Written 10/7/10
So I feel like I have been officially inducted into World Race travel days. We finally made it to Tegucigalpa, Honduras after a 6 hour van ride turned into a 17 hour cross country adventure. We were blessed to have a van of our own instead of taking public transportation, however the exact city we were going to was lost in translation which resulted in a scenic drive all throughout Honduras. I am pretty sure we circled the entire country before making it to the capital. It was a beautiful drive through Honduras, but 17 hours is a LONG time! I am pretty sure our van driver has the highest score in the game of dodging pot holes and semi trucks while maintaining his 60mph speed on the winding mountain roads. We managed to avoid all but a few pot holes and all oncoming cars because our driver, Ricardo, was the bomb.com!
He loves Jesus and I am pretty sure he never stopped smiling the entire day, even though he drove a manual car up and down mountains for 17 hours. The Lord definitely blessed us with a wonderful driver and our own van. However for future reference I now know that whenever you ask how much longer it will be, the answer will most likely be 2.5 hours. It seemed like every time we asked, we were always given the answer of 2.5 hours…17 hours later…we realized it was not 2.5 hours away. We found many creative ways to sit/lay throughout the journey, because sitting in one position for 17 hours is next to impossible. We were only stopped twice by the Honduran police. After a few intimidating looks and some questions the first policeman let us go with no problem. The second time we were stopped it was not looking too promising for the van full of missionaries, until our contact realized we had a Coca Cola. She said we could bribe him with something energizing and he would probably let us pass. Sure enough as soon as she handed over the Coke the police deiced he would let us pass. I never realized the value of a Coke until today, and will now carry one on me at all times. Many memories were made and much bonding happened over those 17 hours in such close quarters.
Our cozy van 🙂 (view from the back seat)
We are staying in a dorm style house up in the Honduran mountains in a town called El Horno. We all have our own bed, we have a full working kitchen, a hot shower, and a living room with a wall of windows. The Lord has definitely blessed us with an amazing contact named Tony, as well as a wonderful living situation. Sure there is a gecko the size of small dragon (ok minor exaggeration) living in our room, but we have beds and warm showers! We are not sure the exact ministry we will be doing because our contact has given us SO many wonderful options to choose from. He is leaving most of what we do up to us. We know that we will be teaching English in the schools in El Horno, helping fix up the buildings on the property we are staying on, as well as working with street kids. We will also be going into Los Pinos, which a very poor village, to just hang out with the street kids and slowly build a relationship with them. Besides that nothing else is decided on but as soon as I know I will let you know. Our contact is giving us a few days to just get adjusted and figure out what type of ministry we would like to do, but we will be starting ministry on Monday (10/11). As soon as I know more about what type of ministry we will be doing I will let y’all know. We have to drive about 30 minutes for internet, so I will probably only be updating my blog once a week.
T
TTo our surprise Honduras gets quite cold…when you have limited clothes you get creative with layering 🙂
P.S. I learned that rice and eggs can indeed look like mashed potatoes and chicken bits and combined with soy sauce, bell peppers, and chicken bullion makes for one excellent meal!
