Howard man finds Honduras mission trips ‘humbling, rewarding’
By Suzanne Weiss | For On Mission
HOWARD — “I said I was never going back,” said Dan Lefebvre of his reaction after returning from his first church-building trip to Honduras five years ago. “But God has a way of changing your mind.”
So, in February of this year, Lefebvre returned.
“The ice cold showers were my biggest pet peeve,” he said with a laugh. “A cool shower might be OK, but an ice cold shower is a little too much.”
So why did he sign up for another two-week trip?
“It was the realization that had we not gone, the church wouldn’t have gotten built,” said Lefebvre, who grew up in a Catholic family in Allouez, one of four children.
He and his wife, Milissa, live in Howard and are members of St. Jude Parish in Green Bay. They have two grown daughters.
The Honduras trips are coordinated by Deacon Nick Wiliams of St. John the Baptist Parish in Howard, who works through APUFRAM International, headquartered in Comayagua. The organization is dedicated to helping the poor help themselves through Christ-centered education.
“It is a bit of a humbling experience realizing just how spoiled we are,” said Lefebvre, one of five men who made the February 2020 trip and helped lay concrete.
“The foundation was there, and we had piles of cinder blocks, bags of mortar, and when we were done, we had a standing structure,” he said.
“I’m a pretty active individual, even though I sit at a computer all day, so a little manual labor wasn’t too taxing,” said Lefebvre, a self-professed “computer geek” who manages a team of systems analysts.
The group stayed at the Casa Santa Teresa de Lisieux retreat center, where they had no hot water. “You also had to remember not to drink the water or brush your teeth in the water,” he said.
The construction site, up in the mountains at an elevation where coffee plants grow, was shady and comfortable, despite temperatures in the 80s, Lefebvre said.
The local people, who were “super friendly,” showed their gratitude by bringing meals and refreshments to the job site, he said.
“The community had been asking for a church for a number of years,” Lefebvre said. “APUFRAM was finally able to come up with the funding and resources to get a building built. They were ecstatic. Their prayers were finally coming true. They were getting this church that they had wanted for a long time.”
“On our last day, the community got together and celebrated Mass in the structure we had built,” he said. “It was rewarding. It made it all worthwhile: the travel and the work, the living conditions.”
Six men and one woman took part in this year’s trip, partially funded by Knights of Columbus Council #6764 of St. Benedict Parish, Suamico, as well as its Ladies Auxiliary. Lefebvre is a trustee with the council.
“The second trip was a little different,” Lefebvre said. “When we got there, we just walked into an empty, vacant lot. No foundation. The very first day I got there, one of the local foremen on the site walked up to me. He had a pickaxe in his hand. He swung the pickaxe along a line. He took a shovel and … scooped dirt out of the trench. When he got done, he handed me a pickaxe. Without saying anything, he told us what he needed done. He needed the foundation trench dug so he could put the footing in. We got the message.”
Since the group ranged in ages 56 to 84, “none of the guys were young enough to swing a pickaxe all day,” he said. “Somebody said, ‘All in favor of renting a backhoe?’ The decision was unanimous.”
A backhoe arrived that same afternoon to do the heavy work. Unlike the 2020 trip, this site offered no comforting shade.
There was also a setback over a land dispute that needed to be resolved before they could return to the job site, he said.
Instead, “We stayed at the retreat center and put ourselves to use fixing anything we could find that needed attention,” Lefebvre said.
After returning to the site, they built rebar supports, mixed and poured concrete, and added rocks to the foundation of the church property’s perimeter wall.
“The people were just as wonderful… They were very generous in their giving,” Lefebvre said of the February trip. “One day, kids from the local school came by and wanted to practice their English on us. They actually helped us move some stone around. Then we all had lunch together. We said grace before we had our lunch. They said their prayers in Spanish while we said ours.”
On their last day, the community once again came together for Mass, this time in the open air.
“Somebody estimated well over a hundred showed up to say Mass and say ‘thank you’ to us for coming to help… It is humbling.” Lefebvre said. “You realize what you’re doing makes a difference. I would go back again. I would.”
For more information about participating in or supporting future trips to Honduras through APUFRAM International, contact Deacon Nick Williams at (920) 494-5105.
