Tyler Knorr did not feel ready for baptism—until Honduras. A graduate of Pleasant Hill Adventist Academy and member of the Pleasant Hill church, Knorr recently attended an evangelism mission trip that changed his relationship with God.

Knorr is not alone in experiencing this change. Eight students from Pleasant Hill church and eight students from Maple Wood Academy in Minnesota joined forces for a three-week evangelism mission trip to San Pedro Sulas, Honduras, March 9-28. Coordinated by Bill Miller, president of the Minnesota Conference, and Nathan and Serena Kam, youth leaders at Pleasant Hill, the mission trip covered eight different sites throughout Honduras.

The eight members representing Pleasant Hill church included Jeff Cho, Chris Kam, Kelli Kam, Knorr, Kyle Pierce, Cameron Purdey, Doug Stowers and David Wilson. Each Pleasant Hill youth teamed with a student from MWA to preach to adult audiences or work in children’s ministry.

Children’s ministry was an obvious preference for Cho. “My first choice was to work with children’s ministry,” he said. “I like working with kids because I can act like myself and be a kid around them.”

Kelli enjoyed working in children’s ministry because of their enthusiasm. “The kids really loved the action songs like ‘My God Loves Me’ or singing ‘I Have the Joy, Joy Down in My Heart’ in Spanish,” she said. “We would tell them stories to emphasize how much Jesus loved them.”

In addition to songs and stories, the children’s ministry team also made crafts with the kids. “Each night after the story, we would do a craft,” said Purdey. “The crafts varied from coloring to making sheep out of cotton balls or angels out of coffee filters.”

However, Cho, Kelli and Purdey all agree: the children’s baptisms were the highlight of their experience. “Every night we’d go to watch the baptisms, and on some of the nights I saw some of the kids that I taught being baptized,” said Kelli. “That felt incredibly special.”

The baptisms reflect the Holy Spirit’s work at the evangelistic meetings. Within the eight different sites, anywhere from 20 to 150 people attended each night for the evangelistic meetings. Collectively, the student preachers were responsible for 19 sermons, which were all translated by the local church pastor.

“We preached each night, and the coolest part was making a call,” said Knorr. “I loved it when I’d make a call and people would raise their hands. I was nervous that they might not respond to my sermon, but God was up there with me.”

During the mission trip, the student preachers received a “coaching session” from Terry Mennich, pastor of the Mankato church in Minnesota. Each morning two students would give the day’s assigned sermon and receive feedback.

The coaching sessions proved valuable for the student preachers, as the assigned sermon topics were often challenging. “The Hondurans already had preconceived notions about many issues because many of them are Catholic,” said Pierce. “Nonetheless, we preached theology from the Bible. We preached on the Mark of the Beast, state of the dead, Sabbath, baptism, healthful eating, future events, suffering, and the signs of the times.”

Clearly, many lives in Honduras continue to be touched as an aftermath of the evangelistic meetings. More than 127 people were baptized. Even after the meetings, God has continued the work through the people of Honduras. For example, a public transportation driver, after driving people to and from the evangelistic meetings, was baptized along with his entire family.

Weeks later, the gospel continues to spread within Honduras. Espana, the pastor of Central San Pedro, updated Serena on recent events. “He has now trained the youth of his own church; they are doing evangelism campaigns in four other churches,” said Serena. “They are using the same materials that we used and shared with them. It is amazing how the Holy Spirit continues to use the youth of this world.”

Equally significant, the Hondurans are not the only ones to make a commitment to God. Three of the youth members from Pleasant Hill Church—Knorr, Pierce and Purdey—were baptized during the mission trip.

“During my visits with Pastor Espana, he assumed that I had been baptized—but I wasn’t,” said Pierce. “After talking with him, I started wondering how I could deliver the message to the people, calling them to do something which I hadn’t even done myself. After getting baptized, I felt exuberant.”

Chris experienced another kind of high point. “This mission trip has caused a different kind of growth in me,” said Chris. “It provided me with more of an awe of God. This is the first mission trip where I saw so many visible miracles. One night when we were in Choloma, the attendance was down to seven people because there was a party going on in town. We started praying for more people to come. The moment I lifted my head from praying, I saw tons of people pouring in. That was the largest attendance we had.”

Wilson was affected by the Hondurans' generosity. “The thing that comes as a shock is how committed of a people the Hondurans are, especially the newly-committed,” said Wilson. “They’re so self-sacrificing. People would drive us around everywhere, everyday and multiple times a day even though they had jobs and other things to do. That was shocking to us.”

So what caused Knorr to finally feel ready for baptism? Knorr credits the mission trip. “Even though I’ve been a Seventh-day Adventist my whole life, I resisted getting baptized,” said Knorr. “I thought my personal relationship with God still needed more work. However, during the trip, I realized that I needed to do it as a preacher of God’s message. It was an amazing experience to be baptized in Honduras. I’ll never forget it.”