Personal Narrative: My Mission Trip To Honduras

One week this summer I was able to live in a completely different world than the privileged one I had been living in all my life. This summer Memorial Road Church of Christ took me to Honduras on a mission trip where other students my age would be serving the people and church there, rebuilding houses smaller than my room for whole families to live in. The mission trip allowed me to learn a lot about the people of Honduras and myself. It was put into perspective for me how blessed I am and how much I take for granted and how much I think I deserve, while people are much happier than me with much less than I have. The trip forced me out of my comfort zone, which was challenging, but I always felt like a stronger person after finishing something I did not want to. No matter how uncomfortable I got, serving the people in Honduras who really needed it was fulfilling, and the impact that it had on me was greater than anything I had ever experienced before. One trip to a disabled children’s orphanage allowed me to appreciate my

wealth, my health and my family on a completely different level.
Two weeks into my summer, the day before I would be leaving for a week in Honduras was the day I started washing enough T-shirt and shorts combinations to last me two weeks.

By the next night I was ready to go with my toiletries, clothes, Bible, bugspray, bedding and passport. I reviewed the packing list at least five times to be sure I did not forget anything necessary for me to survive a week in a third world country and despite this, I had butterflies in my stomach. The fear of having forgotten something essential that would be thousands of miles away combined with the uneasy feeling I got from the thought of spending a week with people I wasn’t comfortable with left me with a pit in my stomach that wouldn’t leave me until the next evening. My dad and I arrived at the church around midnight when I boarded a bus full of strangers that I had not taken the time to get to know in the year my family and I had been living in

Oklahoma.
Sitting next to a girl I was introduced to during my first week in Oklahoma, but hadn’t spoken to since, became increasingly uncomfortable as small talk became awkward silence. The fact that I am no good at making new friends immediately after meeting someone made for an uncomfortable four hour bus ride to Dallas, TX where we would fly out. I spent the majority of the bus ride shifting my weight around in an attempt to discover a comfortable sleeping position in my seat that felt like cold steel under me. To my dismay the airplane ride consisted of even more time spent squirming in my seat in order to find some way for me to sleep enjoyably. By the time we finally arrived in Honduras Monday afternoon, my butt was sore and I was extremely tired from not having slept a minute on either the bus or the plane. The other juniors I was travelling with were all hungry, tired and sore as well, so after the tedious process of ordering fast food in a foreign language I knew very little of, we were on our way to where we would be staying at The Baxter Institute. The junior girls chose their beds, unpacked their suitcases and we all tried to get some sleep in before we would head to a special children’s orphanage deep in the vast, breathtaking Honduran mountains blanketed in forests of palm, mango and banana trees.
I made my first Honduran friend at the children’s orphanage by the end of our first day there. When we arrived at the orphanage you could sense how nervous and anxious the group was to be meeting little kids with disabilities and no parents to speak of. We were asked to spend some one-on-one time with the kids, walking them around their secluded park complete with a playground, hammocks, a trampoline, a garden and narrow walkways. An American woman working at the orphanage brought the kids out of a room one at a time and if the child didn’t chose someone they wanted to walk around with, one of us would volunteer to guide them around and talk to them despite the language barrier. As our group thinned, the woman brought out a little girl in a wheelchair and told us the story of how she got to be in the orphanage and what her disability was. As I walked up to the little girl, the woman told me that she liked to be held and she gets tired of sitting in her wheelchair after a while. Angie was the little girl’s name and she seemed to be sleeping when I wheeled her out to the garden to push her wheelchair up and down the pathways shaded from the beating sun by palm leaves. As I looked at the little girl’s beautiful face and thought about what she had been through and what she has to deal with everyday, I was filled with compassion and sadness for her.
As Angie woke up, I guided her wheelchair into an area in the garden, covered by a roof from which six hammock swings swayed, colorful and inviting in the warm breeze. I scooped her out of the wheelchair and into my lap, and we swung carefree in the tranquility of the vegetation in the mountains. Angie smiled as we rocked back and forth until I struggled to keep my eyes open. To be sure I wouldn’t fall asleep with the fragile little girl in my arms, I stood up and as I was carrying her over to her wheelchair I heard her laugh for the first time since I’d rolled her out of the building. Hearing her sweet laughter made me happy, so I carried her all around the park until she fell asleep again.
Of everything I experienced in Honduras, my first encounter with the children had the greatest impact on my life. In Angie, I saw genuine happiness in the chaos and poverty that flooded her precious life. Meeting Angie really helped me to appreciate everything I take for granted and I even felt guilty for having so much and not being as thankful as I should be for it. If the little children with disabilities and no parents can be happy and see the beauty in life, why shouldn’t I be able to do so as well?