Initial Shock- What's that in your hair?

During our first mission trip to Honduras, God revealed many things about Himself to us.  We traveled on foot many miles to a very impoverished village known as La Ceibita.  We had plans on washing and doing the hair of the women and children as well as an adaptation of a VBS.  When we arrived though, we found that there were only two spigots for running water for the whole town and one of them didn't work.   So much for our plan to wash hair!  However, one of our guys proved to be a handyman and got the town spigot running again.  We lined up the ladies and children and took them one by one and to wash their hair.  The people of this town are Lenca Indians and many of them still use a very traditional dress, including head coverings for their hair.  It was such a humbling experience as we removed the head coverings.  Most of these ladies had never had their hair washed with shampoo before or brushed either.  As we lathered the shampoo and placed our fingers in their hair, lice began crawling up our arms.  For us North Americans, we were mortified!  CULTURE SHOCK!!!!  Thoughts like, "How can these people live like this and these people are so dirty," crossed my mind.  The differences between my culture and that culture were glaring at me!  While washing that first lady's hair, I remembered that Jesus washed the nasty, dirty feet of His disciples, so why shouldn't I be able to wash this hair?  I quickly pinned up my own and continued.  I was more and more humbled by the actions of my Savior with each head that I washed and brushed.   As I washed the hair of each mother and child, I prayed for them.  I prayed that God would reveal Himself to each individual in the village and that La Ceibita would be forever changed by the Word of God.  Initial shock can be overcome by seeing the greater picture.  I have since learned that for these people, lice were and are simply a part of their life.  It isn't such an awful thing when everyone around you has the same way of life.  As my relationship developed with the people of this village and others in the same region, lice became such a non-issue because I grew to love them just as they are.

After we left the village and arrived back to the nearest city, we bought lice shampoo and treated our own hair "just to be sure."  A couple of weeks later I found myself in the hustle and bustle of my wedding week and all the last minute details that includes when my fiance looked at me with a strange look and asked, "What is that in your hair?"  He then began to move my hair behind my ear only to discover more "somethings" there.  I quickly ran to the bathroom to discover my own infestation of lice right before my wedding!  Yet, somehow, I wasn't totally disgusted because I knew that wouldn't be the last time.  Our journey together was about to begin and we knew that would include many more trips to these villages and possibly many more times of fine-nit-combing. Sharing the life-changing message of Jesus with them was worth it and still is!

First Stage- Initial Elation

I love new beginnings!  I love the feeling of a fresh start and blank slate.  I love that God promises us that each day is full of new  mercies. I love the excitement that stirs in my heart about the unknown adventure that lies ahead. I love that feeling of stepping out in faith and watching the Lord pave the way each step...

And I'll never forget those first steps into our ministry in Honduras.

Let me preface this by saying that I knew when I met and married Rene that I was not just saying "I do" to the man that I would spend the rest of my life with, but I was also saying, "I do" to a lifetime of missionary service with him.  Rene had shared with me that he had a calling to tell others back in his country of Honduras about the Lord and  I had surrendered to the call to missions long before I ever met my dear husband, so I knew at some point in our lives, we would be Honduras bound.

But, you see, my husband asked me to marry him before I ever had the opportunity to meet his family.  I said, "yes" before I ever laid eyes on the country that I would one day call "home".

So, we led our first mission trip to Honduras three weeks before my wedding.   We arrived in Tegucigalpa with a team of college students. My future mother-in-law arranged it so that she was waiting on the landing strip when our plane arrived.  I hugged my future family for the first time.  We travelled across country to a small city where we rented a cattle truck and all climbed in the back to continue our journey another several hours to a small town.  We camped out and the next day, we hiked and hiked and hiked to a very remote village.  It really did seem like the "end of the earth" to me.  All the while, I was soaking in the scenery!  Beautiful mountain ranges and green valleys, security guards with machine guns standing in front of grocery stores and banks, tiny people scarred by the toils of life, men that wore straw hats so that their skin was protected by the sun and women that wore bright colors and covered their hair.  I saw new foods and smelt new smells and experienced coke being served in plastic bags with a straw.  Strange things.    The people in that village had very little from a worldly perspective.  They had the clothes on their backs and most of them didn't even have shoes on their feet.  They even referred to their birthdays as "the day the corn was harvested" rather than a date.

I saw a lot of new things for me.  But up there in that tiny village I saw something I didn't expect, something I had never seen before: I SAW VISION and I FELT CALLING!  It took effort on our part to get to that village.  It also took a lot of resources.  We gave these people a lot of things.  We washed the ladies' hair as lice crawled up our arms.  We passed out shoes and clothes. But more than all this, we shared HOPE with them.  We shared Jesus!  The clothes we passed out would one day wear thin and the shoes would one day be outgrown or worn out and even the rice and beans would only last a couple of meals, but JESUS will be around for all of eternity!  So, we shared with them and the words of the scripture, "the poor people of this world will be rich in faith," took on a whole  new meaning to me.  My first steps to a new land were greeted with initial elation and calling and the calling is what held me through every other stage of CultureSHOCK.