Sunday Worship with our Honduran friends

Sunday worship, Honduran lunch, then an emotional visit to Micah House

Sister churches Iglesia Presbiteriana Terre Promiteda: Agalteca, Candelaria

Hope to write entry later on today. Pictures are fairly self-explanatory

How Jane spent her birthday

 

We visited 4 churches today in search of likely partners to work with for a clean water project. Only one was a really good candiate. The small, impoverished community represented by this young girl at the well has access to water through this one well that works on this hand pump. We performed tests on the water that this young lady pumped up for us by hand. Unfortunately, as we spoke with Pastor Cristobal Flores we discovered that the capacity in this well is so small that adding an electric pump would almost certainly deplete the water supply in about five minutes. We will almost certainly not be able to help this community.

Having technical difficulty uploading the number of photos we took today. Will work on the problem from this end and try to get a slide show mounted soon. Tomorrow we are scheduled to visit another 3 churches.

A Day of rest and meetings

Today we were waiting for the folks from Idaho to arrive, so we have a leisurely morning, sleeping in and then lounging on the roof terrace until lunchtime. Rev. Dennis, Penney, Glen and Melinda of Idaho had set up a meeting with the local Habitat for Humanity which they graciously allowed us to sit in on. We met on the roof terrace to hear about local work. Habitat is in process of creating an impressive number of new homes here. We were interrupted by a huge thunderstorm which had us scurrying downstairs like frightened church mice.

Rev. Mark arrived to ferry all of us (now a complement of 9) out to see a camp run by the Heifer Project where mission groups often choose to stay when working on projects within an hour or so of Tegucigalpa. With the ability to house 35 people in rustic but not squalid conditions (6 to a bedroom, but with bathroom in each bedroom) and a nice kitchen, dining room, kitchen, and an able cook. Out back, a garage with two large busses for transportation, and a lit basketball court for recreation after a long day of mission. Resident dog, two kittens and a cow (well, what is a Heifer Project camp without a heifer?) nicely adormed the grounds.

Tim and Gloria Wheeler, mission workers with both Heifer and PCUSA showed us around the camp, then invited us back to their home nearby where Gloria insisted that we all sit down and enjoy her homemade banana bread, flan, and pineapple tea. Coffee plants made a beautiful hedge outside.

Tomorrow we are back on the road, with a plan of visiting 3 communities. Should be interesting with 4 additional bodies crammed into our van. We will all be very friendly by the end of the day!

We have BEEN to the mountain top!

It's not the end of the world, but it's the last stop before it! Go an hour and fifty minutes outside of Tegucigalpa, Honduras to the rusty bridge, turn right. Go another 45 minutes up a steep gravel road. Dodge (not to mention the bones of the unfortunate steer whose parched bones tell us it succumbed to the harsh environment.) Take the first left, continue 10 minutes. Where are you? In Morocopay, Honduras, at the Iglesia Evangelica Presbiteriana Verbo de Dios. No electricity, no running water. The one spigot for the community is turned on once every two days. when Dionisios Dominguez, Treasuror of the Water Committtee, unlocks the access and turns on the flow. Fillipe Silva is the president of the water committee.

Pastor Rachel Canales flashes her sweet smile, tinged with the slight flash of gold. She is clearly the matriarch of the community. Children have followed us up from their huts below, wanting to know why these gringoes are  here. Two little girls are so excited by our arrival, they go home and come back, freshly washed, sporting their Sunday best. Take a picture of us! they indicate with their smiles.

Elmer Moreno, student pastor under Rachel, helps answer our Water Issues Survey questions. One in 25 children die before their fifth birthday due to water-related illnesses. 5 children per day (in a community of 250 persons!) miss school each day for the same types of illnesses. Adults and children alike suffer from this. Average monthly household income is 1500 Limpira per month. Okay, so that translates to about $75 per household per month. And many spend up to half of that on transportation costs to get down the mountain to their field labor jobs. Literacy rate is about 50%.

The church, manse, and Sunday School building have been built over time by other Presbyterys and NGO's. They come and go. The people stay the same. Devoted, simple, trusting. Yes, we drink this water. No, it is not treated. Sometimes we put the plastic bottles of water out in the sun to purify it. Can we build a building to house a filtration system? Yo creo si!

The lifestyle these people lead is so far removed from ours it almost beyond comprehension. Drinking the water you see in these pictures because you have no other option tells it all. Elmer turned on the water tap so that we could do our water tests on it. It was an extremely hot day. We watched, poignantly, as the children all flocked to the running stream with cupped hands to slake their thirst with the tainted water.

The ride back to the City

We returned in the dark,there was conern that we should not be on the road late at night.The trucks are moving excessivly fast caressing the slower cars, no rules here ,if you can take the shot and pass a vehicle sometimes 3 at a time (width ways )on a single lane. I am the worst back seat driver, so I am a wreck with all the trucks &a road strewn with boulders,speed bumps, busses turning in the middle of the highway, foot pedestrians---combine all that while driving around the mountain. Relief to return back to the hotel. We had no water in our room, good job we bought all those wipes. Dinner we asked for many items on the menu but we were given 3 choices, what is on the menu only comes partially presented: so what if the rice and the trotillas are missing!

Quebrada Grande; Iglesia Presbiteriana Jehova Nisi

Check out the slideshow at right, and the captions for a quick overview of our first site visit. Mark Wright collected Harlon Mills and Dave Parks (LWW, Tennessee) at the airport, then we joined Dominique, our able interpreter. One more stop to pick up Pastor Fernando from his church in the city to take just over an hour's ride out into the country through mountain roads to the little Presbyterian Church in the tiny community of Quebrada Grande. Pastor Enrique Ochoa met us there. Once we explained (through Dominique and Rev. Mark) that we were there to speak about water, he whipped out his cell phone and called the president of the community water committee, who appeared with his son within minutes.

Although the community does have some issues with water-related illnesses, it seems that they are still way ahead of most of the communities that need our help. Since they have running water (most of the time) and since it is treated to some degree, it is unlikely that LWW will seem like a good idea to them. Although the folks we met with were very nice, and we went through the Water Issues Survey carefully, this community does not seem high on the list of probable successful partners.

Monday 5/17/2010

Rev. Mark Wright greeted us just outside of customs and drove us to our lovely Inn in the van he has rented in order to take the three different groups all around the countyside this week. We were only a little disconcerted to be greeted by a porter who doubled as an armed guard to help with our luggage. After a short time to drop off our luggage we were lucky that he had the afternoon to drive us to Valle de Angeles, a village just outside of Tegucigalpa which is your standard tourist type spot. Jane went just a little crazy buying local souvenirs, but we were more or less assured by Mark that this would be our only opportunity for shopping, since the villages we will visit the rest of the week don't see tourists.

We met up with the rest of his family back at the inn for dinner. Wife Ashley came with sons Ethan, Elliot and Gabriel. We sat in the covered open-air courtyard and enjoyed getting to know them a little better. Mark's responsibility here includes enhancing the relationship between our US Presbyterian congregations and the Presbyterian Church of Honduras. Our Living Waters visit is a great opportunity to further that mission!

On the one hand it feels a little odd to be in such a comfortable setting, with Wi-Fi, TV, etc., but on the other hand, since we have been told NOT to wander from the inn, we are more or less captive here until Rev. Wright comes back to pick us up.

Midday the folks from the church in Tennessee will arrive, and then Mark will take all four of us to our first remote site.

Running low on battery here in the lobby (signal is poor in the room). Hopefully Jane will add to my entry before we leave for the day.

Take a moment to look at the slideshow of all the pictures we took yesterday.

Esther & Jane Commissioned today- off to Honduras

Preparations and Partnerships

Time for our departure is fast approaching. Jane and I have gotten all of our inoculations, begun our Malaria regimine, filled our antibiotic prescriptions (just in case!) and packed our mosquito netting. We are scheduled to depart Newark early Monday morning, arriving in the capital city of Tegucigalpa late morning. Tegucigalpa is two hours earlier than Eastern Standard Time.

We are excited to be partnering on this trip with PC(USA) pastor Mark Wright. The Wrights are the first Presbyterian mission co-workers to serve with the Presbyterian Church of Honduras. We have chosen now for our scouting trip because one of our Clean Water U. instructors, Harlon Mills, will be in-country at the same time. He is the Honduras Coordinator for Living Waters for the World.