Honduras, March 3 thru 12, 2010
Rivers of the World (ROW) once again teamed up with the Lovett School, www.Lovett.org, for their annual spring break trip, only this time to travel to Honduras. After a year’s worth of planning the team of 33 students, faculty, parents, and staff finally arrived. Immediately the team started its bonding through the distribution of Christmas boxes to over 500 children the first day- one should note this was after having dug the remaining dirt from around a new church foundation and having poured the necessary concrete footings.
On Sunday, the team traveled to a local waterfall, Pulhapanzak, and swam Honduran style in the rapids and existing nature pools for a much needed cool down; however, from there, it was to church, which had followed VBS in the mountain villages. By the end of day two everyone was exhausted!
The rest of the week took on a traditional routine: wake-up by 6:45-7:00, breakfast by 7:30, in the vans by 8:00, pick-up supplies at the clinic/meet local pastor’s and day worker’s by 8:30, either split-up the team or travel as a whole to the jobsite by 9:00 work until the afternoon, rejoin the team, travel to other mountain communities, muster the energy to engage another 1,000 kid’s for an hour or so to then distribute gifts and supplies. By nightfall we would arrive to the lodge for a hearty dinner, usually by about 7:00, and the evening would end in group discussion and a time of devotion. Whew! Each day we would change some sequence of the events above, however, one thing was for sure: each day was hot, full of work, and took a lot of energy and patience.
During the week, we also spent time with the local schools. This was intense. Everyone had a job and we spent time making sure we had a plan before we rolled in. On one occasion, after interacting with the children (playing games, making arts and crafts, etc.), the principle dismissed all the students for recess and challenged our team to a basketball game. The local news reporter’s even showed up. Despite a heart wrenching loss to the Hondurans it was a cheerleader’s escapade!
Throughout the week, part of our goal was to also learn about the local culture. Although we weren’t able to travel to Copan (the local ancient Mayan Ruins) due to the schedule and due to construction on the Pan-American Highway we couldn’t visit the caves we were able to visit a local sugar-cane refinery and also several coffee plantations-both provide incredible exports for the country and are small scale operations. It is hard to believe the coffee and sugar we come to know in the US starts in such an environment. The last day we also spent some time in the city at a local market- it seemed that you could buy almost anything there… from a watch to a fish a hammock or even a painting. It was also interesting to see several of the local carvings that folks would make and how several of the musical instruments would come from the same type of wood as well.
At night we stayed in the lake region- known as Lake Yojia. It was amazingly beautiful. Several of the days we would go out and swim and see some of the lake. The country has vast changes in terrain- from mountain villages that are so steep you wonder how we ever made it all the way up to the valley’s that seem to go on forever. All in all we had a great week and learned a lot about Honduras, the people, the culture, and the climate. In the future everyone will look forward to seeing the new church under roof and it’s member’s serving Him.
In Christ,
Drew
ROW Volunteer
