Alabama Honduras Medical Educational Network

In 1998 a single group of volunteers from Walker County, Alabama traveled to Limon, Honduras as a medical relief team. Poverty, disease, malnutrition, and lack of opportunity were not the only aspects of life there that this team witnessed. Within these conditions, they saw their own friends, family, and children. After sharing meals and enlivening experiences with individuals so far from home, this group returned to their normal lives satisfied with having made a difference … even if it was for only a week.Then came Hurricane Mitch.

After seeing the destruction on the news and hearing that all the places along the North Coast that the team visited had been dramatically changed by the storm, the team's leadership received a request from Sister Eleanor Cooper of Cruzadas Evangelico asking for help. As a result, the team not only mobilized its initial support system but also rallied entire communities to gather clothes, toys, building materials, Bibles, food, and medical supplies so that they did not abandon the people with which they had grown so close only a few months earlier. It was within this recovery effort that AHMEN was born.

Over the years many thousands of volunteers have come together to work as God's hands and feet in Honduras through AHMEN. Some teams continue to bring much-deserved medical attention to the most-ignored areas of Honduras along the Garifuna and Moskitia coasts. Others conduct state-of-the-art eyecare clinics across the country. Many volunteers sponsor feeding kitchens and help individual groups of Hondurans develop their own business ideas through sewing, woodworking, jewelry, and water purification. Some groups of missionaries help communities pursue their own courses to self-empowerment through long-term educational programs, and many others see their mission as motivating the country toward transformation through active discipleship and evangelism. Together, as a single body with a single purpose, we collaborate across the many areas to which God calls us.

AHMEN is, at its best, a network of individuals charting a partnership with the Honduran people toward a brighter future. We do dream of a Honduras free of those conditions which touched our hearts almost two decades ago, but we do not dream for our Honduran families. AHMEN instead partners with our Honduran families to help their dreams become a reality.