Christmas in Honduras.

In ten days I am going with 13 other students from my college to spend Christmas and New Year at Orphanage Emmanuel in Guaymaca, Honduras. We'll be cooking, cleaning, relieving the full-time staff (which is quite small for the hundreds of kids at the orphanage), as well as playing with the kids, leading worship, and most importantly sharing with them the meaning of Christmas and the gospel it brought. Our itinerary is quite "flexible," however, as short-term missions tend to be, so please be in prayer that our team will have our minds and hearts set on being useful, diligent servants who use our time and resources wisely and fruitfully. I know that none of us want this to turn into simply a holiday abroad.

With finals looming and thousands of words I need to type and print before I'm set free for the semester, it's been a challenge to really focus on the ministry I'm about to embark upon. Why did I choose this particular trip in the first place? I've never been involved in a social-justice ministry before. It's been a long time since I went on a Mexico trip in high school, and since then I've only been on trips to first-world countries (not that ministry in highly secular countries isn't significant; it is). I guess I wanted to keep cultivating this heart that God is growing in me for the weak and poor, compassion for people who inherently have needs that can't be assuaged by a shopping trip but who rely solely on generosity just to live day to day.

"And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the LORD, which I am commanding you today for your good? Behold, to the LORD your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it. Yet the LORD set his heart in love on your fathers and chose their offspring after them, you above all peoples, as you are this day. Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn. For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe. He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing."
_Deuteronomy 10:12-18 (I love Deuteronomy. All of it. A lot.)

Father of the fatherless and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation.
_Psalm 68:5

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.
_James 1:27

So that's what this Christmas is going to be all about, Charlie Brown. At least for me. Pray for us please! We still need lots of money... and there's a lot more, besides finances, that we are depending on God to provide us with. :]