urbanpromise honduras 10-year anniversary.

Our first ever date - the Mayan ruins in Copan Ruinas

This coming July will be the 10-year anniversary of UrbanPromise Honduras (UPH).  For those of you who do not know, UPH is a non-profit organization that works with kids and youth in Copan Ruinas, Honduras.  Ten years ago, I (Matt) helped found the organization with my two friends Blair and Rachel. Blair continues to work with UPH from the USA and Rachel still lives in Copan Ruinas. We spent several years living in Honduras, developing the organization and running programs. Starting and working with UPH was an important part of my life, and the organization still remains close to my heart. During that time I learnt a lot about living cross-culturally, working as part of a team, and living by faith. I fell in love with the Honduran people and the community in Copan Ruinas, and I made many great memories from our time living there.

(left) White water rafting trip with the UPH youth. (right) Kids from Camp Hope, our first after school program.

UPH started as a vision of our good friend Blair while he was teaching at a bilingual school in Copan Ruinas in 2007.  I remember him sharing his vision with me in typical Blair fashion, seemingly out of nowhere, full of passion and with an invitation to join him in the work. I knew right away that it would be an adventure like no other, and it didn’t take me long to get excited about the idea as well.

(left) The three founders with UrbanPromise President, Bruce Main. (right) Duct-tape Man fighting some evil villain.

After I agreed to join, we moved to the headquarters of UrbanPromise USA in Camden, NJ. We were there to learn about starting an organization and to start laying the foundations of what would later become UPH’s mission, vision, structure, and programs. It was an exciting time, but also a challenging and stretching one in many different ways.  We spent many days dreaming of our future programs in coffee shops, arguing over the wording of our mission statement around boardroom tables, and making awkward fundraising pitches to potential donors. It was also during this time when Rachel, the third member of the initial UPH team, joined the organization.

(left) A regular day at the first UPH office;. (right) Rachel teaching at our second ever summer camp.

Eventually, we raised enough money to survive for a few months and we moved down to Copan Ruinas to start programs. We started with an English summer camp for students of a bilingual school. There were many speed bumps and mistakes made, but we had a pretty decent turn out and lots of fun. After that summer, I continued as Program Director for our first after-school program, which I named Camp Hope. We ran it in the community of Nueva Esperanza, which means “New Hope“ in Spanish. I wanted the camp to be a place of hope for the kids, a place where they could feel the hope for deeper friendships, for a better future, and for experiencing the love of God.  These same hopes kept me going during tough times in Honduras, and they continue to motivate me in cross-cultural ministry today.

(left) Francisco and Nicole washing paint brushes. (right) Some boys from Camp Hope with some bald guy.

After almost two years in Honduras, we decided it was time to return to Canada. However, UPH is still running programs and doing great work. They have been steadily and faithfully growing ever since, touching the lives of hundreds of people in Copan Ruinas throughout the years. I feel very proud and lucky to have been a part of UPH’s beginnings. Not many people have the opportunity to live in another country, start something that makes a difference in people’s lives, or be able to work with their best friends. UPH allowed me to do all of these things, for which I am forever grateful to God, the UPH team, the people of Copan Ruinas and to all the friends and family that helped support the team and I. Many of you who are reading this are the same people who prayed for us faithfully and supported us financially. To all of you who did so, I am incredibly thankful. I hope you will join in the celebration, from wherever you are in the world.

(left) Kristin and I with the family I lived with for eight months in Honduras. (right) Mayan ruins field trip with camp kids.

In July, we are planning to attend the 10-year anniversary celebrations in Honduras. It has been a number of years since we have been able to visit Copan Ruinas, and never as a family. We are excited to show our kids this part of our history.

If you would like to be a part of helping us get to Honduras by financially contributing to the cost of our trip, you could make a donation to our MCC Personal Drawing Account.  Choose the "in memory, in honor, or in support of someone" section and write in the comments box "Matthew Wall and Kristin Cato PDA". We are trying to raise $2500 for the trip. See our Support Us page for more donation details.

And if you want to know more about UrbanPromise Honduras or support their work, go to www.urbanpromisehonduras.org.

Thank you all for being a part of our journey, in the past and the present.

Blessings,

Matt

My last day as Program Director at Camp Hope.

exploring the Chocó.

I (Matt) was lucky enough to join an MCC Learning Tour that came from Canada (Abbotsford) whose focus was to visit some of our partners, churches, and workers in a region of Colombia called the Chocó. The Chocó is a region located on the north-west coast of Colombia mostly made up of rain forest.  It is sparsely populated, quite poor and undeveloped, and also apparently the wettest place in the world. I can attest that although it did rain every day we were there, it was the near 100% humidity that was really a kicker. The day I arrived I was waiting in the airport for the rest of my team to arrive, and I was sweating buckets just sitting in the airport doing nothing, indoors in a (slightly) air-conditioned lobby. But that was nothing compared to walking around in the heat of the jungle. From the airport, we took a bus several hours south to the town of Istmina, the site of the very first Mennonite Brethren church in Colombia.

A picture of Istmina from the river. There is one big bridge separating the town in two and a large Catholic church on the hill. This was our main base while visiting the churches and communities in the area that MCC supports and partners with. This is also the end of the line for the road into the vast rain forest of the Chocó. From here on out, it's only boat travel.

A typical small community on the river down from Istmina. The area is prone to flooding, even more so with climate change and illegal mining. One of the things MCC funds and the church pastors work on is disaster relief related to flooding.

Walking up the path from the river to the town of Bebedo, with a traditional hand-carved canoe that is a common site in river-side towns. The town of Bebedo is only accessible by boat and requires several hours of travel on the river. There is not much opportunity for people here, but there is a thriving MB church. Work is hard to come by, so most people are farmers.

These coffee bags can be filled with either rice or rice husks. With the help of MCC, the pastors in the Chocó have developed an agricultural program to help people husk their cultivated rice. Rice can be sold for profit and the husks can be used for fertilizer or animal feed. The pastors also help train and subsidize farmers to move to growing cacoa – the plant used to make chocolate.

This is one of the pastors working in the agricultural project, with the rice-husking machine in the background. There are not many working rice-husking machines in the area, so what this community has is a valuable commodity. The agricultural project charges farmers to use the machine just enough to cover machine maintenance.

The cacao fruit growing on the tree. Bigger and uglier than I thought it would be – but it makes up for it by smelling nice.

The harvested cacao ready to be processed into chocolate. I was told it is a tricky plant to grow, especially in the extreme heat and wet of the Chocó, so specialized training and taking extra care are necessary. A cacao farmer can make an okay living, and a living that is safer and more stable then other crops, so it is an attractive option. The pastors have seen many people switch products, something some armed groups have not been happy about in the past.

One of the pastors preaching in the MB church in Bebedo. Many of the pastors support several different churches in both Istmina and along the river, taking turns spending a couple days in each community. The MBs planted churches all along the river, but the situation with the armed groups eventually made it so that some communities became unreachable. Bebedo is about as far as us foreigners could safely travel, and only with the pastors escorting us. Even then, some people were surprised we made it that far.

A little meeting square in Bebedo. Not much to do around here without electricity, except watch the old coconut tree. It is a simple life out in such communities, but still anything but easy. Luckily, you can take a break on a comfortable concrete bench.

A wall of green, everywhere you look as you travel on the river. Armed groups still operate in the area, despite the recent Colombian peace accords. At some point on the journey, we were told to put the cameras away to prevent us from accidentally taking a picture of something we shouldn’t.

Tons of tuk-tuks, something I haven’t seen much of since Copan Ruinas, Honduras. Here, they call them Choo-choos, which is a much cuter name and makes me hate them a little bit less.

This is a cup of Borojo juice. The Borojo is a brown, squishy fruit that is native to Colombia and can almost exclusively be found in the Chocó. This was the first time I have been able to try it and I was looking forward to it. Although, after all the hype I can say that the taste was slightly underwhelming. Some people say it has a kind of fermented apple taste, but I thought it was more like a floral apple taste. Pretty mild though. Not my favourite, but not bad either.

One last picture flying out from the capital of the Chocó, a city named Quibdo. You can see where the two main rivers meet into one, but as you can see, the waters don't feel like mixing for some reason, creating a cool looking 2-tone effect, and perhaps a metaphor for something.

I was moved by the people and the nature of the Chocó, and I feel lucky to have experienced it firsthand. We got to see a tiny glimpse of life there and it is full of a lot of hope and transformation, but also a lot of hardship and fragility. Places like this remind me of why I love to travel and work in cross-cultural ministry where you get to see incredible places and meet inspiring people hiding in every corner of the globe.