In Mangulile with Jorge and Douglas

By Katie

A few weekends ago we traveled to a town in northern Olancho called Mangulile. Jorge and Douglas had invited us to be guest speakers at a training for the youth of the church there and to stay for a joint church service for young people that night.

Jorge and Douglas (in the picture below) are two members of the youth board from our classis, or regional grouping of churches. They are super motivated to share the gospel in a deep and thorough way to the young people in Honduras. They’re also inseparable. They both are in seminary, preach on a local Christian television show, and spend much of their time visiting other churches in order to preach or to motivate the youth to get organized to bring about actions that deepen their faith and reach out to non-believers.
They invited us to come along on this trip to visit some folks we’ve already met at last year’s youth retreat. Their youth board was falling apart so Jorge, as president of our youth board, wanted to address the situation openly to get things rolling again. Matt lead a time of reflection about the potential they have as planted seeds, watered by each other and their mentors, and pruned and cared for ultimately by God. My part was to present some different models of youth ministry to help them define how their programs might lead toward the desirable goals of growing deeper and reaching out. No visit to a community would be complete without a church service. A few hours before the service began, we heard a pickup truck with a loud speaker and a microphone announcing the event, saying, “Come to the united church service today at four o’clock. Our brother Mateo and our sister Kati are here visiting from Catacamas and want to see you there.” At the service, we sang a bunch of “happy songs”, Jorge’s specialty. To get the full effect, hook your computer up to huge speakers that you might use for blasting an action movie in a home theater and turn them up all the way. It was loud; incredibly loud. But everyone was having a great time praising the Lord!

There were some beautiful sights to see on the trip to and from Mangulile, about five hours from our home on a nasty dirt road. These photos make up for the bumps and uncomfortable drive! Opportunities like these are an exciting part of our job here in Honduras. What made this one even greater was the youth put everything together themselves and only invited us as guest speakers. They continually remind themselves that they are not the church of the future, they are the church now. Their faith and capabilities of organizing themselves for the sake of the gospel message are very impressive.