(Written February 5, 2014)
We have finished our first month in Guatemala and arrived safely in Honduras for a 4-day debrief with the whole squad and squad leaders. Not only them, however, but our Squad coaches, Gary and Joey, and Squad mentor, Jeremy, flew out to spend debrief with us. It was nice to have the whole family here to have fellowship, community, and to build each other up.
The teams from Puerto Barrios arrived a day before everyone else. Our buses arrived at 5:45am and we left shortly after 6am. Jen came out to bid us goodbye while Christian rode with us to the first bus stop. We travelled in two vans and crossed the border quickly. The borders are much easier to travel through than first world ones. We crossed through and stopped off to the station at the right, filled out paperwork one would normally fill out on an international flight, got our passports stamped and jumped back in the vans.
Honduras is different from Guatemala. While there are still shacks people are living in, so far I have seen nicer homes, well fed animals, and a clean country. Guatemala was covered in trash. Honduras also has a better infrastructure, we weren’t hitting our heads on the ceiling every 5 minutes because of potholes or speed bumps. This country seems better taken care of.
We stopped off at the first bus top and said goodbye to Christian. We rode on a charter bus to our final destination, arriving earlier than expected by several hours. We stopped once for snacks that were our lunch. There Rob left us to meet up with some friends in Honduras. The town debrief is located is the Valley of the Angels. Here people are a little less welcoming or friendly.
The next day Jeremy, Gary, and Joey arrived (Gary and Joey are married and our basically our squad parents). We all explored the city and had fun together waiting for the other teams. Apparently, their driver got loss and took them the wrong direction, they only found out when the bus broke down. They arrived late at night to us cheering them in.
These past three days have been similar in schedule. Breakfast at 8am, team debriefs scheduled at different times of day, if you aren’t scheduled you have free time. At 1 pm was lunch and one-on-ones with leaders were interspersed throughout the day. Squad family/fun time was 5:30pm with dinner at 6pm. At 7pm was worship/session. Today was a bit more fun as we had a funfetti 5k (it was actually like a mile) in the morning. Water was sprayed, flour thrown, eggs cracked, and confetti thrown. We said we baked a cake for Jessica’s birthday today. At 3pm we had female time/man time. We girls all at the end gathered the guys and sang a mash-up of songs to them and prayed. Joey told us stories and answered questions about her relationships and so much more. It was really encouraging.
This week was really to refresh us, renew our spirit, review the last month, see how much we have grown, and identify areas where God still calls us to a higher plain. We celebrated our month in Guatemala and then released it, preparing ourselves for ministry in Honduras.
