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I went with 9
other folk from Desert Chapel to San Pedro Sula, Honduras.
We were there for approx 10 days. Unfortunately, I
took very very few pictures while we were there, I am in
progress of speaking with the rest of the team that we went
with to attempt to recover some more pictures. It's
been 5 years since I was there, while writing this, so my
memory may be a little off on all the details. We
went down there with quite a few goals in mind. We
put together a many teams in our 10 person group, each person
had many priorities. Our construction team was put
in charge of building, I believe, 16 pews for about 3 or
4 different churches; each only got a couple of pews. These
are small small churches, many with just a roof, no walls,
and if lucky, a cement floor, many just mud & dirt.
There really aren't roads to many of the churches, just
trails. I remember going into the middle of the forest
where we would find a church, and many of the people would
have been walking about 4 hours or so, through the forest
barefoot just to go to church. We, in the good ole
US, complain about 15 minutes in driving because of traffic.
We would get to the churches and they, if lucky, had a few
2x10's running across some cinderblock for benches to sit
on during service. We would pull up with these pews
that we made out of 2x6's with backs, and people would start
crying. Men would be jumping on the truck unloading,
while the women, many who were pregnant, and had 3 kids
attached to them, on the shoulders & back, would be
moving the existing 2x10's & cinderblock out of the
way. It's amazing to see the blessings these people
have. We complain because our seats aren't comfortable
enough, and they are grateful for anything. Many places
didn't have running water. I remember having to fetch
water to use the "toilets." At each church,
we would make balloons for the kids, put on a puppet show,
do a mime, give our testimonies, and much else. I'd
never seen people so happy in my entire life. We went
to an orphanage where we got to hang out with the kids for
a full day. We made slime & balloons and gave
the kids all kinds of gifts. While we were there,
we found that the orphanage had been broken into multiple
times. We started walking around the premises to pray
for protection of the building & occupants. While
walking around praying, we saw some guys outside the fence
who were calling us. "What you doing, what you
doing?" We told them that we were praying over
the place for protection because of the recent break-ins.
There was suspicion that these were the guys. We shared
the Gospel with them, and found one of them was from Long
Beach, and left because he was in big trouble. We
also prayed with them and continued on our way. Turns
out, there was no more break-ins at the orphanage after
that. Praise God. For our free day, about 2
days before the end of the trip, we took a nice long drive
to the largest waterfall in Honduras. We went for
a swim in the water as well as went down to the base of
the waterfall. Beautiful scenery. I'm trying
to get a hold of more pictures of it. During our outing
this day, one of the ladies on our group left her bag behind
with credit cards & her passport. The next day,
her and two others took off to the capital of Honduras,
Tegucigalpa to get her another passport. They went
to Tegucigalpa on July 4th, my birthday. A few little
things I remember out the trip: That stinkin suburban
that we rented. It had an alarm on it that would just
go off every time we opened the door. We never set
the alarm and couldn't turn it off. Just about every
time the door was opened, the alarm would go off and we'd
sit there and wait for 5-10 minutes listening to it, not
able to start up the vehicle. It really seemed to
frustrate everything. I remember seeing the first
Ford Focus down there, before they were released in America,
I thought it was just as ugly then as now. I also
saw the first mini pickups with 4 full size doors before
they were available in America. Money exchange was
Honduran pesos, approx 14 or 15 of theirs to the US dollar.
I was the only one who didn't get sick from the water down
there. I was sucking on lemons the entire trip, therefore
the acid killed whatever makes you sick. The term
used was motorboats, "who has the motorboats?"
I ended up getting them after I returned to the US.
I had a whole bag of lemons on the plane and realized I
wouldn't take them into the country, so ate all of them
on the plane, and by the time we reached the airport, I
hit the toilet twice before getting on the next plane.
I played a little practical joke on some of the girls.
I brought an extra roll of toilet paper and unrolled quite
a bit of it, then started writing messages, of which I can't
remember, and then rolled the toilet paper back up, then
switched it for theirs. They had absolutely no clue
who did it. It caused such a commotion, it was hilarious.
That's about all I can think of for the moment, but other
thoughts will come, and they will be added, along with more
pictures.
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| Richard
Barena & I |
My
birthday party |
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