Henderson Missionary Family

In our first year here in our new home here in Honduras, Brantley started this blog.  He called it the Honduras Hendersons instead of just something with his name.  The idea was that at some point maybe his mother or I would feel/have the need or calling to also write about some of our experiences and share them here.  With that in mind, I decided to share.   God has blessed Alania, Brantley and I with opportunities to share, preach, live and labor over this past year here in Honduras and for a short time visiting the states during Thanksgiving and Christmas.  But honestly, as exciting and exhilarating as some of our experiences have been, what is truly spectacular is that God continues to teach us so much.

The biggest takeaway I have from the past year is God’s Faithfulness in answering prayer and how he has been teaching us to pray.  In John 16:23 Jesus told the disciples “if you ask the Father for anything in My name, He will give it to you.”  I’ve known that verse for some time but during my first year I’ve found out that it’s true.  Not that I didn’t believe it before, I did.  But, I am now learning how to ask God for everything I need.  In the next verse, vs. 24, He says “ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be made full.”  When we ask and receive of God our joy level goes through the roof!  At least mine does.  It’s not that I had to move to a foreign country to start asking God for things.  I’ve asked God for plenty prior to moving to Honduras.  But honestly, I just asked God for big things.  You know, like to guide Brantley’s life into the right path, for protection when traveling, for a friend or family member to become a Christian, etc.  What God has shown me so far this year is that actually our joy is in the small things.  That’s why the Bible says things like “you ask and do not receive because you ask with the wrong motives” and “you don’t have because you don’t ask.” (James 4:2-3)  The wrong motives are many times just asking for the big things and thinking those will make our life great or give us peace.  And, not asking has to do with not asking for the little things at all.  I’ve had to ask God for some “nuts and bolts” stuff lately – small stuff but REAL stuff.  I’ve asked in areas of my life that, prior to now, I didn’t ask God about because I either thought it was too insignificant to worry God with or, quite honestly, I thought I could handle myself.  The answers have not all been yes but many of them have.  But even the no’s have come quickly, clearly and have brought joy.  The point is that I have truly experienced God in new ways and that He has answered ALL those prayers.  Once again, maybe not the way I want, but He has answered.  Those answers on small things are what I really believe to be faith builders.  Asking God to fix a less than desirable situation with another person, asking God to take care of a task or project that you are dreading, asking God to heal a small physical pain, asking God for patience…  These wants that we have but don’t typically take to God because we think we can handle, are where we build our faith enough to ask in faith for big things.  The problem is how can we ask in faith believing we have already received, like Jesus told us to in Matthew chapter 21, if we don’t regularly experience God answering our prayers?  How can we regularly experience God answering prayers if we don’t depend on him for the daily things we need?  How can we trust God if we never entrust anything to Him?  How can we entrust big things to Him if we don’t entrust small things to Him?  The answer is we don’t.  To get answered prayers we have to pray.  How anxious are you at this moment about anything?  Pray about it.  Tell God your most honest thoughts about the situation.  Philippians 4:6-7 says “Be anxious for NOTHING, but in EVERYTHING by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.  And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”  In the context of what I’ve written, please let that sink in.

The Catch

The catch is that if we ask God to fix a situation, we are trusting God to fix it His way.  Thereby, we have to give up some control.  This is a big place God has been working in my life lately, giving up control.  Obviously, you give up a lot of control when you sell everything and go into ministry.  You give up control of big things and little things.  But consider a question – Which brings you joy?  Answer truthfully!  Is it in having control or relinquishing of control?  I’m not asking which you prefer necessarily, but rather, which brings you joy?  Joy actually is in relinquishment of control to someone you can trust.  But, control feeds our pride which tells us that we can’t trust anybody else with the situation, not even God.  That pride becomes our faith.  That is idolatry because our pride is not God it is an idol.  So we serve the idol of pride by thinking we can handle a small situation rather than relinquishing control to God, watching him work, learning how He works, experiencing His answers, experiencing His faithfulness, and seeing our faith grow.  Instead we entrust things, situations to ourselves by serving our pride and we begin to believe the lie that we can’t trust anyone else with our problems…not even God.  Then, when a problem comes too big for us to handle, we try our best to give it to God but we don’t trust God because we’ve never given any little things to God.  This scenario has played itself out in my life in years past and I’m so thankful to The Lord for beginning to show me by His grace how he answers prayer and how I can trust Him.  Joy is in the relinquishment of control of our lives to God.  Controlling your own life may seem comfortable, but relinquishing control is the only place of true joy.  Start with the little things “ask and receive that your joy will be made full.”

Your Brother in Christ,

Kris

The whole time I’ve been in Honduras I have always kind of wanted to go to school here.  I have not really had the opportunity because when we moved school was already in the second half of the year.  As the school year was approaching, I thought it would be a good idea to check out all the options of me possibly enrolling in a high school.  There are a few good bilingual high schools in San Pedro so I looked up their phone numbers and called about possibly going to visit the schools.  All of this happened the first week of August on Sunday and Monday.  On Wednesday my dad, mom, and I all went around to the three schools.  The first one we stopped at is named Internacional Escuala Americana.  When we pulled up to the gate, the guard came out and asked us what we were there for.  Just for future reference, everyone at a bilingual school doesn’t speak English.  Of course the guard was limited to only Spanish, so my dad tried to explain the best he could that we needed to talk to a lady by the name of Joanne Rogers (the lady we talked with on the phone).  The guard had no idea what he was talking about, so he pointed at a sign that said, “Matricula.” We obviously had no idea what that meant, so my mom looked up the word on Google Translate.  It means enrollment, so we agreed with the guard and he let us in.  We pulled into park and got out looking for an entrance to the building. I saw a small yellow gate so I started that way. About that time my dad said, “Wait, come over here real quick.” I thought oh gosh what is he about to make me do. Of course we did what all gringo missionaries do and we held hands and prayed in the middle of an empty parking lot.  It felt pretty silly, but doing that helped to open up my eyes and let the Lord speak to me about the right decision to make about each school.  As we walked in the small gate, another guard came up and said something so dad just said, “Matricula,” and he knew where to take us.  We came up to this room named High School Office.  We stopped there and the director of the school came out.  He was an American so it kind of surprised me. We started talking and it turns out that no employees were at school yet, because they were still on vacation.  The director didn’t know much about what we were asking him, so he just showed us around the campus and told us to come back on the 18^th. This date was familiar because that is the day my online classes started.  I am currently taking dual enrollment online classes through West Georgia Tech. These classes also started on the 18^th.  I came to realize that I was going to have to make a pretty quick decision. We were on to the next school. This school is named Freedom High School.  We have a lot of translators that I am close with that go to this school, so it was already pretty high on my list. When we got up to the gate at this school we just told the guards that we were here for matricula and they let us right on in.  We parked right up next to the school and went around to where all the offices were. We were standing there and a lady came up and asked who we were waiting for.  My dad told her we were looking for a woman named Gloria (The lady we spoke with on the phone from Freedom).  Well, that lady was Gloria so she told us to wait right outside her office and she would be with us in just a moment.  When she called us in, we all sat down and she started going over the costs and things like I was 100% going to enroll there.  We told her that we were just there to talk about the possibilities of me enrolling.  She took us on a tour of the school and then took us to the principal to talk about further things.  When we got there, we just asked him a lot of things about what classes I would take and if I would be able to get out for each team that comes down.  He was very open to me missing some weeks here and there for teams but not all of them.  After that, he gave me a paper that showed what classes I would take.  The Honduran school system only goes to eleven grades, but they learn the same amount as the U.S.  They said that I would be in the tenth grade, which makes sense because I would still have two years of school left just like I do now.  He showed me my classes and I noticed that I would have to retake Biology and Chemistry, in which I have completed both, so that was a big negative in me going there. He then told us that school starts on the 18^th. I knew that this was going to be a faster decision than I thought.  We talked a little bit more and then we were on our way to the third and final school of the day.  This school is named Albert Einstein International School. This school is in downtown San Pedro, which is like being in a jungle with a lot of concrete.  When we finally got to the school, after trying to figure out where it was, we just walked right in and didn’t have to explain anything to the guard.  When we were inside, it reminded me of a small two story apartment building.  We went and talked to a lady who couldn’t speak much English, but she was trying really hard.  She started explaining how the school is a trilingual school and that I would have to take four weeks of French before I could start classes.  When we heard this we pretty much just left. That was probably the weirdest school I have seen in my life. As I started to think about the possibilities, I really only felt like Freedom was the only option.  Then again, I didn’t want to have to retake classes because it seems pointless.  I thought about it and came to realize that the best thing was just to stay with the online classes.  It would be a really good experience but I felt like God spoke through the responses we got at each school.  As school has started back up in Bowdon, I am a little sad because I’m not there with all of my classmates.  This is the first year since kindergarten that I will not start off at Bowdon.  Then, I think about how I am doing God’s will and there is nothing else I would rather be doing than that.  Please continue to pray for my family and the whole organization here in El Plan. Thank you for everything!

Brantley Henderson

In the United States, when the word “football” comes up in a conversation, there is no question on what sport you may be talking about. It is the sport in which fans dedicate their lives to supporting and watching every Friday, Saturday and Sunday. There is no doubt that I love American football just as much and more as the next southern guy. Now when I hear football, or in Honduras “fútbol,” I think about what us Americans call “soccer.” Prior to moving to Honduras, if someone would have asked me if I liked soccer, I would have said no without hesitation.  Now I enjoy watching and playing soccer almost as much as any other sport that I played back home. I love sports with a passion and that will never change.   Prior to moving here my whole life pretty much revolved around sports and when I moved here I noticed a new sport that I have never really thought about. I thought, “Why not learn the sport that everyone craves for in every country other than the U.S?” Now I know so much more about the sport than I did before I got here. It is like basketball in some ways, but at the same time it is totally different.  I have had to spend time watching and understanding the different positions and how each has a different role in the game. There are eleven men on the field at all times, just like American football. Like I said earlier, the ways that the game sets up and the strategy is a lot like basketball. There are positions such as a “forward” that exist in both basketball and soccer. Also, the main goal in both sports is to get the ball to the basket, or in this case, the goal.

The ways that the teams schedule is set up is unlike any other sport that I have ever seen. Teams play for multiple championships, or “cups,” at one time. Unlike in football, baseball or basketball where there is a postseason and playoffs; in soccer you are constantly playing for some sort of cup. Another thing is that there is pretty much no offseason. There is a time where players get a break but it usually only lasts for at most a month. It is a good thing that it is not longer because the fans would go into a rage of not having any sport to watch. There are two well known teams that play in Spain and just about everyone in Honduras either like one or the other. The teams are Real Madrid, which people shorten to “Madrid,” and Barcelona, which people shorten to “Barça.” Probably the most frequent question I have been asked in Honduras is, “Madrid or Barça?” I had to make a choice so I picked Real Madrid and now I feel like I have been a fan all of my life.  When people ask me that question it always makes me think of being in Alabama and someone asks, “Alabama or Auburn?” or being in Georgia and hearing, “Georgia or Tech?” It is funny that passion for sports teams never go away whether in a third world country or in the U.S. I really wish that soccer would become big in the U.S just like it is in the rest of the world. Atlanta is getting a soccer team in 2017 and I am really excited about that. As I am here I hope to keep learning about the game and getting better at playing it myself. I still love all the sports that I have always loved such as basketball, golf, baseball and American football. Soccer is starting to win my heart as well. I am really glad that I found a new sport to play and watch and hopefully teach some people back home who think soccer is for girls. Please continue to pray for the Honduras Baptist Dental Mission and everything that is going on in El Plan. Thanks for your support and I will be seeing some of you very soon!

God Bless,

Brantley Henderson

In Honduras and pretty much all of Central America, the week before Easter is known as Semana Santa (Holy Week).  The whole week is celebrated but people usually don’t start getting off of work until Thursday.  This week is usually spent traveling to see family or laying around in a blow-up swimming pool.  We spent the week traveling and ended up doing a little swimming ourselves.  Monday we traveled to Santa Lucia, Francisco Morazan, Honduras to visit friends that work with the mission.  They invited us to stay with them in their house in Santa Lucia.  Santa Lucia is located about 30 minutes outside of the capital city of Tegucigalpa. The drive from El Plan to Tegucigalpa consisted of one road for 4 hours.  The ride wasn’t that bad except for mountain roads and having almost the whole road occupied by buses.  Once we got to Tegucigalpa our friends, Aquiles, Lucia, and Swan, met us at a gas station and we followed them to their house in Santa Lucia.  Once we got there, we checked out the town and saw a lot of cool places.  That evening Aquiles cooked some meat on the home made grill that is made out of a wheel barrow and a long rack thing.  We put charcoal in the wheel barrow then put the rack on top of it and there was a grill! The next day we all went to a town beside Santa Lucia called Valle de Angeles.  Here we walked around on the streets and ate at a really cool restaurant that served pizza and pupusas. Pupusas are basically a very thick corn tortilla stuffed with cheese and pork.  They were interesting but they were also very tasty.  After we ate, Swan tried to take us to a secret place that is supposed to be very beautiful.  We were on our way through the back roads of Honduras.  When I say back roads, I mean someone’s backyard.  We were driving in between these two rows of fences, and all of a sudden the fences started getting closer and closer and the truck would not fit through the narrow way.  Swan tried to get us to park in front of some lady’s house, but we didn’t want to leave the truck there because something could easily happen to it.  Swan was pretty upset but everything worked out okay.  The next day we traveled about 2 hours to the village of Teupasenti where Pastor Luis Santos lives.  He is the Honduran pastor that leads all the church services when we are out in the field. On the way, I got a call from my pal Luciano who works and is living at the mission. He had also traveled to Tegucigalpa to visit some friends during Holy Week.  He called me to see if he could ride with us. He was going to catch a bus to Pastor’s house but since buses are the main way of transportation for Honduras, the bus station was so backed up he wasn’t going to be able to get one. He called us at the right time because we just entered Tegucigalpa on our way to Pastor’s house. We picked him up at the bus station and then we were on our way.  It was a pretty rough ride to where his house was but it was well worth it.  When we got there we went to his house and then on to the river for some swimming.  When we got to the river there were a good many people there swimming.  People were on the shore cooking and playing music. We swam, ate some watermelon, and then went back to Pastor’s house for lunch.  For lunch his wife cooked rice, potatoes, and some kind of really good meat.  The meal was excellent. We left shortly after that and Pastor showed us all of the churches in his village.  I really hope that we can go and stay with him for an extended amount of time. He is a really great guy who loves serving the Lord. It shows because it is not easy for him to get from his house to El Plan due to the fact that he does not have an automobile. He has to catch a series of four buses to get to the mission compound.  It usually takes him anywhere from 6-8 hours just to get to where we live. He travels like this each time a team comes in. He is truly dedicated to serving God.  The trip this past week was great.  I really felt like my family and I are becoming more like Hondurans each and every day. Please continue to pray for everything that is going on here.  Thank you so much for your support and I hope to see you all soon!

God Bless,

Brantley Henderson

The Honduras Baptist Dental Mission is now starting to heat up for the year and it has been such a blessing to see God’s will being done through the people.  The second team of the year was the Ronnie Norris team from Arkansas.  They were a team of 48 people so not all of them could fit on one flight.  There were 14 of them that came a day early due to the size of the team.  All was well up until the next day.  The other part of the team was awaiting their flight when they found out that their flight had been cancelled due to a flight attendant not showing up.  The airline put everyone on a different flight and flew them to Houston later that day but could not send them here to Honduras after that.  They stayed the night in a hotel then got up and flew here the next morning.  While all of this was going on, the other part of the team had to make a decision on whether to go out into the field and only work for two days or stay in El Plan and work at our on-site clinic. We have recently finished a dental/medical clinic in the compound that is set up to see medical, dental, and optical patients.  They chose to stay and work the clinic all week which turned out to be the best.  When the other part of the team got here on Sunday they all worked to get the clinic ready for the week.  The next day, they started seeing patients and as God’s plan continued to unveil the first person to come in the clinic was a man who was in a diabetic coma.  If we wouldn’t have been there that week, the man would not have lived to see the next day. Some other people formed evangelism groups to go out and witness to people.  I decided to go out into the village with the guys in the evangelism groups.  The first day we just stayed around close to the compound and went to different houses sharing the gospel.  I pretty much just gave out Bibles and said, “Dios le bendiga” which means God bless you in Spanish.  The next day we went to a school in another little village right across the main road.  We went around to the classrooms and told the kids to tell their parents about the clinic and we also told them about Jesus.  There was a little place to buy drinks and baleadas (See previous post for explanation) inside the school.  The principal told us that we could have a free drink and a free baleada so that was a very good part of that day! The next day, which was the last day, we went to another school and did the same thing.  We walked back to the compound that day and on the way back we went door to door and shared Jesus with the people.  We stopped at this one house and Michael, one of the guys from the team, asked me if I wanted to share with the two women that were there.  I couldn’t turn him down so I started asking them questions and telling them about God’s grace and they came to know Jesus as their Lord and Savior.  It was a great feeling to lead my first two people to Christ and to know that I will see both of those women again one day.  There were a lot of great people on that team.  Michael used to be a missionary in Uruguay so he and I connected very well.  He gave me a lot of advice that will help me here.  There was another guy who was out witnessing that really impacted me.  His name is Jim Whitaker.  We talked a lot about everything and I am really glad that I got to work with these men of God.  My birthday was during their time here and Jim gave me a Jesus Calling devotion that was signed by the whole team.  They really made my 16^th birthday a special day to me.  As we are still here in El Plan, I ask that you will continue to pray for me and my family as well as the mission.  Thank you all for supporting us in the past and in the days to come!

God Bless,

Brantley Henderson

Have you ever heard of the place Copan?  You probably have not and you should consider yourself lucky.  The previous team stopped by these ancient Mayan ruins on the way back from the village a few weeks ago.  When we got there I found out that it was a tour guided event, so I, my dad, Andrew (the other missionary’s son) and Ricardo (a 15 year old translator) stayed out of the tour.  There was a little place to get something to eat right outside of the tour, so we went and ate the Honduran special, baliadas.  It is basically beans, eggs, cheese, sour cream and lettuce all wrapped in a flour tortilla.  Once you’ve eaten one you’ve eaten them all.  After that, we heard that it was going to be another two hours before the team would be out of the tour.  We then decided to take a Moto-Taxi into the city of Copan.  For those of you who don’t know what a Moto-Taxi is, it is a vehicle that is pretty much like a four-wheeler with a cover on the top that drives on the main road.  Every town has at least twenty of these “taxis” that ride around and wait for people that need a ride.  So, I, my dad, Andrew, and Ricardo all pile into this motorized buggy and head into the town.  My dad rode up front with the driver and there was only one seat up front so he had to share with him. The other three of us rode in the back that is only designed for two people. The taxi would go about 30-40 MPH, which is very fast when you are in buggy with nothing preventing you from falling out. On top of all of this the driver was not what you would call safe.  If you were to look up “reckless driving” in the dictionary I’m pretty sure you would find a photo of this man.  At one point we were halfway on the curb and halfway on the road just cruising.  We got to the city and the roads were all laid with stone.  It looked like roads that would be in Italy or something.  The driver let us out and we all paid him 20 Lempiras each, which is a dollar. This shows you how cheap things like that are here.  We walked around the city for a few minutes and found a store that sold fake Justin cowboy boots. It wasn’t all bad though because the place had air conditioning and a television, in Spanish of course.  The lady in that store was always staring at us and thinking, “Either buy something or get out of my store you Gringos.”  By then it was time to head back. We took another Moto-Taxi back to the tour place but this taxi was not as fast this time.  It wasn’t as much of a thrill as the ride into the town.  When we got back we sat on a curb until the team got out of the tour.  During that time, we had all thought that we were closer to home than we were when we left the village.  I looked at our location on my phone and we actually drove two hours in the opposite direction to get to these precious ruins.  We were pretty frustrated at this point.  We left the village at nine that morning and didn’t get back until about eight that evening.  It was a pretty long day if you ask me, but I am glad that I experienced it so I know what to prepare for in the coming trips.  As we prepare for another team to get here on Friday, I keep hoping that there is not another Copan Ruinas somewhere in the depths of Honduras.  Please continue to pray for my family and the mission as a whole.  With prayer everything is limitless!

God Bless,

Brantley Henderson

Hola! We have just completed our first week out with a team from the United States. The team that traveled down was Bob Leal’s team from Arkansas.  We traveled into Honduras to the department of Copan to the town of Veracruz. Here the team set up medical, dental, optical, and pharmacy clinics to help the people of Veracruz. The team saw about 1500 people throughout the week. This team will always be a special team as it was my family and I’s first team as an associate missionary family.  This week we have all been a little “home sick” I guess you would call it. One major thing that opened my eyes was, when the team left yesterday it kind of became real to me that we would be staying. Please continue to pray for me and family as well as the whole mission.  I look forward to keeping all of you in touch with what we are doing down here.

God Bless,

Brantley Henderson

My name is Brantley Henderson and my family and I have recently moved to Honduras as full time missionaries.  The past couple of months have been very hectic due to all the packing and moving.  It has been kind of hard moving down here and leaving so many friends, family members, sports, church activities, etc. behind.  For example, I played my last basketball game this past Friday and that was a very emotional time. But, looking forward I have been trying to realize that it is all in God’s plan and He will take care of everything.  I have just started home school and I think it is going to take some time to get used to.  As time goes by I think it will start to sink in and hopefully it won’t be so abnormal.  As we are down here I ask you all to please pray for me and my family and the whole mission organization. With prayer a lot of things are possible that seem crazy from the outside.  

God Bless.