by Frank Holman

This coming October Bethany will commission our seventh service team (including high school trips in 2004 and 2006) to Honduras and the community of Nuevo Amanecer (New Dawn). Bethany is in its fifth year of a five year partnership (Journey With A Village) with Agros International, Agros Honduras and the community of Nuevo Amanecer (originally known as Agros Uno).

Nuevo Amanecer is situated in the Otero Valley in Western (central) Honduras on 140 acres of agricultural land. Some is used for houses (fifteen plus adobe homes); some for water reservoirs; and a growing portion is now producing plantains, beans, corn, squashes, melons, jamaica, and other plants.

Over forty five Bethany members and friends have traveled to Honduras and Nuevo Amanecer over the last six years, some multiple times. We have built friendships with many Honduran families and individuals, some of whom continue to live on and work the land, and others who have returned to their original communities or have moved to other locations. We have also built ongoing relationships with the Honduran staff, both past and present.

As we prepare for this next trip we are often asked, “What do you actually do when you are in the community?” One answer is that we help with whatever physical work is required at the time: for example, digging soil and mixing adobe for making adobe blocks; planting seedlings in the community food garden; mending barbed wire fences to keep neighboring cattle out of the crops; or planting, trimming, harvesting, sorting and sacking the plantains.

Sometimes team members will assist with food preparation for the afternoon meal. Often some of us will spend time with the children, helping them create their own picture-story books, or venture out through the fields and name the reservoirs. We visit the children’s school. We participate in the community worship service: and we now always eat our mid-day meal together with the villagers, and close the week by preparing a meal and presentation for the village.

Another answer to the question “what do you do?” is less easy to describe, yet may be more significant. Because of our relationships with the village and staff, now spanning over six years, from the time when the first families were moving onto the land (in 2004), through our most recent trips, we also serve as witnesses to the labor, sacrifices and contributions of not only the current villagers and staff, but also of past community members and staff who are no longer there; binding the past to the present and the future.

During our last trip we participated in and shared during a community meeting. As we all sat in a semicircle outside the community house, the white adobe structure itself served as a vivid image of this community and its history. The community house had been started in 2004 as a home for a former community member with the help of all the original villagers and the second service team. But that work, consisting of digging a foundation trench through the rocky soil and filling it with hundreds of stones gathered from the surrounding area by hand, was now invisible.

Nevertheless, these unseen stones, laid by others, were now the foundation for the visible adobe and wood structure, without which it most likely would crumble and fall after the seasons of rain and wind. The encouragement and reminder was intended for all of us, villagers (new and old), staff and Bethany partners: to remember, honor and witness to the contributions of both the seen and unseen foundation stones.