Day 6

Today we started the day by heading to the Valley Of Angels for some shopping before we headed to the Blind School.
This morning, one of my roommates...Jenny decided to let me sleep even though she was having a medical problem with her eye....yes she had pink eye. Instead of walking across the room to me for advice she went instead down the hall to Dr. Tom)(thankyou Jenny).

When we got to the VOA we headed to the nearest Pharmacy to get some eye drops for Jenny. You see is Honduras you can go to the Pharmacy and get prescription meds WITHOUT a prescription.....nice!!

Mark and I decided to break away from the shopping group (JENNY) and head off of the beaten path to explore new areas. We saw a coffee shop and I had to try a honduran frappacino, which had I really thought about it I probably would not have gotten since I did not know for sure if the ice they used was purified or not, or if the whipped cream came from a can or not. Mark took a pic of me taking a sip of the cool delight in case it would be the last picture of me alive.

After that Mark and I put our smart pants on and headed next door to the Ana El Fria Bar and grill to order a pizza. The pizza never came, but we did get to eat some really amazing bean dip. The fact that the pizza never came was probably a good thing.

Day 5

Day 5...Day 5...where fore art thou Day 5...Not in my memory .....oh wait now I remember....

On Wednesday my group headed out to Moa Loloa again to help out at the kitchen where children are fed.....that's for you Judy. The church building is being used at lunch time for the kids to come and have a meal prepared by a group of ladies and volunteers. I was tasked to help make tortillas. The dough was already made up by the group the day before so all I had to do was place the dough ball onto the flattening device and then lay the dough onto the griddle. Well, it seems easy but getting the dough to be flat on the griddle was not. I also was not fast enough in this process and was replaced. Below is a picture of my tortilla teacher. Notice the wad of dough in front of the bowl. Yes, that is the tortillas that I messed up.

Here are some pics of the kids

Day Four

Day four begins the same as day three.....with my roommates up before the roosters. This day I made it to breakfast.

On this day the goup I was with headed out to build a house in the community called Moa Lolola (sp?) Let me describe it to you. It is a really tall steep mountain with a little crick running a the base and another really tall steep mountain on the other side. If you are walking up or down it you have to take an O2 tank, repelling rope and spikes. Luckily for us we got a ride up to the house site by Jen Arnold...yea Jen!! Once we got there we found out that all teh building materials had been unloaded at the wrong place and we needed to move it all. Let me fill you in on the "building materials." It is all the lumber, boxes of nails, buckets of hammers, levels and such, post hole diggers, rock spikes taller than me, roofing materials (sheets and sheets of aluminum). We had to get all of this from the road down to the site about 60 feet straight down and another 30 feet over. We started carrying the board (2x4s, 4x4 and some other big something by something). I did not have a partner so I carried one board on my shoulder at a time, but then we got wise and made a line and slide the boards down. Of course if you were at the bottom of the assembly line there was an 80% chance that your legs were gonna get knocked out from under you. The building site was not quite ready for building so the boys and friends of the home owner worked the land until it was just right.

It began to rain and when it was raining it was chilly, so I played the put the rain coat on and take it off game all day. I think though, that this building site was my favorite of all time. The land was so steep that it created a huge crawl space and we had to build the front wall up last, which made for awesome pics. It was sooo beautiful. The view was worth a million dollars, but the house only a thousand. Oh Judy and I managed to wack a little girl in the head while moving boards around. OOPS!! Below is a pic of the finished project. Its the house with the stilts.

Day 3

Day 3 began, for me, extremely early. Monday morning is when i found out that my roommate who will remain nameless, liked to get up at the butt crack of dawn to take showers and get ready and such. I beleive I was asked at like 6:18am if I wanted the shower next.....NO, NO I didn't. I wanted to sleep....which had I gotten to sleep past 5:45 am I would have been a little more prepared for the next night, which I will go into later.

OK so, the earth is round...just kidding.....

Monday I headed out to Santa Ana to build a house. We stopped by Casa de Esperanza to plan the groups for the day and such. My group ended up hanging out for a while while we waited for supplies and automobiles to arrive to take us to our building site. While we waited kids were played with, soccer balls were kicked and about 3 cans of spray on sun screen was applied.

We piled in out truck when it got there and headed out to our building site. Once there we hiked to the spot....but wait....we didn't have tools yet so we waited for them to be brought.....but there were some over achivers in our group who said, "Tools, who needs shovels, post hole diggers and rock spikes when you have hands. Tools big deal." So we began digging the post holes with our hand...in the very rocky ground. Judy and I, after about 3 seconds got wise and started providing the entertainment for the afternoon.......movies quotes!! There was everything from Steele Magnolias to Shrek, from Fox and the Hound to The Princess Bride.

Judy and I working really hard

It may look like I am just standing around, but I actually finished hammering before the boys and am waiting on them to finish.

The tools finally came and up went the house. Judy manned the wood pile, while I drove in nails, Janice fell down the mountain and Brett played under the house. Another group came and helped us finish up.

Monday night we all, except for a group that Brett took to see the Matt at the hospital, went to the Jesus Statue. It was kinda sprinkling and wanted to rain, but it held off while we were there. Mark led devo and introduced us to the panting deer, while Jenny sang the wrong line to "Have you seen Jesus" and Margaret told Leslie that she broke her butt b/c she has a crack in it. There was laughing.

After we got settled in for the night I was awakened by knocking on the door. It was Judy who came to get me b/c there was lady who was sick. We stayed up with here for a bit, and decided that it was probably HTP (honduran toliet party) but in the morning she was getting worse, so after consulting with Dr. Tom we advised Terry the she needed to be taken to the hospital. She was and was admitted for acute pancreatitis. She was eventually flown back to the states on Friday.

So ends day three.

Day 2: Waiting, Choking and Hospital ERs

Sunday will be known as the day of "wait" because that is what we pretty much did all day....wait. After we got up and had devo we went to the airport to wait for the rest of the team to arrive. Luckily the traffic jam was over and we made it to the airport on time so that we would have plenty of time to wait. After parking the buses we went inside to the area where you wait for people to come through customs. I waited standing, sitting, leaning against the wall, sitting and standing somemore. I even played with a little girl to pass the time while we waited. Finally a few seats opened and Margaret, Judy, Leslie and I sat to wait. Eventually the torchers began filtering through and we helped them get their luggage to the buses.

We then headed across the street to eat lunch. Judy, Brett, Mark, Wyeth, Ryan, Collin and I ate at Little Ceasers where we had 2 slices and a drink for $1.35. Pretty awesome.

After we were done we loaded up on the buses and headed back to the mission to unload and have orientation. Once we got to the mission house it began to rain, rain, and rain some more. I now know what it is like to be in the boweling alley when God gets a strike....it is LOUD!

After everyone unpacked and changed we loaded the buses again and headed out for dinner in Santa Lucia at the Santa Lucia resort resrant. While there a couple of things happened: 1. Ryan choked and the hymlick was administered 2: Matt's leg looked really bad (I'll get to this later).

Ryan was fine after Dr. Tom and Ben did the abdomen punch and I played a game of bench leaping. Matt on the other hand did not fare as well. Matt had gotten bitten the week before by what we now think was a spider. Some where between his home and Honduras it began to get infected. Judy and I made our assessment of the situation and decided that he needed to go to the ER. But, first we all went to the oldest Catholic Church in the western hemisphere, the Santa Lucia Church. While we were all unloading Judy decided to play tag with one of the buses. She almost was made into a school bus concrete wall sandwich. We did our thing and sang worship songs, took pictures and OH I almost forgot. On the way to the church when we were walking from the resort we had to walk up this huge hill that we had previously walked down. We met a dog that Mark named noodles and Margaret lost a lung.

Anyway, after evening devo we headed back to the mission house, but Judy, Terry, Rudy and I took Matt (from above) to the ER at the Honduras Medical Center to get his spider bite looked at. We walked right in and were in a room within 2 min. That would never happen in the States. Turned out that Matt had staff in the bite and would have to be admitted so that he could have IV antibiotics and stuff.

We made a video of Matt lying on the gurney. ...pretty funny stuff.

So ends day 2.

The trip down

The trip down was pretty uneventful as compared to last year's musical (see Honduras 2006: The Musical). I was to meet Mary at the Nashville airport but did not find her until after we got off the plane in Miami. We had a little delay in Miami while we waited in the E terminal in Siberia, but we made it to Teguc without a problem. While Mary and I waited for our luggage we ran into Rudy and Ryan who were there to pick up Ryan's luggage that did not arrive when he did the day before.
After we got our bags we headed out to meet Terry and went to get some lunch at Wendy's. Then we headed to the new Bodega to hook up with Margaret, Jenny, Tricky Pat, Steffey and Leslie who were organizing the supplies that had been shipped prior to our arrival.
Saturday was the day for Terry to make 100 trips to the airport. He left us at the Bodega and headed back to pick up the Oklahomians Wyeth and Mark. We all loaded in the truck (about 12) and headed to the mission house. We left the luggage at the bodega b/c there was not enough room in the truck.....a toyota. After we got to the mission house Terryy headed back to the airport to pick up Brett and Judy. We all were to get ready and wait for their return so we could then go eat dinner at El Coral. Terry got back BUT did not have Brett and Judy. They were not at the airport and there was not another TACA flight coming in that night....so began the great hunt for the Canadians.......AND the birth of, " Are you my mom? Are you Brett and Judy? Are you Canadian?"
We all headed back to the airport...in the truck....but we ran into a traffic jam and were stuck for about 30 min. When we finally got to the airport it was closed and still no sign of Judy and Brett. We headed on to the resturant and while we were eating Jenny Wright showed up and following her was Judy and Brett. So we found out what had happened. TACA arrived early and Terry had been late due traffic. Jenny who lives in HOnduras and is friends with the Canadians had come to the airport to see them. After waiting and no signs of Terry they left with Jenny to go serach for us.....but missed us b/c we were out looking for them.
After dinner we all (14 now) piled into the toyota and headed back up the mountian. At about a speed of 10 mph.
So ends the first day.


Sorry no good pics from this day.