In the months leading up to my Race, I kind of overlooked my first three months in Central America. Not that I wasn?t looking forward to them, but I have already been to Nicaragua twice with my youth group for mission trips so it was a ?been there, done that already? thing. The minute we stepped out of the airport in Honduras, however, I remembered exactly how much I love the culture here…the brightly colored buildings, car horns honking, people selling anything you can imagine on the streets, Spanish music blasting, the beautiful mountains in the distance. Yet, in spite of all this beauty, the is so much need here…so much poverty and violence.
This month in Honduras we are working with the Heart of Christ ministry in La Hermita, which is a small village about an hour and a half from the capital city of Tegucigalpa. The ministry is run by Gracie and Lee Murphy, or as we know them, Mama Gracie and Papi Lee. They take in victims of rape and incest, both mothers and babies, and also have two girls with cerebral palsy in their care. They are also working to provide food for single mothers in La Ermita and other local villages. Four of the teams from my squad are working with the Murphy?s this month.
Our teams rotate between village ministry, construction ministry, and house ministry. The village ministry team goes to the different villages interviewing families to see if they qualify for the food program. The construction ministry team has been working on plastering and painting different rooms here at the compound. The house ministry team cares for the babies, toddlers, and cp girls as well as cleans the compound.
For fun, here?s a list of things I?ve gotten used to / interesting things that have happened to me in Honduras –
Taking cold bucket showers
Giving a scorpion a piggy back ride
Eating delicious street food
Making daily runs to the pulperia (store) for snacks
Turkeys gobbling outside my window at all hours
Cramming 27 people onto one bus
Crickets jumping on me in my bed (what can I say, bugs love me)
Thank you all for the support and prayers! I will try to post a photo blog when I have better internet so you all can see some of what I have experienced this month. Goodbye for now! Rita
