Honduras '11

As you may know I just got back from a week-long missions trip to Honduras. I thought that I'd utilize my blog and share about the trip rather than tell people multiple times. If my memory is correct this was my sixth missions trip to Honduras, and fourth specifically to La Venta, a small town about an hour north of the capital, Tegucigalpa.

I started going down because my dad went down and had great experiences there and he has always gone with me before. He was planning on going this year but realized the Thursday before we left that he just couldn't afford to miss an entire week of work so decided that he would not go. That was obviously tough for me and was going to change the trip quite a bit. On Saturday while I was packing we got a call from Kent, the other gentleman who leads the trips with my dad and who has been down probably 15 times. He told my dad that his son, Keith, who was planning on going, had hit a deer on his motorcycle. They rushed Keith to the hospital. My dad decided that he would have to go since Kent was not able to and we could not go without one of them. Thankfully Keith is okay-no broken bones but pretty severe road rash and he was pretty bummed about not being able to go. Once Kent found out that Keith was okay he decided to come down, so he made the flight on Tuesday. My dad, knowing that Kent was planning on coming down knew that he should leave early so he could work, left on Wednesday. Altogether I think everything worked out, it was just stressful at times and definitely not normal.

There were seven people on the trip: Kent/my dad, three college men, a guy who graduated from Taylor a few years ago, and his parents.  All but Cindy, the lone female, had been before. Cindy spent the week with the women, mainly cooking meals for us. The guys worked at a church in La Venta, which is the third year in a row I've worked there. They are adding classrooms and offices behind the church and we worked on pouring the footers for that the first four days. I believe we mixed thirty-nine 100 pound bags of cement, which we added rock, water, and sand to. I'm not exactly sure how much concrete that is, but it's quite a bit for mixing it all by hand. On Friday we worked on Osman and Suyapa's new house digging footers.  Osman is the pastor of the church and Suyapa is his wife; she was diagnosed with cancer last year and has been recovering from that.

Thursday we took the afternoon off to play soccer with some local Hondurans at Monte which was a lot of fun. The five of us who were playing got put on the same team with a couple of Hondurans, against about nine Hondurans. We played for probably an hour and a half and ended up winning 12-11, which we were all really excited about. I think I had three goals and three assists.

One exciting and different aspect of the trip was that Osman gave us all massages after working on Wednesday and Friday. I think he took a class to learn how to give massages and we were all eager to let him practice on us. That was pretty fantastic:) One of the best things about our mission trips to Honduras are the relationships that we've built. Where most people will go down for a week and never go back, there has been a core group of people that have gone down for years. I've been able to build a really strong relationship  with Osman and Suyapa and Eufimeo and his family, the care taker of Monte. Thankfully all three of them know enough English that I don't have to embarrass everyone with my terrible Spanish. I met one gentlemen my very first year that I also have a special bond with. His name is Osman but everyone calls him Little Osman so we don't confuse him with Pastor Osman. He told me that he's twenty-five, but I don't believe him. I'm fairly confident he's closer to 35. He speaks hardly any English so we really can't talk, but we've mixed countless matches of concrete together so have a special bond. He is also the strongest pound for pound man I have ever met. He's about 5'4" and maybe a hundred pounds, but if he has any fat I'd be shocked. All of that to say, he worked with us starting on Wednesday which was really nice. It's always great to see him but not always a guarantee.

On Saturday we decided not to work before heading to Tegucigalpa and the entire group of us besides Kent and Cindy, along with Eufimeo and Little Osman went hiking up a mountain. It's really mountainous and beautiful and green in Honduras and there is a river that comes down one of the mountains near Monte. So we followed that up and then on our way down we stopped in one of the little pools to go swimming. There was a cliff about 8 feet up that we could jump off of into the water that was a lot of fun. After swimming we headed to this really nice bed and breakfast in Tegucigalpa for a cook out. We stayed the night there and flew out in the morning.

That's a quick snapshot of my trip, it was really good and enjoyable and we did not have any sickness or injuries which is always nice:)