Honduras Day #4

Saturday, December 29, 2012

We started off this day by riding down to the village of La Colonia. This was the first time that anyone from our group had been down here before. The church that you see here was actually the house of one of the women there. We were in the largest room and that was where they regularly held church. We did the same VBS routine here with music, skit, crafts, and food.

 

While we were doing crafts with the kids, Morgan and Danielle were chillin out being gangsters...

John, Bo, and Andrew were making new friends...

And Melissa and Sam were being baby whisperers!

Everywhere we went, Andrew made sure to take candy or toys to give to the kids. They, of course, loved it!

Melissa did a great job of capturing this moment with John and one of the kids. This little guy followed John around the whole time. I think this picture does a great job of capturing why we were there, to meet their needs by loving them like Christ.

After we left La Colonia, we went down the road to La Venta. And we were welcomed with the whole church singing us a song. Unfortunately, I can't get the video to upload. But, trust me, it was pretty awesome. After doing our VBS routine at this church, Mrs. Jan and I talked with Mario, the pastor, and his daughter for a while. His daughter was 21 and was telling us about their family and introduced us to her 19 year old brother, Jose, and her 14 year year old sister. She had graduated from the university and was wanting to teach young students English. Mario told us about the 3 churches that he pastors each week, what an incredible responsibility! Their whole family was incredibly nice and so welcoming to all of us. The kids at this church were so well behaved and nice. They talked and responded more to us than any other group and the older ones did a great job of helping the younger kids. I did not want to leave this church and these kids.

After we left La Venta, the whole group went back to the river that some of us went to the day before. This trip was a tad more eventful... John, Mcauley, Bo, Andrew, Collin, and I decided to walk upstream a little ways to explore and find the swimming hole that Mrs. Jan had been talking about. Andrew and Mcauley had been down this way before and Mrs. Jan knew the land well so we weren't worried about getting lost. About 20 steps in, I slipped and fell straight into the water, soaking everything I had on. Thankfully, we knew that the water was very clean. By the time we got down to where the water was waist deep, a ways down from the rest of the group, some of the guys had shed some clothes, I had plenty of scrapes and bruises, and Collin had a leech. Then, John decided that he wanted to find an easier way to go back than by following the river. So, we decided to try and find a shortcut through the field that backed up to the river. Bad idea. This field was full of neck high grass, corn, and who knows what else. After about 5 minutes of walking and not seeing any sign of the rest of our group, we had to turn around, find the river, and basically start over. Thankfully, we got back on the river pretty close to where the rest of our group was. Then we all loaded up, went back to the compound, took some real nice showers and had the most delicious home-cooked meal of mustard fried chicken and french fries!

Then we played some more cards, beating Bo and Collin...again. This was the point at which Collin knew he was "in a pickle". All in all, another very good day!