El Salvador Experiences a Really Living Mission Trip
Youth from the Really Living Team before heading to El Salvador.
SAN SALVADOR, EL SALVADOR – On Thursday March 6th, 12 youth and young adults from the Really Living SDA church headed to El Salvador on a mission trip. When the location was chosen less than a year prior, hesitation arose among those wanting to make the trip. El Salvador had consistently been known as the murder capital of the world due to vicious uncontrolled gang activity and an unstable government. However, thanks to a new generation of voters under the current president, the country is considered to be one of the safest in Central America.
Really Living youth arriving at the ADRA El Salvador Headquarters.
The team worked with ADRA El Salvador on a project focused on building chicken coops for families as a means of income. The project began two months prior to the missionaries arriving in the country and each family underwent a selection process. The most important being a desire to learn. During these week’s ADRA El Salvador provided training on using chicken coops to operate your own business including learning the basics of chicken illnesses, knowing the appropriate coop measurements per chickens and how to commercialize the eggs.
The importance of this project rests in an understanding that due to the civil war in the later half of the 20th century, much of El Salvador’s population over the age of 50 remain uneducated, meaning jobs requiring the ability to read and write are unattainable. Therefore, families being given the tools and resources to have their own small business is fundamental in creating a better life for themselves.
Through ADRA El Salvador’s partnership with missionaries from Really Living, 15 families were provided with 200 chickens, the materials for the coops and the chicken food.
On the first Sabbath, the team visited a church in the rural community El Matazano Chaparra. Though small in numbers, the vibrancy of each member stood out to all of the missionaries. The missionaries, being led by Really Living youth pastor Jose Sanchez, provided an afternoon kids programs for the community. Over 50 children from the various parts of the village joined the two-hour program which featured songs, crafts, story-time, games, snacks and a piñata. Each missionary was touched by the kindness and joy seen on the children’s faces during this program. Though only two of the missionaries spoke Spanish, the language barrier did not minimize the impact.
Youth prepare the chicken coop.
On their first day of work, they delivered 200 baby chicks to a family whose mother and son had recently been baptized into the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The son is named Michael. He has special needs and as a child was in the home when a fire broke out. As a result, roughly 90 per cent of his body is burned. The missionaries were welcomed by the mother, father and grandmother of the home while they spent time with Michael. He received toy cars, a toy race car track, bubbles, t-shirts, a baseball hat and new sunglasses. The morning concluded with thanks of gratitude from the father who expressed that the acts of kindness they were receiving was a life changing. He is having Bible studies with ADRA El Salvador members and he hopes that the missionaries will continue to return to El Salvador.
That afternoon, the missionaries headed to the home of the family they would be building a chicken coop for. Supplies were dropped off and the team worked in this location for the remainder of the trip. A breakdown of the work included:
Clearing the makeshift coop started by the family
Levelling the ground by removing large stones and debris
Digging one foot holes to place six wooden posts
Creating cement to be placed in each hole and also layered across the floor of the coop
Surrounding the coop with barbed wire
Placing a metal roof on top of the six posts
What stood out for the team were the intentional relationships ADRA El Salvador was developing with the people they serve. The team visited a woman named Prudencia who is taking care of her 101-year-old bed-ridden mother. A bag of groceries were delivered and the song “He is Exalted” was sung in English. Prudencia sang along wholeheartedly in Spanish and then shared some words of gratitude. A prayer was given in English and in Spanish by the missionaries and even though there was a present language barrier, the Holy Spirit could be felt in the room as tears and hugs were shared.
Really Living youth leading out Sabbath service.
The trip ended on the Sabbath with time spent on the ADRA headquarters grounds where there is a primary schoool, secondary school and church. The team attended the AY program held in the evening at the church and spent time speaking with the students there whose aspirations include working in the fields of: medicine, marine biology and psychology.
As the trip came to end, Alex Figueroa, ADRA Country Director for El Salvador left the Really Living team with these words:
“Though we may not see each other again in this lifetime, we know we will all be reunited in heaven.”
This article originally appeared on Really Living’s website.