And it’s hopelessness that Suzy McCall has been confronting for 14 years.

A South Carolina Episcopalian with a background in Christian education, McCall left her home parish of St. Philip’s, Charleston, S.C., to join a missionary team through the South American Missionary Society in 1990. The team set out to plant a new church in Tegucigalpa. McCall focused on music and evangelism.

Five years later, she began community development and a stay-in-school program in an inner-city neighborhood called Colonia Flor del Campo, or flower of the countryside. In the neighborhood that is one of Tegucigalpa’s poorest, where half of 14,000 people are younger than 18, McCall started children’s Bible clubs and began to take in abandoned babies.

Hurricane Mitch changed everything in Honduras. The storm hit the region in October 1998, devastating the Central American country with a deluge of floodwaters and a new depth of desolation. The tragedy tossed McCall and her community into hurricane recovery. That experience led her ministry in a new direction.

“I spent a year doing hurricane relief,” she said. “During the relief work, the young people were a huge part of the work force. I think their comments and hard work provided the impetus for [a new school].”

In 2000, McCall started the Latin American Missionary and Bible Institute, an interdenominational training center for Hondurans preparing for cross-cultural ministry. Open to nationals with a spectrum of educational backgrounds, from sixth grade to high school, the participants enroll in a two- to three-year academic program that includes Bible study, health care, first aid, computers and even driving lessons.

The LAMB Institute has graduated two-thirds of its 30 students, although the graduates -- half men, half women -- have not been placed in ministries outside of Honduras yet.
The first two years, the institute held classes in borrowed space. In 2002, the Pennsylvania-based Discovery Service Projects sent 100 volunteers to build a new school. The institute has become an anchor in an inner-city neighborhood that is devoid of economic opportunity.

Unemployment breeds violence

“The biggest issue in Honduras and in this neighborhood is personal security,” McCall said.  “There are a lot of petty crimes, but even the petty crime is connected with gang activity. There are thousands of gang members here, and they range from little petty thieves to organized-crime connections with very sophisticated weapons.

“Unemployment is killing people here. People who want to work can’t find work and of the people who do work, many cannot make enough to feed their families. So there is a lot of depression and a lot of alcoholism,” McCall said.  “Worse than not having a job is having a job and still not being able to provide for your family. It is very degrading.”
Many families simply abandon their babies when they no longer can care for them. McCall has adopted four children since she arrived in 1990 -- three are teens now -- and continues to fill her home with abandoned infants.

“It is sad to see the value of human life plummet,” she said. “People don’t want the responsibility of a baby because, in part, they don’t see any future for the baby.
“‘Why am I going to kill myself raising this baby that is just going to suffer like I am?’” the families ask. “You can begin to understand the hopelessness that a lot of families feel.”

A ray of hope

In December, Discovery Service Projects is returning to begin construction on a new Christian family-care center called “God’s Littlest Lambs.”

The new facility, which McCall hopes will be up and running in May 2005, will be more than a daycare center for abandoned and adopted children. It will be an integrated family center that will focus on literacy, counseling and family planning. They even plan to start a soccer league.

Not only will the center add an important and practical resource to the impoverished Honduras neighborhood, the students in the missionary training program also will be able to do their fieldwork under closer and more effective supervision, McCall said.

Support for the LAMB Institute comes from the church and parishioners of St Philip’s, Charleston, but also from people in about 20 states -- many of whom have traveled to see this hand of God in Honduras. A dozen groups helped with reconstruction after the hurricane, and the institute continues to bring about four groups a year to the neighborhood -- one where hope is a little easier to find.

Susan Clarkson, chair of the LAMB board, can be reached at: LAMB, 215 Hickory Street, Charleston, SC 29407.