Invited by the Diocese of Honduras

At the invitation of Bishop Lloyd Allen of the Diocese of Honduras, Missio will meet in the city of San Pedro Sula, April 29-May 2. Tuesday the 29th and Friday the 2nd will be the travel days for the core conference.

Bp. Lloyd Allen (center) with Tim (left) and a team from the Diocese of Northern Indiana

"Mission with Jesus" is the Missio theme

with Conversations about Evangelism, Empowerment, and Climate Change. Missio will be bilingual, with simultaneous interpretation offered between English and Spanish

Conversation Catalysts

Each of the three major topics will feature a speaker from Honduras and its region and a speaker from outside the region:

Evangelism

Team 3

Rev. Amilcar Ortega

With over 25 years of experience, Amilcar has ministered in San Pablo, Santa Lucía, San Mateo, San Patricio and, since 2016, at El Buen Pastor Cathedral, where he is Dean. His vision for evangelism has been sharpened as he has served multiple times as a spiritual director for the diocesan Cursillo Movement and the Happening Movement. He is chaplain at El Buen Pastor Episcopal School, located at the Cathedral.

Team 2

Rev. Paul Rajan, DMin

Paul will talk from his experience in cross-cultural and cross-linguistic evangelism and church-planting as a missionary in South India. Paul also has experience in New Zealand, the Pacific islands, southeast Asia and the USA, where he is a member of the Standing Commission on World Mission and president of GEMN. Rector of Good Shepherd Church in Wantage, NJ, Paul is a member of the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education.

Empowerment

Team 3

Rev. Canon Consuelo Sanchez

Teacher, lawyer and priest, Consuelo is canon to the ordinary in the Diocese of Honduras and executive director of the Anglican Association for the Development of Honduras (AANGLIDESH), an NGO whose mission is to empower vulnerable young men and women. It works with microfinance and business leadership programs that have educational and spiritual content to motivate them to have dreams and improve their living conditions.

Team 3

Ms. Elizabeth Kim Ha

Liz is CEO of Five Talents USA, which partners with the global church to help women and men find sustainable paths out of poverty through entrepreneurship. For over 20 years, Liz has dedicated her career to international bridge building and restoration of marginalized communities. She is passionate about gospel transformation that leads to the empowerment of women, flourishing communities, and thriving churches.

Climate Action

Team 1

Bishop Julio Murray

Bishop of Panama since 2000, Julio is a leader in mobilizing the church in La Iglesia Anglicana de la Region Central de America (IARCA) to respond to the intensifying effects of climate change in the region. He was the primate of the Central American province, which includes Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua, from 2018 to 2022, during which he served on the Standing Committee of the Anglican Consultative Council.

Team 3

Rev. Nancy Searby, PhD

Nancy is the Capacity Building Program manager in NASA’s Earth Science Division, where she strengthens use of Earth observation information from satellites and in-situ measurements for better decisions and actions in the USA, Africa, Asia, Latin America, and around the world.   She is deacon at St. Anne’s Church in Reston, Virginia, a Global Mission Advocate in Virginia Diocese, and a GEMN Board member.

The Mission Formation Program will take place all day on Tuesday, April 29.

Get training in biblical foundations, mission spirituality, mission history and theology, cross-cultural sensitivity, best practices for mission teams, and group process.

Diverse activities on April 30th

Wednesday afternoon will feature field trips to missional sites around San Pedro Sula, with the evening spent at a Honduran cultural festival dinner at Catedral El Buen Pastor.

A note from Bishop Allen about Security in Honduras

Missio plenaries and seminars

will be held at the main conference venue: the Hyatt Place Hotel, where attendees will be staying.

Introducing the Diocese of Honduras

The Diocese of Honduras has about 40,000 members in 156 parishes, missions and preaching stations.  Its cathedral, Catedral El Buen Pastor, is located in San Pedro Sula, the country’s second largest city, after the capital of Tegucigalpa.  

Since 2001, the diocese has been led by the Rt. Rev. Lloyd Allen, the first indigenous bishop of the diocese and now one of the longest serving bishops in the Episcopal Church. A graduate of the Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas, Bp. Allen is currently president of Province IX, which includes the dioceses of Honduras, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador Central, Ecuador Litoral, and Venezuela.

Catedral El Buen Pastor

Front View of Catedral El Buen Pastor, San Pedro Sula

AANGLIDESH

AANGLIDESH supporting entrepreneurship by women

Honduran Episcopalians continue to reach and grow throughout the country. When Hurricane Mitch hit Honduras in 1998 as the worst natural disaster in 200 years, the Honduran government asked the diocese to distribute supplies because it had the most thorough connections throughout the country.

The Anglican Association for the Development of Honduras (AANGLIDESH) is a diocese-related agency whose mission is to empower vulnerable young men and women.  It works with microfinance and business leadership programs that have educational and spiritual content to motivate them to have dreams and improve their living conditions.

Arguably the second poorest country in the Caribbean, after Haiti, Honduras is vulnerable to climate change due to its high exposure to climate-related hazards (hurricanes, tropical storms, floods, droughts, landslides) that devastate crops and critical infrastructure.  Hurricane Mitch destroyed an estimated 70 percent of the country’s crops and infrastructure, causing more than 10,000 deaths and $3 billion in damage and significantly setting back Honduras’ development process. More than half Honduras’s people are rural, of whom 65 percent live in poverty. The rural poor depend on rainfed agriculture as their principal livelihood. 58 percent of children under five suffer from chronic undernutrition.

65% of Hondurans live in poverty

"Gigantes" baseball team at El Hogar

A number of domestic Episcopal dioceses have missional relationships with Honduras, including Alabama, California, Central Florida, Louisianna, Mississippi, Northern Indiana, Washington and West Texas.   

Two Episcopal institutions are familiar to many.  Our Little Roses, located in San Pedro Sula, rescues girls from situations of risk and empowers them to become women with moral and spiritual values strengthened through the teachings of Christ.  El Hogar de Amor y Esperanza (Home of Love and Hope) in Tegucigalpa provides education and a nurturing home to children living in vulnerable conditions in Honduras through an elementary school, a technical institute and an agricultural school.

The General Convention of 1967 divided the Missionary District of Central America into five Missionary Districts: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Bp. Allen is the third bishop since Honduras became a diocese in 1978.

Missio 2025 Schedule & Investment

Monday, 28 April
1:00 pm Mission Formation Program (MFP) participants arrive
   check-in, dinner on participants’ own
7:00 pm MFP social time & possible Opening Session
Conference Fee
Includes attendance, field trips and meals.
$ 199.00
Total investment
Hyatt Plaza
Breakfast included. 40 double rooms & 20 single rooms.
$ 130.00
Per night. Tax not included.
Mission Formation Program
Register separately at the GEMN Donation site.
$85.00
Total investment