Each summer I've had the opportunity to lead short term mission trips to Honduras with teams from the church where I serve as a pastor, North Way Christian Community. We always visit Dr. Lisa Anderson Umana and her urban ministry partners to assist her with he work with Christian Camping International. Last year we had an amazing team that did great work in Tegucigalpa. On one of our bus rides around town, Lisa and I schemed up a trip where we would attempt a city immersion with students from Bakke Graduate University that would overlap with a short term missions team from North Way. This week, that dream is becoming a reality. On June 23rd, Lisa and I welcomed students from around the world to Tegucigalpa to begin a ten day city immersion. The North Way team is having their final trip planning meeting today, and they're flying to Tegucigalpa on June 27th to join us for our adventures in Honduras. It's all coming together!
During our welcome dinner on Friday evening, we took the chance to get to know each other. Usually everyone is tired during the initial travel day to open a BGU immersion, so we keep the schedule pretty low key. One of our themes for the immersion is experiential learning, so Lisa is incorporating lots of fun ideas into the week to help us reflect on what we're learning.
We're staying at a beautiful retreat center called Villa Gracia. There's tropical flowers everywhere, amazing views, and nature all around. We'll be going in and out of many different parts of the city while we're here, so this place will be a nice place to rest our heads. We start each morning off with quiet time and an Ignatian devotional that was put together by BGU's director of spiritual formation, Dr. Nita Kotiuga. God does special things through city immersions, so it's important for our teams to spend time with the Lord each day.
On Saturday we started the learning off with guest lecturers from the Tegucigalpa chamber of commerce. They shared a presentation on how business can bring about transformation, and they shared practical examples of how they're doing that in Honduras. The highlight was probably spending time with several entrepreneurs who have started up exciting new businesses in different parts of the city. In the afternoon we discussed missions. We had two missionaries visit with us, and they shared about a very unique ministry model that they've developed where they have developed a network of missionaries and ministries throughout Honduras that are now collaborating with each other. It was a beautiful picture of shalom leadership.
After dinner in the evening, we enjoyed an evening of dancing. A local Honduras dance group shared traditional folk dances with us. It was a great opportunity to get to know the culture better as we prepare to explore the city this week. We were even invited to join in on the dancing for a few songs (I won't post any pictures of me embarrassing myself with my awful dance moves). I'll do my best to post on this blog as the BGU team, and eventually the North Way team, join forces to learn more about what God is doing in Honduras. It's going to be an amazing couple of weeks!
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