10/7/10
I’m sitting in Tegucigalpa, Honduras looking out the windows of the retreat center. This will be home for the next month. This room is surrounded by windows. We are in the middle of nowhere and looking out the windows, I see some of the greenest landscape I’ve ever seen. It looks like a jungle and the weather is perfect. Let me tell you about our journey yesterday to get here.
It’s 4am. I wake up to the still dark city of Antigua, Guatemala. My team, Rooted 19:30 and team Arrow have to pack up and be on a van by 5am to head to Honduras. The drive is supposed to be about 7 hours. I’ve had about 4 hours sleep after team debrief last night, but I’m up and excited to head to my next country so soon. I wake up the rest of my team in the hostel, because I don’t hear any noise that they are awake. It’s pitch black and I’m walking around in the pitch black banging on doors. I bang my toe on a step and lose part of a toenail. Good morning! We all pile into the van. It’s a tight fit and I’m the first one in so I go to the back corner against the window. There were four of us in that seat and I’m not all the way on the seat because it doesn’t go all the way from side to side. Let me just say that I’m so thankful that I am not claustrophobic and don’t usually have problems with motion sickness because what followed was the longest, bumpiest ride of my life. I am awesome at sleeping anywhere. I throw my pillow behind my head and am asleep for a couple hours. I don’t believe that anyone should ever be up when it is still dark outside. We finally pay and cross the border into Honduras. We have Ricardo driving us the whole time and he is great. He tells us at one point that we have about 2 hours left to go and we figured we would be arriving no later than 4pm. We are supposed to meet our contact, Tony at 6pm in the capital which is about a half-hour from where we will be staying. At 10pm we are still driving.
A few things happened as they often will on the WR. Somehow there was miscommunication and our driver thought we were going to a different city altogether. We had to stop at a couple other checkpoints. Our driver mentioned we were a missionary group and even though this isn’t a closed country, it is always better to just say we are tourists. We thought this may be an issue and started praying. I guess we got off easy because we only had to bribe him off with a Coke. He wanted more. We only had one. The Police are corrupt and it is common to have to give them drinks or money. There was also a road blocked. This just means that someone put some rocks across the road. We had to go around that and got lost. During all this we are trying to call our contact to let him know we will be late and talk to the translator to find out where to meet her. My bum is sore at this point, I tried to watch a movie with Tracy, got about 20 minutes in and felt nauseous. That was the end of movie watching. Then later Tracey felt really sick. I jumped over her so she could stick her head out the window. We all did get to see the most beautiful scenery along the way. Green, green, green, and so many mountains. That alone made the drive all worth it. It made me think of Psalm 90:2, “Before the mountains were brought forth, or you ever formed the earth and world, even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God.” It’s funny that I was thinking of this while listening to Jason Aldean singing, “She’s Country”.
We all laughed a lot and I was just proud of everyone for having great attitudes. Allan kept us entertained with questions like, “Would you rather have your big toe for your pointer finger, or your pointer finger for your big toe?” and “Would you rather grow a beak or a tail?” We made up crazy stories where our driver was the hero and laughed at people trying to get comfortable and moving into crazy positions.
Finally we meet our translator that leads us 30 minutes outside the city into the wilderness. The van takes us as far as it can and then surprise! We get to hike the rest of the way in. Those headlamps really do come in handy. I’m pretty excited about the hike after sitting for 17 hours and don’t even mind that my feet get muddy. I would also just like to say that I am an independent woman and like to do things for myself, but have NO problem when a guy on the team offers to carry my pack. I’m just thankful for the guys who are becoming like brothers, because we will need them.
We get to the retreat center, which is a big open room and then a hallway with all the other rooms off the sides. I’m sleeping in bunk beds with the girls on my team. Christy already broke a piece of wood off one during team debrief so that was fun. We just need to sleep. We picked the one room with no light so once again my headlamp was used to pull out my sleeping bag and check for spiders. I only see dead ones, so with a quick prayer that no live ones crawl into my bag or mouth, I’m asleep.
I will talk more later about Tony and the amazing work he seems to be doing here. He is an American who moved here about 5 years ago and is now runs this center and takes care of the 120 acres of land that is sits on. He has built great relationships with the locals in a couple of the surrounding areas. He wants us to just focus on building relationships with each other and just getting closer to God the next couple days and finding out what this month will look like. We will be doing many different projects, but he never wants us to focus so much on them that we lose sight of the relationships that are more important to in the process. We all know that healthy relationships are important to have in life and so many are not healthy. I just want to learn more and more how to be better at any type of relationship. I was reading 1st Cor. 13:1-3 this morning and it says, “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angles, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophesy, and understanding all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could move mountains. But have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.” It’s just not about what you do as much as loving people and how you act. You can have the most amazing gifts, but if you don’t use them to show love, they are worth nothing. I just want to show the people of Honduras the love that God has for them through whatever I do this month.
The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes this morning was a spider right in front of me on the wall. I guess God answered my prayer to keep them out of my sleeping bag. Next was the ice water shower. J
We have no internet access where we are staying, but will when we go into town.
