Dear Friend,
I have been overwhelmed this month at how God answers prayer and uses such small acts of faith to do big things for the Kingdom. The biggest thing I wanted to share about this month was our Honduras mission trip! On Saturday, March 5th, we left Blacksburg around 4:15 am to head to the Roanoke airport where we started our journey: 12 students and one leader travelling from Blacksburg, Virginia to Danli, Honduras. After a long day of traveling, we joined with Iglesia Gran Comision, Danli (Great Commission Church of Danli) for their Saturday evening worship service. It was very impactful to worship the same God in different languages! On our first full day, Sunday, we visited a house that a previous mission team had built, learned about that community’s current water supply situation, and then visited Urrutia to see Total Water’s sanitation project, which is almost done! The piping has been completed and the concrete for the septic tank lid was being poured that week. Monday was a full day of evangelism in Urrutia, where it was very encouraging to see how our evangelism from last year was not forgotten. For one of our students, Ally, who went on the trip last year, this was very clear. At the first house Ally visited this year, the woman there remembered her from last year! Despite having only one interaction over the course of a year, this woman remembered. Ally and the woman were then able to discuss the difficulties the woman’s family had faced over the past year, including the loss of her husband. Some people might devalue the importance of short term missions, but I’ve seen countless ways how even short term trips can make a difference!
On Tuesday morning, we visited a day-care with about 40 kids ranging from 2-5 years old. We attempted to play some organized games at first, but lost their attention quickly and simply played with them on what pieces of playground equipment they had which weren’t broken. Beyond the bubbles, and running around with the kids on our backs as “caballitos” (little horses), what we didn’t realize at first was the impact we were making. One of the teachers later shared how most of the kids we were playing with might not have received that much love or attention before. Many had been abandoned or abused, but we were showing them Christ’s love like they’d never seen it. In the afternoon, we visited a school of about 160 children, which we broke up into 4 groups to rotate through stations including crafts, games, Bible stories, and First-Aid. On Wednesday, we had a similar routine of visiting a school in the morning and another daycare in the afternoon. Thursday we spent evangelizing in other communities, and Friday was our day of rest.
Many prayers were answered in our trip home that Saturday, making it safe and sound to Roanoke around midnight. God answered prayers of safe travels, health throughout the week, among many other things! And less than 24 hours later, I got the chance to preach my first NLCF sermon, like I mentioned in my last update. I spoke about the season of Lent, which although almost over at that point, still helped challenge our congregation to see what disciplines they could add or things they could take out of their lives to help focus on God.
After spring break there were a lot of other activities to finish out the month of March. We had our annual spring dance, which was luau themed this year, and was used as a way to invite friends outside of community to start building relationships with our members. I also organized the 2nd Life After College workshop for our seniors, focusing on topics like retirement planning, dining on a budget, and finding a church home. We finished out the month with holy week, by hosting Seder meals on Holy Thursday, as well as joining with our community congregation for a Good Friday meditation service and a giant combined worship service on Easter Sunday. After the service, we baptized 8 people between our two congregations! Two of those were from my own Hokie family, which was very exciting!
I hope that through our trip to Honduras, as well as the many other things we are doing here at Virginia Tech, you are able to see the impact of your financial and prayer support. I couldn’t do this without you!
In Christ,
David
David McCann 