"Howdy Y'all! Gig'em Ags!" - Honduras Mission Trip Day 3

TUESDAY - Day 3 (January 10th)

Today we woke up to an "American" breakfast that was really yummy! Pancakes with peanut butter, mmmmm delicious! We also had watermelon and eggs too. After we had time for a personal devotional, we headed off to the job site.

The kids at the site are SO helpful! They are always willing to grab a hammer and drive in some nails, or carry lumber, or hold nails for us, or climb onto the rafters of the roof to help pull up metal to nail in. I loved to compare this situation to what it would resemble in America. In the states, children would be told to stay out of the workers way and not be a bother. These children were in no way a bother, but rather so helpful! We toured the family's old house which is one foot away from their new house, and were shocked to see the one room "house" they were living in. The dad of the family was SO thankful and grateful, he started crying in gratitude and embraced each one of us in a huge hug. His family wasn't going to move into the new house until members from the church came out to bless the home. We finished the house today, and so had some time to just play with the kids. The children knew that we were trying hard to pick up Spanish, and so they wanted to learn some English too. And what happens when a bunch of Aggies are teaching kids English? They learn to say "Howdy y'all!" and "Gig'em Ags!" So cute!

We drove back to CEI and had a lunch of peanut butter sandwiches, chips, and bananas. SO yummy!

Today was the first day that we went to the orphanage in the afternoon. We were at a very nice private orphanage (in comparison to the state orphanages), that was opened three generations ago by an American family. The orphanage is now being run by the original founders granddaughter. They have children from a few weeks to 17 years old. One cool thing that they do is that they pay for their kids education through college (Education is free until 6th grade, then it costs the equivalent of $100 USD) on the condition that after graduation from university, they come back and work for the orphanage for 5 years. The system works really well, because then everybody who works at the orphanage has a genuine love for the kids and is very understanding and compassionate. The orphanage is very well kept, the children are well fed and look healthy, and they even have pet monkeys and dogs (unheard of in Honduras).

When we got there we got to play with the kids for the first bit. I was helping one girl go across the monkey bars when all of a sudden she started giggling and laughing uncontrollably. I looked up to see that a monkey was perched on the monkey bars where Rosa was hanging (or where I was holding her up), and the monkey had her ponytail in its mouth! I quickly pryed her hair out of the monkey's mouth (Rosa still laughing) and ran away from the monkey bars. Everybody from Cho-Yeh saw this happening, and quickly informed me that the monkey was eyeing me. I started walking further away from the monkey bars, and the monkey was watching me. All of a sudden the monkey jumped off the monkey bars (irony -- monkey... monkey bars...) and started chasing me. Literally. CHASING me around the playground!! Geeeesh.

We performed our Lifehouse Skit here too for the older children, and it went really well! At the end of the afternoon, I was playing with some of the 3 years and under children at the bubbles station, when I found this sweet little girl kinda sitting by herself. I picked her up and played with her a while. Her name was Sara and there will be an entire blog post devoted just to this little piece of sunshine that stole my heart!

After the orphanage we drove to a lake and watched the sun set behind the mountains. Beautiful!!

Dinner was chicken and mashed potatoes -- SCORE! I was able to eat safely all three meals today!

We then experienced another round of cold showers, devotionals and worship before quickly falling into our beds and fast asleep. What a gorgeous and fulfilling day in this country that is stealing my heart!!