Andy's Wild Ride

So, I'm here in Honduras by myself for a few days. The medical mission I am working with told me I could go with them to Lepaterique to do a clothing distribution. I obviously have no idea where that is, so I just assumed it was nearby and would kind of be an uneventful day without much to blog about. Boy was I wrong. Therefore, you will be getting a blog about today instead of how to help the orphans. That will still be forthcoming.

So, I went to church this morning with the family that runs the mission. It was all in Spanish, so I didn't understand too much. The worship was great though, and I could figure out what most of the songs were saying.

After church, a group of women from the US arrived. They are distributing clothing this week to different areas. I helped load the truck, and we were off. I rode in the truck bed and laid on top of the huge bags of clothes. We drove on a dirt/gravel road through the mountains for about an hour and a half. We passed through tons of small villages and saw some beautiful scenery. Here are a few photos I took.


I rode up by the cab, not hanging out the back.


The views were incredible. It was tough to get a good photo though because I was usually bouncing around too much.


Here's what the road looked like most of the way. Where the Land Cruiser is ahead there is a bunch of mud.


Here is a really old looking bridge we crossed. It was a little nerve racking.


The view from the bridge.


As we neared our destination, you could see the storm clouds gathering.


This is the church we distributed the clothing and shoes at.


Oscar (one of the workers from the mission) explaining to the people how it would work. About 1 minute after this, there was a mad dash (Black Friday style) for the used tennis shoes. It was humbling to see people so excited about getting some used clothing. If 2 people got only 1 shoe out of the pair, they kind of did this waiting game to see who could last longer before wanting to just give their shoe to the other person so they could leave. I thought it was kind of like a staring contest, but with shoes.


Apparently this kid had had enough of the chaos. :)


Well, the storm finally came and I ended up riding back in the rear of the Land Cruiser. I took a video of it, but it's too slow to upload to YouTube here, so I'll post it later. The ride there wasn't even close to how wild the rainy ride home was. Making turns while driving down a mountain in the rain doesn't exactly settle your heart. I did quite a bit of praying on that ride home. Thankfully we made it back safely.