A Sunday in Honduras

Today was our fun/relaxing day here in Honduras. We started out with a breakfast of pancakes and papaya around 7:30 am, then headed to church with Anna, the coordinator for our trip. While her church is attended by primarily Spanish speaking people, they did have a translator for us today during the message portion, which was very helpful considering the only words I consistently recognize are "hola" and "gracias". I realized shortly after we arrived at church that I am actually part Honduran...everyone came at least 10 minutes late, and church probably didn't start until 9:20 or 9:30. :) It also lasted a little longer than it normally does in the U.S. - 3 hours! They have an outdoor facility overlooking the city of Tegucigalpa - pretty incredible view. 

After church we went out to lunch with our coordinator Anna. She took us to a place where we could get an authentic Honduran food called pupusas. They are kind of like a round quesadilla, but the breading part is make of a cornmeal mixture and is softer and thicker than a tortilla. They are usually filled with cheese, pork sausage, beans, or a mixture of those three. They are served with a pickled carrot/onion mixture that you put on top, or with a cilantro coleslaw type topping. Everything we ate there was excellent, and our whole group of 14 ate for less than $50. 

After lunch, we took a road that our translator told me translates as "road to the belly" that wound through the beautiful mountains of Tegucigalpa, and took us into the little downtown area of Valle de Angeles. It's meant mostly for tourists, but the majority of the people there seemed to be Hondurans rather than visitors. And unlike some tourist traps, most items were very reasonably priced. We spent a couple hours there before heading back to Casa Lamb for dinner.

Here are a few more pictures from today:

The city of Tegucigalpa, looking down from the hill our church was on this morning.

The landscape around Tegucigalpa. A lot of the mountains were steeper than this, but I was too afraid to stick my hand out of the van for a picture. We took the curves pretty fast!

Andy in front of his Honduran barber shop. Who knew? 

We really enjoyed the day to bond as a group, getting to know each other better before we head to the orphanage and attempt to work as a team over the next several days. I think we're all looking forward to actually going to the orphanage though. We've spent so many months preparing for this, and in a way it feels strange to be so close to the children we're here to meet and serve, but not to have gone to the orphanage to meet them yet. That'll change tomorrow morning though - we leave at 8:30 am. Thanks again for all the prayers, and for caring enough about our trip to check on us. :)