 |
| Pacaya Volcano, Guatemala |
Pretty soon I’m going to be showing
up at the airport with a one way ticket to Central America. Sounds crazy, but
in my strange little head it actually makes sense. The reason I’ve got this
ticket is because I’ve committed the next two years of my life to working
maintenance and helping with the kids at a small orphanage in rural
Honduras. It’s volunteer work, so I
won’t exactly be bringing home a paycheck, but they feed me and house me, and I’ve
saved up some money over the past couple years for plane tickets and health
insurance, so I think I’ll be able to survive. Plus the beer down there is
pretty cheap.
The thing
is, I have a little different philosophy on life than most people. When I graduated from Texas Christian
University in May of 2010, most of my friends went out and got jobs in the
corporate world. I was a mechanical engineering major, so a lot of my friends
went to go work as engineers in the aerospace industry or oil and gas field. In
fact I had a job offer from Bell Helicopter, complete with a nice salary and
good benefits, but I just couldn’t bring myself to take it. I’m not really the type to sit behind a desk
and make drawings on a computer screen while wearing my slacks and button up
shirt all day. At the time I was 22 years old, had the whole world in front of
me, and had no desire to settle into a long term career of the 8 to 5 grind.
That’s the way I viewed it at least. I wanted to do something more fulfilling.
Something with a little more adventure and something I would love and enjoy and
believe in. Something where I wouldn’t just be working for the weekend. A lot
of my friends say I went to college and turned into a hippie. I do have long
hair after all, but at least I never got into the drugs or the free love thing.
One of my goals in life is to spend
the time that God has given to me doing things I find meaningful. After I
graduated from TCU (and then worked for the past year to pay off my college
loans and save some money), I felt like a free man. For the first time in my
life my path wasn’t set out for me, and I could do anything or go anywhere I
wanted. So it was then I started thinking about long term volunteering. I’d
been involved with humanitarian work before, spending most of my Spring Breaks
in Nicaragua and a few weeks one summer at an orphanage in India, and I felt
like it was something I wanted to take further. Nothing got my blood flowing
more than the meetings I had with the other TCU students discussing our plans
to work with that Nicaraguan farming community, or the late night talks I had
with my friend Donald in India about what roles Americans could or should play
in the lives of orphan kids halfway across the globe. I loved it. I found it
meaningful, exciting, and even fulfilling. So when I found out about the Farm
of the Child orphanage in Honduras, something in me clicked. I thought to
myself, what could be more worthwhile than taking kids off the streets of drug-infested
Central America, where they would most likely otherwise fall into a lifestyle
of begging or gangs, and giving them an education, a safe place to sleep, and
the opportunity to make whatever they want out of their lives? Not to mention
teaching them about the love of Christ. So with all the options for my future
that this world and the grace of God had provided me, I decided this was what I
wanted to pursue.
I found out about The Farm of the
Child (La Finca in Spanish), through some friends at college. I got in contact
with them my senior year, but realized I should probably pay off my college
debt before going down. After I was able to do that and save up a little extra,
I started talking to them again, and found out they were in need of a
maintenance man. I’m a mechanically minded guy and a quick learner, so I
offered to do the job. They said it sounded good to them, and before I knew it
arrangements were made and plane tickets were booked.
The orphanage sits on nine acres of
the Caribbean coast of rural Honduras, about seven miles outside the town of Trujillo.
I’ll be living in a volunteer house with about fifteen other people, mostly
Americans, but some from Honduras and Nicaragua. I’m the only maintenance
volunteer, with the others working as teachers, social workers, nurses, or various
other things. During the day, I’ll be working doing general maintenance around
the orphanage with several locals from the surrounding villages that have been
hired to help out. I, as well as all the other volunteers, will also be doing a
lot with the kids, like playing soccer, going fishing, or picking the
vegetables out of the garden. It’s a
Catholic orphanage, so we begin each morning with prayer, and most nights have
mass, adoration, or a rosary. It will be a life of simplicity, communal living,
service, and prayer, which will be very different from the life I’ve been used
to. But it’s also something I’m very excited for. I feel like I’m most familiar
with busy schedules and a fast paced life, but I know there’s a lot to learn
from the steady rhythm of rural Honduras, and I plan on embracing it as best as
I can. I am certainly very thankful for this opportunity God has put in my
life.
If you’ve made it this far down, I’m
impressed. That was long. But also thank you. And if you’ve enjoyed this post,
maybe you’ll enjoy the ones in the future too. My communication over the next
few years will be sparse, consisting mainly of internet access once every week
or two, but I hope to keep my friends and family as updated as I can on my
life. This lifestyle will most certainly be very trying time also, so any
emails or letters from ya’ll letting me know what you’ve been up to or offering
encouraging words would really be great. Nothing would be more uplifting than a
message from a friend on a rainy Honduran day, when I can’t unclog the toilet
and the kids won’t stop screaming.
So that’s my story. My flight leaves
March 5th, and there’s no looking back from there. God bless ya’ll.
