Honduras 2010 - Day 2

Mission Trip to Honduras

Day 2

Thursday June 3, 2010

I apologize in advance for the length of this blog post.  It is admittedly too long, but I am trying to recap my entire Mission Trip in just 8 posts (one for each day I was there), so that means that the posts will all be a little longer as I want to include as many pictures and stories as I can. 

However, I have made the pictures smaller to save room, so click on any picture to enlarge.  (I have still yet to figure out how to post the pictures side-by-side?)

For a recap of Day One click here.

We headed out early in the morning.  That's Angela, myself and Bill in the back seat of the white pick-up truck.  Our destination - the small remote village of El Zapote.

Rick and CJ occupied the front seats.  It takes about an hour to get to El Zapote, even though it's only about a ten mile distance away.  The terrain is very rough, so it's a slow, very bumpy, trip.

Leading the way there, Grant and Keith rode in the front of the Rhino, while Decker held on for dear life in the back.

We stopped in the nearest town, Yamaranguila, on the way to El Zapote.  Pictured below is a big church that sits in the "town square." 

Across from the church is a little store, called a "Pulpería".  We got some soft drinks and snacks for the day.

These sweet little guys watched from nearby while we made our purchases at the Pulperia.

We finally arrived at the church in El Zaopte!  It was rather surreal to be there and see how far along it had come since last year when we were laying the foundation stones and pouring the floor slab.

I love the arched windows and door!  Isn't it quaint for a little remote Honduran village church? 

Eventually there will be doors and shutters on the windows....but that is still yet to come.

Here's a view from down the road, looking back up at the church

I climbed up to an adjacent hill to get some photos of the church from a higher vantage point....and tried checking my e-mail from my phone while I was up there.  Believe it or not I actually had service!

Here's some photos I got from atop the adjacent hill...

Vista de Valle (the name of the church, which means "Valley View" named so after my Home church - the church represented by our group)....it truly has a view of the valley!

Inside the church, you can see the roof trusses and underside of the metal roof panels.  When we left last year, the walls were only about waist height.  It was so great to see how far the construction had come in the last year!  (Construction in Honduras is a slow process).

As you can see, the metal roof wasn't quite finished, but that was on our to-do list while we were there.

I love the view through the windows!  Isn't it breath-taking??

Trees stand over top the church and large mango-like fruit grows from the trees...

At one point, one of the Honduran men climbed high up in the tree to pick some of the fruit.  Can you see his silhouette in the top/center part of the photo below?

Also growing , are banana trees - see that bunch of green bananas right past Decker's head?  Fresh Honduran bananas are yummy!  Little known fact: Some Chiquita Banana's are actually grown in Honduras too!

Starting the week off with our to-do list in mind, we had brought the materials to finish off the roof of the church.  Here, Bill helps Vicente (the church's Pastor) unload the metal roof panels.

But....uh-oh!  You can see the despair on Keith's face (he's the one sitting on the roof talking on his cell phone in the photo below) as he realizes that not only do the panels we brought to finish the roof not line-up to what is already on the roof, but the store where Keith bought them doesn't have the right ones in stock.  Okay, scratch finishing the roof while we are there - oh well.  There's plenty to be done otherwise!

So, instead of working on the roof, we ventured down the road to the little school in El Zapote.  We brought "Salvation Story Bracelets" with us and we hoped to share them with all the kiddos in the village.

After permission from their teachers, we lined the kids up and passed out the bracelet kits.

Each bead on the bracelet was a different color and stood for a different part of the Salvation story....I explained each color and corresponding meaning to the kids as they added the beads to their bracelet (Angela translated for me)

The kids seemed to understand and we even had them repeat each color / meaning back to us in hopes that they would remember them after we were gone.  We also encouraged them to wear the bracelets and share with others what they mean.

After making bracelets, we re-taught them how to play "Pato, Pato, Gonzo!" (or Duck, Duck, Goose!).  Some of them remembered from last year.  They had a blast with it!

After playing for a while with the kids, we headed back to the church (where our vehicles were parked with supplies) and decided to go visit some families in El Zapote.  We had brought Family Hygiene Packs to pass out as we visited them and shared the story of Jesus with them.

Here's Keith carrying a duffel bag full of the packs as we started our hike down the mountain to visit the homes.

From L-R: Me, Keith (you can see his head peaking between our shoulders - he's the missionary that lives in Honduras), Rick (our Team Leader), Decker & Bill (Father & Son), Angela (our translator) and CJ (the other lady on our team besides me)

Hi-ho, hi-ho, it's off to visit families we go....

Can see that little house in the center of the photo?  Not many of the houses up in the mountains are close together.  Most are spread out with a short (sometimes not so short) walk from one to the next.

That's me, sitting on the porch, showing this family the "Salvation Story Bracelets" before we handed one out to each of them.

I love this shot that Grant captured, just the hand with the bracelet. 

As we were walking from house to house, we pass several beautiful scenes of the mountains, but we also come across crops that people are growing.  Here's a pineapple - looks almost ready to pick, doesn't it?  Mmmm......Fresh Honduran Pineapple is to die for!  It's so de-lish!

Here's a field of coffee plants!  Strange to think that coffee beans grow on tree-like plants.

Along the road, we saw these two little ones and shared some bracelets with them too.

Since we were up in the mountains, where the air is a little more thin, we had to stop and rest on several occasions.....here's Rick taking a break.

Another house.....

We gave this family a Hygiene Pack too.

And along our way we went....

When we arrived at this home, we knocked and no one answered the door.  We assumed that no one was home, but when Pastor Vicente peaked in the window, he said "They're sleeping."

Come to find out, the family wasn't sleeping, they were just scared that we were from the government!  They said every now and then that some "white men" come around with clip boards asking lots of questions about property and such and they were scared to answer the door at first.  Vicente quickly explained who we were and then they gladly talked with us.

Here, Angela translates as the men share about Christ with this family.

Then I share about the bracelets and give each person one

And off we go again.....

When we arrived at the next place, this little bitty guy caught my eye and I had to pick him up!

Aren't these kiddos precious?

And this lady was certainly proud of her meat grinder. 

I shared about the bracelets with the kids and a few adults at this house too.  We also took time to pray for a man there.  His family said he used to be able to talk just fine, but over time, the man started to loose his voice and now he can barely just whisper.  I'm not sure what was wrong with him, but we prayed for health and healing.

With the little broken Spanish I know, I asked the kids their names and how they were doing. 

This man asked for a bracelet too!

That's me with all the kids at this house (not sure if they all live there or not)

I absolutely loved this little guy!

He loved looking at the pictures on Bill's camera

See the preciousness in his eyes?

Oh, how I wish I could have brought him back with me!  Isn't he darling?

After a long day of hiking to homes, visiting with folks, passing out bracelets, food packs and hygiene packs, we decided to call it a day and head home.

Thanks for recapping this journey with me!

OT....and lots of it!

The last few weeks I've been working overtime....gradually adding more hours onto each week.  I worked an extra 9 hours the first week, an extra 9.5 hours the second week and so far this week, I've worked an extra 5 hours (in one day)....with plans to work an extra 5 hours almost every single day this week....which would make about 20-25 hours of overtime for this week alone (not including the how much I might work this weekend).

The reason for all the overtime is the completion of a project at work.  It seems that it always happens this way in the business I'm in.  We work on the same project for 6-8 months and then there's the scramble of last minute details and coordination to finish it all out.

Fortunately for me - I get overtime pay since I'm an hourly employee.  So, at times I welcome the chance to earn a little extra cash.  It doesn't make it fun at the time usually....because essentially I have no life for a few weeks, eating dinners at my desk and having to turn down invites for much more fun things than OT.  But, once the project is over with and I have my time back (and an increase of green in my pocket)....it all seems okay and even a little worth it.

This extra pay will come in handy lately as I have several things I need to pay for:

-A Sink Hole in my Driveway (more to come on this saga at a later date)
-A Bridesmaid Dress (My Bestie, Shannon, got engaged!!!)
-A Speeding Ticket (82 in a 55 - Oops!  <---In my defense, I thought it was a 70mph zone, which I realize is still speeding, but I really don't have *that* bad of a lead foot).

Honduras 2010 - Day 1

Mission Trip to Honduras
Day 1

 Wednesday June 2, 2010

Our group with our "team shirts" on.  At least we were easy to spot in the airport.

From L-R: Grant, CJ, Mel, Rick, Bill & Decker

Waiting to fly out of SDF...apparently I was the only one excited about being up at 4:30 in the morning.

Arriving in ATL for our layover.  Still lovin' the green shirts!  Lots of people stare when everybody wears the same shirt.

Flying into San Pedro Sula, Honduras!

Getting through customs this year was a breeze.  Unlike last year, when it took about an hour or so.

Once we got through customs, we loaded our luggage into the van and we were on our way.

We also rented that white truck to get around in since the Missionaries' 2 other vehicles were in the shop.

On the road!

It's about a four and a half hour drive up into the mountains where we stay.

Here, we are behind a truck full Hondurans passing a brightly colored banana truck.

This is the way most Hondurans typically travel (and how we traveled in the mountains last year) -  in a truck with side rails....holding on for dear life!  It's amazing how they all stay in there.

We took about $6,000 in US currency with us for all the supplies, food packs, our personal room & board, travel within Honduras, etc.. so we had to get it changed into Lempiras (Honduran currency) also known as Lemps.

Here we are at the bank (please note the heavily armed men guarding the entrance).

It's hard to see, but they are going through my bag before I entered the bank.  I gladly opened it as wide as I could and thanked them in my best Spanish....you don't want to upset men with big guns.

CJ waited in the van for us and was rightfully scared of the men as well.

Rick and Bill were carrying around all the Lemps we got at the bank. The exchange rate is about 18 Lemps to just one of our dollars. So in exchanging $6,000 US dollars, we ended up with about 108,000 Lemps - of all paper money - quite a massive stack!  Their money belts were stuffed!

We stopped at a gas station along the way and I bought popcorn from this little girl (unfortunately I didn't eat it because of the possibility of it making me sick, but hopefully it helped her out a bit).

We continued on our journey and at one point, we came around a really sharp curve to find a rather gruesome scene.  The description that follows might not be for the weak of stomach!  Read with caution.

There was an older man laying the in the middle of the road.  He had obviously been hit by a car and then dragged for a while.  He was very bloody - bleeding both from an open hole in his head and from feet that were rubbed and scraped raw from being dragged.....leaving them almost unrecognizable as feet.  You can see a group of people gathered around him in the background of the picture below.

The men from our team decided to hoist him into the back of our white pick-up truck and take him to a nearby hospital.  Right after the men had moved him from the road to the truck, an ambulance showed up.  The medics treated him in the back of the truck before transferring him to a stretcher to get him to the ambulance.  I never personally saw the man close-up (although I saw a picture later that Bill had taken of him).  But all the men in our group said it would be a miracle if he survived because his injuries were so extensive and Honduras' health care is less then sub-par.

The man's blood was pooled in the back of our pick-up and on the road where we had found him.  The ambulance left with him in tow and we somberly drove on our way.  Keith, the Missionary that lives there, said that whoever hit the man didn't stop because he would have been thrown in jail and held responsible (even though it may have been the pedestrian's fault) and forced to pay all the medical bills.  He said hit-and-runs happen all the time there because it's more of a guilty-until-proven-innocent system.  It's a really sad situation there...no one taking responsibility out of fear....leaving that man to die on the street......

We did stop (at the house nearby where this man was hit) on our way back to the airport the next week to see if we could find out if he had survived or not.  Surprisingly, we were very glad to find out that he had lived and had been transported to Tegucigalpa, the Capitol City of Honduras for better treatment.  They said he was in serious condition, but that he was doing better.

After getting back on our way up the mountains, we made a pit-stop at a house where the owners make and sell hammocks.....among other things.

The men in our group were planning to spend a night in the village of El Zapote in the church we helped build last year.  So, they decided that hammocks would be their best bet for restful sleep....instead of sleeping on the hard ground with the possibility of a bug or an animal crawling on them during the night.

I scoped out a hammock too, but decided not to buy one since I don't have a good place to put one....but one day I *will* own a Honduran Hammock!

After the hammocks were purchased, we made one last stop along the way to grab some beverages and use the restroom.....

The "Rest Stop" had a pretty fountain area and several Toucan birds in a nearby caged area.

"Home" at Last!

We finally arrived at the complex where we would stay all week....

.....and had to get one more Team Picture in those awesome Team shirts!