If your Easters are anything like ours have been all our lives, they include getting up in the morning, putting on that special outfit you have picked out for Easter and looking your best for Easter morning church service. Everything is very festive; often pictures are even taken of everyone looking their best to celebrate Christ’s resurrection.

This Easter was a bit different for us this year. We traveled with Orlando and Silvia to a small village beyond the capital called Güinope. Orlando had been asked to preach all weekend, as the church had recently tragically lost their own pastor. We reached this village after several hours of driving, the last hour solely on dirt roads climbing up into the mountains. Easter morning there was a sunrise service planned. We woke at 5am only to realize the electricity was still out from the night before and there was a problem with the water tank at the house we were staying at, so there was no water. So, in contrast to the usual pageantry we are accustomed to at Easter, we got up, dressed in the dark, hoping that the clothes we were putting on matched. We fixed our hair as best as possible, put on extra deodorant and headed out to the sunrise service where the praise team improvised without electricity. Well, we thought to ourselves, that was an interesting Easter morning… probably the closest we would get to that first Easter morning.

We have learned while we have been here that while this particular house had a tank that provided running water that just wasn’t working, a very large percentage of Hondurans live without running water most of the time. In conversation with Orlando and Silvia on the ride home, we learned that many people in our church only have running water twice a month. When they do have water, they fill up a very large basin and make that water last until the next time it comes. Their showers consist of using a bowl to dip in the bucket to rinse themselves with. This was a humbling and sobering thought…

As we spend more time here, we continue to learn more about the extent of the economic hardship people face here. We continue to be surprised at how the lack of financial means does not stop the people here from doing ministry within their own community. Two immediate examples come to mind. We attended a meeting for all the Sunday school teachers of the church. The meeting was mainly to plan the coming events for the ministry. However, it was brought to attention that one of the teachers discovered that one of her students does not attend school because he does not have enough money for a pencil and notebook. After discussing the problem for a few minutes, the group of Sunday School teachers and leaders decided that if they were going to do their job as a church, these kids could not slip through the cracks. Then and there they formed a committee to investigate the situation and needs of each student that was attending Sunday School to see how they could help.

Second, during a recent youth service led by young adults, it was announced that the next week’s service was going to be held at a woman’s house that used to attend the church. She has several children and is very poor. The young adult leaders explained that they were going to include this woman in fellowship by bringing the service to her since it’s hard for her to make it to church. They also explained that they were going to bring food to this woman and her family the day of the service.  They encouraged the youth to sign up by themselves or with a partner to bring some basic food goods to this woman. Within about five minutes, the white board was filled with names and pounds of this or that.

Both of these instances really stuck to us. Often when we are asked to do something, to give of our time or our money, our first thoughts are one of two: no I don’t have any extra time or money, or what’s in it for me?  A common realization when returning from a mission trip to a third world country is, “Wow, these people have nothing, yet they are so happy!”  It is one thing to be able to be happy with nothing, it is quite another to happily give when you have nothing (Mark 12:41-44). What we have observed here, especially in these two situations, has been a beautiful picture of the body of Christ actually being Christ’s hands and feet, reaching out to make a difference in the lives of others.