Landmark Impacts Honduras
Where Saving Souls Can Be Like Pulling Teeth
Ellen Beal, Landmark parent, staff member, and mission trip participant
For most students, spring break is a time to get some sun and just relax before heading into the home stretch of the school year. But for a group of 30 Landmark high school students, Spring Break 2006 was an experience they will never forget.
These students, along with two alumni, chaperones, medical and dental personnel, and staff members from Frontline Missions, set out with a vision to impact the Honduran mountain people for Jesus Christ. After landing in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, the team traveled seven hours by bus to reach their base of operations in Olanchito. From Olanchito, the group made both day and overnight trips into remote mountain villages to help conduct medical and dental clinics, work on constructing a school/church building, and perform music and drama to share the gospel with the Honduran people.
Landmark students experienced first hand what life is like for the people of Honduras, where entire villages live without electricity, healthcare access, and even the most basic medicine or transportation. Although most of our students had only minimal ability to speak Spanish, the Honduran people were able to learn about the love of Christ, not only through our translators but more tangibly through the actions of the team.
The students and medical/dental professionals worked long hours under hot and dusty conditions. Over the course of the trip, the team traveled in three Honduran states, conducted four days of medical/dental clinics (treating over 800 patients), shared their dance and drama presentation seven times and saw over 140 people receive God's salvation. At least 50 of those salvations occurred as our dentists witnessed to their patients in the dental chairs, demonstrating to our students that saving souls can, indeed, be just like pulling teeth.
Although their desire was to serve and be a blessing, each mission team member found himself blessed and is now eager to return again to Honduras.
This article was originally published in Landmark's January 2006 "LCS Connection."