Students spend spring break serving children in Honduras

A group of Palm Beach Atlantic University students spent eight days over spring break working with the Children’s Impact Network in Honduras, an organization that rescues children from abuse, neglect, and abandonment. The team worked to share the Bible with orphaned children and Honduran people.

PBA CMGlobal team in Honduras. Photo Credit: Emely Castillo

CMGlobal is PBA’s organization that sends groups of students to various countries every Spring and Summer break. This year, the Honduras team was the largest, consisting of 23 people. 

For two days of the week, the team traveled across villages and paid visits to homes where they read passages from the Bible, prayed, and sang in Spanish.

Over the course of the week, CIN and five PBA students were able to act as translators for the group, so the Honduran families could understand the Bible passages that the team shared with them which brought many families to tears.

Jocelyn Roa, a PBA junior and elementary education major, translated Spanish to English for the group. She described the experience as a significant step in her faith because she had been concerned about translation before the trip.

“I truly believe that the Lord was with me because I did not have any trouble translating, it truly amazed me how the words would just flow,” said Roa. “It was not me talking, it was the Lord talking through me.”

When the team was not visiting homes, the team hosted Sidewalk Sunday School with kids from the local schools and churches, where they sang and danced to worship music, played games, performed a Bible story skit, shared a Bible verse, and asked the kids questions about what they learned.

The team also participated in service projects on the CIN property where they worked in the greenhouse, painted houses and painted the front gate. Through service projects, the team helped improve the homes of children who previously did not have good homes to live in.

Madison Galarza, a senior from New Bedford, Mass., is a double major in elementary education and childhood studies at Bridgewater State University. In 2018, she embarked on her first mission trip with CIN to Bolivia. In 2023, she interned with them in Honduras. 

“One of the greatest gifts that has been given to me through serving with CIN has been getting to know the children so well,” said Galarza. “I met the boy that I sponsor when he was five and now he’s 10.”