Bringing in the new year... Honduras style!

Monday, January 1. All I can say here is that celebrating the New Year in Honduras is an event like no other! Sure, we have fire works in the states, but down here? They have FIRE WORKS! Or, shall we say, mini-bombs. From mid-night till 3:00 am I am pretty sure thousands of new pot holes were created from the explosions that went off around the Mission House! So, while the rest of Honduras slept in Monday the crew got up at 7:00 am to get ready to go to the Kluge’s for breakfast (I guess it was wrong of me to have wished for some M-80’s to fire off to wake up our slumbering amigos, huh?).

After breakfast we went back to the Mission House to break down our load of bulk foods for the food give away. We spent about 2 ½ hours measuring out beans, rice, flour, sugar, coffee, etc, and placing it in gallon sized zip-lock bags. Then we bagged up the food (about 250 bags) and loaded up the pickups to take up to Mololoa for delivery. Jerren and Jonathan rode on top of the food to watch it (and because we did not have room inside the trucks for them!) and to make sure it did not fall out (although we did loose 1 bag that some lucky pedestrian picked up).

We arrived in Mololoa about 12:00 where we locked our hubs and put the trucks into 4 wheel drive and began our climb up to the top of the mountain. We hiked to the farthest houses first and worked our way down. We delivered house to house delivering a much needed bag of food, a smile, and a warm, “feliz ano Nuevo!” Greg Armstrong mispronounced “Cristo te ma” and told everyone that their name was Christ! We all had a good laugh (along with the Hondurans) and shrugged it off like any good gringo would do!!!

Susan and Spencer went to the church building around 1:15 and handed out stuffed animals and toys to the 1:00 and 1:30 group that came to eat. We ran out of toys on Friday and this group did not receive anything. We were determined that everyone in the feeding program was going to get a Christmas toy from us before we left. At 3:30 we had handed out all of the food and an entire mountain was given almost 2 weeks of food.

We headed back up to the Mission House for a couple of hours of free time. Some of the guys played soccer while the rest of us took a power nap! We left at 6:00 to go down into town for dinner at the new mall near Baxter. It is amazing and is MUCH larger than the other mall that we usually go to. After dinner we went back to the Mission House for devo. We had a great wrap up discussion. Everyone was very talkative and had a lot of thoughts on the week. It was truly amazing how much was done in just 5 working days with such a small group. After devo we started the clean-up of the dorm and packed up some of our stuff.

Tuesday was a “day of Tim” day. We got to sleep in till 8:30 (Randy woke us up or it might have been even longer) and we started loading our stuff onto the trucks. Greg and Jonathan got up early and took a leisurely 6 MILE run before we left! I guess we did not work hard enough for some people…. We made it to the airport around 10:30 and had a very quick check-in. Brandy and Jennifer said their goodbyes and we passed though security to the gate area.

We had a great flight into Houston. There we passed through customs without a hitch (we did not have the Canadians with us) and even got our entire luggage (again, we did not have the Canadians with us). We did pull a prank on Jonathan and his bag, which we carried out for 10 minutes till Greg Armstrong couldn’t contain his laughter. We connected and arrived in Nashville on time to some very happy parents.

Thanks to all who made the trip possible. From the donations of toys and money to the prayers and phone calls, this was a great trip. Honduras is a beautiful place, especially during December, and I hope that we will be able to take a team down there again next year. God bless you all and happy New Year!!! Next up, the May trip! Until next time, may God bless you and hold you in the palm of His hand.

TR