CIY...engage!

We have a group from CIY (Christ In Youth) and their Engage mission trip program here for 11 days, 20 people, including 19 from a Church in Tucson AZ, and one CIY staffer leading the group.    

They have been hard working since day one, working at night as well as during the day. 

First we tackled pouring the garage floors for the clinic parking area as well as the garage for the Fords.  It was hard work, but they got it done!

The good news for the Ford garage parking area was that there was shade from the second and third floor going up and some of the flooring there already in place.














They were scheduled to do one mural, but ended up tackling two!  They are also working on a mural in Sampedrana. 

I will try to get some finished pictures up on Facebook in the next few days. 







Here you can see the finished work on the Ford parking area, complete with the ramp to get up, and the initial work for the ramp to get into the clothing container (the wooden stairs we were blessed with held up very well, but it was time to replace them...we just could not pour the concrete yet as we unloaded a clothing container later that night.) 







Saturday we had an interesting day doing something we have never done before, but that we hope to do again in the future...going out with the clinic staff and many members of the Church into the neighborhood of Unidad y Fuerza (Unity and Strength) as a combined outreach.  We had nine groups going out, six doing home visits with food, and three with the doctors from the clinic doing house calls for the sick. 

Some of the sick were just normal, smaller items.  One family the group I was with visited included a mom with five children (six on the way) who had all her kids at home...no money even to get to the hospital.  She had crippling arthritis in her feet and hands, was very pale, and looked very tired.  This visit was the first prenatal care of any kind she has ever had. 

This all in an area just a 15 minute walk from our clinic.







Darwin had some contacts from another ministry that came with us as well to cut hair for anyone that needed it.  They worked from the porch of Jorge's house.   There were children, at least one drunk gentleman passing by on the street, and others that were helped in this way. 







Their first few nights here, the group went through the clinic rooms and found where some cracks had developed in the finish coat that was put on six years ago when the clinic opened, and filled those to make a smoother appearance. 

Valerie's room seen here needed the most work. 










And then Saturday afternoon and evening they helped paint all the rooms with Justin setting everything up and helping throughout the process, and Sunday (after more food distribution) helped put everything back where it needed to go so the clinic would be ready to go full force again Monday morning.







Saturday night after the great day's activities, there was an outdoor Church service in front of Jorge's house (where they have cell group meetings) and Jim from the group preached.  It was a great message, and just a great time to be in the community, road closed and all. 






Monday morning the group left for Sampedrana, the idea was to use some of the extra money they raised to help some construction efforts there. 

This includes the seen concrete pad for play time for the kids as well as drying coffee when needed. 










Building anything up the mountain is not easy...getting gravel, concrete and sand is much more difficult than just calling for a truck, unless you can pay double or triple what it costs down in town. 

Sometimes they are having to make trips down to a riverbed to buy sand as well. 

They are also helping build a classroom for the Church, will be doing some kids activities, food distribution, and showing a movie for the community tonight. 






Last night they had a Church service, the group sang some songs...so well that the guys from Tegucigalpa are already talking about seeing if they can sing for the Thursday night service here!



Still much more to do while they are here, hoping to post some more pictures of that later this week before they leave on Saturday. 

We will not have as many groups this year as we did last year, but with groups like these that are working so hard, we still hope to do as much or more as last year!