I had never been anywhere in Central America before and I didn’t know much about it, other than the obvious fact that everyone there speaks Spanish. I learned a little about Honduras from the informational meetings I attended at the church before we left, and I knew that it was a poor country. But knowing that a country is poor and seeing the harsh reality of it firsthand are two completely different things.
I remember my shock as I looked out at the city of Tegucigalpa from the airplane window as we landed. And again from the van window as we drove through the city on the way out to Rancho Ebenezer. But, it wasn’t until we got outside of the city and into the rural areas where most Hondurans live that I really began to see the difficult conditions that the people of Honduras endure. Dusty, bumpy, potholed roads wind up the mountains that surround the city. And on these mountains are the tiny, rundown shacks that so many people call home. There are children all along the road, filthy and probably wearing the only clothes they own. Some of them have makeshift shovels and are filling potholes in the road, hoping that the wealthy ‘gringos’ who pass by will pay them for their service. I was overwhelmed by what I saw.
The next day we went back into the city to go to church and eat lunch at a Honduran restaurant. After lunch, the missionaries who were with us asked us to box up all of our leftovers so we could give it to the children on the side of the mountain road on our way back to the ranch.
We pulled up to the spot where several boys were shoveling dirt into a few potholes. We stopped the van, opened the windows and began handing them styrofoam boxes full of leftover beans, rice, tortillas, and scraps of meat. You could see the excited look in their eyes as we handed over box after box. As we drove off, I turned around to look out the back window of the van. The boys had dropped their shovels and were looking into one of the styrofoam boxes. After they saw the contents of the box they began jumping up and down and shouting in excitement! And all because of some leftover scraps of food! I thought back to when I was a child and how I groaned and complained anytime my mother announced that we were having leftovers for dinner. And here these kids were, ecstatic that they would be dining on leftovers, not to mention someone else’s leftovers! It made me realize how often I take even the simplest things for granted and how I grumble and complain about things that I shouldn’t. It made me realize how blessed I really am and how I don’t stop to thank God for that quite often enough. God continued to show this to me throughout the week, especially when our team visited a family out in the community to share with them the gospel and give gifts of food, clothes and other necessities they lacked.
Overall, it was a wonderful week. God opened my eyes to so many things, and He taught me more about who He is and how He works. And I came away with the feeling that He was still calling me to some kind of ministry. The question remained: what is it specifically? I made up my mind to pray about it and wait for Him to reveal that to me.
However, as life returned to normal, I soon became distracted and fell back into the pursuit of my own selfish ambitions. I started focusing completely on my career as a graphic designer and my future in this field. Before too long I was making plans to move to a bigger city with better opportunities and a larger design community. My goal was to make a name for myself as an artist and land my dream job at a hip design agency where I would make lots of money working on exciting projects for big-name clients. And all of this was without any prayer or consideration for what God might have planned for me. It was as if I had forgotten the promise I made to God in the car ride home from Nashville.
Well, before I knew it, it was spring of 2007 and it was getting close to the time Fellowship would be sending teams on short-term mission trips to Honduras. I was so consumed by my busy life that I wasn’t too keen on going this time around. But, I started remembering how great the trip was the year before, and I remember getting the feeling that if I went on another trip God was going to do something. I wasn’t sure what, but I knew something would happen. And that kind of scared me. Yet somewhere deep inside I knew that an up-close encounter with God was exactly what I needed.
Well, one day in May I got a phone call from my sister, Brittany. Brittany was living in Korea with my parents at the time and was about to graduate from high school. She had been studying Spanish for five years and was fairly fluent. She had gone on mission trips to Spain and Mexico and had been planning on going back to Spain that summer. But her plans fell through, so she was calling to see if it would be possible for the two of us to go on a trip to Honduras together. She was going to have one week off from school a few weeks before she was to graduate and she wanted to see if it would be possible to go on a trip that week. I checked the dates for Fellowship’s three summer trips and one of them happened to be during her week off. So that settled it. I was going back to Honduras!
Well, I am so glad that I went because it was another amazing week. Everyone on that team was such a blessing to me and it was so great to be able to spend some quality time with my sister. Spiritually, it was just what I needed. God reminded me of the things He had showed me the previous year, and He showed me some new things. And He grew the seed that He planted in my heart during my first trip. He grew my love for the people of Honduras, specifically the children at Rancho Ebenezer, and He gave me a love for the ministry of WGO. I felt God calling me to use my gifts in some way to minister to children. I felt God calling me away from my selfish ambitions in graphic designer. I didn’t feel like He wanted me to totally ignore my gifting in that area, but I knew He had a different plan for me than what I had for myself. I felt God stirring something in my heart. I just wasn’t quite sure what I was supposed to do. Then, at the very end of the trip, God gave me a hint through the words of Nate Schultz, an eight year-old missionary kid.
Nate and I had become buddies during my time at the Ranch. We met on the soccer field the first day there. We hit it off almost immediately and were inseparable for the rest of the week. He even rode in the van with me to the airport on the day of our departure. And it was at the airport that God used the boldness of his words to impact me.
As we sat and waited for the team leaders to check all our bags and pay the airport tax, Nate asked me, “When do you think you’ll come back?”
“I’ll probably come back sometime next year,” I said.
“Hmm… well, how ‘bout next time you come back for nine weeks?” he said.
I laughed and said, “Well, I don’t think my job is going to let me have that much time off from work.”
He quickly replied, “Then you need to go back and tell them that you quit your job and you’re moving to Honduras!”
I just laughed and Nate’s mom, Kymm, said to him, “Nate you just need to pray that God will send Brett to Honduras!”
“Yeah! I’m just gonna pray for that!” he said.
I laughed again and told him, “Ok, I’ll pray about it too.”
I said my goodbyes, then boarded the plane and headed home. Back to my normal life. Back to my normal routine. But as I sat on the plane Nate’s words kept replaying in my mind. It was all I could think about. I suddenly felt extremely sad about leaving.
The day after I arrived back in Arkansas, I went out to dinner with Shane and his wife, Beth, to tell them all about the trip. During the past year Shane and I had grown closer because of his willingness to meet with me twice a month to disciple and mentor me. And I knew he was going to Honduras himself on another trip with our church a week later. So naturally he was the first person I wanted to talk to about my experiences. I told him how God had worked on my heart that week. Then I told him about my conversation with Nate. He laughed, but then said very seriously, “You know you should really think about that. You’re young, you’re single, and you’ve got nothing tying you down. It would be really easy for you to give up a couple years of your life to go down to Honduras and serve.”
Ah! He just had to go and say that didn’t he?! Of course he would go and confirm exactly what I suspected God was doing in my heart. But I was stubborn. I wasn’t about to give in that easily. So I said, “Well how about this. How about we talk to our missions department and see if it would be possible for me to go back with you on your trip next week? And if it works out, then maybe God really is doing something.” I said that thinking in the back of my mind that there was no way it was going to work out. It was too short of notice and there was no way I would be able to get a decent price on a plane ticket at this point. But Shane said, “Ok, tomorrow we’ll go talk to the missions department and see what we can work out.”
So the next day I met with Rosie Stephens, the head of the missions department at my church. I told her what was going on and asked if it would be possible for me to go back to Honduras on the trip the following week. She told me that it would be difficult to work everything out at such short notice, but that she was willing to see what was possible. Then she asked me if I had any limitations as to how much I wanted to spend on a plane ticket. I told her that I didn’t want to put any limits on price or anything like that. I just wanted to see what was available. She said ok, she would see what she could find out.
Three hours later I got a phone call from her and the first thing she said to me was, “Well, guess where you’re going on Saturday?” That’s right, I was going back to Honduras! Not only that, but I was going for $600 cheaper than I had gone the week before! God had done an amazing thing and I was totally blown away. But that’s not all. She also told me that she had contacted WGO about my interest in coming to Honduras to serve, and that she had told them a little bit about me and what I do. Well, it turns out they were in dire need of someone to come and do media and graphic design for them. They also had several needs in their children’s ministry. So they wanted to meet with me during the last half of the week to talk about all of that. I couldn’t believe it! It just seemed too perfect to be a coincidence. Needless to say, I was very excited about going back. But more than that, I was excited to see what God was doing. Little did I know that God would continue to do amazing things in the weeks ahead…
IN PART 4: The details of the second trip and how God confirmed to me His call on my life.
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