Chris Ferguson recently visited Victory Lane at Smoky Mountain
Winning Dirt Late Model races is something Chris Ferguson finds to be very rewarding. And in 2015, the Mt. Holly, NC driver has been rewarded often as he and his team are in the midst of one of their best seasons, which has included two World of Outlaws Late Models wins among other checkered flags captured so far.
But the 25-year-old has recently found rewarding experiences outside of racing. In July, Ferguson took some time away from racing to go on a mission trip with Weaverville, NC-based Louder Than Words Ministry to the Central American country of Honduras to serve a population in need.
“We went to El Opatoro, La Paz, a village in Honduras, about six hours from the capital of Honduras,” Ferguson explained of his journey in an interview with InsideDirtRacing.com. “It’s up in the mountains so it really wouldn’t have been a six hour ride but you can’t go but 15 to 35 mph on the roads there. We rode in a school bus all the way out there.”
During the week in the small town, Ferguson and the others who took part in the mission trip performed a number of tasks. Some of the work done by the group involved spreading the message of Christ while other chores were done to simply improve the day-to-day lives of the people in the village.
“We did a little bit of everything, we were there for a full seven days,” Ferguson said. “We did door-to-door evangelism, that’s one part of it. We did a lot of construction, we dug wells and we dug trenches for the houses so the water could run around them. We built foundations for houses, replaced roofs, put concrete on the floors in the houses because they were living on dirt.”
Much of the team’s focus was on children, but everyone in El Opatoro benefited from their presence.
“We did Vacation Bible School for the kids,” Ferguson pointed out. “We had a dentist that served over 400 people in a week, which was awesome. And there’s a lot of cool stuff in between all of that that we did with the kids and the members of the community. We did four or five church services at night during the week.”
This was no vacation trip by any means.
“We had a full plate, we got up every morning at 6:00am and started our day at 7:00 and worked until 6:00 or 7:00 at night,” the driver of the No. 22 Late Model said. “We slept on the floors, we did the whole thing. We didn’t stay in no fancy hotel and drove out there. We actually stayed in the village. We were fortunate enough that they had a school and we stayed in one of their big rooms. It was a cool experience for a fact.
Chris Ferguson with some of the children he met in Honduras.
“We’re actually still trying to establish a church there,” Ferguson added. “The ministry that I go with, this is one of the few places where they don’t have a church. We’ve all been praying for them to get a pastor, that’s the foundation. We go into the village with pastors from Honduras, they have groups who are Christians that get together and read the Bible but they just don’t have that foundation yet. They’ve been there two years now for a week and they have a piece of land where they want to build a church, but that’s kind of pointless to build a church until they get a pastor.”
Although they were far from their own country, some elements of the trip offered a taste of home. But other elements were not very much like what the group was used to in their daily lives.
“The ministry that we went with, they’ve been serving in Honduras since 2000, and they provided food for us and the ladies in the village actually cooked for us. We ate really good all week. We had a good portion of food. But we didn’t drink the water, we had bottled water. We didn’t have a running shower or plumbing. When you used the bathroom you had to go fill the bucket up with water out of the well. When you showered you had to fill the water up out of the well in a bag and hang it in the tent. I only took one shower the whole week, you just use baby clothes all week to wipe off and that was something new for me.”
That experience gave Ferguson a new perspective on life.
“There are a lot of necessities that we think we have that are not really necessities, you know.”
Ferguson stepped away from racing for a week in the midst of his best season.
The question many might have for a driver in the midst of his best season would be why take time off from racing at this time of year.
“The biggest thing I brought back from there was that I never thought giving up my time and taking two weeks off from racing right in the middle of the season, right when we are running the best we’ve ever run, I never thought that would happen,” Ferguson insisted. “I’ll never regret making that decision and doing that stuff was more important than winning any race I’ve ever won. I’m happy that I did it and I’m definitely going to go back and do it again next year.”
