Another Great Day in Honduras

This morning Marc and Nolan left for San Pedro Sula to meet the group from Tupelo, Mississippi. I was so excited that some of our friends from Mississippi would be here tonight. Marc told Matt and I to be out front in the car at 8:00. Our only task for the day was to lead the wood truck up to a job site. Two houses were to be built today and they were near each other and supposedly, the wood for the first house was delivered yesterday. These house crews were going to have wood for both houses before they even got to the job sites and be ready to roll. Wrong.

Matt and I were still sitting in front of the clinic at 9:00. Shortly after, the wood truck appeared. Matt asked me an interesting question. If he delivered wood for the other house yesterday, why doesn't he know the way to this house? I didn't give it much thought. Getting to this site was an experience in itself. But, we got there. The truck was unloaded, I paid the truck driver and he left. Matt walked up to the other house and guess what? There was no wood. We had no cell service where we were.

Matt and I left and got back in cell phone range and I began to call about the wood. By the time we got back to Santa Ana, Mark Connell knew the wood had been delivered to a site in Santa Ana. He began to scramble to locate a truck to move the wood from one site to the other. He asked me to lead the bus to the job site. Matt and took off again, with the bus behind us. All I can say about this, is I think my friends from Topeka are glad they were not on the bus for this ride. We got back to the sites and Matt was showing the group where the wood that was there needed to be moved. The wood truck could not get all the way to the house site and the wood had to be carried a ways further.

I found out there were a few more problems and I told someone to tell Matt I would be back. I turned around and headed back to Santa Ana and, again talking to Mark Connell on what we could do. Mark Connell, Tim Hines and I were scrambling to get these things worked out. Mark found a dump truck to haul the wood to the job site. He asked if I could wait and lead the dump truck to the job site. The wait was much longer than anyone expected because loading wood into a dump truck is harder work than anyone expected.

By the time the dump truck full of wood is headed up the mountain led by me, many people's patience had been tried and most of us were feeling the stress of the welcome to Honduras day. When I drive up, there stands Matt with a big smile on his face. He runs over to the car and says guess what there was a baptism while you were gone.

That truly made everything else seem trivial. This was great news. While some of us were scrambling to make things work, Matt and Richard, the preacher in Ojojona were sharing the best news of all with a lady. As it turns out, it was the lady for whom a house was to be built. The house was the one the wood had been delivered to Santa Ana instead the other side of Ojojona. This one event in a wild day made me stop and think about what is important.

The rest of the day, most other things did not run any smoother than the beginning of the day, but it was definitely another great day in Honduras.

Terri