Marcos falls and lives to tell the tale

Wanted to show you the almost complete Sunday school rooms in San Juancito.  We helped as a mission with the roofing materials, but otherwise the entire project has been one the Church has brought to fruition.  There are still no doors, windows or floors poured, but at this point it is done enough for them to use it, which is the key.  It is hard to tell from this picture perspective how big the rooms are, it was quite the ambitious project.

 

There is a family that lives above the Church, caretakers/watchmen of the property if you will.  Santos is the father and one of the leaders in the Church, he works full time farming (Oscar is helping him now giving him a job on his nearby property), just not on his own farm for the most part, there is not enough time.  He and his wife have ten children.  They live in the house pictured here (not the white building at the top.)  They have been active in the Church for many years. 

 

We got to talk to them quite a bit the day we were visiting, and I had not heard the story of Marcos' "incident" last year so I asked for the full scoop.  Marcos is the handsome young man in the yellow shirt on the left.  You might notice from the above picture that there is not much of a guardrail on the wall that overlooks the roof of the Church, which is probably 20 feet or more off the ground.  Marcos was following his brother on a "short cut" to get to the house quicker...and fell from the house level to the roof of the Church, and then rolled down from the roof and fell down to the ground.  No bones were broken somehow, but he had a big head injury, and after about two weeks was cured with surgery and care, and released from the public hospital in Tegucigalpa...all of which classifies his experience as...amazing.  (that he did not die in the fall, that he broke no bones, that the treatment was quick and effective, and that he was released in two weeks...that almost never happens.)

 

His mother was most worried about his head injury because Marcos also had brain cancer when he was a toddler, and survived that as well after trips and time in the public hospital with chemical treatment.  That is also quite impressive/amazing/odd-overcoming.  After hearing all that...we concluded God must have great plans for him.

 

We also met his sister, the only one in the family interested in studying at all in her life, she has struggled and worked very hard to actually graduate high school this year.  All the other children were always more interested in farming or other work they could find.  She would love to be able to go to college, a pipe dream if I have ever seen one.  We are praying though...maybe after some conversations and God intervening, maybe a scholarship would be forthcoming? 

 

Families like this one we encounter often on our travels and work through the Churches, it is hard to put into words really what these visits mean for us, for them, and for the work of the Church body.   

 

Hard to put into words, but Marcos lives to tell the tale.