Shoes are SO over rated

The continuing saga of the vans.  If you recall, when we got back to Honduras, the grey van was in storage and it wouldn't start.  Tom got a new battery for it and it ran for a few days.  But after a few days, every morning it would need to be pushed down a hill in order to pop the clutch.  But once it started running, it ran all day.  The team left on Wednesday without incident and the grey van was taken to the shop to figure out what was wrong.  We discovered it had two batteries (who knew). The batteries are located under the passenger seat and middle seat of the front of the vehicle (again, who knew). So Tom bought another battery.  Now, it would seem that the alternator has a dead thingy in it (technical term) and they cannot get just that part. Sooooo, a new alternator is required.  It costs (are you sitting down?)$1,000.00 US DOLLARS!!!!!!!! For an alternator!!!!! Holy smokes batman! But, good news is we can get a 20% discount. WOW. But, what are you gonna do. The next problem is we need to drive it to San Pedro Sula TODAY to get prepared for the team that is flying in there on Sunday. But, it will all work out somehow.  

Sigh…. Tom gets home from the bank and comes upstairs to eat lunch.  Bob pulls in right behind Tom and tells Tom that he has a flat tire on the red van.  You guys all know the drill. Yep, it is going to be one of those days.  BUT, we are blessed, because we got up this morning!  We have food to eat and a place to stay.  It's all good.

The grey van is finally done (6:00 pm) so needless to say we never made it to San Pedro Sula today.  we will be leaving at 6 in the morning tomorrow morning and driving straight to Costco to get food for the team that comes on Sunday morning.

We left at 6:45 in the morning.  No problems getting to San Pedro Sula.  We went straight to Pricesmart to get groceries. Then to the campground to get settled.  It is well over a hundred degrees here. Boy is it hot!  We needed to go to the bank and get money so we went to the little mall in El Progreso to the bank, ate dinner, and went to the grocery store for the things I couldn't get at Pricesmart.  We were driving out of the lot when two security guys flagged us down.  They told us we had a flat tire. Yep, ANOTHER flat tire, this time in the grey van.  It is dark and we try to find all the parts to change the tire.  My first thought is someone did to us because they saw us get so much money from the bank (the police in me).  I am looking all over, but no one seems to notice us.  The security guard comes over and helps Tom with the tire. I stand guard by the locked van.  We did feel very fortunate (perhaps a God thing) that the guards told us about the tire while we were still in the lighted parking lot (it gets dark by 6pm here).  The spare wasn't in great shape, but it did have more air in it than the flat one did. But hey, at least we HAD a spare. And Tom has had so much practice changing tires that he has it down to a science.   Back to the campground to start cooking for tomorrow's arrival of the next team.

I went to take a shower and went to look for my shower shoes.  Not there.  In fact, not one pair of our shoes that we left in our closet are here.  I came down wearing only flip flops because I had left my work boots, tennis shoes, shower shoes, extra flip flops, aqua shoes here so I wouldn't have to carry them back and forth.  Tom had shower shoes and tennis shoes here. All gone. Sooooo, when the team comes tomorrow morning, I will greet them in my flip flops and will have to go buy something that I can wear to the worksite. UGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH. Ok, say something positive about this. Hmmm, at least I have money to buy shoes. Now I just need the time.

6/24/12 We went to pick up the team from the airport.  We have Monica Holloway from our church staying with us for 3 weeks.  She will be helping out with two of our teams.  She came off the flight, but no one else did.  We waited, and waited.  She said there weren't people on the plane from Oregon.  They were suppose to be on the same flight with Monica. We asked at the counter if they had missed the flight.  We were told they are not permitted to tell us that.  All they would say was the flight was here.  I called Bob to see if he had a number for one of the team leaders.  He said he thought they weren't coming until tomorrow.  I told him they were suppose to be here today.  We get Monica and go back to the campground wondering what happened.  Tom asked Monica if the plane was full or not.  she said it was.  This team is 28 people.  you would miss that many on a flight.  I went and got my calendar, along with all my paperwork.  Everything I had written down said they were coming on Sunday, the 25th. Hmmmm, Sunday is the 24th.  Oh, my bad.  They will be here tomorrow at the same time.  We took Efrain and the box truck and two vans for Monica and one piece of luggage.  Oh well, she got the full treatment. We got back to the campground to 3 pans of homemade mac and cheese and a huge pot of sloppy joes. Guess what we are having tomorrow for lunch? Anyone?  Monica is trying to adjust to the heat here.  She asked how long does it take to get used to the heat?  I told her, when I get used to it, I will let her know.

Some of you know that we have a problem at the campground with squatters.  They have been here for several months.  At first, they completely blocked the road leading to the campground and stated that we did not own the land, that they did and they were taking over the campground (Maybe they took my shoes……)  Anyway, Efrain took the ownership papers to the Mayor's office and showed proof of ownership.  The "leader" of the squatters had to sign a paper stating that if they came on our property or tried to take it over, they would be jailed. He signed the paper and went to jail for the evening.  The next day, they were all back blocking the road leading to the campground. BUT, they let Efrain and anyone else who wanted to go to the campground go by.  It seems that there are about 3000 people who live among the cane fields.  They say that they are the rightful owners of the cane fields.  The Sugarcane producers have not shown any paperwork stating they properly own the land.  So, the mayor is not kicking these people off the land.  We are talking about over 10,000 acres of land here. These people are talking about taking up the cane and planting African Palm trees for the production of Palm oil.  This is going to get really interesting. A lot of the razor wire on top of our walls had been torn down or had fallen. Tom spent the day re-securing the razor wire on top of our walls. There are a couple of small spots that don't have any wire, so we will be looking into getting those taken care of soon.

This is what my crunch of the van looks like

We headed out to the job site Thursday morning.This is a new job, which is at the base of the dump in Danli. The project is a house for a pastor. This is a VERY poor area. While heading up the mountain, we saw homes made from pepsi crates, and steps made of tires. One of the girls in the van yelled that she saw a tropical bird in a tree. Then, shortly later, she says, Never mind, it's a chicken." We have gotten a lot of mileage out of that one. It has been raining so the smell of the area wasn't the best, but the group got a lot of work done that day.  

Friday proved to be a very challenging day getting WAAAAAAAAAYYYYY up the mountain to an area called El Parasito. It had rained ALL night previous to our leaving, so we were concerned about the mountain roads being muddy and slippery.  We were right to be concerned.  They were.  Our vans would not make the trip, so we had two men from the church we were going to work on come and get us in their pickup trucks, along with our black pickup.  Bob drove the black pickup while Tom and I rode with the others in the back.  This time it was a two hour trip standing up in the back of the pickup.  The rest of the group rode in the backs of the other two pickups.  The "road" was horrible. VERY muddy. I watched one of the trucks take a hairpin curve on 3 wheels.  It didn't give any of us a warm and fuzzy feeling. Of course, it started to rain while we were going up. There was one section of very steep mud that we had to come down. The first truck to go down slid into a VERY LARGE rut and slammed into it really hard. One of the guys riding in the back of the truck injured his ribs.  The rest of us who watched it happened still had to go down the same road. We did though and were VERY happy to have it over.

No good picture to show the deep ruts, but this one would show the narrow road.

one of the concrete floors in the house in El Paraiso

The job was to pour a concrete floor for the pastor's house. This team had paid to have the house built and had come to put on the finishing touch. We were greeted by the pastor and many of his congregation excited to have us and ready to go to work. We worked all morning with them mixing the cement and pouring a floor for the new house. We had made arrangements for the women of the Parasito church to cook our lunch and we would reimburse them the expense. We had a typical lunch, chicken and rice with tortillas. It was delicious. When we tried to pay the ladies they refused any money. They said it was their way of showing appreciation for what we were doing. That may not sound like a big deal to you at home, but trust me that was a sacrifice of food they needed for their own families. We had no choice but to be gracious and accept their gift so as not to offend them.



After working all day on the mountain, we were ready to leave.  The heavens opened up and I mean opened up. It poured.  All of us were thinking the same thing.  How in the world were we going to get off that mountain. One of the trucks that brought us up, broke a spring when it hit the large rut (and injured the guy), so a different man brought his truck to take us down.  We loaded in all three trucks. While we were in these 3 trucks, we were all thinking the same thing. How are we possibly going to do this? One of the guys in our truck said, "I think we need to pray about our trip down."  We all agreed, so our truck started praying out loud. After he was finished, we felt better (NOT great, but better).  Then we were told we were going down a different way.  OK, that sounds great to us; but wait a minute. That means we don't know what is ahead….. Is this good or bad??  Anyway, we started down. The rains slowed down and we looked over a cliff and there was a complete rainbow.  It was beautiful.  Someone said, "God heard our prayer.  It is going to be alright."  We all started to relax and enjoy the ride.  The rain had stopped, but the road was a muddy mess. A little bit later, we started passing through mud slides.  Now that isn't good. Would we be able to get through?  About that time, we see a grater.  Yes, you heard me.  A VERY LARGE GRATER, the kind you see at a large construction site.  The grater was grating the tiny muddy road in front of us! How in the world did that thing get up there and at that precise moment in time???? We all knew the answer to that question.  It stopped at a point in the road where we could get past it (Not a small feat on these paths) without any trouble. By this time, there were only two trucks.  We couldn't see the last one.  It was the one with the teens in it. We went the rest of the way to the river we needed to cross.  The rain started up heavy again. The river was swollen and running quickly.  We are told to get out of the truck; that we would be walking across a foot bridge to the other side.  The trucks would leave us at that point.  Now Bob and Evelyn are in the black pickup.  Paul (leader of the team fro the states) tells Bob that Bob would drive the pickup adjacent to the river and cross at a bridge "down there."  It was the same bridge that we used to get across in the morning. Thing was, Bob had no idea where he was.  Paul said, just follow the river and you'll get to it.  We were concerned that if there was a problem, we would be separated and couldn't help Bob.  Paul said, "no problem, he has a cell phone." Hmmmmm, again not the warm and fuzzy feeling.  I pictured them floating down river somewhere, with his cell phone in his hand….. 
 
We crossed the foot bridge and got to the other side. This was a suspended bridge out of an Indiana Jones movie. Wire and rope strung across the river with wood pieces placed in between to walk on. The waist high wire to hold onto as you went across was barbed wire. Are you kidding me!!! Barbed wire to grab if you fall. Large empty areas between the slats also were a joy to see.  We walked to our vans that we had parked and Paul told me to load up my van and go on back to the hotel.  He said there was no point in all of us saying for Bob and the other truck.  We told him we had no idea where the other truck was with the teens in it.  Just about that time, we see them literally drive by us!  They did not see us along the side of the road.  It was hilarious.  I pointed out the van and said to Tom, "there go the kids!" Tom started towards the street and yelled at them.  The driver heard him and turned around.  I went on ahead and by the time Tom got his van loaded, Bob and Evelyn had showed up.  All was well that ends well.

Saturday we went back up to the house we worked on by the dump and finished pouring a temporary cement floor for the parishioners to use outside the pastor;s home.  The congregation took down the old roof and supports at the old location and moved it to the new location. The group also worked on the electric for the pastor's home.  Some of the teens showed the children in the area how to play baseball.  They used a thin board and a tennis ball.  It was cute to watch.  Saturday night we went to a church service where this team had worked on the roof of the church last year. It was a good service with lots and lots of music. 

Concrete slab for church

Sunday we started back to Tegucigalpa.  On the way home we went off the beaten path and went up to see a pastor and his family.  They were so happy to see us.  This group had helped build his church as well back in 2009. This pastor has an adult daughter who works in the fields of a farm with a machete.  She has bad veins in her legs and about a week ago, one of those veins exploded and she almost died from the blood loss. The gaping hole by her ankle is grotesque and she is far from being ok. She must take injections due to all the blood loss. Just watching how she is living would tear your heart out. she has no shoes, other than flip flops, so she does not have any support at all. One of the women in  the group took off her own shoes and gave them to the woman.

The woman in the black shirt and white pants is the one with the vein problem.

So many things we can be truly thankful for that we take for granted everyday. 

Well, we FINALLY got back to Honduras.  Tom and I changed our flight from Wednesday to Sunday so we could start AND finish our new patio and sidewalk.  Anyone who said I was the driven one of the family can now say Tom is.  Well, at least on this particular project he was.  But, thanks to the help of a couple of our grandsons, son and friends, we got it done and it looks nice.

One of the changes that came with the United- Continental merger is now United does not serve ANYTHING (other than water and soft drinks) for free on international flights.So we got to the airport at 0415 and left Columbus for Houston at 0555.  We get to Houston and had a little over an hour to get something to eat. Boarded the second leg of the trip and got to Honduras on time.  Manuel was there to pick us up and he took us to his parents house to eat lunch and see Berenice's new baby girl, Paulette. Got a few things done for the next group coming in and cleaned our apartment. Out to the store to get some food for morning and we had dinner at CoCo Baleadas (oh how we missed those baleadas!!) and then home to crash.

6/11/12 - Time to get serious about getting ready for the team that comes on the 12th.  The Work and Witness house needed cleaned, and 2 other portents needed cleaned.  The grey van needed picked up from storage, groceries needed to be bought, laundry needed done, serious money needed to be withdrawn in cash from the bank, and we needed food for us to eat. Tom went to the bank and 3 hours later he came back with no cash.  The bank withdrew the money for him and then decided that he wasn't a signer on that particular account, so they had to put the money back into the account (one would think they would have checked that first, but….). Next, we went to get the van from storage.  The van wouldn't start. This is a Nissan Hiace, which is not sold in the states.  We couldn't find the battery.  It wasn't under the hood.  We looked everywhere.  Finally , one of the guys at the storage place said he thought it was under the front seat.  Another half hour was spent trying to figure out how to get the seat unhooked so it would rise up. Gosh, there is a LOT of stuff under that seat; the oil stick, the oil reserve, the transmission fluid thingy, the battery, etc. Huh, who would a thought?  But, no jumper cables. So we leave to go back to our house to get them. Then, back to the van.  Between the bank and the van, it pretty much killed the day and we were still not sure the battery in the van would last.  I still had all that cleaning to do AND go grocery shopping for the team. I saw the lady who lives across the street and asked her who cleans the church.  I asked her if she could get that woman to clean the 3 places for me because I had officially ran out of time.  She said she would ask.  Got the groceries at Pricesmart, which is like a Costco. Tom and I ate a hotdog there (no food in our place) and a group of Mormon missionary teenage boys sat down beside us.  They started asking us questions and we asked them questions and a couple of hours later, we leave Pricesmart after promising the boys I would have them over for dinner sometime in August.  After unpacking all the groceries and doing some work to prepare for the team coming we headed to a hardware store for needed plumbing parts because one of the apartments had a broken toilet seat and it was leaking. Well too late for that. The stores were closed by the time we got there. Another wasted trip and chore to put off till tomorrow.One of the toilets the team needs to use was out of commission. The day is shot and we still don't have any money (we kinda borrowed some from another account to buy what we did). Pizza Hut for dinner (we don't eat fast food at home!)

6/12/12 - The team arrives today. I get all the linens out and the house set up (the lady got it cleaned late the night before) with tables and chairs.  There are 22 of them. Tom and the District Superintendent go back to the bank to get the much needed money. While they are gone, I take the grey van (new to us) and go get fresh fruit at a local stand. While I was backing up to get out, I hit a truck with a low trailer (OBVIOUSLY didn't see it). The crash was deafening to me.  I get out of the van and go look at my busted tail light.  There were 4 Honduran men all standing there looking at it too. Boy did I feel like an idiot.  I asked them if the truck was ok; they said it was.  BUT, they were pointing out to me that my tail light and the large dent in the back door were not ok. Geeee, so GLAD they pointed that out to me. I get back to the house and cut up all that fruit I bought; probably sticking the very sharp knife a little too hard into that fruit….  Tom comes home and I tell him what I did.  His response was perfect.  He didn't laugh.  He didn't yell.  He just looked at me and said he was sorry. Now THAT is a great husband!!!! Off to the airport to get the team and Bob and Evelyn.  They came in on 3 different flights. Manuel takes all the luggage in the pick up and leaves the airport.  I get 12 people into the grey van and Tom gets everyone else into the red van. The grey van won't start. (sigh). No jumper cables.  They are in the pick up (since that was what we used to jump it the first time).  We went up to a few people to see if they had any cables; nope. no one carries those.  I called Manuel and asked him to come back and jump the van. He does. After we get everyone back to the work and witness house, Bob and Tom go to buy a new battery for the "new" van. Oh yeah, the red van's transmission was slipping, too.  But, after it got warmed up, it seemed to be fine.

Oh forgot to mention that two people on this team didn't make the flight in Ohio.  When the girl (she is 16) presented her passport to board the plane, they refused her because her passport was due to expire in July. So, she and her dad DROVE from Dayton to Detroit right then to get another passport.  The airlines called the passport office for them in order to get her an appointment. NOTE TO EVERYONE WHO TRAVELS ABROAD!!!! You are NOT permitted to fly if your passport is due to expire within 6 months of your departure date.

6/13/12 - we left for the mountains.  Everything went well. The plan was to get to the hotel, eat a quick lunch, then go to the work site to work half a day.  Well, it started raining right after lunch, so work was out.  That gave me this opportunity to bring everyone up to date on our travels so far.