Honduras Mission - Day 1

The twelve who were called on this mission are Vinny, Donny, Eric, Travis, Troy, Nick, Darrell, Tom, Jon, Greg, Bob and Ryan. The guy in the front with the blue shirt is actually Carlos, who is one of the locals. Tom was missing as usual, and Ryan is not in this picture as well because he is the awesome photographer who took it. Twelve disciples chasing Jesus...why does this sound familiar?

Day one, of course, was all travel. It had been a long time since I have been on a plane, and I have to admit, I was a little nervous. The rush of the plane taking off is one of my favorite experiences. If I could only harness that much horsepower in my car. Once in the air, I was quite comfortable and God was already speaking to me. To view the Earth from His perspective is an amazing thing. I love it when there is just enough cloud cover to see through to the ground. Everything looks so peaceful and small. Sometimes I wonder if there are angels walking on the clouds. That's what I want to do when I go to heaven.


After our connecting flight in Houston, we were in the air again for two more hours before we landed in Honduras. The airport was a small open air pavilion. Cowboy Jimmy (a 10 year missioner from Aurora, Indiana) was there to greet us and to load us on to a van for a 5 hour ride to the mission base. If you have never experienced driving in a third world country, it can be quite nerve racking. There really were no laws there. Cars were speeding, passing, cutting and tailgating. It was almost as if you were in a Nascar race. To top it off, there were pedestrians everywhere. The people just stand around on the streets. Most of them were selling things but a lot of them were just standing there. Bicycles were everywhere. I admired the amount of bicyclists but I definitely would not ride my bike there. Most of the vehicles were pickup trucks which was the most appropriate means of transportation because of the condition of the roads. There were a lot of people riding on top of or in the beds of trucks all over the place. I remember when my brother and I used to do that before it was outlawed.


Almost every vehicle had a dent in it which was not hard to believe by the way they drive. One thing that I immediately noticed was, there were no women drivers. Just roads full of testosterone. Now that is a scary concept.


We arrived at our mission base at around 6:30 pm. The base had nice accommodations. The kitchen was nicely set up and the meals were awesome. One of the locals (I believe her name was Flora) provided all of meals and she did a tremendous job of cooking them up. I did not think we were going to eat the way that we did, it was great. The sleeping quarters were nice as well. The beds were comfy and having showers was a welcomed treat after a long day of travel.




As I lay in bed at the end of the first day, I thought of my family, my travels and what God was showing me, and of what was in store for me over the next several days.