Lindsey Anderson
Checking in from Honduras

 

Lindsey Anderson an SJA young adult and graduate of Creighton University is spending two years in Honduras working at Farm of the Child, an education and health center for needy children. Lindsey has agreed to send back periodic reports. A feature on Lindsey can be found at this link.
Seasons Greetings!  I find it hard to believe that the holiday season is already upon us.  It’s especially incredible to me living here in Honduras, where it is dipping all the way down into the low 70's during the night.  Quite a change from Minnesota at this time of year!

As many of you know, I moved to Central America this past August and will remain here for the next two years.  My first destination was Quetzaltenango, Guatemala where I studied Spanish for five weeks.  It was a wonderful experience studying the language, living with a Guatemalan family, and traveling the country.  I learned a lot during my weeks there, but still have a long way to go.

I moved to Finca del Niño (Farm of the Child) in Trujillo, Honduras on October 1st, which is where I will be living and working for the next two years.  Every day that I spend at the Finca, I find myself falling deeper in love with the project and children.  There’s Arturo whose hobby is lying, but who always gets caught because his lies are so ridiculous.  There’s Nely who one day decided that it would be fun to cut her hair in school and ended up cutting it to strangely resemble a Mohawk.  Or there’s Carlos Alfredo who needs to act tough because he’s the youngest boy in his house and gets picked on a lot for being Garifuna (the Garifunas face a lot of prejudice here) but loves to hold my hand when he thinks that no one is looking.  How could you not love these kids!

Farm of the Child
I am assigned to work as a Social Worker here at the Finca.  As a Social Worker, my job is to support our house parents in their vocation of providing for the physical, emotional, educational, and spiritual needs of our children.  I am the Social Worker for two of our homes.  The first houses the girls between the ages of seven and eleven.  They are a fun and spirited group that should keep me on my toes!  My second house is currently the home of one group of our boys who are seven to twelve years old, but our youngest boys will be moving into the house in January.

Our children generally come to the Finca as an escape from situations of abuse, neglect, and/or sexual exploitation.  As Social Workers, we work with our house parents to try to heal the wounds of our children’s pasts, while providing them with the skills that they will need to become fruitful members of their society.  Working towards this mission, we are currently focusing on teaching our kids about what it means to be a person of character and the social skills that they will need as they move to independent living situations.  It is challenging work to be sure, but it is work that I am finding to be very fulfilling thus far.

Alex and Franklin cooking
I hope that this helps to give you a little better idea of what I am doing here in Honduras.  I expect my time here to be full of joy, pain, discovery, and growth and I will attempt to share these experiences with you through updates such as this.  I will close here with a few statistics about the reality of life in Honduras.  While this by no means gives a complete picture of the situation here, I hope that it will provide you with a glimpse into the reality that I am currently sharing in.

Happy Holidays,
Lindsey Anderson, (lupemarie@hotmail.com)

The Reality of Honduras

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