First off I need to apologize for not blogging but I am going to post a couple today to try to make up for it. Hopefully I will get some pictures uploaded as well.
We set out for Nicaragua. Our original itinerary (the plan that we made) was that we were going to go to Guatemala City and catch a Tika Bus (like a greyhound) at 1:00 PM to San Salvador, El Salvador and arrive at about 5:00 in the evening meeting one of my teammate’s friends who is doing a semester in El Salvador to spend the night at his house, then early the next morning catch another Tika Bus from San Salvador to Managua, Nicaragua, we then were going to catch a Microbus (read: 12 seater van) from there to Jinotepe, which is where we thought we were doing ministry this month.
Then God changed the plan, and only for the better. We got to the bus station in Guatemala City only to find out that the bus was full and so was the competition bus company’s bus that was going the same route. So we were not going to get to leave until the next day. (They do not take reservations so that is why our seats were not saved) So we stayed in the Hostel that is attached to the bus station. This would not have been a problem except for the fact that they only had one tiny room left with two twin beds. Let me remind you that we are a team of 7 and at this time we have all of our packs which are like adding another to each of us. So needless to say this room was not big enough. It actually did manage to hold all of our stuff and 5 sleeping people. I did not sleep at all that night because I knew that we had a bus ride the next day and I am not the best at sleeping on busses so I thought if I was extremely exhausted maybe I would be able to sleep better on the bus. It payed off. We got on the bus the next day at 4:30 AM and headed for El Salvador. I slept ok on the bus. The problem we now had was that my teammate’s friend who we are staying the night with has class till about 5 and we are getting to El Salvador at about 11:00 AM because we took the morning bus instead of the evening bus as we originally planned. Im going to let you guys know that the rest of the world is not safe. It is not safe for a group of 7 “white” Americans to walk around a city carrying everything that own on their backs. We didn’t know what we were going to do. God had it all figured out though. When we arrived in El Salvador and departed the bus we immediately saw another one of the World Race teams. It was team “Crash of Love”. Their team leader is Dustin Suttle and they are awesome. It was so good to talk to them for a little while about there month of ministry. While we were talking to them, Dustin introduced his ministry contact from the month to Christina, one of my teammates. His name was Oscar and he only spoke spanish. We were in luck because Christina’s degree from college was in Spanish and she lived in Spain for a while so it was good that she was the one introduced to him. During her first conversation with him she asked if he knew of a place that we may be able to store our stuff for the day until our ride came and picked us up later that day. He quickly volunteered to host us for the day and knew a church that we could keep our stuff and then he would take us to a mall to hang out and then to top off that he knew the guy that we were going to meet that evening and offered to drive us and our stuff to his house. It was perfect timing because had we come a day earlier we would have not had a ride or have seen the other team. So we went and put our packs in a church and then rode a bus to the mall. We ate at the mall and then went back to the church to grab our bags and then Oscar drove us to meet the guy that we were spending the night with. When we got there they had dinner cooked for us, a El Salvadorian specialty, called pupusas, which are corn tortillas stuffed with refried beans and cheese. Absolutely delicious. We played card games and hung out till bed. We then got up at 3:30 and jumped in a taxi and headed back to the bus station.
We were quickly boarded on a 45 passenger tour bus with about 15 people on board. It was great everyone pretty much had two seats to themselves. It was a long 12 hours on a bus. But I go to sleep and just relax the whole time. When we crossed into Honduras on our way to Nicaragua we had to go through customs. We were all kind of drowsy and not really thinking. When I got off the bus to walk into the border patrol office to have my passport checked I was immediately approached by about 10 Honduran men shouting at me and offering to “take” my passport. Of course they were speaking mostly in spanish and I didn’t understand much of it. They were also trying to exchange money with us. Anyway I made it through the border crossing with a new stamp in my passport and all the money I came with.
We got to Nicaragua at about 5:15 in the afternoon and got a taxi from Managua to Jinotepe where our ministry contact has a hotel for short term missions teams. You can come for about $20 a night per person and they will set up the ministry that you do while your here and they also have breakfast cooked for you every morning. That is NOT how the world race travels. In the hotel all the “comforts” of the states are available while where we are staying in La Quinta Esparanza does not have the comforts of home.
More to come…
Cody
