Club member Nate Bean coordinated a trip to Tegucigalpa, Honduras. The destination was an area known as Los Pinos. The Rotary Club of Issaquah provided $1000 in support of a project to help the citizens of this impoverished area.

Covenant Merge Ministries coordinated the trip, evaluating how to best help evaluate ways the visit by a team would help the long-term vision of the local ministry and encourage teams to develop a long-term relationship with the host ministry. You can find more information about Covenant Merge Ministries.

Fifteen members of the Cascade Covenant Church in North Bend spent a week in 2007. While there, every day a 15-passenger van drove 15 minutes to the Los Pinos area, which is primarily an area that was non-existent prior to Hurricane Mitch in 1998 when more than in 11,000 people were killed and thousands more displaced from their homes.

This area had no infrastructure to support these new people at the time they relocated there. To this day it is still very primitive with no running water and no sewer or proper septic systems. The people of Los Pinos must pay to have (unclean) water delivered from a pumper truck or walk water up from the community well at the base of the hill. Only about ¼ to 1/3 of the students attend school and it appears that a large percentage of the adults are unemployed, simply because there is not enough work to support the entire population. Honduras is one of the poorest countries in the western hemisphere, with a per capita income of only $1,190.

The worksite consisted of land that has been cleared of brush and leveled to accommodate building foundations. There were roof support pillars and a corrugated roof in place when we arrived. The long term vision of the church is to build two buildings on the site, one to serve as a church and the other to serve as a school. There is currently no good school facility serving children of that age in the area. One of the primary focuses of the school is to teach the students to read and write so they can be more prepared for the work world after school. The buildings bereing constructed will serve as both the new school building and the church until a second building is able to be constructed in the future. The work performed consisted of clearing land, preparing and building the foundation and construction of a retaining wall.

Mornings were devoted to construction until lunchtime and the afternoons were given to working with children�s ministry. Trenches were dug around the building site for the footings and preparing the floor. All of the concrete and cement was mixed by hand on the ground with shovels and the water had to be carried in one bucket at a time from 55-gallon drums at the neighbor�s home. During the course of a week crews were able to almost complete the floor and the first stages of the retaining wall. Forty-seven bags of cement and enough sand and gravel were left behind for local residents to complete the floor and wall after the group left. The people of the church have the manpower to be able to finish the work that was started, but the supplies needed to do the work cannot be afforded without help from our partnering church.

The time in the afternoons consisted of three different daily topics. One day was committed to cleanliness and hygiene, one day to healthy eating and one day to respect. The children worked with were between the ages of 2 and 13. Four to six workstations were set up each day and the children were separated into groups according to their ages and they went to each station with their group. Skills taught were how to make wise choices with the foods that they eat, how to wash their hands properly, tooth brushing, clean clothes, how to keep their environment clean, picking up garbage, getting along with others, respecting their parents, their siblings, their environment, etc.

It is hoped that future visits will build on the successes of this first visit.