Down for the Count...

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Gurgle gurgle, glub glub. That my friends, was the sound of my stomach this morning. In an effort to calm it down, I had oatmeal at the house before heading up to breakfast. There I choked down two forkfuls of eggs.

Immediately after breakfast all the children met in the courtyard for their morning worship service. We were asked to join in and sit with the kids while devotions were read in Spanish. Classes started after that at 7:20am.

Morning worship in the courtyard.

I wasn't expected to help in the classroom until 9:00 am so I went back to the house to lay down for an hour. I was laying in bed an hour later willing myself to get up, but my body was having no part of it. I was stuck in bed for the rest of the morning.

It started to thunderstorm. While I was wrapping myself in every sheet available to stave off the chills, my cohorts decided to inventory the donations we had brought down with us. We had nine full-size suitcases pack with items. I heard counts of 67 pairs of jeans, 34 towels and 54 pairs of flip flops. The members of our congregation were very generous. The storm passed and they all left to work on the service projects for the week. Now I could actually get some rest.

Suitcases we brought down filled with donations for El Hogar.

Speaking of the service projects, in addition to helping in the classrooms, one of the other things we had been tasked to do was help build a bathroom. We left that job to the guys who got heavily involved in mixing and hauling cement.

Bathroom that was being worked on.

Lunchtime came and my roommate came in and announced, "We're taking the kids to the movies at 2:00 pm." Wait, what?? I'm sick, you can't be going to the movies! There was no way I was going to miss this, so I ate a few crackers, popped some more Imodium and said a prayer.

So how do you get 73 children, 9 volunteers, 2 teachers and 2 drivers to the movies in two, fifteen passenger vans? Very carefully. There don't seem to be any driving laws in Honduras. The roads are a free for all, seat belts not required, feel free to sit on the edge of a flatbed truck while bouncing down the highway. We could have used bungee cords to secure kids on top of the van and it would have been ok. So each van made two trips to the theater with about 25-32 people on each trip. It was only a few miles away. At the mall of course.

We purchased the tickets, bought popcorn and soda for each child and in we went. What were we seeing? How to Train Your Dragon 2. In Spanish of course. There was a bit of confusion with the seats. Apparently in Honduras theaters you purchase assigned movie theater seats. A few of us weren't in our correct seats and it was confusing the other patrons.

I have to say, the children were very well-behaved. Of course with a giant popcorn and soda, there were numerous trips to the bathroom.

Even in the bathroom the girls wanted their pictures taken.

Wednesday night was spent in the amphitheater with the second dormitory of boys. We did the same type of craft. Who would of thought a white paper plate would make someone so happy.

More fun with paper plates!

This seemed to be the never ending day. My head was so happy to hit the pillow.