This week hit hard and fast. Byron brought in one of his teams from Murfreesboro! It was refreshing to be around “my people” again.

Byron is the ministry leader I’m serving with while I’m here, and his deep relationship with the team meant everyone was onboard with the vision for this ministry. This vision, put simply, is to help raise up disciple makers within every church (of every kind-as long as they are christian) who then go out, host bible studies, and make more disciples. 

Byron’s process is two fold:

1. Partner with ministries like Clinica Esperanza and R1T1 who serve the community year round.
2. Maintain relationships with people in need of service and offer discipleship to those seeking.

Serving year round

Clinica Esperanza has a brick and mortar building where it services patients every day, free of charge. However, not everyone can make it to the clinic for “minor” aliments, so the clinic brings its services to the community with Medical Brigades, a.k.a. village clinics. During these clinics, locals will have access to various professionals, including dentists, doctors, optometrists, pharmacists, and even barbers (from R1T1’s students).

R1T1 operates like a trade school, providing students with real world training in wood working, brick making, construction, culinary business, horticulture, and fish farming. When teams come in, these students lead them through projects, gaining a crucial experience in becoming students who teach. This translates into R1T1’s weekly bible studies, where students can grow into disciples who make disciples.

For weeks like this, American teams come in to serve over 100 people (every day the run a clinic) in remote mountain villages by “taking over” schools and causing a ruckus in the best way. The American team helps take pressure off of the organisers – performing for the children and guiding the adults through their stations – so that more people can receive assistance at once. This team also brought some American professionals to work alongside local Hondurans and spread out some of the work. Everyone served receives a gospel message and prayer as they work through the process.

Making disciples

Which brings us to the second part of Byron’s process: discipleship.

During community projects, we give out short questionnaires with an important question: “Do you want to learn how to read the Bible?” Over years of doing ministry, Byron has grown a list of several thousand individuals seeking a Bible study. The hope is to help local Hondurans who are seeking the Lord find a place where someone is willing to welcome them in and disciple them. There’s only one problem: the list of leaders ready to disciple is small. Very small. Like, less than 50.

As we served the community through projects and events this week, Byron had an opportunity to share his vision with local churches, and one of them agreed to begin leading these bible studies with us. It may not sound like much, but this could double our list of leaders by the time we leave, and it’s just week 3! Byron will start working with the church’s pastor in the coming week to disciple congregants who want to lead people to the Gospel.

Sharing heavy burdens

Spending this week with my fellow Murfreesboro Christians was fun, but we also experienced a heavy weight this week. We spent our last day of ministry giving postpartum gifts to mothers in the NICU. While at the hospital, we met many people in hardship, some mourning loss, and we shared our time and prayers with them, in hopes that we could bear their burdens with them.

“Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”

Galatians 6:2 (ESV)

It reminded me why focusing on the Gospel is so important. I can help build a house and I can entertain children on stage, but there are many things I can’t do, and even less I can do for these local communities once I’m back home in the States. There are people here who will continue to face deep heartache, who I can only offer a brief shoulder to lean on for a few minutes before I leave. The only way to have impact after I’m gone is through growing sustainable discipleship in local churches who will be there to share the Gospel and bear burdens for their community.

Prayer requests and current needs

I have a lot to pray for this week. Please keep us in your prayers as we continue to adjust.

• Prayers those we served this week, especially the mothers in the NCIU
• Prayers for my dad
• Prayers for the mission teams
• Prayers for open doors to discipleship
• Prayers for Honduras