February 3, 2007
Fund Raising Event Pictures
Eighty-nine guests and 16 team members and their spouses attended our February 3 fundraising event. Donations to our mission effort totaled over $4,200 and Thrivent will be adding another $1,600 in matching funds. THANK YOU to everyone for the generous donations and to Thrivent for the matching funds. Kruta’s Bakery donated the scrumptious desserts for the dessert table, and the team members provided the appetizers.
The donations will pay the trip expenses for Vicar Erik and Ulmira Loza and for the medicines we take to Honduras. Last year Ulmira was a dentist evangelist. Although she spent all of her time pulling teeth and tending to other dental needs, she used every opportunity to witness to her patients, including singing Christo me ama (Jesus Loves Me) to the children in her dental chair.
This year we are pleased that Erik can also join us. His ability to evangelize in Spanish (without needing a translator like the rest of us do) will be a special blessing. Both Erik and Ulmira are helping us learn a few simple songs in Spanish.
The entire Honduras Mission Team is made up of members from several churches in a number of states. These include members from Our Shepherd Lutheran in the Detroit area and from Friendship Lutheran, Taylorsville, North Carolina. The team members who are part of our Good Shepherd team include Harry Schlechte and Gerry Werth who will be working on construction projects at the orphanage; the medical team members working in Tegucigalpa include: Erik and Ulmira Loza; Kathy Bohnet and her brother-in-law Don Dahlgren, from York, Nebraska; Kevin Rust; Pat and Lee Hoffmeier and their two daughters, Joanna, from Denver and Christa from Chicago; Alice Hoffmeier, Lee’s sister-in-law from Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Jody Crockett from Timothy Lutheran, St. Louis; Karl Lubsch, a pharmacist from St. Louis; and Sandy Evans from Alto Pass, Illinois, a nurse anesthesiologist who is our “mom” in Honduras. (The names of the GSLC members are underlined.)
We received our first shipment of 140 pounds of medicines this week. All of these need to be labeled with instructions in Spanish. Many—tylenol, vitamins, amoxicillin---will be repackaged into smaller amounts so they will be ready for the pharmacy in Honduras.
The team will do the first counting and labeling of medicines at their meeting on February 22. The LWML has agreed to help us do the same after their meeting on March 1. Anyone is welcome to help us with this task!
With the help of many GSLC members we have collected enough travel-sized shampoos, conditioners, lotions and soaps to fill 300 sandwich bags with a sample of each item. Our thanks to Chuck and Mary Ann Eckert who have done most of the packaging of these items. They even took the time to label many of them in Spanish! And, we received toothpaste, toothbrushes, and other dental supplies from Dr. Richard Boatman and Drs. Kent and Kathy Splaingard. During Lutheran School’s Week, the seventh graders at GSLS along with their grandparents, will be making approximately 400 salvation bracelets for us to use in children’s evangelism. THANK YOU to all who have participated in this mission opportunity. TO GOD BE THE GLORY!
Lee Hoffmeier
January 11,2007
A message from Pat Hoffmeier:
The Good Shepherd Honduras Mission Team’s 2007 trip is scheduled for March 24 – 31. World Gospel Outreach (WGO) is the sponsoring organization for our trip. The vision of WGO is to help bring the country of Honduras to Christ by 1) Evangelizing the lost through effective and impactful medical/evangelism brigades; and, 2) Winning the future generations through raising abandoned children in a Christ-centered family ranch environment at Rancho Ebenezer.
During the last 21 years, over 250,000 Hondurans have been ministered to by medical teams like ours. Other teams have worked in construction, building homes and a school for the children at Rancho Ebenezer.
In 2007 Good Shepherd has joined with a church in North Carolina and one in the Detroit area to form a team of 30 people going on the Medical Mission and 8 to work on construction at Rancho Ebenezer, the WGO orphanage. Of these 38 people, GS has 15 team members, including 8 who are GS members and others who are friends and relatives from Iowa, Nebraska, Denver, Chicago, and St. Louis.
We are still looking for an optometrist to join our team. If you know an optometrist who would be interested, let us know!
Those who have previously gone on these trips have said it is a life-changing experience.
As one woman wrote in WGO’s July newsletter, “We went to teach, but we were taught ourselves. We went to witness but were witnessed to instead. We went to serve but were served more than we ever could have served them. Christ was at the core of all we did and just radiated out through us and the Honduran people.”
Those who go have the opportunity to witness their faith and tell the love of Jesus to both children and adults who struggle through life with meager resources and a belief system of works righteousness. This may be an opportunity for bonding that will be forever memorable for parent/child, grandparent/grandchild, husband/wife, brother/sister, etc.
We will soon be asking for help to count and pack the thousands of pills that we are taking with us.
If you have any questions/comments about our Honduras Mission, please call Lee or Pat Hoffmeier at 618-288-3684 or e-mail at hof@charter.net. We would enjoy hearing from you.
Pat