Weiser Wide Mission to Honduras just returned from 12 days serving in Tegucigalpa and rural areas of Honduras. Nine Weiser locals were joined by 4 Minnesotans and 1 Massachusetts resident to partner with Bethany Global teams and Koinonia Baptist Church. This trip has occurred every other year since 2002, and has included team members from many of the local churches.
This year’s team spent the first few days organizing and packaging donated medicines we had transported into the country, as well as purchasing liquid medications locally. We then loaded onto the church bus to travel 3 hours into the mountains. Staying in a local church, we traveled 
further out to the small villages of Jaral and Mogotes for a day each, and then spent 2 days at our home base in Marale providing medical and dental care. Another important component was a children’s program of puppets, skits, music, balloon animals, origami, and a gospel message, as well as lots of laughter, soccer, and face painting.
An American dentist living in Honduras was joined by Dr. Lore Wootton of Weiser, and a Honduras doctor and dentist. Jennifer Moreno, a medical assistant, distributed medications prepared by Teresa Davalos, an LPN, and several other teammates from the make-shift 
pharmacy. John Wootton became the go to man for sterilizing dental equipment. Pastor Steve Penner did an opening devotional each morning, and assisted patients in finding donated reading glasses to assist their vision. Linda Strain led the children’s team, assisted by Cecylia Whitehurst on guitar, and Ben Wootton , Taryn Hawker, and the other non-Idahoans. In all, our team saw 925 medical patients, 163 dental patients, and 415 kids. Over 2700 prescriptions were provided.
After another long bus ride back to Tegucigalpa, our team did some painting for the church, as well as a program to celebrate Koinonia School’s 10th anniversary. We also took a day to visit AFE (the school for children of the city dump), touring the facility and providing a program for each of the classes. The most emotional part for most was a trip to the city dump, where we served 200 meals, gave out 300 bags of water, and prayed for some the 1800 people that work there finding recyclables. It was hard to look on the faces of many children we had seen at the school a few hours earlier, now digging through the trash in one of the most dangerous places to live and work in all of Honduras.
If you are interested in learning more, or in helping support the ministry of Koinonia in Honduras, please contact Lore Wootton or Linda Strain.
