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Katie Galyean
Extracting teeth, pouring cement floors and practicing Spanish are not typical summer activities for teenagers, but for Jackie Galyean, 19, it is not out of the ordinary.
For the past four years, Galyean, a resident of Elizabethtown, has been going to Honduras to do mission work with an organization called Louder Than Words. While there, she helps lead teams in rural mountain villages as well as at orphan camps.
For the past three years, Galyean has worked with Louder Than Words as an intern. “As an intern, we are there anywhere from three weeks to three months,” said Galyean. “The local pastors in the villages set up projects for [the teams] to do during the week that they are there, so interns are there to help facilitate and make sure all the little details are covered.”
There are different parts of the ministry that a team going with Louder Than Words can serve in. They include going to serve in the villages or helping to host a children’s camp for some of the local orphans.
“The orphan camp is an opportunity to take the kids out of their normal setting of just being in the orphanage and going to school. You get to give them a summer camp experience,” said Galyean. She said the children get to experience the Gospel in a number of different ways.
“[The children] get to have a good time with their friends and have a time where they don’t need to be stressed out about life,” said Galyean.
For the village weeks, things operate a bit differently. “We usually travel hours on a bus to different villages in remote areas,” said Galyean. “We usually spend the night in schools or churches that they might have built, but usually the village will not have any evangelical churches or even people who have heard of Jesus Christ.”
Galyean said their main focus in a village week is to introduce the gospel of Christ to the villagers and then afterwards, there is a Honduran pastor who will come and work with the people to help them learn more about how to live their lives according to the Bible.
Vacation Bible School with the kids, dental ministry, and movies are always big hits in the villages according to Galyean.
“We like to bring movies in our computer and set it up through a projector because most of the people we come in contact with have never seen a movie at all. So even if they are not really open to Gospel, they will come and see those movies and that gives us the opportunity to share the Gospel,” said Galyean.
Galyean said working with the kids and the dental ministry are her favorite parts of going to Honduras.
“I love the children’s ministry because it is really just a whole new world for them to have us give them so much attention and play with them because their parents are so busy trying to provide for day-to-day needs,” said Galyean.
Galyean said the dental ministry really opened her eyes to the necessity of using her future profession to serve and share Christ with others. “When I first went as an intern, I had never seen dental ministry or any kind of medical needs like that before in the states. So it was eye-opening for me to see that these people didn’t even know how to brush their teeth sometimes,” she said.
Galyean said these experiences changed what she had planned to do as far as a career and her future. “I saw a huge need and I know I am the person who is supposed to be filling that need,” she said.
“I now know that I want to something in the medical field so that I will always have opportunities so serve here in the states and overseas with missions,” said Galyean. “I had never really thought about my career in depth before, but when I saw all those things it really made me evaluate my future.”
Galyean has spent a total of 15 weeks in Honduras so far and hopes to go for at least 5 more weeks next summer.
Louder Than Words was founded by Mark Moore of Gastonia. If you would like more information on the organization or what they do in Honduras, you can go to their website at louderthanwords.org.
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