April/May Newsletter

Dear Friends and Family,

I have been totally late in writing the newsletter for April, so this is just going to double as the newsletter for both April and May. The last time I wrote (mid-March), everything with the coronavirus was just beginning to blow up. I was convinced at the time that it wasn’t going to last too long, but here we are a month and a half in and it doesn’t look like things will be improving any time soon, at least not for us here in Honduras. I hope that all of you are well and that none of you, nor any of your loved ones, are sick or jobless or struggling to get by. I pray that God guards you and keeps you safe, and that He continues to show Himself as Healer, Redeemer, Provider, and our Sovereign Lord even in the midst of this chaos. Only in Him can we place our trust and find true peace.

Things here have slowed down a ton-- all large gatherings, soccer games, and church services have been prohibited, and all the schools are shut down (all online now), as well as most businesses. Many people have lost their jobs, which honestly I believe is a bigger threat than the virus itself. Here in La Venta, we are extremely fortunate. Because of it being such a small population, we still have the freedom of going outside and seeing family and that sort of thing, which I’m so thankful for. In the cities and along the coast though, things are not so peaceful. People are pretty much in full lockdown and can only go out to do the basic errands such as going to the grocery store (with the required mask, gloves, and hand sanitizer) on specific days. There are even a few neighborhoods in Tegucigalpa (the capital of Honduras) that are completely closed, no one can leave or enter. Please be praying for this situation, it’s already a bad economy here but it’s so much worse now. And another prayer request for Honduras is for rain! It’s extremely hot here and we haven’t had any moisture in so long, so there are a lot of fires around the country, including La Venta.

Due to the restrictions, Mario and I are not able to be doing all the ministry things that we wish we could... Just when things started shutting down, we realized that we needed more materials to be able to finish the construction in the kitchen at the church, so we’ve had to put that on hold indefinitely. We also had sat down in mid-March to write out a weekly schedule of gatherings we’d like to start really implementing such as Bible studies and worship nights, but then pretty much the next day, all large gatherings were prohibited. At first we were really discouraged and disappointed, but then we decided to do a Facebook live worship night, along with two of our good friends, Eduardo and Magdiel. We had originally planned on only doing one, but now it’s turned into a weekly thing and we are all really enjoying it. It’s been a great way to stay connected with our community and stay encouraged and focused on God and His goodness.

However, the highlight of this last month was the opportunity to give food to lots of families here in the community. A dear friend of mine is an ambassador for a business called Noonday (Noonday helps to support women all over the world through fair-trade business. Go check out Noonday Collection to learn more, it’s seriously awesome!) and she wrote me about a month ago to see if she could do a sale to raise money for a specific cause here in La Venta. My dad also wanted to do some fund-raising through FSI to help support the community in some way, so we decided that the best thing would be to buy food to give to the families with less resources. The whole process of raising that money lasted for a while, and once we had it, we were thinking we could generously bless about 50 families with those funds. Mario and I got some quotes on a food order for that amount of people and it turns out we were way off-- in the end we were able to give food to 150 families! Isn’t God so abundant and generous!? Some of our family and friends helped us with bagging up and delivering all the food (2lbs of rice, 2lbs of beans, 2lbs of sugar, 1lb of flour, 1lb of corn flour, 2 bags of salt, 1lb of pasta, 2 packages of pasta sauce, 1lb of cooking oil, 2 bars of margarine, 30 small packets to make chicken broth, and 1lb of coffee). It was really so amazing to be able to share the love of Jesus in that way. And really my hope for that day as we were handing out the food is that each of those people felt peace and hope and joy, the kind that comes only from our Heavenly Father. I hope they felt His presence, His kindness, His love.

God’s been reminding me that even though things seem out of control and totally overwhelming and hopeless, He is Sovereign and He invites us to continue to seek Him and serve Him and trust Him even-- no, especially-- right now. “Now may the Lord of peace Himself give you peace at all times in every way. The Lord be with you all.” 2 Thessalonians 3:16

Blessings,

Katie and Mario Velasquez

**Mario’s cousin is a self-taught photographer and volunteered himself to come take pictures and make a video for the food project to be able to share with everyone who helped make it possible, here’s a link to Mario’s Facebook profile to see the video: https://www.facebook.com/mario.velasquez.77715/videos/2674248369369220/