After 4.5 years at the Finca and so many medical brigades that have come and gone from the Trujillo area, I finally had the opportunity to help with one of the brigades in the outside communities!! It has long been on my Honduras bucket list, but I have either always had an immersion trip at the Finca during the time of the brigade or the brigade simply didn’t need any more translators or additional help.
Mountain Medics is a medical brigade that first came to the Trujillo area in 2024, and they come back to the area every March to help God’s people in remote villages. Graham is the owner of the organization, and I have gotten to know him pretty well over the last few years during the organization and the execution of the medical brigades. I was unfortunately not able to go with them in 2024 or 2025 due to immersion trips being at the Finca, but the desire to help with the brigades has been on my heart for a while now, especially hearing all of the incredible experiences of my Finca missionaries over the years with the different medical brigades that come to the area.
Like I mentioned, I finally had the opportunity to go help this year!! I was SO, SO, SO excited about the opportunity, and it definitely lived up to the hype! Graham decided to take his team to two remote towns (called Plan Grande y Quinito) on Monday, 3/23 and Tuesday, 3/24, but the only way to arrive at those towns is via boat. The road is sometimes accessible for motorcycles at different times throughout the year, but the majority of the people only are able to come and go via a small boat on the ocean. It was my first time in boat that far down the Honduran coastline (the boat ride took about 45 minutes from the Finca). & IT WAS SO, SO, SO BEAUTIFUL!!! I was overcome with gratitude and appreciation for the pure beauty of the country that I have lived in for going on 5 years now. The combination of the enormous palm trees, coconut trees, and the beautiful shorelines is something that I will carry in my head and heart for a long time going forward.
On Monday and Tuesday during the medical brigade, I was mainly responsible for being on the intake team, which means greeting people as they come in and filling out their initial evaluation form and their essential vitals. I really enjoyed this opportunity to meet different types of people from Plan Grande and Quinito and to do my best to share with them my energy and love for Christ. The only downside to working on the intake team is that there isn’t very much time to talk to the patient and truly get to know them because there are always more people in line and the patients want to go see the doctors.
I also got a few brief opportunities to translate for some of the English-speaking doctors that were on the medical brigade, mainly in the dentist’s office. I REALLY, REALLY enjoyed getting to translate for the doctors because there was more time to genuinely sit down and get to know the patient, and I felt like the translating work was more important than simply doing the original intake form. I really enjoyed the opportunity to meet the patient where they were at in a time of challenge and difficulty and help them be able to decide the best future for their own health.
While the actual intake process and translating work was really incredible, I enjoyed the most being able to get to know the nearby families and hearing their stories! For example, 5 of our missionaries stayed in Quinito on Monday night while the rest of the brigade stayed in Plan Grande, and we were greeted by an INCREDIBLY generous family which Teddy and Emmet had met about a month earlier on a different brigade in Quinito. This family welcomed us into their homes, chatted with us about life and the struggles of daily life in rural Honduras, and even fed us an INCREDIBLE lobster dinner to end a lovely time together. During the brigade on Tuesday, that same family made all of the Finca missionaries a LOVELY seafood soup (called sopa marinera) that we thoroughly enjoyed!
While life was certainly much simpler and calmer in the two remote towns of Plan Grande and Quinito, the thing that impacted me the most was the incredible hospitality of the people! Hospitality and generosity are a huge part of the entire Honduras culture, but it still absolutely shocked me how generous the people were in a place where there are no real jobs available to the men. Unfortunately, the only option for most of the working men in the community is working on commercial fishing boats for 8 months at a time. 8 months without seeing their families… 8 months without stepping foot on dry land… I learned that it is a job that very few people actually enjoy, but what are the other options for those men and their families? They must support their families by any means possible! Regardless of the lack of employment and the lack of stable income, the people from Plan Grande and Quinito met us with sheer joy and awe-inspiring generosity…
These encounters during my few days helping out on the brigade has made me prayerfully question my own generosity with the people that surround me in my daily life at the Finca. Am I being generous with my abundance? Or am I truly generous with the little that I have like the incredible family from Quinito that received us? How is God calling me to more embrace that spirit of living in my every day life at the Finca? Those are all SUPER important questions that I am spending time with in prayer!
Please pray for my all of our Finca kids!
Please let me know how I can pray for you!
God bless!!