And So It Begins...

Pacaya Volcano, Guatemala

Hello folks. I guess if you’re reading this that means you’re either semi-interested in my life and the adventures that come with it, or you were just browsing the internet and stumbled upon it. If you fall into the second group, you can probably just move on, cause I’m not that great of a writer and there’s bound to be more interesting things to read on the world wide web. But if you happen to be interested in what I’m up to, I’ll try my best keep your attention and avoid massive grammatical errors. 

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 5^th, and there’s no looking back from there.  God bless ya’ll.