ELCA Communicators Work to Rebuild Honduran Villages

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=20 with local synods of the ELCA. The group worked in Honduras Oct. 27 to=20 Nov. 3 to help villagers rebuild their homes and demonstrate solidarity = with=20 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,"=20 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."
Frerich