Friday, July 03, 2009
A China Spring pastor and his wife and son appear to be safe in Honduras this week after a military ouster of that country’s president. But they’re not sure they can get out of the country.
Pastor Jeff Wyers of Church at Tree Lake is staying near Danli, Honduras, with wife Tammy and 15-year-old son David, in advance of a church mission trip that was to start next Wednesday.
Now that mission trip may be canceled because of political instability in the wake of Sunday’s ouster, which the U.S. and other nations have condemned as an illegal coup d’etat. The military seized a pajama-clad President Manuel Zelaya and put him on a plane out the country.
The interim president has said Zelaya was removed legitimately because of abuses of power and will be arrested if he tries to return.
Church members say the Wyerses have kept in touch this week through e-mail, and the mountain area where they are staying is calm. But it appears all flights out of the country are booked for the next several days, and bus service in and out of the country has been curtailed, the Wyerses said in an e-mail this week.
Still, the Wyers family, which had a dose of national fame six years ago as participants in the public television reality show “Colonial House,” appeared to be in good spirits.
“Our family motto is if it’s not an adventure, it’s not worth doing,” Tammy Wyers wrote to fellow church members. Still, she wrote, “this is not at all the tropical vacation I had imagined. I feel more like a political prisoner than a tourist. . . . It’s not the worst place in the world to be stranded, but it’s not what I had in mind.”
Tammy Wyers flew into the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa on Saturday, hours before the presidential ouster. She joined Jeff and David, who had been staying since early June on a coffee farm owned by a church member, John Depue.
Tammy Wyers had planned to return to the U.S. on Wednesday, the day the mission delegation was to arrive.
A group of 12 church members, including six youths and an infant, was planning to work on a small reservoir and water distribution system for Depue’s neighbors.
But the U.S. State Department recommended this week that American citizens avoid nonessential travel to Honduras, and the trip may be called off.
“I told everyone not to expect going next week,” said Jason Jamar, the church’s youth minister. “We’re just prayerfully waiting until Sunday to decide. It would be a disappointment for our teenagers. They’ve been working hard raising money. They’ve done carwashes, sold suckers and held bake sales.”
The Wyerses aren’t the only missionaries with Waco ties in Honduras.
Ryan McGhee, a Baylor University engineering and business graduate, went to Honduras in May to do a rural electrification project with a 12-member Baylor group, Engineers With a Mission. He stayed to work on a small-scale hydroelectric project in the village of Danta Uno.
McGhee and Baylor engineering lecturer Brian Thomas are collaborating on the hydroelectric project, which is planned to become a business opportunity for Honduran villagers.
Thomas said McGhee still is planning to stay until the end of July.
“When I first heard about (the military action), I had concerns about Ryan, but I contacted him, and he said it was very calm. There didn’t seem to be a great deal of tension in Honduras.”
Thomas said the political situation is complicated, but he thinks the Honduran military and congress may have been justified in ousting Zelaya. A leftist with ties to Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Zelaya tried without congressional approval to stage a referendum to extend presidential term limits.
jbsmith@wacotrib.com
757-5752
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