Sovereign Spirit | One Woman's Path from Shameful Sheep to Spiritual Sovereignty | Chapter Three, Part Nine

Sovereign Spirit
..One Woman's Path from Shameful Sheep to Spiritual Sovereignty

Chapter Three, Part Nine

When I was sixteen, I was eligible to go on my first mission trip to Honduras. Since we switched churches and began attending Antioch several years earlier, my grandparents had been working hard to steer the church in the direction of a more missions focused Christian body. Recently, they had finally been able to get the ball rolling for new construction projects in Honduras. Hurricane Mitch had recently hit the country, causing considerable destruction, and as my grandparents were still very much in touch with missionaries still living and working in Honduras, they were able to find out where construction needs were greatest for new churches.

I was thrilled to have the chance to return to the country where I’d made so many beautiful childhood memories. As the plane touched down, ever so rocky as is typical of a Tegucigalpa landing, I felt like I was returning home. Walking out of the airport, the air was familiar, a unique mix of clean mountain air, wet heat, beans, sweat and last week’s garbage.

I loved it.

We stayed in a quaint hotel in a small town called Tocoa that year. Each morning, the women in our group would wake up at 3:45 am, and be in our makeshift kitchen, by four o’clock. There we only six of us, and I was the youngest of the group.

We prepared a normal American breakfast as best we could given our equipment and available ingredients. We made trays and trays of cheese toast, regular toast with butter and jam, heaps of eggs and bacon, and prepared Honduran coffee, which was my favorite part. Lunches also needed to be made for the men to take to the worksite by six o’clock. So for a steady two hours, we worked hard and fast to prepare two meals for over twenty hungry Baptist men. If you don’t know what hungry Baptist men look like, just stand outside your local Baptist church around noon on Sunday, and you’ll find out.

It wasn’t easy work, especially when we blew a fuse or the or the worn out stove decided to let its stubborn side show, but I loved the flow of teamwork we women learned to build together, and the early morning conversations we would have while we worked and the roosters began to crow.

Shortly after six o’clock in the morning, we had a chance to rest. We plopped down in the chairs recently vacated by the men who’d left for the worksite, and sipped coffee while we ate what remained of breakfast. We had a couple of hours to clean up, shower and relax for a while before we made a trip to the market for food supplies for the next few meals. We typically tried to get to market before it got too late in the day, and the sun’s heat became too much to bear. It was hot in Honduras, but on top of the heat, we were also required to wear pants or skirts that covered at least past our knees, and no tank tops were allowed, multiplying the effect of the hot midday sun on our bodies.

In addition to our dress, other counsel was given about how we were to behave while traveling in Honduras. We were not to make eye contact with men at all. We were always to travel in groups, making sure to stay close to one another. We were told the men would often make a clicking sound with their tongues to get a woman’s attention. If we heard it, we were not to look around to see where it was coming from or acknowledge the cat call in any way. It was our job to keep moving forward and pretend we hadn’t heard anything. Our own safety and our task to be walking examples of how good Christian women behaved to the locals were the reasons given for these restrictions.

Walking through the streets of small town Honduras was something I always looked forward to. It was the perfect setting for a people watcher like me. People of all different shapes, sizes, and dispositions were everywhere. Walking through the local market, the hustle and bustle of midday carried a busy but cheerful tone as we passed by. We were probably met with more cheerfulness that usual because it was obvious we were Americans, and Americans in countries like Honduras typically mean cash.

Multiple people on one bike would cycle their way through the town streets, and, if you were out at the right time of day, you would see all the school children in their typical Honduran uniforms walking and talking with their friends on the way home for lunch. I’d always mentally envision myself walking with them, as if I lived there and were one of them. I imagined what we’d talk about, and what we’d find to do with our afternoons. Yes, I still played pretend, even if it was only in my mind, when I was sixteen years old. I still do today, at thirty-three.

I did hear the clicking sound as we passed by men on the street. The first time I heard it, I didn’t recognize the sound for what it was, and I did look up, just out of natural instinct. I found five or six pairs of male eyes, with their bodies frozen in place, following us down the street. I remembered what I’d been instructed, and immediately put my head back down, eyes glued to the dirt road. I felt a certain shame concerning my body, especially my breasts and my legs, which were athletically curvy, my blonde hair which stood out in a sea of dark haired Hondurans, and my youthful, innocent face. I thought the cat calls were my fault, and that maybe if I walked in a different way or had worn looser clothing, I wouldn’t have invited the unwanted attention from those men. I felt like being female was somehow a faulty way of being human.

In the market, I’d watch as my mother carefully picked out the vegetables and fruits we’d be taking back to turn into meals. It seemed to be a science I didn’t understand yet. Breads were found in the local bakery, and large slabs of meat were hung up in the market fronts so you could choose which one you wanted. The meat racks were always a bit repulsive to me. When the merchants saw us, they sometimes tried to charge us more than the real price because they could see that we were foreigners who probably had money and probably wouldn’t know any better. Since my mom was our leader, and had grown up in the culture, we did know better, but we usually didn’t argue. We knew they needed the money more than we did. To us it was only nickels and dimes worth of difference that to them would mean a lot more.

For any other supplies we needed, we had to wait until the men returned from the worksite, as we were left with no vehicles for transportation. There was a “normal,” American-style grocery store a few miles away, but it was not within walking distance, especially not with all the heat, and all the food we would need to carry back. All our errands were done on foot, and we arrived back at the hotel, arms full of bags, hair damp at the scalp and sweat dripping off our bodies. Luckily, our hotel was air conditioned, so coming home meant sweet relief.

After our errands were finished, we put the fruits and vegetables we’d just purchased in for a clorox soak to kill any bacteria on them as was custom, made ourselves a quick lunch and finally had time for a nap. We’d have to be back up to start cooking dinner for the men around four o’clock.

Around five o’clock in the evening, the vans would arrive with our crew of sweaty, stinky men. They usually looked pretty beat up from the day, and were eager to get a shower and scarf down the meal we prepared. We were often met with complaints over dinner about the lunch we had packed for them. Someone didn’t like their peanut butter crunchy, they wanted creamy instead. Someone else didn’t have the kind of sandwiches they wanted. Still another wanted gatorade instead of the water and kool-aid we’d sent.

I felt incredible annoyance at these kinds of complaints. Didn’t these guys know what country they were in? Couldn’t they see the poverty surrounding them at every corner, at every bend in the road? Didn’t they know that we had woken up far before dawn to prepare their meals, and couldn’t they realize that we were working with limited resources? How could they possibly complain? Why weren’t they thankful to have anything to eat at all with so many of the locals right in front of their eyes going without basic necessities day in and day out?

If they were really trying to be Christ-like, they would have found someone in village where they were working all day to give away their lunch to, rather than come back to us and complain that they didn’t have enough lunchmeat in between the bread slices. “That’s what Jesus would have done,” I thought to myself. “Besides, most of the men in our group have guts that would feed them for a year or two.” We were Baptists, after all.

Anger bubbled up in my veins; I couldn’t understand these spoiled Americans. Moments like these made me want to accidentally miss the plane home at the end of the week. The thought of returning to the land of plenty where everyone’s wants were insatiable was even more revolting than usual after spending time in Honduras.

At the same time, I knew I shouldn’t be irritated with my fellow Christian brothers. Guilt overrode my anger, and, in the end, I was more upset at myself for being so judgmental.

After dinner most evenings, we either drove back out to the worksite to hold services with the church members we were constructing the church building for, or went to a more local church down the road for services. Sunday morning we also held a standard church service on the worksite, complete with music, a sermon, and a children’s Sunday school lesson, which the women were in charge of. All the services were held outdoors since the church building was still incomplete. Microphones and a few lights were powered by generators, but we were mostly in the dark for the evening services.

Getting out to really be with the Honduran people was what always made the trip for me. The village kids were naturally drawn to me, and I to them. They loved my blonde hair, so different from their own, and were always reaching to touch it. I would try to ask their names, but could never understand their response very well; it came out like an entire sentence. Later I learned it was because they were telling me their entire name - first name, middle name, father’s last name, and mother’s last name - all in a row, and very, very fast.

One year I got to go out to the worksite for the day with the construction crew, which wasn’t usually allowed for the women. We had brought a suitcase full of vitamins, a few simple medicines like Ibuprofen or cough syrups, and some first aid supplies. We set up a mini-clinic a passed out the items to any in the village who needed them. I was in charge of writing how many of each vitamin or medicine to take, and how often, in Spanish. I would also explain the instructions in Spanish, to the best of my ability, to the people who came to our little stand. I had never felt so validated as a human being before. I felt like I had a true purpose, like my existence served another’s.

The last day in Honduras was a dreaded one. I did not want to get on the plane home. I didn’t want to walk on American sidewalks with perfectly weeded edges and freshly cut front lawns, or see American stores with all their vast array of unending product lines, or walk past American people who wouldn’t even notice that I existed at all.

For two or three weeks after I returned home, I went into a strange depression. Culture shock took its toll upon my return home rather than when I arrived in a foreign land. All I wanted was to do was replay my experiences from Honduras in my mind. If I couldn’t physically be in Honduras, I could at least remember it, and, in so doing, feel like I was there. The more I replayed my memories, the less afraid I was that I would forget them; comfort was easy to find in the recollections, and so I let them play in my mind’s eye often.

I would grumble to myself about how ridiculous American society and customs seemed in comparison to Honduras, how there was so much more love in Honduras despite so much less in the way of material possessions. I knew I had encountered a special, palpable joy in Honduras, and I never wanted it to leave me once I got back home and into the routine of daily teenage American life.

During my last couple of years in high school, I became more involved than ever with the youth group at Antioch Baptist Church. I was asked to be on the youth leadership team which was a group of adults who worked with the youth and a few of the youth themselves. Our job was to plan youth events and basically take the lead in determining what direction we wanted to take the youth group over the next few years. I began taking part in helping with the younger youth group, the middle school aged kids. I chaperoned a couple of their trips, and was excited to have a hand in raising the next generation up to serve the Lord. I was at church or church related functions four days a week most weeks, and always eager to be there. Missions remained a big focus for me, and I was able to go one one more mission trip to Honduras before I graduated high school.

The summer after graduation, my whole world would turn upside-down.