Yay! We have a schedule…mos a menos. We spent our first few days unwinding and building relationships, but I’m not going to lie, we were all desperate to get started! But it’s a good thing we had a few days to get ourselves together bonding with each other and the people we’re spending the month with. So here’s the deal. We’re staying in El Horno (30 minutes away from the capitol) where there’s a small community of about 28 houses. Four days a week we go down to the school to teach english for about an hour. There’s two first through fifth grade classes that we’re working with and they’re absolutely adorable. The people in this community are all so loving and sweet. Santo and his family are our closest neighbors, and they hang out up here with us all the time. Celvin, their oldest son, gives us spanish lessons on Mondays…which are pretty interesting because he doesn’t speak a whole lot of english haha but we have fun. I’ve only been to the school in El Horno once, because yesterday I loaded up in the car with the boys and headed to Los Pinos. We only have one car between the 13 of us so we had to split up yesterday. Monday was our first day in Los Pinos which was a huge and successful day! Me, two other girls, our boys and the Los Pinos boys left early to catch the bus. It was so awesome to have the 3 boys with us because I know we would have never made it to Los Pinos without them. We live on a three mile long dirt road with crazy pot holes, so we started to walk that but the boys whistled some truck down so we hitchhiked to the end of the road where the bus would come. Josue, Christo, and Louis are between the ages of 13-15 but I feel so safe around them. They told us all of the buses to get on and how much they really were (everyone tries to rip off the gringos–white people), held our purses because they felt safer with them than we were, and would switch spots with us on the street when cars were coming. It took us about two hours on the buses and I sat with Louis the whole time. He is such a precious boy and would fall asleep on my lap, rub my shoulders, and we somehow talked the whole time. We’ve only known these boys since Friday but I already have such a love for them–I don’t know how I’m going to leave, I could spend the whole 11 months here.
Love my boys 🙂 Louis and Josue
We got to Los Pinos before the other group, so Louis took us up to his house first. The houses there are basically all built out of scraps or mud, but this community has got to have the best view in the city. It’s up on a steep hill and overlooks Tegucigalpa. Getting up to the boys houses was straight uphill on dirt and mud; I don’t understand how it’s possible for houses to even be built on such a steep incline. Louis lives with his grandmother, who raises him, and his 15 year old sister, and some other dude that was in there. We learned that Louis’ mom left him when he was just a baby and his dad has been around, but for the past 15 days has been missing. It’s crazy to me how happy these boys are when I keep learning more stories like this. His grandmother was so sweet and I was honored when Louis took my camera to get a picture of me and grandma. He was so cute and went over to fix her hair and get something off of her face…ah I just love him.
Honduran’s are so cute 🙂 I look like a giant compared to them haha. This is Louis and his grandmother
Anyways, we went to the four brothers house next–Carlos, Josue, Christo, and Fernando. Their mom, Lillian, lives in the nearby dump and digs for trash to support the boys. There are three matress, a dirt floor, and only 3 walls with the fallen wall covered with a tarp. I almost lost it when we walked in and Louis started to sweep for us, but I was not going to let these boys see me cry over their living condition. The rest of the group met us there, along with some precious little girls we met the other day, we ate our pb&j’s, and headed down to the abandoned school. This was a huge day because the whole community was out looking at us. We’re the first group to actually come in there and try to turn this village around so our first impressions were crucial. We stood in the main room with a lot of the kids and prayed over the building and the community. Then we split off in groups, each one of us having some kids, and went into the different rooms of the school to pray over it. It was so powerful to have all of us on our knees praying and the kids right beside us and praying with us. They are so hungry for change and it’s going to happen 🙂
All of us praying together in the school
Yesterday, was somehow even better than Monday. I went with the guys and even more people came out. We had machettees, rakes, brooms and shovels and started cleaning the school up (it’s seriously run down and doesn’t even have a roof). I just grabbed a broom and started sweeping with about 50 people just looking at us. It only took about 5 minutes before everyone was helping. They came with brooms from their houses and the kids were even so excited to do work. They were fighting over who got to use the shovel, and there were a few times I found myself with nothing to do because everyone kept grabbing tools out of my hands. Then we played football for hours. There were so many people playing and we just had so much fun…there was one point I was on the ground with a pile of 10 kids on top of me–I was loving it:). Then we played a massive game of ring-around-the-rosey…teenage boys playing with us! That just doesn’t happen in America, but they haven’t had a childhood, which is hard for us to even grasp. The hardest part about going to Los Pinos is leaving. I hate leaving all of the kids there and sleeping in my bed at night wondering what they’re doing and if they’re safe.
Me and Christo!
We have Wednesdays off, but most of the other days we’ll be in Los Pinos. Thanks for all of your prayers so far! Our big goal for this week is to keep building up our relationships. A lot of the boys do paint thinner to get high (a can is only $1.50) so our biggest goal is to get them clean. They’re around it all the time but they want to stop. Only one of the boys has been high since we’ve been working with them, but he’s going to come and spend a week or two with us at the farm. Please be praying for these boys to stop using thinner. I’m so blessed to have these amazing boys and girls in my life and so pumped that we are giving them an opportunity to be kids for the first time in their lives.
Overlooking Los Pinos…Christy, Louis, Me, Cassie, Josue and Allan
