Five Years Later

In college we had a very active campus ministry program. Each year during fall and spring breaks, hundreds of students traveled to various locations across the US and even the world to participate in Habitat4Humanity builds and mission trips. Some trips were as close as “inner-city” Philly and others were as far as South Africa.

My trip was a bit different as it directly tied to my senior design capstone project. The project was the design of a split level reinforced concrete volunteer house/chapel for a boy’s orphanage* in north central Honduras. And during spring break a group of 13 of us traveled to Honduras and dug 6 footings, cut and placed reinforcement, mixed concrete by hand and poured the footings to kick off construction of the building. It was an incredible experience.

Going back 5 years later though was even more incredible. So much has changed. The boys have grown, both in size and in numbers (11 in 2001 and 40 in 2006). The volunteer house is finished and construction has begun on a school complex. The boys are still happy and healthy and as fun as ever to play with.

I spent a lot of time relaxing and catching up on sleep. I caught a glimpse of k2’s life since she up and quit her engineering job over a year ago. I played soccer and bingo. I worked on a mural for the dining room wall. I entertained the boys with my horrific Spanish. All without thinking about work once!

* The word “orphanage” is somewhat deceiving; a better description of Amigos would be a “home for boys.” The majority of these boys have parents, or at least mothers, but have either been abandoned, abused, or have parents who are unable to care for them. They’ll never be adopted… instead they live in a loving environment. They have a house over their head, food in the bellies, and are given a chance to be children as well as gain skills to make them successful adults.