Community Health Evangelism-Tim Spetnagel

“Gustavo, where are we going”?, I asked. “We are going to look for students in Tapaire”, he replied. I wasn’t sure where we were going but I had a general idea of the area because I knew from last year that we had gone out to sign up students for the vocational school in the same region.
As we ventured up the dirt road to this small town, I began to pray that God would open the door for us to talk to some young people about the vocational school. As we made it to our destination, Chacho, Gustavo, Kenis and I got out of the truck to determine which houses to visit. As we were talking about how to go about looking for students, the decision was made to go in two’s to look for people. After visiting few houses we met together again and talked about our experience. Chacho was excited about the results. He began to understand some of the importance of some of the things that he was being taught as a leader in the church.

In October of last year we had a seminar called CHE, Community Health Evangelism. In this seminar there was twenty-three that attended. The purpose of the seminar was to transform areas through applying education in disease prevention, doing personal evangelism and discipleship. One of the principle ideas is to look for the leader or leaders of the community and begin mobilizing and training people in their own community to minister to their neighbor’s physical, spiritual, emotional and social needs.
Here in Honduras the government is like it is in the states. The local government has a mayor, and in the villages there is a village council. On the village council is a president. On this particular trip Chacho used the CHE training we had received in October. Chacho said the president was not there, so we needed to come back to meet with him later. As we were leaving, we wanted to stop by the health center to see if the nurse was on duty since she would be a recognized village leader and might help us with information about perspective students. While we were at the health center, the president of the small community showed up. We talked to the president about the vocational school and encouraged him to send students which would benefit the community eventually.
We went back to the main road and went another 2 miles to “Las Cabezas” where World Vision has an office. When we arrived, God opened another door for us. We met with the supervisor of World Vision. When he came out, I recognized him. It was Matthew, a man who I have seen at our vocational school many times holding seminars. He asked how he could help us. Gustavo started to explain that we would like to meet with some leaders to talk about the vocational school and that we were looking for potential students. Matthew interrupted him and said, “I am meeting with some leaders right now. Would you like to talk to them?” Of course we said yes, and then about 6 or 7 leaders came out.
Was this a God-thing or was this just coincidence? We realized that God had used a seminar that Chacho, Kenis and I had participated in to be able to work out in the villages. We continue to use the training we received in reaching out to the surrounding regions of Choluteca.

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