potatoes, cabbage, and carrots oh my!

Today was an awesoome day here in Honduras. I am pretty sure I said "Welcome to Honduras" at least 68 times. In case you were wondering, that was not the awesome part of today. What we did today was.....

At 4:30 this morning the group from Memphis arrived at the Mission House. After a long bus ride they crashed and slept in to shake off the travel legs. Except for the long drive the trip went smoothly. Breakfast was from 7:00 till 8:00. Refried beans, scrambled eggs, fresh pineapple and toast. Tyler Gist, from SC, spoke at our morning devotional, held at the overlook. After devo our team laoded up and drove down into town to our warehouse. At the warehouse we had a huge load of food waiting for us to repack into family portions. 50 pound bags of beans, rice, flour, corn meal, along with spaghetti noodles, tomato sauce, and other goods were sorted and packed into family sized bags to await a food distribution next week.

While the team was packing food a few of our group traveled into town to the open air market. Their objective was to purchase fresh fruit and produce for today's food distribution. Fresh cabbage, carrots, onions, cucumbers, potatoes, oranges, mangos, and other food was bought for an unbelievable $500. We were able to make 150 bags of food, all fresh, to give away. We had a lot of fun shopping in the crowded market, trying to get the best prices from the vendors.

After the food was sorted and packed, we took the fresh food bags and went to the Valley of Angels for distribution. We turned off the beaten pass before we reached the city, and drove to the back of beyond, turned left, went 10 more miles and we were there. We parked our bus on the soccer field (you cannot build a village unless there is a place for a soccer field) and used pick ups to drive the bags of food down the dirt roads that lead from the soccer field. Team members followed the trucks and delievered house to house. We were able to give every house on this mountain top food. It was BEAUTIFUL up on top of the mountain looking out over the mountain ranges on either side. We played some soccer on the field and visited with many of the people who lived there.

Travelers arrived this evening from Memphis (Harding Academy) and Yale just in time for dinner. We are waiting to see if our late night travelers from Sarasota and Clarksville, TN, arrive. So far it has been like playing the Honduras lottery as to whether a flight will arrive on time, be late, cancelled, re-routed, or if we have our people on the flights. It has been pretty much crazy and Mark Connell has basically lived at the airport today.

I hope that everyone will check the blog tomorrow (Sunday), I will be posting a website you might be interested in. Starting Monday you will be able to log onto the site and watch and listen to a live broadcast of our evening devotionals. You will be able to make comments to us while the devo is going on as well. I hope you will take advantage of this awesome technology and will enjoy "being here" with us!

Tyler Steffy spoke tonight during our evening devo. Even though everyone is tired we had a good night of singing and praise. After a few minutes of visiting and meeting each other (we currently have people here from Tennessee, Alabama, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Conneticut, and Virginia) most everyone headed off to their rooms.

Sunday we plan on going to Los Pinos for worship. We helped assist in the start of this congregation about 7 years ago. After church services we will be going to the mall to eat at the food court and then will head over to Hospital Esquela to visit the patients and pass out toys and stuffed animals. At 4:00 we are taking the Sunday school class from Mololoa (about 70) to KFC for chicken and a chance to play on the GIANT playground. Most, if not all of these kids, have never been more than a mile from the home since they have been born. This will be a wonderful treat for them

Its 11:00 at night, the dogs are barking and the roosters are crowing..... its going to be a good night. Good night from Torch central. Keep us in your prayers!

TR