How Our Honduras Mission Trips Are Going Virtual This Year
When 2020 began, nobody expected a pandemic to turn their entire lives upside down. Just like everyone else, we are learning to navigate a world that we have never experienced before. At Our Little Roses, the COVID-19 outbreak has changed the way we do everything, but we are figuring it out little by little. Keep reading to learn about how we’re adjusting our Honduran mission trips during a pandemic.
How the Pandemic Has Changed OLR’s Mission Trip Plans
The entire country of Honduras is currently experiencing a state of emergency. As part of the nationwide declaration, the Honduran borders closed in March 2020 to anyone who is not an official resident of Honduras. Subsequently, we have not been able to welcome anyone into the Our Little Roses Home throughout this time.
As you can imagine, closed borders have impacted OLR immensely. In addition to the inability of people to travel to Honduras, martial law has been put into place, meaning the military is making decisions for the general public. This has changed the way we live in Honduras, adding another element for our girls to adapt to.
A large portion of what we do at Our Little Roses revolves around Honduras mission trips. People from all backgrounds come to OLR to learn about our programming and deepen their understanding of life in Honduras. Now that we can no longer welcome visitors to our residence because of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve had to get creative about how we can keep our mission alive and engaging.
How OLR is Being Flexible During COVID-19
The main way we have become flexible during the pandemic is by learning how to make our mission trips virtual instead. Rather than operating as usual, we have adjusted to our situation and started hosting mission trips over the internet. Thankfully, we were able to acquire the necessary equipment for Zoom calls and virtual hangouts with mission teams throughout the United States – all safely from the comfort of everyone’s home!
We couldn’t have done this without the support of people who would have otherwise come to Honduras to visit the girls, so we are endlessly appreciative of our sponsors. Thus far, there have been six virtual mission trips, with one mission team meeting with our girls per week.
Once and sometimes twice per day, we have the girls gather around a screen and then call our mission teams via Zoom. Everyone holds conversations, laughs, tells stories, dances, and interacts with each other through various virtual activities.
What Kind of Activities Are the Girls at Our Little Roses Doing?
We want to protect our girls from the spread of COVID-19 in Honduras, so hosting virtual mission trips is a major way we’re keeping everyone safe at Our Little Roses. The OLR team and our Tias have joined forces to keep the girls as engaged as ever.
For the most part, the mission teams on the other side of our Zoom calls have activities planned for our girls to take part in, but at OLR, we ensure that any tools or equipment needed to carry out the activities are available to our girls. As an example, one of the exciting activities our girls recently participated in was an escape room!
Fully planned by a Honduras mission trip team, a PowerPoint presentation was set up with directions and detailed instructions about the game. The girls at Our Little Roses were given papers all about the escape room that was set up, which we printed on-site in Honduras. The mission group explained the details via Zoom while being able to help and watch from afar.
The mission team created a game called The Lost Mummy, which involved three separate challenges. Within the game, there were teams made up of four to six OLR girls each. As each team worked to solve a challenge, the girls would ask the mission team if they were right.
If they correctly solved the first challenge, they were instructed to move onto the next one. The goal of the challenge was to solve them faster than the other teams with a time limit on each challenge to keep the girls on their toes.
For example, they were allotted fifteen minutes to complete the first challenge. Since the second and third challenges were slightly more difficult, the OLR girls were given twenty minutes per challenge instead. The first group of 4-6 girls to successfully complete all three challenges was awarded the title of winner!
The Best Way to Get Involved with Our Little Roses
The primary goal at Our Little Roses is to provide a safe haven for our Honduran girls, girls who have nowhere else to call home. When times were different and the pandemic was not in full effect, we opened our doors to donors, sponsors, and mission members alike so that they could come to learn more about life in Honduras and the girls could learn about life in other parts of the world.
Our mission trips fueled a lot of what we do, so figuring out how to function during COVID-19 has been a learning curve. Despite the nation’s borders being closed for travel, there are still a couple of ways to stay involved with Our Little Roses.
OLR offers the option to support our girls through generous donations. Whether you want to make a one-time donation or become a monthly donor for life, we cannot thank you enough for your kindness.
Additionally, selfless and generous people like you can sponsor our girls as well. As a sponsor of Our Little Roses, we will make sure you can maintain involvement with the lives of each of our little “Roses” even with a pandemic on our hands. We can’t wait to welcome you into a community where our top priority is helping our girls thrive.
There’s nothing more beautiful than helping to raise these girls and watching them grow into confident, goal-oriented women with dreams. If you are interested in donating to Our Little Roses or becoming a sponsor, please reach out to us today! We look forward to hearing from you.