Today was our final work day for the week. With the help of Hector this week, we have been able to get the shelter up and built in two days. We really were Hectors apprentices and he really must take all the credit for the shelter. He is a local guy who works in construction and was the one who helped build the special needs school. He volunteered his time this week to help build the shelter, and thank goodness he was there, because I am not sure we would have done anything anywhere near as nice as what he did. Still, we had fun helping with the project, driving nails in wood and climbing ladders. Everyone got to participate in the project in some way. When we were not working on the shelter, we were helping in the feeding center with the kids. A few of our team actually got to the feeding center at 7am to help prepare and cook all the food for the kids. Lots of chopping of vegetable and preparing chicken and rice. Some of us spent a little time on the property cleaning up trash also. Honduras does not have the infrastructure for disposing of trash properly so there tends to be a lot of it around. It’s unfortunate given how beautiful a country Honduras is.
After our morning of work and finishing the shelter, we ate lunch and then went out to do some more home visits before hitting the river. The home visits were particularly hard for some of our team members. Such poverty with young women caring for so many kids under one household, little kids that had lost their mom and kids that had severe disabilities. These visits can be so hard but I think they are so important. Important to show love to otherwise marginalized families and families struggling in general. One of the families today was so thankful for our visits because she said they had just used the last of the food in their pantry.
After home visits, we walked to the river – which ended up being a longer, hotter walk than anticipated, but still the team enjoyed the water and time sitting in the shade visiting. We did a short devotion and talked about how even though we are a world apart, we are kept together by God and nothing can separate us. After a little more swim time, we headed back to the vans.
After cleaning up we headed to church for the final service for the week. It was a lively service with lots of joy and smiles. So good to be with everyone again for our last night. We then headed to dinner with Pastor and Lorena, Christian and Silvia and a few others.
Such a great last day, lots of laughs but also some tears, but mostly joy. It is always such an honor to be part of this community.
Tomorrow we hit the road for the long drive back to San Pedro Sula where we will spend the night before our flight home. I will probably do one more blog before the flight home but for now, goodnight!
Blessing, Shelley