The Nugget Newspaper - News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon

Pastor Frank Fraga with pictures of Honduras trip.

Sisters pastor Frank Fraga traveled throughout Honduras last August, preaching the gospel and encouraging the locals. Fraga returned to Sisters with a mission -- to raise $14,000 for a church building in village of Chapalapa.

"The first week I was there, I spoke at meetings held in an old corn crib," said Fraga, who pastors the Trinity Christian Center in Sisters. "There are no churches in Chapalapa."

Fraga's trip to Honduras was sponsored by World Wide Crusades, a non-profit organization headed by Oregon pastor Bill Smith. The organization strengthens and plants churches in third world countries, then operates through the churches to distribute food and provide medical care.

The impoverished conditions of the Central American nation were eye-opening for Fraga, a seasoned traveler.

"I thought I'd seen poverty before," Fraga said, "but it was nothing like what I encountered in Honduras. The average income in Chapalapa is only about $100 a month -- if they can get work on the citrus farms."

Fraga said that the villagers walked several miles -- some barefoot -- to attend the crusade services that were held each evening.

"We'd see women carrying their babies, walking five miles to the meetings," said Fraga. "We had an old mini-van we used to get around. One night, we had nineteen people we'd picked up along the way stuffed inside."

During the second week of Fraga's trip, he spoke at crusade meetings in Cerro Verde, which is a suburb of San Pedro Sula. Many churches had already been established there, but the church Fraga spoke to was raising money for a school to educate deaf children and their parents.

"The church did a survey and discovered that there were over 4,000 deaf people within a three mile radius of their building," he said. "So they started a school, primarily to teach sign language to the parents so they can communicate with their kids. They now have about 60 students, and need more room."

Fraga left Honduras with the dream of providing the people of Chapalapa with a church building of their own.

"A lot of the work World Wide Crusades does hinges on having a building," Fraga explained. "Food and medical supplies are distributed to the community through the churches."

Fraga has already raised enough funds to purchase land. He recently sent a check for $3,100 to the pastor in Chapalapa to buy the one-acre lot.

"The people there will do all the construction of the building by hand," said Fraga. "They have no equipment or machinery. The men use machetes, otherwise known as Honduran chainsaws, to cut down trees to use as beams for the roof. The cement is all mixed by hand. The finished building will measure 30-by-60-feet, all out of cement blocks."

Part of the money Fraga is raising will purchase motorcycles for the two men who pastor the small church.

"One of the pastors walks for nearly five hours one way to come to the meetings," said Fraga. "And there are lots of snakes in that area."

Fraga has raised more than half the necessary funds for the project, but still needs $5,800. For more information, call Frank Fraga at 504-9221..