Honduras - Day 1

Well the day has finally arrived! I am finally on my way back to Honduras. I know that God had a reason for having me wait a year to go back. We got up nice and early (3:00 am). Emily McCarthy (who didn't sleep at all the night before because she was so excited/nervous about her first visit to a third world country), met us at our house and within ten or fifteen minutes of us waking up we were headed to the church to meet the rest of the group. I knew that I would forget something and, sure enough, I got to the church and realized I left my camera at the house. Luckily we now live five minutes from the church so mom took me back to get it. James Watson helped us load all our luggage onto the church bus and after saying our goodbyes and piling into the bus we were finally on our way to the airport. Despite it being 3:30, I was so awake and so excited! I just knew that God was going to work wonders during the week. As usual we got to the airport early and it still took us forever to get through baggage and security. Luckily we all made it through without having to be patted down or double checked. We sat at our gate and drank our Starbucks. I was suddenly overcome with happiness. I was with great friends and my sister and I was about to spend a whole week serving God and the people of  Honduras. What a great life God has blessed me with.

We finally boarded our flight to Miami. I normally have no problems flying but for some reason the pressure really bothered my ears; not to mention the fact that we were on the tiniest airplane I have ever been on. Seriously though, the plane only held one hundred people. I sat with Chelsea and she was a little nervous at first, since this was her first time flying since she was about four years old. Once the plane got in the air, she was finally able to enjoy the experience. Flying is one of the strangest/exhilarating things you could do! It never gets old! We had an hour and a half layover in Miami so we played cards. Then the funniest thing happened. There was this man sitting next to where we were playing cards. He asked us what we were going to Honduras for. We told him that we were going on a mission trip for the next week. Come to find out, his daughter is Leighton Meester (Gossip Girl/Country Strong/A lot of other movies). We told him we were from Nashville and he was like, "Oh yeah my daughter just got done filming a movie there. She is in Country Strong". We were thinking she was an extra or something but when he told us her name our jaws dropped. What were the odds that he would be going to Honduras. Turns out he had some business stuff to do in Tegucigalpa. Crazy! The flight to Tegucigalpa was an exciting one. It was finally hitting me that I was about to be in one of my favorite places on earth. I squealed, to Emily's surprise when I saw the mountains of Honduras coming into view.

Walter and the guards met us at the airport and helped us load our luggage into the extremely shady vans. But its okay because the vans end up being one of the best parts of the trip. Our first stop was the Hotel Excelsior (our wonderful home for the week). After spending about an hour resting in our surprisingly nice hotel room, we met the rest of the gang to find out the rest of the plans for the day. That is the one thing I love about Honduras...you never really know what you are doing until the last minute. It definitely makes things more exciting. We were surprised when we met our guards that one of them spoke decent English. His name was Alfredo and we all bonded with him right away (mostly because we could actually talk to him, unlike the other guards). The other guards were Hector, Erlyin, and Edward. They were all shy but as the week went on they definitely warmed up to us. We decided to go eat lunch at Wendy's where Emily cracked us all up trying to speak Spanish to the guards. The poor guys had to think we were crazy. And finally we headed to the Medical clinic where we bagged 500 food bags. Handing these bags out would end up being one of our daily tasks. Alfredo helped Laura and I bag the beans and in one of the bags we found a dead mouse and that had us all freaking out and laughing. Needless to say, after only a few hours of being in Honduras we were already  bonding with the people there. And if you decide to read about the rest of this trip, you will find out that bonding with the Hondurans was the reason God sent us on this trip. God is already working through our group. We are going to do amazing things through His name.

Medical Clinic were we bagged 500 bags of food.