Royal mother, daughter change lives in Honduras

Courtney Cronk holds Juan Manuel, who is living at the malnutrition center in Sulaco, Honduras. The 4-year-old boy, who has worms, as well as parasites in his nose and mouth, only weighs 24 pounds. (Photo submitted)

The two women took part in the Gehlen Catholic Mission Honduras' 10th mission trip to Honduras, the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Their 12-day trip, which lasted from March 30 until April 10, included a traveling team consisting of 22 high school students from eight different school systems and 10 adult chaperones from five different states.

For Lynn Cronk, the Clay County mother who's taught in the Clay Central-Everly district for 26 years, the mission trip marked a return to the country she'd serve as a two-year Peace Corps volunteer in 30 years ago.

For Courtney Cronk, her 17-year-old daughter who's currently a junior at Clay Central-Everly, it was a time to "do something different away from here."

Their trip had three identifiable main objectives: To physically provide potable water to El Junco villagers, to immerse themselves in the local culture, and to make some friends with the native Hondurans.

For Courtney, immersing herself in their culture meant eating everything they ate. The self-described "picky" eater wrinkled her nose as she explained they ate vegetables with their rice, tortillas, beans and whole fish, among other things. She and other missioners taught the local children to play games such as tag and duck, duck, goose. Catch with nearby dirt clumps proved to be a favorite, as did soccer for the Honduran children. They, in turn, showed the Americans how to hold and use a pick ax more efficiently as the two parties worked side by side.

During their stay, the village of Esquies became home for the American volunteers. They traveled 20 miles, which took 90 minutes each work day to make the trek via an air-conditioned bus on the area's primitive roadways, to El Junco, the village of 58 homes and 425 people they were helping to establish a new water system for. El Junco has no electricity. It also had no running water until shortly after the delegation's visit.

The Cronks explained village residents would trek down the mountain to the river to wash clothes, take baths and balance buckets of river water on their heads to carry back up the mountain with them. The water they carried also served as a bathing and drinking source for area animals.

"The idea of bringing water in was to decrease the disease," Lynn said. "They said 47 percent would probably be the deduction in intestinal disease because of the bringing the water to the village."

Since the mission trip fell in the midst of the area's coffee harvest, the Hondurans divided their time spent volunteering with the group on the village's potable water project with the local harvest. The project undertaken, meanwhile, involved building a large reservoir to capture water from a natural water source, placing two 1,200-gallon tanks on top of the hillside and digging trenches from the tanks to each household in the village, Lynn explained.

Volunteers were divided into groups. After trying each of the work groups, Courtney settled with a group of younger Honduran children who spent their days carrying rock and sand down the mountainside to the river. Once deposited there, they were used to build a dam to collect water -- which is currently being relocated up the mountain via gas-fueled pumps and collected in tanks.

"The kids didn't have shoes on when we were doing stuff, but they were way faster at it than we were. They were passing us walking up the mountain. And things I'd never do as a kid, they were doing," she said. "One kid, he was probably 6, would pick ax with us. And, they carried machetes around. They were strong little kids."

"They outworked us every day of the week," Courtney added of their Honduran counterparts.

Lynn shuffled between the work groups that dug trenches through rocks with pick axes and shovels and assembled the project's PVC water pipes.

The Cronks received an e-mail from Richard Seivert, one of the mission trip's organizers, notifying them that their El Junco water project had been finished on April 29. All of the village's homes had water, courtesy new faucets placed on their residences' exteriors. The only thing left, he explained, will be meeting with villagers to begin the water chlorination phase.

"Your work has now come full circle. My guess is the number of people in the village who get sick on a regular basis will decline dramatically," Seivert wrote team members.

The mother-daughter duo also relayed that they were only allowed to take showers the days they worked in Honduras.

"And then, they were only between 60 and 90 seconds," Lynn said. "We figured during our 12-day trip each person probably spent 10 minutes in a shower total."

"It was gross," Courtney added. "But you almost didn't notice you smelled because everybody else smelled too."

While the CCE third grade teacher explained that the countryside or its inhabitants had not changed much since she served there three decades ago, Lynn deduced that many Hondurans they came in contact with were still starting over from Hurricane Mitch, which devastated the country in late 1998. She found comfort in their daylong visit to Sulaco, which hosted a sewing school for girls, a wood carving school for boys and a malnutrition center for children.

"I was very impressed with the schools that taught Honduran people a trade that would help them improve their own lives. Both of the schools were three-year programs with very specific techniques," Lynn reflected. " ... We met some graduates (of the sewing school). A lot of the graduates were using that skill to improve their own home or make their children clothes. Some were also being hired by others to use those skills."

The duo explained the malnutrition center they visited hosts up to 24 children and is one of the recipients of food packaged by Kids Against Hunger (KAH) groups in northwest Iowa. Lynn and Courtney both participated in the March 7 KAH packaging event held in Spencer.

"I have seen poverty on commercials on TV before, but now I have held poverty in my arms," Courtney said following her visit to the center, where she coaxed a malnourished 4-year-old into her arms.

While all of the 2009 Gehlen Catholic Mission Honduras team members arrived with luggage loaded with donations carried from the United States, they filled large bags with toiletries, shoes, toys, clothing and other items their final day abroad. These were then distributed to families in the village which had hosted them. Two quilts and accompanying pillow cases made by Lynn's mother and Courtney's grandmother, Joyce Thomsen of Royal, were also delivered to Daisy, a woman the two especially liked.

"She was kind of an unusual woman in that a lot of times women are subservient to men in Honduras. I don't think she had a husband. She was a take charge woman in a society where that isn't generally the rule," Lynn said of Daisy.

As they contemplated their recent mission trip, both women said if not to Honduras again, they'd like to go on another.

"I would go back in a heartbeat if I could," Lynn said. "It just confirmed in me a belief that we have to reach out to others. We are very blessed and we need to help other people around the world."

"I think the best part of the trip for me," the mother added, "was sharing it with my daughter. To see her open her heart and her arms to the poor, the sick and the malnourished of the world was really special."

The two Clay County women attended a reunion with fellow mission trip takers Sunday in Le Mars, where they witnessed the premiere showing of a DVD highlighting their experience. The Cronks are planning to show the DVD to fellow parishioners at St. Louis Catholic Church in Royal. Courtney is also hoping to spearhead an effort involving students in their school district and members of area churches to contribute to programs which will not only raise awareness, but help others.