The Final Weeks and Puerto Lempira

Teaching Misael and Axel how to play Mancala

SO sorry it's taken me so long to do another blog post! yikes. The few days we spent in San Pedro Sula before we flew here to Puerto Lempira were spent doing more ministry stuff with Shari and Terry and heading to Widow's Mite and Hogar Esperanza for the last time this trip :-( It was so so difficult to say goodbye to the kids; the only thing keeping me going was the hope of a return in October after my seasonal job at the lodge ends.

Terry and Philip @ Casitas

Casitas

With Shari and Terry - Mary, Philip, and I were able to go to Casitas for the first time. Casitas is a public girls orphanage. Many of the girls there have babies, are pregnant, or are mentally disabled. The conditions are not good there, and it was tough to see. Morale seems very low on the whole; but we did some worship with them, a trivia game with prizes, and gave out cookies and juice. The girls loved talking to us and we had a beautiful time with them. After we left, Philip and I had a lot to think about in terms of how our lives point to Honduras and what our Honduran ministry will entail. We are not sure exactly how; but we are opening up our lives to God's will and we want to follow his calling - and right now, it looks like Honduras is going to play some role in our future.


PUERTO LEMPIRA, GRACIAS A DIOS, LA MOSQUITIA, HONDURAS

Well, it's official, our last Honduran adventure (this trip) has begun. We left San Pedro Sula in the wee hours of my birthday morning (April 25th) by bus to La Ceiba. We arrived in La Ceiba at a little before 10 in the morning and headed straight to the airport for our 1:30 flight. We checked in, got a coffee, and settled in for a little chill time before our flight - two hours later, the desk attendant walked over, "Katie?" "Sí" "Perdon, pero no hay una vuelta a Puerto Lempira hoy." WHAT?? Apparently Mary and I were the only people scheduled to be on the flight that day (weird) and so they cancelled it. We had to find a hotel and stay overnight to catch the 6:15 flight the next morning. Well, waking up at 4 am two days in a row was no cake walk, but we did it a-okay!  We got to Puerto Lempira at about 7:45 in the morning after a beautiful flight over the rainforest and savannah on a 16 passenger plane. We landed on a dirt runway and as we were landing, I could see Laura Waits (mama of the missionary family that Mary and I are staying with) waving to me. And she was right there when we got off the plane! haha - super weird experience for me. Not to mention, our luggage was on the back seat of the plane and if I had stuck my legs straight out, I could have kicked the pilot's chair. Well, after we got our luggage loaded into the little Yamaha Rhino that the Waits family drives, I thought "THIS is Honduras. - This is what people think when I tell them I have come to do mission work in a third world country. This is way past nowhere. Its the end of the line." But let me tell you, it's beautiful. The lagoon is lovely, and there is a nice breeze that comes off the water that keeps everywhere pretty cool.

Walking the House of Hope kids to the lagoon for swimming

Garden at Mama Tara

We are working with three homes here: House of Hope, Mama Tara, and Alastero. We have gotten to do some pretty cool stuff in our few days here so far. On Thursday we went to House of Hope to help clean out the dental office there - apparently HoH was founded by a dentist and he comes a couple times a year to do a dental clinic in his office here. But between visits, the office gets a little dusty - so Mary, Arlee (the Waits' daughter), and I cleaned house! Then that afternoon we went to see Mama Tara. Mama Tara is 85 years old (her birthday was the 27th of April) and she runs the orphanage and has for the last 50 years. She has a big heart and the principle of the home is very Miskito (indigenous group that lives in Puerto Lempira) culture based. i.e. free roaming, outhouse using, fire cooking culture. But sadly the house is in disarray, and things keep getting stolen or sold. Mary and I hope to help the Waits family do some serious work repairing their vegetable garden, and we will also be helping Ebety (the teacher there) work with the children on their Spanish reading. Everyone here speaks Spanish as a second language - their first language is Miskito. We got to take some of the kids from House of Hope swimming in the lagoon yesterday and today we helped Laura with the English school for the older Alastero kids.

So far we LOVE Puerto Lempira. LOVE. It is beautiful, remote, exotic, and there is a lot to be done here. And we intend to soak up every minute of this wonder that we can before we go back to San Pedro and then to the states.