Perhaps what makes the Haiti report for December 2010 so difficult to write is that it is so much like the Haiti report from ten months ago.

Very little has changed.

What future is there for a hungry, fatherless four-year-old in the rural mountains of Nicaragua? Will such a child eventually join the ranks of the chronically sick?

A classic hymn declares, “How wonderful, how marvelous is my Savior’s love for me.” The poorest of the poor in the remote mountain villages of El Salvador are able to sing this testimony with confidence and personal experience.

Two hundred years of poverty and devastation had left Haiti in near ruin. Generations of Haitians had lived in perpetual poverty. Many had nothing to start with—and now the massive earthquake in January has taken untold thousands of lives.

In August 2005, a team from World Challenge went to Nicaragua as part of a week-long medical outreach in the capital city Managua. The team included a doctor, nurse, and five volunteers. While in Managua the World Challenge team partnered with Clínica Amor en Acción (Love in Action Clinic). Many on the World Challenge team and even some of the clinic staff had no previous medical training. Despite inexperience, God is faithful in equipping those that He calls. All it takes is a willing heart.

While we live in comparitive comfort and luxury here at home, hundreds of thousands of children throughout the world are starving — they hunger not only for physical sustainance, but for the true Bread of Life and for love. The longing in their hearts goes deeper than we can even imagine…

Every Tuesday and Friday mornings, my healthy teenage sons wake up, get dressed and take the trash cans from our garage and place them on the side of the street. Later that morning, a truck comes by and picks up the garbage and we never see it again.

A team of seven people led by Dr. Gene Smith traveled to Honduras from March 15 through April 3 for a medical/missions outreach. The team, which was joined by five American missionaries in Honduras, included Dr. Smith and his wife, two registered nurses, a school teacher, a business executive, a contractor and a teenager heading to the Air Force in June.

The team set up medical outreach clinics at the orphanage in the Valley of the Angels, on the outskirts of Tegucigalpa, as well as in various prisons, and on the island of Utila. The team spent twenty days in Honduras.