Eli Lucio

i initially started my walk with the Lord early on but never really committed or really dived into a lifestyle that was centered around Christ. i have experienced hardships as all people do along the way with my walk with the Lord. to be completely honest i never really thought about going on a missions trip or even desired to. i got baptized February 4th, 2024 and that is when you can say my “faith was on fire”, i wanted to share the gospel and tell people about Jesus the best i could. as time went by that fire started to diminish and i found myself falling into the way of the world and i was not intentionally trying to glorify God in what i did but i more so used him as a hot-line service to where i would only call to him (pray) whenever i needed something or wanted something good to happen in my life. i started to go through a phase of my life that was very hard for me and i was continuously falling into temptation and feeling like i could never please the Lord. during this phase of my life i met very valuable and like-minded people that truly help me seek the Lord out and pursue him throughout my life. fast forward, it is now august and gage asked me if i would want to go on a missions trip to Honduras with him and truthfully i didn’t put much thought into and i just said yes because i thought that it would be a great thing to go on this trip and help people and i would be such a good person and the Lord would be so pleased with me. i started to raise money for the mission trip and honestly i was so fortunately blessed financially by the Lord and people in the community started to donate abundantly. next thing i know, i am boarding the plane to go to Honduras. the time flew by truly in a blink of an eye. when we touched down in Honduras, things started to become more surreal and prevalent that this truly is a third world country. during this missions trip going into it i had an idea of what was going to happen and how it was going to impact me but now sitting here after just spending a short five days there i truly have experienced so much spiritual growth, perspective changes, and honestly haven’t seen the Lord’s presence so vividly until going there.