A 16 year old girl lives in the Honduran mountains miles up from the nearest town.
She wears lipstick colored dark pink on her lips and her eyes are kind. She barely slowed down for me to understand a word she was saying Spanish, even so she wanted to talk. She wanted to talk away from the hundreds of other locals that were that day.
So we did.
This mountain community felt forgotten, thought it was a lie that anyone would come help them.
Catracho Missions have been Jesus’ hands to feet as to say we have not forgotten you – providing food during COVID and the hurricane, building a church and school, providing water to 30 families, shifting spiritual atmospheres (I saw and felt in the time we were there a huge shift already).
I’m going to Asia Minor in February and getting trauma and perspectives training for a month in January to serve those who can feel entirely stranded just like the community we served this month.
Partner here!
Any amount you give right now will be matched dollar for dollar up until $500 by a dear couple in my life!!!
I can honestly say I don’t know how I could spend almost a month here now and not have gotten it until now – even the smallest bit of what it’s like to grow up here. What it’s like to be a teenager here compared to where I grew up.
Of course we are all human and there’s more similarities than there are differences. This is not trying to pity the poorest but just looking at their reality. Though there’s so much beauty, love, and joy in these people; it’s just looking at their reality.
For it’s one thing to be poor physically and rich spiritually, I’d say you are better off that way. But to be poor in every way…
“Jesus sacrificed his life for us. Because of this great love, we should be willing to lay our lives down for one another. If anyone sees a fellow believer in need and has the means to help him, yet shows no pity and closes his heart against him, how is it even possible that God’s love lives in him?” – 1 John 4:16-17
This Honduran 16 year old isn’t in school anymore – very common here. She stays at home almost all day, cooking and cleaning.
She told me her dream is to go to the US as there is no work here, and she’d love the opportunity to study. She asked me about borders and all…how do you tell her how expensive and difficult it is for her to get to the US?
I told her all things are possible with God but also that the US isn’t all that much better anyway. I told her that it was God’s love that was the only thing worth anything and that we serve others with that love. I told her she can sit in God’s Presence and call on the name of Jesus for guidance each day and got to connect her with our hosts who meet so many local needs. We communed together in prayer, in His peaceful Presence.
Her reality is living in a place her entire lifetime where my team, sleeping in our tents, can barely last another week. This mountain is so beautiful but incredibly heavy at the same time.
Here, where men often spend their days drunk and are born not knowing how to be men, not knowing how to treat women. Here, where a hurricane destroyed homes and left some without food supply for weeks.
Here, where some men prohibit their wives from reading the Bible, from being free.
This teen didn’t have a Bible. This teen barely had an opportunity to go to a church on her own. This teen doesn’t have access to the words of life that are my sustanance and have been my transformation and fulfillment and passage way to knowing who God is intimately.
It hit me so hard, because that was the age I came to know Him. Came to know Love. Started eating His Word.
It’s in the pages of that Holy Book that real hope can be found in any situation.
Like my friend has been saying though, there is no barrier that God won’t cross to get to someone!
Our minsitry hosts put on a 3 day VBS for the children and women’s event. They said it was breakthrough that the men let their wives come alone.
They said when people come to their property, it means full freedom to share about Jesus.
Even if they didn’t have access to the words, light, and hope of Jesus before, they did those days.
This ministry is being built from the ground up. Real change is coming. Generational curses and oppression being broken. Men learning how to be men. The Spirit coming to transform anyone and everyone who would call on Jesus’ Name.
Little kids smelled and had fleas swarming around their heads, but they climbed all over us with such beautiful eyes and spirits. Some of their eyes here have that childlike joy, but some have it almost entirely stolen from them.
We would no longer stay away from the smell and the fleas. It’d be time to smell ourselves and have fleas climbing through our scalps and strands of hair.
It’d be time to haul loads of wood up and down a mountain (the women here haul wood for miles numerous times a day when we are not here. It is the hardest physical labor I’ve ever done).
I will not leave them stranded.
I will not leave teenage girls uneducated without access to the Word of God.
The Good News and salvation had to be available to everyone. It is. But also it isn’t for those that have not heard the Name of Jesus and do not have access to His Word.
That is why I believe He has called me to spend my days bringing His Light and Word to those that are poor in every way (those oppressed and those that don’t know there’s a God who loves them so much that He lived as them to overcome it all on the Cross by Resurrection).
I saw all these children running.
I saw their faces.
Something said this is only the beginning. I barely understand anything. But I know this –
Jesus came to seek and save the lost (Luke 19:10). He can heal and redeem any situation at any moment (Isaiah 61). He sent those that are his disciples to carry Him and that to every people group by the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28; John 14:12).
I’m coming for you those without access, those without opportunity, without hope, without the Bible, without Church, without family.
I’m coming for you, because HE ALREADY CAME FOR YOU
He didn’t leave me stranded
He saved me, made me whole, called me
It feels like I have nothing
Not even the sandals on my feet
Take them off – this is HOLY ground
You can’t live off old manna and old wineskins anymore
He is always doing a new thing
He loves you enough to not keep you stagnant
To not keep you comfortable
It’s not that what was before was bad, actually most of it was incredibly good
But He is doing a new thing
It was about what You were doing
We just get to partner, to build, even to create with You
God shifted something May 2021 in Panama
I cannot describe to anyone what that was, what that meant
But I’m currently living in the fruit of everything shifting
It’s overbearing sometimes what He has done, what He is doing
I miss my family so much
I weekly mourn everything
But afterall, giving Jesus it all and truly loving always entailed true sacrifice
Whatever the pain and the stripping, whatever the revelation and every Scripture reading staining my soul and sending me to my knees,
He had to become the only home
Love had to increase
Every person around me right now had to be the people in this part of the story
It didn’t matter who brought the Kingdom
It just mattered that it came
It didn’t matter how His Presence Came
It just mattered that He came
It’s hard not having your sweet presence with us here at home, but after hearing these stories, we are so incredibly proud that you and your squad are being the hands and feet of Jesus and are making powerful impacts physically and spiritually in the lives of hurting people. Love you ??
I’m so proud of you! Hannah! Know you and those you are helping are in my prayers.
Once again, Hannah, this is so beautiful. He is the God Who Sees, and He has gifted you with sight—to see and love as He loves. Thank you, dear heart. You are so loved!
Brave, brave Hannah… I’m so proud of the way you serve and lead. God is too. Thanks for seeing His children. Thanks for looking them in the eye and loving them. You are helping to bring God’s kingdom to earth right now!