Dirty Hands Day

Day 3 – Tuesday at Orphanage Emmanuel

Tom, one of our team members, is an early riser and made it part of his servant heart to the team to make the umpteen carafes of coffee that we consumed each morning. Thank you Lord for Tom!

And for Hope. Really for Hope. Bless her heart, she brought me a steaming mug of coffee to our bunk house at 5:30 this morning as a way to bless me. Words truly cannot convey how much I appreciated that!

I was excited about today! Last night I learned there was a farm! And they needed people to come plant! This I could do!

So, after morning devotion with the medium-big boys and breakfast, I headed toward the farm with a sense of purpose that had been missing. I was still meditating on Psalm 1 and the difference between a broken world and a thriving one built on the foundation of God’s Word.

The fact that there is a need for an Orphanage Emmanuel speaks to our broken world. Most of the children there are not actual orphans. Some are. Most are either abandoned, abused, or come from extreme poverty. Many are placed there by the government having been taken from their living situations. Some are there because they were getting into trouble and the courts placed them there – as a way of protecting them? There is growing gang violence even in the small gown of Guaimaca. I have seen a number of children and youth who are special needs. I know they are there because this is a society where the parents have no use for nor any resources to care for such children. I have seen children who have been maimed and burned and bear scars of abuse or other trauma. These are the children who cling to you, simply needing a loving, safe touch.

Yes, the way of wickedness and sin and mockers leads to a world that needs a place like Orphanage Emmanuel. I can see that. I have also begun to understand what the Lord was impressing upon me about being neither active nor passive in furthering or condoning the broken world. We are to be actively engaged in living whole.

This place exists because of the faith of one man, David, and one woman, Lydia. They are affectionately known by all of the children here as momma and poppa. They heard the Lord call them to Honduras and like Abraham, they went. That in and of itself stinkin’ challenges me and my “safe” faith.

Emmanuel is founded on the Scripture from Psalm 27:10 “Although my father and mother have forsaken me, the Lord will take me up.” The Lord revealed to David how His heart was broken by the cries of these children, unwanted by society and rejected and neglected by men. So, with Psalm 27:10 as their mandate, Emmanuel became the reality of the Lord’s calling. Orphanage Emmanuel is the manifestation of what it means to live whole.

This is what I pondered as I walked to the farm today. The brokenness but also the faith of these two people. What must it be like to have such faith? To understand the call to live whole in such a broken place? This is what our upcoming retreat is all about.

I found the farm. I am the only female there, but there was one other member of our team. In the not so far distance I saw my husband and several other men from our team digging holes for the posts for the towers (now there are two that need to be built, not just one) and others were swinging pick axes as they dug the trenches for the irrigation pipe. Alongside the men are several medium/big and big boys helping.  Honduras has declared a week of no school – so the boys are working.

I have learned that the older children are assigned jobs at the orphanage. The girls help cook, do laundry and care for the younger children. The boys are on yard and property maintenance, working the farm, and tending the animals. This is how they learn the importance of hard work. And they tell us it is good for them to see the teams that come to help working alongside them. It teaches the boys, in particular, work ethic. Later, I would wonder what they thought about me being out there with them. That was not very traditional!

I recognized several of the boys from our morning devotion time: Rudolph, Jose, Jimmy, and Saul.

They seemed happy to see me there. They asked me my name again – reading my name tag.  The boys practiced saying it and ended up with a couple of variations.  Those who really tried to understand the silent “e” decided it was Denees – with the accent on Den.  The rest decided to say it phonetically based on their alphabet which made it Deneesay.

I picked up a shovel, and alongside the others begin mixing dirt, manure, and coffee hulls into a large pile that became dirt for planting in. We mixed and mixed and mixed. The boys were chatty. And that was fun. Several knew English but I am finding that language doesn’t have to be a barrier. These children see teams of people come in and out of their lives almost every week so they have become fairly well adapted to communicating non-verbally.

After we got the dirt mixed thoroughly, we then filled hundreds of bags that will be used as pots to plant seedlings in. The boys worked hard. I worked hard. By lunchtime all the bags were filled and moved into the shade house. This is where we would be working after lunch – planting kale and beets. The boys made sure my spot on the trailer was dusted off before I sat down on it for the ride back around. That was so cute considering how disgustingly dirty we all were after the shoveling of manure!

Agriculture is a new project for the orphanage. The man in charge of running it, Wade, has his degree in Agricultural Science or something like that from Auburn. He came down on a mission trip himself, fell in love with the adopted daughter of David and Lydia and stayed. It’s a great story!!

His love is farming and his vision is to establish a working farm to help provide nutritious food for the children. They have established a tilapia farm, have a pig herd, cattle, chickens and goats. The plants will help provide nutritional vegetables. They have a year round growing season here, so when they find what works and how to best grow them for maximum output, they can really move toward producing much of what they need.

After lunch, I, and several others from our team, spent the afternoon planting in those freshly filled planting bags and pots. Wade gave us direction as to how many bags he wanted with kale and how many he wanted with beets. Two kale seedlings to a pot and five beet seedlings to a pot. The seedlings are so fragile. We are trying to be so careful as we transplant them. Wade is certain they will live and grow. We aren’t but we wish we had his optimism.

We worked all afternoon but felt like we made no progress; there were still so many little seedlings and so many empty pots. But our backs are certainly telling us we made progress!

There is a store – La Tienda – that the kids always ask to go to. They have to be accompanied by an adult – and they see team members as the way to get there. This does bother me a little as it seems to reek of the whole entitlement thing that I so oppose at home. I have noticed that the first thing they often say is “will you take me to the store?” If no, they don’t really want to have much to do with you. But Rudolph and Jose have worked hard. At least, I think they worked hard! And I did want to do this thing that seems to be central to the experience here.

At 3:00 sharp the work on the farm wrapped up. I am used to working until the work is done. Which of course it never is, but still – quitting at 3? The men at the towers did not quit. Their help did, but they didn’t!

With Wade’s permission, the boys and I walked to the store. Rudolph’s English was excellent and he was able to facilitate our conversation. I learned that he wants to be a chef. He has quite the plan laid out – come the U.S. for the University study, stay for 10 years learning his craft, and go back to Honduras to open his own restaurant. Gosh I hope that happens for him! What a joy to see a young boy with such dreams!! Jose wants to be pilot he says. Well of course that captured my heart right away and I want to make sure my husband meets him! He’s precious.

I delivered them back to their house by four and headed back to the team house for the evening. I soon realized that even though their work at the farm finished at 3, their work did not. I saw Rudolph with a couple of older boys making the rounds swapping out the food slop buckets. They waste very little here. All food scraps go into the slop bucket for the pigs. That was his job after his dinner.

I am beginning to understand my husband’s response about how this trip is about loving on the kids. I had this idea that loving on the kids meant being with the kids, entertaining them, playing with them – that kind of thing. But for my husband I see that his way of loving the kids is building this water tower stand so that the mango grove and farm areas can have irrigation. His way of loving on the kids is to help create something that will provide for them. I begin to see the planting as my way of loving on the kids.

This was a good day. A really good day. Lord, thank you for a new heart and the blessing of dirty hands.

Blessings from Honduras!

Denise