Honduras, 2020
Here is the report from the team captain.
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From: Dr Charlick <xxxxxxxxxxxt>
Sent: Monday, January 27, 2020 12:32 PM
To: hollandkendall@kendalloptoministry.org
Subject: 2019 Honduras Mission Summary
HEALTH TEAMS INTERNATIONAL
HONDURAS MISSION – July 7–21, 2019
A group of 10 Christian health care providers and 2 evangelistic pastors went to Honduras July 7-21, 2019 to work with Pastor Omar Salorzano, a Honduras pastor and his 4-generation family for our 9th year.
Our joint purpose was to reach the unreached people who have never heard the Good News of Jesus or who had never heard the complete story well enough to want to become a Christian. We had our 10 health care providers providing loving medical care, giving out medicine as needed, providing dental services and fitting people with glasses, both reader and prescription glasses. We did all of these health services free in very remote, small villages where they had no health care.
We were invited by a local pastor of a small church in a small village who needed help and would be happy to follow up on the new Christians that accepted Jesus.
Our Health Teams International (HTI) team provided loving, free care services along with sharing the Good News of Jesus and this resulted in opening the ears of non-Christians as well as their hearts and they became much more receptive to listen and accept Jesus into their hearts and becoming Christians. Health Teams International has done this combination of free, loving health care services and sharing the Gospel together in over 70 different countries where we have been invited for 40 years. Our results have seen over 200,000 unreached people become Christians.
The local pastors who have invited us to their area are happy to follow up and mentor the new Christians we leave behind. We have seen a beginning church of 5-10 people suddenly grow into churches of several hundred.
Our two HTI U.S. team pastors spent full time sharing the Gospel with individuals, families, and small groups that were waiting for our health care providers. They had over 200 unreached people accept Jesus as their Savior and become Christians.
Many of the health care providers shared the Gospel individually with their patients and many patients also prayed with them to become Christians. We had a very rewarding time serving Jesus as He commanded us in the last 2 verses of Matthew when He said, “Therefore go into all the world and preach the Gospel.”
Our Honduras host Pastor Omar and his family treat us just like their family. Pastor Omar’s wife is a local practicing M.D. and always went with us and helped us in many ways. Grandma and Grandpa, in their 80’s and 90’s years of age, open their home and their daughter cooked us a very delicious big supper every evening. The meals were cooked so in our 13 days, each
of our 9 years, no one got sick eating the Honduras food. We ate breakfast which was made special for us, in our nearby good hotel. While in the small remote villages we ate our own lunch snacks we each brought from the U.S. To be sure that all our food was safe Pastor Omar furnished us with cold bottles water and soda every day.
Pastor Omar is a well-known and respected Honduras pastor with a sizable church in the capitol of Honduras which is Tegucigalpa. He arranged where our team would go each day by contacting pastors in very small, unreached villages and
maked sure the facilities are adequate for our team and that several local people will help with registration and organization. We have never been to the same place twice.
After 9 years, the word has gotten around about our HTI team and Pastor Omar has many local pastors asking for help in their small remote villages. He has to carefully limit our team to only 11 villages each year. Often, we travel 1 to 2 hours to reach the village we are working in that day.
Lidia, Pastor Omar’s adult daughter, speaks good English and works directly with me and our team members. Lidia works as
secretary for the Chief of the National Honduras Police. She arranged for several heavily armed police to pick us up at the hotel each morning and traveled as our escort with our bus. They stayed with us all day and brought us back to Grandma’s house for supper in the evening. Grandma and her daughter had supper all ready for the police each night also. Lidia also arranged for great Christian translators to be with each team member all day. Several of them are medical, dental and university students. We pay these sharp English-speaking university students a little more than the average daily wage, $8.00 for their 12-hour day. They seemed very happy and they were very good.
Lidia arranged for our hotel and our one-half free day. After going to Omar’s church Sunday morning Lidia took us to very interesting areas where we could look around and souvenir shop and out to Wendy’s for supper. Our last day was our R & R day when we went sight- seeing, had a nice big safe lunch and some went swimming. We took some of our translators with us.
Our weather was great, temperature generally between 70 and 85. We are up in the mountains most of the time. We rode in a nice comfortable private bus. Everywhere we went we had a fantastic Christian driver and his very beautiful, smart daughter was one of our translators.
There were many unusual experiences I will never forget. I will only share one. One small village about 2-1/2 hours out of the Capitol, we met a pastor who was hosting us, we worked in her church. The church walls were made of cement blocks. One half of the church floor was cement and the other half dirt. The church could probably house 40 people max. There was no sign of a roof over the church. We were told that the church was 15 years old and had about 20 people in attendance. We were also told that there was no school in the village or any neighboring village that was close enough for their children to go to school, so most all children could not read or write. Needless to say, not many people in this village were Christians, but there are more Christians now.
I hope our Lord was pleased with our efforts. I feel that most patients we worked on feel we love them. I feel we helped a lot of pastors get more respect and improved the number of Christians in their churches.
I personally feel greatly rewarded and feel good after 2 weeks of helping so many poor people to improve their health, eliminate a lot of pain, helping them to see better with glasses and most important introduced many people to Jesus, Christianity and Heaven.
I feel sure that over 100 people participated in making this whole mission a success. Thanks to everyone who helped in any way.
Richard E. Charlick, D.D.S., M.S.
Pres/CEO Health Teams International
Team Leader
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