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June 29, 2005 We met up with our Teguc. Team this afternoon (12:30) local time. After checking in and showering up from a long dusty bus ride we walked a few blocks to the local shopping mall for lunch and of course...shopping. Later we returned to the hotel to relax and dinner is tonight at 7 PM. Tomorrow we will be out and about and preparing the group for re-entry back home. The health of the team is excellent. Their spirits are up but there is sadness in their hearts for their time here is ending quickly. The Santa Cruz Team had a nice last day. We visited many homes of old and new friends; Celio, a local carpenter, was summoned to produce 110 plaques on which we had a bible verse. (John 14:12-13). Monday a group of us varnished them and yesterday we distributed them to every neighborhood in the village. Not every home received one but we did reach every neighborhood. It was a hot afternoon! After a nap we gathered at the 1st E. Free Church for singing, sharing and cake and pop. After dinner the group met one final time. We invited them to reflect on the past week by giving them four things to think about. After 30 minutes or so of writing in their journals we circled back up and opened the floor for students to share. As each student shared they were to light a candle. I expected maybe half or 2/3 of the group to share out loud...as it turned out everyone shared something and it became quite an experience to hear how each student was impacted. Note to parents: You can ask your kids about the experience but they still may have difficulty puting words to it. Please be patient with them. This AM we finished packing; donated many clothes, medicine and even bed sheets to the village; ate breakfast and said our goodbye's. Speaking for both Teams: Honduras is a difficult place to leave. Some of the students are torn between missing their family and friends at home and wondering if they'll ever see their new friends from Honduras ever again. Parents, again, thanks for being patient with you kids in their expressions of the experience. It's difficult to summarize in words. Well, perhaps we'll write again before we return. If not we'll see you at the airport. Later. al |
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June 28, 2005 No Update today. The group must have been busy and did not call. |
It was a beautiful day here in Santa Cruz . The sun was shining, we had a nice breeze and there was no rain! We finished painting at the clinic - actually we painted until we ran out of paint. Some of the students spent time again today at the daycare and they love being there. Others spent time at the Kindergarten helping to teach English to the children. We also did more house visits this afternoon. These are probably the highlight of the day, going into the homes of the local people and getting to know the families. The rest of the afternoon was spent finishing up the plaques. We completed 110 plaques with getting the stickers and varnish on. We plan to distribute as many as we can tomorrow. The verse on the plaques is obviously in Spanish, but the English translation from John is: “He who drinks of my water will have eternal life”. We had a great group time tonight. The staff shared information about the students. Each staff members selected two students to talk about and one by one they stood behind each student and shared with the rest of the group what makes that person special. It was a really cool thing and helped everyone get to know a little bit more about each other. The food has been great. Today we had Toast and Pancakes for breakfast, really good spaghetti for lunch and the Mexican Haystackers for dinner. It may be a good thing that we are going to Tegucigalpa in two days since our snack supply is getting a little low! Tomorrow we have a social hour at the church in the afternoon and most of the day will be spent doing the home visits to distribute the plaques and saying goodbye to those we’ve met. We are thankful that everyone is still healthy and in good spirits. We only have one more day here in Santa Cruz before heading back to Tegucigalpa to meet up with the rest of our group. It will be a tearful goodbye. We are planning on talking again late tomorrow (Tuesday). Thanks for all your prayers! |
Yesterday we spent time cleaning up at the clinic and continuing the home visits. We went to the service at the First Evangelical Free Church at 4:00. This was a great experience for the students. After dinner we had birthday cake to celebrate Mark’s birthday. At our group session Dr. Vides gave us the history of his presence in Santa Cruz and told us cool stories how he got started with the North American missionaries and how they got to where they are now including Westwood’s involvement. It was great to get his perspective and to have him share this directly with all of us. Today was low key since it was Sunday. In the morning we hiked down to the river to take a group shot on the walking bridge. We then did some more home visits. At one house they had so many trees that they gave each of us a mango to eat. We had some free time so the kids just hung out, read, wrote in journals and relaxed. (This part of the conversation was interrupted by a donkey braying in the background!) At 3:00 we went to the First Evangelical Free Church with the youth group. We sang songs and played games and it was really cool. Our menu for today: It’s been a great day! Our plans for the next two days are to finish up the painting at the clinic, continue our time at the daycare and work on completing the plaques for the home visits. The weather has been humid and sunny although this is the first night that it hasn’t rained. The bugs and gnats have been really bad this year, but we are managing. There are a couple local gals that come in and pick up our laundry and do it for us each day so we have clean clothes. We have a great group of kids on this trip. They are really diggin’ it!! There haven’t been any complaints even when we didn’t have electricity two mornings in a row and they had to eat dry toast with peanut butter. We (the staff) predict that as in the past, it will be difficult for these kids to leave Santa Cruz when the time comes. They are getting very comfortable here and everything now seems normal to them. It’s been a great experience so far! The next update will be tomorrow night (Monday) |
June 24, 2005 The group in Santa Cruz is doing well and everyone is healthy and content with their sleeping arrangements. The kids are warming up to life in Honduras . Dr. Vides has been busy with his patients at the clinic so we haven’t seen much of him yet. There are a few projects that we’ve gotten involved with in the community, some of the group has been painting at the clinic, others have been doing home visits to Honduran families and one group got involved mixing cement and making bricks. We aren’t sure what the bricks are for yet, but they needed to be done. Five students also helped out at the Christian pre-school today assisting with the lessons, playing games and preparing lunch - they had a great time! We met the pastor of the First Evangelical Free Church and he invited us to attend their church services on both Saturday and Sunday so we are looking forward to that. We get together as a group every night to share our daily experiences. Tonight as part of our meeting we had everyone draw names of two people in the group and then write encouraging notes to those people. This has always been something the team enjoys and tonight was no exception. The power was out in the town tonight and it is pitch black. We had dinner and our group meeting by candlelight which was kind of cool. It has been really hot during the days and then has been raining in the afternoon and evening which cools things off. Most of the food we’ve been eating is authentic Honduran food and it has been excellent. Tonight we had deep fried tortilla chips, potatoes, beans, rice and beef - similar to what we call Mexican haystackers. We also take some time at each meal to also pray for the Teguc team. We have ordered some woodworking through one of the local carpenters to make 6x4 plaques on which we will include a Bible passage. We will give these out to the local Honduran families as a house warming gift when we do our home visits. Regarding the current water project, the Water Board met yesterday and is currently looking for a new water source. They decided that if they take water from the current source it would result in taking water away from other cities which would be detrimental to those cities, so they need to look for another source. It is unlikely that our presence will intersect with the water project. Things are good - greetings to our families back home. Please continue to pray for us and the Teguc team that our presence here will have an impact on those we meet as we share the love of Jesus Christ. Our next call is scheduled for Sunday night, check back to see what else we’ve been up to! |
Hello from Santa Cruz We arrived safely in Santa Cruz today. We met at Westwood church at 3:00am this morning to take a bus together to the airport. We had a short time of fellowship and prayer with family and friends before heading off to the airport. Both the flight to Houston and the flight to Tegucigalpa were smooth and uneventful. The Tegucigalpa group met up with their sponsors so we said good-bye and headed by bus to Santa Cruz . It is a long road trip through the mountains, but we arrived safely at about 3:30 local time (1 hour behind Mpls time). Dinner was at 5:30 which consisted of rice, scrambled eggs, bean, tortillas and some chicken nuggets. Everyone was doing great, but extremely tired from the long travel day so we are all turning in early. The local people rented, borrowed and bought beds so everyone would have a place to sleep. Breakfast is scheduled for 8:00 tomorrow morning. There are a couple of projects pending which the team might get involved in, but don’t have any significant plans at this time. We will be getting acclimated to the country and culture tomorrow. Please pray for us while we continue our ministry here in Santa Cruz tomorrow. Our next call will be late on Friday night.
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The
Santa Cruz team is: Alycia Petrie, Ashley
Lureen, Bethany Becker, Bret Chapman, Catherine Finn,Christy
Cheung, Grant Larsen, Jake McGuire, Jon Eklo, Katie Rosenow,
Kelsey Blomberg, Kyle Nelson, Ryan Trautmann, Sarah Havlik,
Tony Pekarek, Tara Farrell A Special thanks to Wren Feyereisen for providing the update reports for the website.
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View the Tegucigalpa Journal The Time is Santa Cruz is Mountain Time (Central time -1 hour) Return to Main Menu |