“Education can change someone’s life like it did me,” Machado said, who is currently 27 and the principal of a bilingual elementary school.

I have always been a busy guy, he said.

For me, I didn’t just want to marry young and farm corn and beans, he said. I like to think outside the box.

On the weekends he works toward his master’s degree in education. He also enjoys working as a translator with different groups, he said.

This week, he is working with Belmont University and Middle Tennessee University in the town of Cane, Honduras. As an English speaker, he doesn’t miss a beat.

He jokes in a bus full of Americans: You have horny cows in America right?

A women laughs and check to see if he is joking. Machado has mastered the art of poking fun, which puts the group at ease. He understands culture past the village of his youth and past the borders of his country.

On a three-month fundraising trip to America, he saw the urban lights of New York City. He rode the rides at Disney World, saw the St. Louis Arch and saw the Statue of Liberty.

People wanted me to see everything, he said.

Machado tells stories of his adventures like a standup comedian, picking up on cultural nuances.

I couldn’t just call people to hangout, he said. I had to call and plan it out like a week in advance.

He told a story about being dragged to shop the day after Thanksgiving.

Women laid out advertisements on the floor, mapping out deals the night before, he said. They woke me up at 3 a.m. In the packed store, a woman with a shopping cart was behind me. The woman asked…

Machado snarls his face as he gets into character.

“Are you going to move so I can get by?”

His education goes beyond the classroom.

In the mornings, he takes a taxi to work for 15 lempiras, for less than a dollar.

He arrives at the school he oversees after a 5-minute ride in a white and blue-striped taxi.

The backdrop is a steep line of mountains cutting into the sky. Their distance creates a blue mist, and clouds visit to dabble at the peaks.

Machado has visited these mountains with friends to get away. There are waterfalls, old trees, and fruit, he said. He enjoys walking through protected forests when he has spare time, he said.

The road leading to the school is parallel to the line of mountains. Enlaces is a private Christian school with just shy of a hundred students. English and Spanish is taught in the classrooms. Through the years, Enlaces has grown. Today, it is primarily a youth center, church and humanitarian distribution center.

After school each day, students can attend the youth center at Enlaces.

Every hour we share the gospel in some way for five minutes, Machado said. Machado became a Christian after talking with missionaries from Ohio when he was 19.

“They shared mainly by how they lived,” Machado said.

They answered my questions when I asked, he said. Now I like to give back by translating for other groups.

“Enlaces” means connection or bridge in English, Machado said.

During Hurricane Mitch in the late ‘90s, Enlaces served as a shelter for 400 to 500 people, he said.

Five to seven semi trucks of supplies still arrive at Enlaces each year. Clothes, food and medicine are sent to area hospitals, orphanages and organizations.

You open the back of the truck and the supplies are literally bulging out, Machado said.

Machado was hired to set up the school two years ago. In his early 20s, Machado had already helped set up a school with an American and two Britains.

Enlaces doesn’t meet on Mondays.

There was some opposition to this innovation, but I thought it was better, Machado said. I am often doing homework for my graduate studies on my day off.

Students at his school pay around $50 a month to attend, but 16 students are offered full scholarships, he said.

Education seems to run in the family. Machado’s 17-year-old brother, Pedro, wants to be a lawyer, Pedro said. He graduates this month from high school, and he is by Machado’s side this week as an interpreter.

When Machado’s mother was just a child, she woke at 3 a.m. everyday. She sold tortillas in the market to support her grandmother. Then she returned to her village before noon to attend school till 5 p.m.

She did her homework after school and then prepared tortillas for the next day, boiling and grinding the corn.

My mother continued to attend school when others dropped out because she knew it was better than selling tortillas, Machado said.

After she completed 6th grade, she became a teacher and married Machado’s father when she was 15. Machado was the third child of six in this family.

When Machado was 15, his mother searched for a job so her children could get an education past elementary school. They moved to the town of Comayagua, Machado said.

One day Machado wants to hike that two hours to his birth village of Plazuelas.

He has been too busy, he said. The village has probably grown a lot. Most of the youth in his village didn’t make it to 6th grade and they probably have raised new families now, he said.