I was out of the office for nearly a week following Easter as I traveled to Honduras for a mission trip with our mission ministry, The Shepherd’s Project.

Twice a year we conduct pastors conferences in that country where we train pastors and church leaders in the Bible and allow them to understand the scriptures more clearly while also providing them with a refreshing time of rest and relaxation – something they never get while working full-time jobs and pastoring churches.

We host a Spring conference and a Fall conference, each with over 120 participants. Each conference is three days and we provide all their transportation to the conference site, lodging, meals, and many other items such as personal hygiene packs. We do this because many of the pastors arrive at the conference with nothing but the clothes on their backs and their Bibles.

During the Spring conference, we bring a team of 10 USA pastors and church members and we actually cook Louisiana meals for them, consisting of gumbo, Cajun chicken pasta, hamburgers, biscuits and gravy, and more, led by the head kitchen chef, my wife, Kim.

While many of the items needed to cook such entrees are brought with us from the states, we have to use other staple items, such as chicken and sausage, from Honduras. Needless to say, it’s a chore to not only prepare the meals for so many but to get them to taste like back home. For instance, what they call sausage is nothing like what we have in the states – certainly a far cry from Conecuh. Fortunately, my wife has been doing this for many years and has it down to perfection.

Due to COVID, we have not been able to travel to Honduras to conduct these conferences for the past two years so it was certainly a blessing to be able to be back there once again.

For me, I was traveling to Honduras sometimes seven times a year pre-Covid, from conducting conferences to leading other mission trips, and had gotten used to their life. But not being there for two years allowed me to see afresh and anew just how blessed we are here in the United States.

In this editorial space, I often do a lot of criticizing. Too much, truth be told, blasting everything from Washington politics to unfair and unjustified government mandates, so this recent trip to Honduras allowed me to do much soul-searching and self-evaluation.

While I’ll not share all my intimate revelations, I will share with you one of the greatest truths that was once again revealed to me and that is how blessed we are to live where we live.

In Honduras, children are provided with a public education from 1st grade to 6th grade. If they want to go further and actually graduate high school, they must be able to purchase mandated school uniforms and school supplies. Since the majority of the families can’t afford these, most Hondurans only have a sixth-grade education.

Once they finish sixth grade, it’s immediately to the fields to work with their family. Girls are typically married very young and immediately start producing children and the cycle continues.

During the pandemic, the entire country was shut down for not two weeks, but for nearly a year. The military was out enforcing a mandatory stay-at-home order and one person from a family could travel once a week to get needed supplies.

Their former president is facing drug charges in the US and the history of corruption in their government has been widespread for decades.

Everything in Honduras is government ran and government controlled. There are private hospitals and schools, but for the average Honduran, they must deal with the government in every aspect of their life.

Because of the corruption in their government, the country has experienced massive demonstrations and riots in recent years in opposition to their government.

In past years, while trying to get our mission teams to the airport to fly home, we have encountered such demonstrations including blocking major roads that lead into the capital city, Tegucigalpa. In Honduras, guns are not allowed so their only recourse is to build massive fires out of tires and wood to block highways and prevent any travel.

While traveling to the airport to fly home on Monday, April 25, I asked our missionary if the riots have subsided since their former president is no longer in power.

He said they have, but there are rumors that another massive demonstration was about to take place soon. It seems that nurses, doctors, and other government employees have not been paid for over six months and they were about to revolt.

Are you kidding me? No paycheck for over six months? If that were to happen in the states, I can only imagine what would happen.

The point is, from not getting paid, to a poor education system, to unsafe vehicles and roads, to inadequate food and supplies, to stores and vendors having to hire private, armed guards for protection, to an inadequate and unsafe electrical grid, to no community water source and certainly no sewage systems, it didn’t take me long to remember just how good we have it here in the United States.

If I were a Honduran, I’d probably take my chances on walking the 2,550-plus miles to Texas myself. Even the poorest person in the USA is rich compared to most Hondurans.

Again, let’s all just be thankful we live where we live. Despite all our problems, we are truly blessed to be citizens of this great nation.

(More information about The Shepherd’s Project can be found at www.theshepherdsproject.org or on Facebook at The Shepherd’s Project.)