wfn.org | ELCA Communicators Work to Rebuild Honduran Villages

[News News <NEWS@ELCA.ORG>]

ELCA NEWS SERVICE

November 23, 1999

ELCA COMMUNICATORS WORK TO REBUILD HONDURAN VILLAGES
99-298-LS**

     Luis Alonzo Madrid, a celebrant of the Word (lay leader) in
Corralitos, Honduras, wept as he spoke to Lutheran volunteers and
villagers who crowded into a makeshift chapel. "We have no way to thank
you, except for the love that is in our hearts."
     A group of volunteers from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in
America (ELCA) shared the joy and sorrow of life after Hurricane Mitch
in a worship service held in Corralitos Oct. 31 to remember the one-year
anniversary of the most destructive day of the storm.
          The service of worship and remembrance was only a small part
of the experience of the 18 volunteers, many of whom are communicators 
with local synods of the ELCA.  The group worked in Honduras Oct. 27 to 
Nov. 3 to help villagers rebuild their homes and demonstrate solidarity with 
the Honduran people.
     The group was assembled by the Rev. Eric C. Shafer, director of
the ELCA Department for Communication, Chicago, and co-led by Jonathan
C. Frerichs, communication director for Lutheran World Relief (LWR),
Baltimore, an overseas relief and development agency of the ELCA and The
Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.  The ELCA volunteers came from across
the United States.
     In Honduras the volunteers worked under the supervision of the
Christian Commission for Development (CCD), a nongovernment organization
founded in 1982 by Christians working with Salvadoran refugees on
Honduras' western border. LWR supports CCD with funds allocated from the
ELCA World Hunger Appeal.
          ELCA communicators traveled under the auspices of Church World
Service and Witness, the relief and development arm of the National
Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. (NCC).  The ELCA is a
member of the NCC.
          Shafer said he organized the trip to give volunteers a first-hand
look at the realities of the Third World.  "The purpose of the trip was
to give communicators a hands-on opportunity to participate in what we
have to write about," he said.
          Communicators helped build homes with the 45 families of
Corralitos and 75 families of Porvenir, in the mountains of the Santa
Barbara region in western Honduras.  In this third poorest
country in the hemisphere they lived, worked and worshipped next to the
people who lost their entire villages to the mudslides and floods of
Hurricane Mitch.
          Of the more than 5,000 people who died because of the hurricane,
99.9 percent were people living in poverty, said Paul Jeffrey, a United
Methodist missionary and CCD employee who led volunteer orientation.
People with little money made their homes on the steep hillsides and in
dry river beds that became death traps in the hurricane as hills
collapsed and whole villages slid into rivers.  "They  died because they
were poor," Jeffrey said.
     The land was eroded already, Jeffrey added.  Slash-and-burn
agricultural practices and a  national forest service that had a policy
of selling trees instead of saving them were contributing factors to
widespread erosion, he added.
     During the storm, rain fell as fast as four inches per hour on
ground already saturated by the rainy season.  In the aftermath,
villagers banded together to buy new land, and they are building new
homes from scratch.  Everyone works together.
          "One of the things that impressed me was the tenacity and the
sense of purpose with which the people worked, and how hard they
worked," said the Rev. Darrel O. Lundby, assistant to the bishop, ELCA
Oregon Synod. "There's a deep level of diligence to restore their
homes."
          "Manual labor is difficult.  We don't have any understanding of
what manual labor is," said Jennifer Heaney, Sioux Falls, S.D.
          In Porvenir, which means "future" in Spanish, ELCA communicators
dug ditches for foundations of two homes and gathered rocks to add to
the cement.  Several volunteers dug a drainage ditch to drain water off
the muddy road, while others shoveled dirt and added rocks to the holes.
     Volunteers in Corralitos hauled cement bricks up a hill where
homes were being assembled.  Heaney said she was amazed while watching
girls as young as seven carry the 20-pound bricks up the hill.
          "They were all barefoot. The boys were piling bricks in
wheelbarrows, but the girls just put them on their heads and up they
went," Heaney said.
          Both villages needed brick-makers to pound bricks into molds and
to set the bricks in the hot sun to dry.  The volunteers made 150 bricks
during the trip.  Local residents can make up to 70 bricks each day and
it takes 1,400 bricks to complete a home.
          Each villager works two days a week building homes and four days a
week farming the land.  All farm land is back in the old villages and
the people make the trip by foot. The trip is a four-hour round trip for
the residents of Porvenir.
          At an altitude of 4,000 feet, the old city of Porvenir is still
home to a few whose houses remain.  The trails of mudslides and posts
that used to be homes are haunting reminders of Mitch's ravages.  Since
the hurricane there have been additional mudslides.
     The residents of Porvenir grow corn, beans and coffee.  Some are
still waiting for their first crop to mature since Hurrricane Mitch.
When the coffee beans are ripe villagers will sell one pound for seven
limpira, less than fifty U.S. cents.
          Although communicators joined the villagers in the work, Jeffrey
stressed that the work was only a small part of the reason they came to
Honduras.
          "The real reason is to be present in this community, to help
remind them that they are alive and loved," he said, adding that it was
more important to boost people's spirits than to build
homes. "It's an act of love, not of construction."
          Jeffrey underlined the importance of working with people, not just
building for them.  "People must become subjects of their history not objects," 
he said, "then long-term change can occur."
          Although CCD is executing relief efforts, its primary function is
as a long-term development agency. Jeffrey said helping a community
start working toward its goals may take five to seven years.  The agency
helps get things started, then helps the community to sustain its own
projects.
     CCD is currently working in Porvenir and Corralitos to bring
potable water to the communities. Presently, water is hauled from
springs at old Corralitos, which is more than a mile away, or obtained
from streams that may be contaminated. Each village does have one to two
crude latrines. Only Corralitos has a hint of electricity; a generator
provided light in the building where volunteers slept.  Villagers hope
for more.
          "We would desire to have a home, a latrine, a good road,
electricity, school, a chapel and a day care. And then, after that, a
junior high and high school," said Maria Alba Benitez, a
Porvenir resident.
          Many of the communicators said worshiping with the people was the
most meaningful part of the trip. The group attended Sunday worship in
each village and a special All Saints Day worship service on Nov. 1 in
Corralitos.
     Kimberly J. Groninga, director for communication, ELCA Southeast
Iowa Synod, said the Sunday service was the most touching.  "They were
so thankful to be alive," she said. "They said that God wanted them to
make it to this point. The men broke down. It was really moving."
          The faith of the people touched Lundby, who noted "their utter
dependence on God and their sense of gratitude to God for the gift of
life. That's where the depth of faith is, where there are no other
resources at hand."
          Madelyn H. Busse, assistant to the bishop, ELCA Rocky Mountain
Synod, said she was moved by the realities of the Third World.  "As a
tourist you see poverty from a distance. You see it in pictures, but
until you see it up close and personal ... I had no idea."
          Frerichs said more than one billion people on the planet live on
less than $2 each per day. "It (the trip) is almost like slipping into
someone else's shoes. We just don't have time for one another (in the
United States). You go away and become more human."
          The spirits of the Honduran people and their gifts of trust,
respect and acceptance were moving, said Heaney.
     "These people have nothing," she said, "but they gave everyone in
the group something that no one else will be able to give us."
          At the end of the journey, participants wondered how they would
take the trip experiences home.
          "I'm going to take back what an accident of chance it is that I
have the life I have," said Glenndy Sculley, assistant to the bishop,
ELCA Saint Paul (Minn.) Area Synod. "I have never lived like this
before, and I will never live like I did before again. I can't."
     ELCA volunteers who worked in Honduras were: Busse, Denver; Robert
Elliott, ELCA Department for Communication, Chicago; Frerichs; Linda
Janssen Gjere, Nebraska Synod, Omaha, Neb.; Groninga, Iowa City, Iowa;
Heaney; the Rev. William L. Hurst, Metropolitan New York  Synod, White
Plains, N.Y.; Kathy Lemmerbrock, Northwestern Ohio Synod,  Findlay,
Ohio; Lundby, Portland, Ore.; Heather McClintock, Wartburg College,
Waverly, Iowa; Stephen Padre, ELCA Department for Communication,
Chicago; Mary Peterson, MJP Video, Seattle, Wash.; Kathe Peterson,
Northeastern Minnesota Synod, Duluth, Minn.; Donna D. Prunkl, North
Carolina Synod, Salisbury, N.C.; Sculley; Shafer, Chicago; Kris Shafer,
ELCA Department for Human Resources, Chicago; and Lisa Smith, Waterloo,
Iowa newspaper.

[EDITORS: Photos from the trip to Honduras are available on the ELCA's
News Photos/Media web site at
http://www.elca.org/co/news/image.index.html]

**Lisa A. Smith is a reporter for the Waterloo (Iowa) Courier and a
former intern with ELCA News and Information, Department for
Communication, Chicago.

For information contact:
John Brooks, Director (773) 380-2958 or NEWS@ELCA.ORG
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