Wednesday in El Paraiso

First of all thank you to everyone praying for us. Please continue your prayers as some of our members are little under the weather including Alehandro. Nothing serious, just some getting used to the food I think.

Church is on Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday nights. The internet cafe closes at 8 local time so tomorrow there will not be a post. However on Friday morning we are leaving for Tegucialpa again. We should be able to post Friday evening and Saturday, and hopefully on Sunday from Houston.

I thought for this post I would just post some random notes from my personal journal and then on Friday we are going to post some from team members journals and comments.

Tonight I put comments on the pictures I posted the other night and I'll try put up some new ones.

Thanks again for everyone's support.
Bob

Day 3 - Sunday

We went to the work site after breakfast. It was a 15 minute walk through streets deep with mud and ruts from tires. There were a couple things that needed done before tomorrow that should have only taken a couple of hours. However the trustee with a key to the tool shed was two mountains away and had to come by bicycle. That took a couple more hours. So we waited and played with kids who flocked around us.

Alfredo was a huge hit, drawing them pictures. Chuck made them some paper airplanes which they flew all over the place, and Josh, Brent, and Alex played soccer with them in the muddy street.

Finally the trustee arived as did a load of sand. The sand was shoveled into buckets and passed brigade style inside the walls, up a scaffolding, up a ladder and dumped into piles onto the roof. A second load of sand was delivered and the process started all over again.

After we got these tasks accomplished we went back to the hotel and took showers, then went with the pastor and Alehandro to Danli where they showed us around. We got to see the Methodist church there that is the model for the one we are working on. It is really nice. It is the second largest Methodist church in Honduras. We also got to meet the pastor. He told us they have about 110 adults and about 80-90 kids coming to their service. He said they have about 165 members.

After we got back from Danli we went to worship with the church and to hear Pastor Santos preach. They had an extra guitar and asked Brent to play with them. He did an awesome job. The service was fantastic. Very lively and the people just welcomed us and were so grateful we had come to work.

A couple things about the service that really struck me was the enthusiastic singing and the fervent, heartfelt prayers.

Day 4 - Monday

Today was our first real work day. We are all amazed at the un-organization we face at the job site. The culture down here is very different from our fast paced, hectic days. They think nothing about waiting two hours for a load of sand or gravel. And EVERYTHING gets re-used. Nothing is wasted. Some of the boards we are using as supports have long seen their better days. But they get the job done.

Yesterday and today we formed bucket brigades and moved 5 loads of sand and gravel from outside where they dumped it to up on the roof. Brent and Josh kept looking to see if their biceps were any bigger. It was a tough job, but everyone jumped in and got it done quickly.

Again today the kids were all around us when school let out. They are so fun. They loved to have their picture taken and today took Donna's camera and took her picture with it. She ended up with a huge number of pictures, most of them of fingers in front of the lens and the ground. The kids just bond so easily with everyone. By the end of the day today, when we left to walk back to the hotel they were hugging us and giving us kisses. The boys love shaking hands and doing fist bumps.

Day 5 – Tuesday

One really cool thing today is that Melvin invited me, Corey, Alfredo, Alehandro, and Jon up to his house. We went in and his sister immediately started getting out chairs for us to sit in the living room. She made is this fantastic coffee, and served it to us in a china tea pot with cups and saucers. During the conversation they made mention to Melvin's dad that Jon wanted to ride a horse. The next thing we knew, here comes Melvin's dad leading a horse through the house! He brings it in the back door, through the kitchen, through the living room and out onto the front porch. It is about half a meter down from the walk to the street. He leads it down the sidewalk to where the walk meets the street and into the street. Jon got on it and rode bareback up and down the street a few times. Much to the amusement of all the locals who came out of their houses to watch “Gringo” ride past on a horse.

After that we walked up to the top of the hill to where the big cross is that overlooks the town. From there you can see all of El Paraiso and have a great view of the church we are working on. We also realized just how close we are to Nicaragua. We had discussed going there to cross the border and get our passports stamped, but Pastor Santos said that was not a good idea and we respected his wishes. From the top of the hill, the very next hills over is in Nicaragua. Less than 10 minutes away from the center of El Paraiso.