Sunday & working/celebrating the 4th

Sunday is usually a day of rest around here and it kind of was.  We got to sleep a little later and we worshiped with the church in Mololoa.   (Where I had built a house the day before!). It is always cool to worship in a bilingual service.

The people at the mission house have part of all of the day off on Sundays, so we had a lighter breakfast and lunch in the mall after church.

Here is Pat giving this baby the first solid food ever!!! Cinnamon roll!

The rest of the day, we worked on sorting, assembling food and medical supplies.  Diane and I were ready for some quiet time, so we worked on bags for new mothers in our room.  We assembled about 75 bags.  I had posted a picture and said I would reveal in the blog what it was.  Diane's church has a sewing group and they work on different projects.  That pattern was found on the Internet.  It is a washable, reuseable sanitary pad.  They made enough for us to put two in each bag.

Monday was the 4th of July and they've planned a special celebration for us.  For $5 each, our group can get the whole movie theater and watch Independance Day.  (That includes a drink and popcorn!)

The word had gotten out that we had made up the new mother bags and one of the leaders asked if we wanted to go to the hospital & of course, we did.   Every time we go, it's a little different.  This year, one of our speakers is a cool COC youth minister from New Jersey (tats and all).  He's a great speaker, and what's even better, he can speak Spanish.  We headed into Hospital Escuela and he found someone who happened to be the main administrator for the hospital.  He lead us to the areas where we could visit.   Someone had sent some supplies to donate and he took us down below in the halls underground.  We had never been there before!!!  We even passed the morgue!!!

Capybara

Jenny Taylor, Diane and I were the only ones who visited the new mothers.  We had almost exactly enough bags.  It would have been exact, but a few mothers had "hemelos" (This may not be the correct spelling, but it means twins.)

We headed back to the Mission House for a quick lunch and then our group had to get 200+ heavy, floppy food bags loaded on the back of the bus.  I helped with that and got quite a workout!!

This is Reed.  This is her 3 or 4 missionary trip.  Her parents have been coming since they were in college. She is a hard worker and always is a trooper.  She will be in 2nd grade next year!

We then headed up the mountain to a very pretty area to hand out the bags.  I made the first steep hike with two heavy bags & I was winded!  Could someone please check what the elevation is here?  We can sure tell a difference.  Actually, the Mission House is even higher up the mountain!!!  It was very beautiful though.  When you get out of the city it is much cleaner.

After that, I started handing bags to our people out of the back of the bus.  This was also a workout, but I really liked it.  We finished around 4.  I couldn't believe we had actually given out all of the bags.  You have to understand, those people don't live on nice little streets.  They live on windy paths way up the mountain.  I commend all of the young people who hiked those paths tirelessly.  Specifically, I worked with Hunter Galbraith, Rachel Tucker, Kelvin Roberts, and Ansley Roberts, as well as others.  Shout out to their  parents!!!

The things you see in the mountains

We all rushed to get showers to be ready for dinner.  It was about that time that we heard there was going to be a baptism.  Sara Whitley from Brandon, FL put Christ on in baptism.  We rejoiced with the Angels!!!

It is the 4th of July, and we had an extra good dinner.  Pupusas are a local specialty.  They are made of corn tortillas and they are similar to empanadas, truly delicious!!!  We were in a hurry to make it to our movie, which we did.  I have to say, I couldn't keep my eyes open for the movie, but it was fun anyway.

All in all, a very full two days!!!

Frankies house built with love

My wireless keyboard is acting up again today.  All of the shift keys arent working correctly so, grammar police, please forgive me!

Today is Monday and it is the last house I have to build with donations.  This house was built in memory of Frankie Caratini, a young man and father of two.  He lost his life tragically at the hands of another several months ago.  His mother, friends and family mourn his loss to this day.

It was a blessing to be able to bring a small ray of sunshine to this horrible incident.

The morning started out rainy, so I was wondering if it would be another *pigpen* build.  You know like the other one where we were wallering in the mud.  It actually cleared up and it was a great day to build.

This was the beginning of the hike, but the picture doesnt do it justice!

We were told that this family was referred to us by our busdriver and the night before it was announced that it would be my last house.   In total, our team will have built 14 houses in all!

This is the mom and two of her children.  The parents said they had two more children, but we didnt know where they were.  This little girl had a dirty plastic baby doll with matted hair, but I didnt get a picture of her with it.

When you go on a build you are always wondering a few things, 1.  Will the lumber be at the site?

2.  How far will you have to hike to get to the site? and 3.  How steep will the hike be?

The suitcase is filled with our housewarming presents.  It had sheets, towels, Spanish Bible, a few toys,  linens, a pot, and other household items. 

Usually the bus can only go so far on these dirt, steep, rutted roads.  He let us out and I asked where the site was and he pointed up to what looked like a cell phone tower.  Needless to say, I was glad I had my hiking boots.  Everyone said this was the steepest site they had ever seen.  We were basically right below the cell phone tower.  We could look across the valley to the mountains on the other side and we lookee even with the Jesus statue!!!  We were lucky enough to have tire steps most of the way, even though they went straight up!!!

These hikes always make you feel out of shape, but I feel some comfort in knowing that the higher altitudes makes it harder.  Even though we had the tire steeps, there was one spot, where there was only rock and dirt and you had to find your footing just like you were rock climbing.  I always take a posthole digger to help me.  We didnt lose anyone and the built went extremely well.  We were done before 3 and and then we headed back down.  Im not ashamed to say, that on the part without the tires, I went down on my bottom.

A Honduran man saw us and came over and asked us to pray for his girlfriend.  There had been some dispute over land and a man lashed out and cut her on the back with a machete.  I didnt see it, but they said she probably had 60-70 stitches.  

This is the family and you can see whats left of there house that was torn down.

On a side note, I had two Clarksville teens on my build, Meghan Judd and Garrett Roberts.  Meghan had been with me on another build, but it was so great to see what wonderful young people they have grown up to be.  I know their parents are proud!

If possible, we try to give the family a housewarming gift.  We put household items and other things for the family.  We dont usually know what the family consists of, but Im so glad Jo Dawn put this stuffed cat in our box!!  This is one happy little girl!!  

We had a small team that went to Didasko orphanage to paint the playground and bunkbeds.  The other team broke down medicine for a medical clinic and they went on a Gatoraid blitz.  They basically went around town looking for street workers.  They give them a Gatoraid and tell them, In the name of Jesus or something similar.  Weve been told that the workers now look for us!

The fruits of our labors, Sunday

Today is the Lord:day 

By the way my little Apple keyboard suddenly won:t let me use the apostrophe!!!! I also found out that my parentheses aren:t working, so please bare with me.  I don:t pretend to be a great writer, but it:s kind of embarassing when a teacher makes simple grammatical mistakes!!  

See the houses toward the back, they are Torch houses.

Our plan was to worship with the church of Christ at El Diamante.  You may remember that this is the area that is *on fire* with the Lord.  The Keys group had already built two classrooms there and we plan and we have built several homes there.  )If you look closely, you can see Torch homes in the pictures.

)Unfortunately, many Hondurans play futbol on Sunday instead of going to church.  I was thinking they should organize a church league for after church and maybe have a meal or something.)

Church services here are always wonderful.  The Hondurans sing out and their love of God seems to surround and envelope you.  Of course, when we sing, we have to show we are enthusiastic too.  Garrett Roberts from Clarksville, TN led the singing and did a super job.

Terry had a large rock and asked what that rock was.  Of course, everyone said a rock, but he told us a story about Michaelangelo.  Someone asked how he made the scuplture of David from a rock. Michaelangelo said that David was inside the rock, he just had to let him out.   We are all rocks, but in the creators hands, we can be beautiful creations, instead of rocks.  We have to let God use us and mold us into what He wants us to be.  

Terry finished and then our interpreter started talking in Spanish with so much force and passion that other Honduran:s started coming to the windows to look inside.  I could follow most of what he was saying or almost screaming.  He was saying, Clothes don:t matter, family doesn:t matter, friends don:t matter.  God is first!!!  At one point, he got on a chair.  He continued this for about 10 minutes.  I think if I hadn:t been right with the Lord, I would have been walking up!!!  That:s how much passion he spoke with!

The invitation ended with 3 baptisms and more comments by the normal preacher.  I think he had to add to the sermon.  I think in all the whole service probably lasted almost 2 hours..  Another fact:  we have worshipped there in the past and we had to sit on the floor.  This year, we had chairs!!   I took me a little while to realize that the chairs had come from the container that had arrived a couple of days ago!   I cant remember if I mentioned it or not because I wasn:t feeling well that evening and I didn:t work as hard as most people did.  I:m sure everyone  was happy to see the fruits of their labor!!

(Torch members are touring the new classrooms which also had new desks that came from the container our team unloaded.)

Sundays always consist of visiting La Esperanza, the mission that trains women with skills so they can get jobs to support their families.  Our group spent about an hour or more shopping there and then we headed to Valle de Angeles for a relaxing day of shopping.  We ended the day back at the mission house with dinner provided by a restaurant that caters called Taco Loco.  Sunday is the one day that the Villa Gracia staff gets off.  They worked so hard Saturday that it is too bad they can:t take more time off!!

Valley of the Angels pictures

Evening devo, plus you will see another tradition.  If you leave belongings around you have to perform to get them back.  It might be singing, Im a little teapot, or some other stunt.

Stay tuned, tomorrow, Lord willing, will be my last house build!!!  Please forgive the wacky punctuation marks!  I don:t have time to change them all, even if I could!!