Home Again

Just a footnote to let all followers of this blog know, we had an uneventful trip home yesterday with three of us arriving back in Franklin about 9pm and the other 4 about 1:30am.  We all left San Pedro Sula just before noon (with temperatures in the 90's) and flew to Houston where we had to take two different connecting flights home.

We'll sort through our thoughts over the next several days but we have to count this as a very successful and fulfilling short-term mission trip.  The project that we participated in was well-designed and all parties involved, both recipients and traveling team, benefited from the experience.   We're grateful to all for your support and prayers.  Thank you all for this opportunity to "Go Into The World to Love and Serve the Lord".  We gave it our best shot and had a lot of fun at the same time.  Thank you.                                                               dan

Tuesday April 27

Our last full day in Honduras!  We started early from Copan because we had received a call that the Bishop of Honduras would like to meet with us.  After devotions and an early breakfast we were on the road back to San Pedro Sula.......a three hour trip.

We arrived at the Cathedral complex in San Pedro Sula in time for our 11am appointment .   We met with Bishop Lloyd Allen in his office and had a short and pleasant visit.  We then headed back to our hotel to relax and pack before our final team dinner.

Dinner was a special occasion as we invited
Reverenda Barbara, her driver, Freddy (our driver & interpreter) and his family to join us at a nice local restaurant.  There's not much to say except that the food was good, we ate too much, and a good time was had by all.  It was a great way to say thank you to the people who had been helping us throughout this entire mission trip.

Copan Ruins

the bird man of Copan

street scene in Copan Ruinas with mototaxi

Our work was done so now we're having a little fun.  Immediately after church on Sunday in Delicias we left the San Pedro Sula area and headed north to visit the Mayan ruins at Copan.  We had rooms for two nights in the colonial town of Copan Ruinas and tickets to the archeological site on Monday.  We took the advice a to get an early start before the heat of the day became extreme, but we were wilting by 11a.m.. Our next stop was lunch and a tour of a very nice Bird Sanctuary and Avian Rehabilitation Center.  A few of us got very personal with the Macaws and as a result left with (well-deserved) torn shirts and mutilated caps.

Probably the most enjoyable part of the day was the strong thunderstorm that came through Copan in the evening.  Streets were flooded and electricity was out throughout the town.  Even some of the ground floor rooms in our hotel had water running across the floors.  The best part was that the temperature immediately dropped about 10 degrees.                                                                                             D

Sunday April 25, 2010

Today we attended church services in Delicias and said adios to some of our new friends.  The service was a little different than what we are used to at home.  For starts, the 9:30 service really started at about 9:55.  Then at one point during the service a dog wandered in and took a nap under the pews.  Kids came and went, mothers nursed their babies, and the LOUD sound system drowned out the chattering children.  We really did enjoy the enthusiasm of the singing and the very sincere and active passing of the peace.

We participated during the service with Brian reading a lesson in Spanish, and Dan reading the Gospel in English after Reverenda Barbara first read it in Spanish.  At the conclusion of the church service Dan & Kim presented gift bags from our Daughters of the King in Franklin to the Daughters in Delicias.

Saturday, 24 April, 2010

The family water tank.

Jose, our master stove-builder and Jack-of-all-trades gathering coconuts for our break.

Coconut Milk Break

Another Stove!

We had a little unfinished business so we decided to return to Delicias today and finish the last 4 stoves for which we had purchased supplies.  This was the hottest day yet so we started earlier and were able to finish in the early afternoon.  We are enjoying our sense of accomplishment as we were able to complete 4 water tanks, 11 latrines, and 15 stoves.  Our team also rebuilt a stove that was not heating properly and demonstrated to local contractors how to prevent the same problem in the future.

We have also really enjoyed working beside and for some very hard working but economically disadvantaged families.  We are impressed with their work ethic and ingenuity to accomplish a task with the crudest of tools.  We have probably learned at least 100 things that you can do with a machete, including cut holes in metal roofing, score and bend small metal rods, and fell medium-sized trees and trim to fit as roof supports and cross-beams.

Tonight we are rehydrating and relaxing in San Pedro Sula.  Tomorrow morning we will again particiate in church services at San Lucas Church in Delicias with the people that we have been working with all week.

Dan, Brian, Dave, Kim, Don, Bill & Mike

Friday 23 April

Can i say another hot one today?  At 8pm local time our weather report reads 90 degrees F and feels like 104 degrees).  It had to be 96-98 at our work site today.  We had to rework our budget for bottled water and buy a few more cases.




Morning Devotions at the Green Frog Hotel

Kids leaving school at Delicias

i

Mortar Mixers














Don, the Bricklayer

Your Dollars at Work













Bill, the candy man.

Thursday-San Pedro Sula

Kim, the Pied Piper of Delicias, Honduras


Another hot one.  Today temperature was 34 degrees centigrade.....we just knew it was really hot.
We've finished our 5th latrine, 9th stoves and 4th water tank so we have been busy.  We definitely enjoy the end of the day when we can cool off and relax.  We have to head straight back to our hotel from work because we do not want to leave the impression that all Americans dress and smell as badly as we do at the end of the day.

top to bottom: hiking up to our work sites, Brian and Kim with one of the recipients of their work,
a family anxiously waiting to use their new stove.

Today's Photos:
1) Dave Betz with the recipient of a stove that he helped build.
2) Bill  White and Dave Betz working on a stove.
3) A small, young girl shaming us be carrying a bucket of sand for our cement on her shoulder.
4) Don Owen and Mike Gardinier beside their recently constructed latrine.

Tuesday in Delicias

After a good night's rest we were ready to hit it again and we are definitely becoming more skilled in out building projects.  We stuck with our specialties so Dave & Bill are stovebuilders, Brian & Kim build water tanks, and Mike, Dan and Don are latrine building experts.

Today's pictures are the team ready to start this mornng, a stove being used today that our team finished just yesterday,  the ladies of the village of             Delicias preparing our lunch, the home of a family that received a latrine today, and the youngsters of a family excited about their newly finished latrine.

First Work Day

We gathered early in the hotel as Dave led devotions before a nice breakfast with locally fresh papaya, then our driver showed up and we were off to the village of Delicias for our first full day of work.  No one told us that we were going to hike up to the top of a ridge!  As we were going up we passed horses carrying bags of cement for our projects.   We started off working together on a family latrine but soon divided into teams for stoves, water tanks and latrines.  We worked side by side and in the homes of recipient families through the day.

Yes it was hot.  Very hot, and we went through the water that we carried with us before we took a lunch break.  We had a nice lunch of chicken and rice in the village at the bottom of the ridge so we had the opportunity to walk back up the hill after lunch.

At the end of the day we had helped complete one latrine, one water tank and one very efficient wood stove.
We definitely learned lots of new ingenious building techniques from our local supervisors.....ask us later!

We are working hard, staying healthy and having fun (and we do appreciate the prayers).                dp

Another long day.  Left at 8am for Delicias, church, to airport.........got the 3 missing bags, missed Bill, who had arrived and left in a taxi before we got there, back to the hotel to find Bill, then to lunch at "Power Chicken", then a long drive to meet Fr. Hector and go up the hill to visit the church at Concepion de la Norte.  We did a quick inspection tour of the new walls of the church (and new windows and glass doors) which we had helped to raise funds for.  The work looked very good and did us proud!  We had to leave and hustle down the mountain road to get back to the paved road before dark.  We finally made it back to our hotel about 8:30pm.  And tomorrow we start our work!

I'm too tired to blog but will copy the above paragraph to the blog site and try to clean it up later.  I'll add pictures as Im able so you might have to look back a day or two.  Oops........just lost electricity so no internet.  Will try to save this on battery and send later. 

5am Monday and electricity came back on.  Will try to get a few photos added and post this before we lose electric again.

Saturday--A Long Travel Day

I'm writing this from our comfortable digs in the Green Frog Inn in San Pedro Sula after a long day of travel.
We met at St. John's parking lot at 2:30am to load into two vehicles to drive to the Pittsburgh Airport for our 6am flight.  I should say that SIX of the seven of us gathered at 2:30am while one unnamed individual caught up on his sleep.  I won't say his name to save embarrassment but he's an honorable person with initials of HWW and we are holding him in contempt until he shows up on tomorrow's flight.

While our missing man caused the first adrenaline rush of the day, the next was negotiating a nightmare through the Houston Airport.  Our flight from Pittsburgh arrived a few minutes late so we knew that we would have to rush to make our connecting flight to San Pedro Sula.  We arrived at terminal B and would have to use a bus to get to our gate in terminal E.  As we headed toward the bus we found a huge line of people snaking down a long hallway waiting for the bus.  Attendants told us that our only chance was to exit the terminal and take the train and then to renegotiate through security (and go through the bag inspection and remove shoes, etc all over again) to get to terminal  E.  Sooo, we hustled through the bowels of the airport, boarded the very slow train that was packed and wouldn't start until doors were very clear, suffered through slow stops at terminal C and D and finally arrived at E.  We hustled up two flights of stairs and found a security line that would take us at least  15 minutes past our flight time to get through.  At that point we were pretty sure that we would NOT make it to Honduras today.

Well, we worked our way through the line and found that the flight had been delayed 35 minutes until 9:35am.
We ran as fast as old guys can run and boarded our plane at 9:40 just as they closed the gate.  Whew!!

No time for restroom breaks or breakfast but we did get on the plane!

We then had an uneventful flight to San Pedro Sula.........except that luggage for Dan, Brian and Dave did not make the trip with us!  After filling out the lost luggage forms we walked out into the heat and humidity of Honduras and were met by Rev. Barbara Boghetich and some of her team.  They transported us to our hotel where we were able to relax a bit after a long day.              

In the evening our new friend and driver, Freddie, met us and took us all to Barbara's house for dinner.  We wrapped up about 7:30pm as a few of us were starting to nod.  We'll have no trouble sleeping tonight.    dp                                    

Team Commissioning

Today it is finally starting to feel as if we are really going to go this time.  We are less than a week from departure and are all as ready as we can be.  Everyone is going over their packing lists and trying not to forget anything that we might need.

During the regular 10am Sunday service today we seven were commissioned to go forth to Honduras and show the Love of Christ and share the Good News.  Now that is a heavy responsibility!!  The Rector said individual prayers for each of us as she sent us forth.  It's also pretty humbling to see the sign-up sheets and know that people in the church are going to be constantly praying for us during our travels.