*There are pictures of most of these things on my facebook page, so feel free to friend me if you want to see them….it takes super long to upload a single photo on this blog!*
I have a really obnoxiously long, detailed, ever-growing, and largely unrealistic bucket list at home that I began about two years ago. Pardon the unoriginal idea, but if you have never made one, you definitely should. Take the pressure off of yourself to add items that you feel like “should” be on it….if you have never had a desire to see the Great Wall of China, go skydiving, eat escargot, or paint a picture, then don’t include them. My bucket list has everything from places I want to see, recipes I want to try/create, books I want to read, events I want to attend….and about 100 other random personal desires.
I had originally thought about making a bucket list for this trip, but given the unpredictability of the whole year, I feared it would become impossible to actually do anything on it.
So here is the next installment of my “Reverse Bucket List”: crazy, random things I experienced in any given country that I never could have known or predicted.
I want to go to Honduras and…
-be exclusively allowed inside the national soccer stadium for pictures!
-meet an American man, Tony, who has committed his life to reaching out to people in the slums whose lives have been dominated by drugs and violence.
-see an amazing sunset almost every day for a month over the mountains of Tegucigalpa.
-have all 10 men on my squad perform a full-out, no holes barred Valentine’s presentation…complete with a God-inspired performance by a squad mate (Zach) that has over 100,000 views online in less than 2 weeks.
-spend hours upon hours digging up and hauling rocks to build a rock wall.
-sit on top of a building with “Jesus Vive!” painted on it and pray over Tegucigalpa, known for its violence, for 24 straight hours (don’t worry, in 1 hour installments with my entire squad…)
-eat churrchirones…pieces of fried pig intestine. no thank you. I was just being a good sport.
-play Mafia and Sardines on a Thursday night with a bunch of adults.
-discover that my favorite breakfast ever is a flour tortilla filled with refried black beans, scrambled eggs, avocado, and queso, served with fried plantains.
-be allowed into homes for children rescued from unsafe home situations, as well as lock-down homes for street children, to bring fun and the message of Jesus.
-lay on the grass under an unbelievably starry sky for squad worship.
-spend 3 Saturday mornings visiting colonias (colonies, or neighborhoods), and play soccer against the all-girls team in that colony.
-help clean out and rebuild a classroom at Zion’s Gate for the boys to be privately taught and tutored.
-teach English to tons of screaming 3rd graders and room full of bickering 6th graders (praise God for those of you that take that on every single day….)
-go trail running on beautiful back mountain roads with unbelievable views of horse pastures and green mountains.
-spend 5 hours in a Burger King to mooch off of the WiFi.
-sing around a camp fire and eat s’mores made out of Chikys, the favorite Central American cookie.
-dig tons of huge rocks and pieces of glass out of the ground to prepare trees for flower planting ( I seriously feel like I could take on some pretty intense landscaping and construction after this month.)
-visit and spend time in a home for the elderly (my favorite!) who have been rescued off the streets or abandoned by family.
-go to the city dump, and see the horrible reality of children who help their parents dig through mountains of trash to make a living. Horrible, scary, smelly, dirty, and incredibly humbling. Whatever you are picturing is probably not bad enough.
-visit Amapala, the beach in Honduras that is currently working towards becoming a cruise port, and see hundreds of enormous jelly fish.
-meet a lovely little abuela (grandmother) named Mina, be moved to tears by her story, and see God heal her from months of illness overnight after we prayed for her and purchased her medication.
-help to build an outhouse for a family in the slums that was previously using a hole in front of the house.
-visit Valle de Angeles, a small touristy town with shops and Pupuserias.
-take a cold shower basically outside when it is less than 60 degrees outside.
-be incredibly inspired by a girl whose Race has just ended and God has brought her to Honduras for life to be a mother to 2 lovely children.
God has moved and worked in incredible ways this month in Honduras! We have done so much cool ministry…everything from construction to landscaping to teaching English (several girls on our squad spent the entire month teaching and the rest of us took turns assisting) to working with street kids and CPS kids to sports ministry….and tons of other random awesome things! I have truly enjoyed this month and have had an incredible ministry host!
We are off to Nicaragua for a short month of about 21 days after we have a 4 day debrief in Grenada, and then it’s off to Asia on April 5th! Please pray that God continues to open doors for us to serve others and to grow in Him!
