Blue skies and rainbows

Child at Hospital Escuela - This is what happens when Torch takes over the Hospital!

We awoke this morning with the sun streaming into our rooms. What a welcome sight! After 2 days of solid rainfall from the storm we were blessed with a beautiful morning. A beautiful blue sky with white fluffy clouds greeted us as we walked outside. The ground was still damp and water droplets fell from the trees. The team was pumped and ready for a big day of work after spending a lot of time inside yesterday. You could just feel it in the air. The breakfast crowd dwindled as the need for sleep became more valuable than food. I for one chose Pop Tarts for more sleep!

Morning devotional was lead by Matt Tabors from Nashville, Tennessee. He talked about doing everything in the name of Jesus. It was all that was needed to get everyone going for the day. We spent about 25 minutes today working in our journals and then packed up gear for the day. By 9:00 we were up and going. We divided into two teams for the day and set out. One team would be in the Valley of Angels and the other would be working in Nueva Oriental.

Kids at the blind school just love toys that make noise!

The Valley of Angels team was made up of two construction teams who returned to finish the houses that were started earlier in the week. Joe Merrilat headed up one team and Nathan Reeves the other. They completed the houses by mid-afternoon and returned back to the Mission House. It was nice to work in dry weather and have chain saws working properly today. The other team stayed on campus and packaged and boxed food for about 200 families. These food boxes will feed a family of 8 for 2 weeks. Once the boxes were done we drove out to Nueva Oriental, a very poor squatter community on the outskirts of Teguc. This is an awesome community, well organized and planned. There is a common area on a hill that we parked our bus. People from accross the vally rim walked to us to receive the food boxes. We distributed the food out the back of the bus while other team members passed out clothes and toys. It was very calm and peaceful the entire time we were there. The excitement of the day was when the bus got stuck in a giant mud puddle leaving the village. There is nothing like seeing a bunch of gringos pushing a bus out of the mud!!! We left the village with the sounds of cheers from the crowd we had just served!

After dinner we finally was able to go to the Jesus statue for devotional. Torch is the only group that is allowed to go there after sunset. The park was locked but we were allowed to walk down the road to the statue. We carried ladders to scale the wall (sounds more daring than it really was) and went to the base of the statue. Tim gave us some history of the city and the statue before we sang. It was a clear night and the lights of the city were clearly visible. It was beautiful to look down onto the city with all of the lights. It really makes you realize how big the city really is. Ryan Brunsink, my summer intern from Virgina, spoke. His lesson challenged us to become a radical follower of Jesus. 10 minutes after devo ended it began raining again. It is amazing watching God work! He just always seems to provide exactly what we need for this trip.

After devo it was back to the mission house. We have been sharing the campus for the past few days with about 300 middle and high school music students. I have to admit it challenged our patience with all of the violins and drums. They were everywhere we turned and most of us still can hear scales in our sleep. Things finally quieted down about 11:00 and most of us drifted off to sleep. Fatigue is setting in but tomorrow should be a easy day for us. We are leaving at 8:45 for worship service and I predict a small breakfast crowd tomorrow.

This is what a family used to live in before Torch Missions bult them a new house!

Buenos noches, Dios te bendiga (good night and God bless you) from all of us down here. Tired but fulfilled in Honduras.

TR