***For those of you who may not know from previous blogs, I have a small group of home school children in South Carolina that are following my blog for lessons in geography, culture, and missionary work. So feel free to read ahead, but the focus, length, and content of this blog is for them!***
Buenas from Honduras! As usual, please friend me on facebook to see more pictures from my trip as this browser takes super long to upload them and the internet is already scarce. But before I head to Nicaragua, I wanted to take a moment to share with you all what I learned about the country.
Although Honduras is quite a bit bigger than El Salvador, a great deal of the country side is still undeveloped plains and forests. In the capital city of Tegucigalpa, the weather tends to be quite warm in the heart of the city during the day, but much cooler up in the mountains in the evening.
On one of our off days we had the chance to go to the beach! Ampala had a beach front that was a large lagoon, with huge beautiful mountains standing tall at random out in the sea. The only thing about the beach that I didn’t like was that there were tons of huge jellyfish everywhere…so many, in fact, that we couldn’t even swim! We also had an off day when we got to go to the Valle de Angeles, which is a small touristy town with lots of cute shops and restaurants.
Much of the culture in Honduras was similar to that of El Salvador. Because we were living in a community of 43 people in one space this month, all of our meals were prepared in mass quantities, and so much of our food was rice, beans, potatoes, pasta, and bread. All of it was incredibly delicious, and my favorite meal was usually breakfast: eggs, beans, tortillas, avocados and fried plantains! Another important thing for our community was conservation of water and electricity, and many of the citizens of Honduras do not have reliable electricity or clean water.
Unfortunately, the overall standard of living in Honduras is quite low, and violent crimes are very common. General sanitation practices are poor, with dirty water, dirt floors, shacks made out of trash, and human and animal waste littering everywhere. While most of the children we were around in El Salvador went to school and had caring parents, it is not uncommon in Honduras for children to drop out of school and for parents to often be absent. Many of the teenagers in the poorest communities we visited could not read or write, and will not begin the first grade before age 14 or so, and then it is if they are willing and have a sponsor.
Please keep Honduras in your prayers. There is a good deal of drug use, usually in the form of people getting high by breathing in paint thinner, from an early age. The cycle of poverty is devastating and usually results in high levels of domestic and community violence, alcoholism, and promiscuity. Those who have truly committed their lives to Christ are a noticeable light in the slums, and we pray that more and more will seek Him each day.
