Around my house in Honduras

Dirt roads.

Long skirts.


No beds.

Sometimes that is what people think when they hear the word missionary but that is not quite what we were going through for any longer than one week.

PRAISE GOD!!!

THIS WAS OUR LIFE IN THE CITY TEGUZ
This is what we saw every day lots of cars, street lights

hotels that are NICE!!! and even kind of expensive for N. Americans.




This is where the people in my living block parked there cars, yes we had cars, buses and lots and lots of taxes. There are horse and buggy but that is very rare in the area where we lived.

This was across the street from my house.

Advertisement is prity much the same too.

Cell Group

During our time in Honduras we all were apart of groups called Cell groups. There were 3 different ones held at my house and I on a normally attended 2, one was led by my brother and one was led by Lamwel (the man in the picture above with me) He is also the mane drummer at the church in the praise and worship band.
He is amazingly blessed in drumming. Unfortunately he is not so blessed in other areas and so the last Saturday that we were in Honduras was his last week being the leader of that cell meeting. He could use your prayers because he is not very sure what is going on in his life. He goes with the people around him, like it says in Proverbs, bad company corrupts good people...once again the word of God proves right.
This was some of the group that was at my house. Ade also came to this one so it was nice because we could help each other understand what was going on. These people were some of our friends who we got to see out side of church and there for saw that when every one responds to the question how are you doing the real answer is not good.
The Honduran culture is very huggy touchy
but even as much as God helped me not be annoyed by being touched a pillow was necessary for this instance. This guy name who is laying on my shoulder is Cesar.
This is my living room and we were having a free Saturday and so we were playing games and eating...something else very important with the Honduras culture. A free Saturday, that is one Saturday out of like 6 that the leader can choose what ever the group does.
There are over 100 different Cell groups with are small more intimant groups of people that get together on Friday or Saturday night to seek the Lords face together. Every week the leaders teach the same lesson at every house and then the have the same night free so some times we combine the groups and do something special but this time we just had a fun fun night with our group.

Note of encouragement

This is from a Pastor who came down to Honduras in the end of Jan. the beginning of Feb. with Mike Holland, to do a week of evangelism with us with a group of 4 other people.
The man with the straw in his mouth is Pastor Kurt, the one who wrote this letter.
Hey STEP girls,

WOW!!! What can I say, I had an incredible time in Honduras with all of you ladies. I took a little bit of time earlier today to check out some of your blog sites and your xanga sites, and I was very impressed by what I read. God has done some incredibly powerful things in each one of your lives. And I want you to know if I were your youth pastor, I would be overjoyed after reading more about each of you and especially after this week and seeing you girls minister the way you did. I am still truly amazed that all of you are only 18, 19, 20, and 22!! You are all mature way beyond your years.

You know I wanted to share something with you before I left, but I never really got the chance. So I’ll share it with you all now as an encouragement!!

I came to Honduras not really knowing what to expect and hoping that God could use me in someway to encourage you girls, and to be a source of refreshing to you in the midst of your intense missions work. And honestly I am so used to giving to teenagers in ministry, listening to them, praying with them, and just giving my whole life to serve them, so I was excited to be able to do that with all of you. It seems like I’m always leading someone whether teens or youth leaders or parents, and trying to give of myself in this way. So I guess I really expected God to pour out my life into all of you. But I was completely surprised because I walked away from this week feeling very refreshed, encouraged in my faith, excited to continue doing ministry, with a greater passion for the lost, and just uplifted by God’s spirit.

Seeing your faith in God, each of you expressing your desire to love and serve God, and love people was exciting to me. Hearing the stories of how God brought you to STEP and where He is leading you was inspiring to me. And just worshipping with you and praying with you all brought great joy to my heart. I was completely blessed by this trip, by the people in Honduras, and by your spirits. Thanks for being obedient to God to be a part of STEP, to go to Honduras, and giving up a year of your life to serve God. And thanks for sharing your lives with our team, for allowing Jeff, Meredith, Gene, Mike, and me to be a part of your lives. And thanks for opening your hearts up to us and welcoming us to Honduras for the week. Maybe it’s not supposed to happen this way, but I could tell that God used all of you to impact my life this past week. And I believe that you will all continue to see God do some incredible things through your lives, just as we did this past week in Las Mercedes!!! Keep striving to Honor God in all you do and He will bless you.


So that’s what I wanted to tell you. Otherwise I’m glad to be back home with my wife, Megan!! I was very glad to see her at 2:00 AM in the morning on Saturday. However, I do really miss Honduras, the language, the culture, and the people I had a chance to meet. And I especially miss the warm weather, I would take 80 degrees and sunburn any day over 13 degrees with a wind chill of close to zero!!! And I heard that in Ohio, they had a cold day off of school today because the temperatures were in the negatives and wind chill was really low!!! Yeah, it’s crazy cold here. So be glad you get suffer for Jesus in Honduras!!!

Oh yeah, I also had the chance to share about my trip with our teens in Sunday school yesterday morning. It was really awesome, but it was also difficult showing some of the video from the Crematorio and talking about some of the stories.

If you didn’t notice already, I attached several pictures to this email, so that you could see some of them. Also, if you’d like to see more of my pictures from Honduras you can check them out at this website. If you’d like more pictures, let me know. Or I can just post all of them on the website, and apparently you can even use this website to order the pictures.
http://www.ringo.com/profile/kletner.html
I am hoping to get some of my videos onto the computer and then I’ll post them as well so you can see them. And eventually I’ll copy them and maybe I can send them to you as well.

You’ll have to let me know how things are going. My prayers will be with you this week as well.

Blessings,

Kurt Letner
Youth Pastor
Mechanicsburg Brethren in Christ Church

Letters like this one were great encouragements to us and makes us remember why we are doing what we are doing.

Here is a pictures of the group that came with Kurtfrom left to right it is Pastor Kurt, Gene, Pastor Jeff, Meridith and Pastor Mike Holland.

They were introducing themselves to the church in Kennedy that we attended.

This is our Pastor Marcos from Nicaragua telling the church what a great man of God Pastor Mike Holland and His father.

The mans head that you can see the back of is a man that my team of people visited and invited to church during the week of evangelism. It was so great to see some of the people show up that we had ministered to the days before.

Manuelito project

Ade and Ivana




This was in April some time I'm not sure when it took place but it was not long ago. this is one of the monkies that we painted at the project Manwalito. Isn't it cute. During out time at this ministry we met some really cool and funny people.


This is Lester. He is a pastor at the church that is connected with the Manwalito project.


He is married and has one daughter. We had the privilege of meeting his family.



This is Claudia, the secretary of the church. By the way the church is called Amor y Vida (Love and Life). She was our very first friend at the project and we had many good times just sitting in her office talking and laughing with her. She is taking classes at the University and is in a prity serious relationship from a man at her church. There is no ring on her finger but I'm sure that that is not far from the future. They are both finishing up Classes so that is more of a priority right now but lets wait and see what God will do in the future :)


She is an amazing woman of God who also does missions in her own country. There are different groups of indigenous people in the Mountains of Honduras that she goes and ministers to every once in a while. She had invited us to go with her one time but our schedule was too crammed to fit a visit with her in this trip. Her dream is to go and do more missions not just in her country but around the world.
Oh yeah and she has an amazing voice!!!!!!!

This is Cookie he is the director of the children at the Manualito project in the country. There are 2 different locations for the project, one in the city and one in the country. For a few days Ade and i had the privilege of going out to meet all of the kids in the country one. Right now all of the children are in the one place in the country, because some changes are being made so we didn't meet any of the children until we went out to the country.