Our Missionary: Barbara Boghetich

We had great fun, once again, as we traveled to Honduras in July of 2011.  "We" is a team of folks from Northern Indiana, and "Honduras" was once again, the village of Delicias del Norte, not far from San Pedro Sula, where our missionary, Barbara Boghetich, pictured here with some of the team, has been working for several years.  Some of our group painted the Church of San Lucas, very much needed since its last painting 5 to 7 years ago.  Others of us worked with a couple of local masons to build pilas (cisterns) and stoves and latrines.  Before we started we joined in worship at San Lucas, where the photo shows La Reverenda Barbara watching the children at the offertory time, singing a song they learned in Sunday School. 

We started on our labors on Monday and worked through the week, arriving around 0900 and staying until around 1630.  It took a half hour to 45 minutes to make the drive from our little hotel in San Pedro--conditions not permitting us to stay in the village itself.  Below you can see the home of Don Miguel, the patron of the village--an honorific as well as an official title.  Everyone in the village comes to him with troubles and questions.  His son Jorge, pictured here, is the Sr Warden of the Church and took a week off from work to paint in the Church with several of the teens . 

The life of a missionary in Barbara's kind of a village is certainly not all teaching and preaching.  Below, you can see her washing out cups at the church pila with chloro water to purify them.  All the pilas are filled with water which comes down from a reservoir on the mountain top--but it is not drinkable.  (Of course, people still DO drink it.)  Last year there was dedicated a water purification plant and now anyone can buy very cheaply sufficient water for cooking and drinking.  But cleaning is still done at the pila--as is washing clothes.  The reason the team was helping to build pilas is that, without them, woman are forced to wash clothes in the river which runs through the village--whose quality is much lower than that of the pilas. 

Don Miguel's wife, Juanita, and another woman from the Church, Esperanza, did the cooking for our group during the week, making daily lunch.  We paid for the ingredients, of course, but they refused to take any donations for their labors.

There was a lot of enthusiasm for the painting amongst the teens of the parish.  They were not afraid to climb up to the top of the tower or hang out the windows.  As the week drew to a close, there was a remarkable improvement.