Honduras

So, I recently returned home from my missions trip to Honduras. I went with my church to Mission Lazarus and it was amazing! I first heard about Mission Lazarus a few years ago when my brother in law went on a trip there. The following year, my dad went and I've heard stories since and have been wanting to go. The coolest thing is that the guy who started Mission Lazarus went to Page High School! What!

Last year was the first year my church went and due to Bonaroo and my family beach trip, I couldn't go. This year the beach trip is pushed back to October and Bonnaroo was a no (that's a whole other blog!) when I found out my church was going back, I knew I wanted to go. It was a huge decision, and a lot of prayer went into it before saying yes. The biggest concern was the $2500 for his trip. In my mind, I'm an adult with a good job who travels frequently, however I don't go in $2500 trips! I felt weird asking for support during this time due to the above mentioned. The whole time, I felt God saying, if you don't have enough faith that I will provide this money for your trip, then you don't have enough faith in me. Well, I trusted God and was able to raise over my goal of $2500! Thank you!

The first day was a long day of flying. Our plane left Nashville at 4:00 to fly into Houston, but we had I fly around Tropical Storm Cindy! We had a 3 hour flight from there into Tegucigalpa and that is one crazy landing! The plane flew in sideways and the pilot just set it down! 2 of the guys on the trip who were sitting behind me had their phones thrown about 10 rows ahead of us! It was a crazy landing. After a few hours hanging at the airport, we got on the smallest plane EVER to fly the short 30 minutes to Choluteca. It felt like a 4 cylinder car trying to gas it up a hill when we took off, and I was happy when we landed!

We made it to the ranch and had dinner and set up in our cabins. We did a tarantula and scorpion  check and had a nice nights sleep before 6:00 breakfast.

The first day, my group went to work on Santos house, which took about 2 hours to get there. We removed the tiles from the roof and starting adding to the height of the house to get it ready for the new roof. Let me tell you, it was HOT! It was easily 100 degrees and humid. I've worked on a mango farm in Darwin,  Northern Territory Australia and I thought that was hot, but at least there we had mango trees for shade!  We worked until 4:30 and we exhausted and worn out! It was after 7:00 before we made it back to the ranch and we were so filthy and tired!

The next day we drove 2 hours to a village to install 3 Latrines. The families have to dig the hole, and some of these holes were pretty impressive and then we come in and put the latrine together and install it. The hardest part was carrying the 500 pound slab of concrete. The first House we had to walk a goat trail up the side of a mountain to get to the latrine. I might of fell down during this walk. Shocker!! The first latrine we put together in 70 minutes and the 3rd latrine was in 30 minutes. We were on it. We also talked to the families and prayed with them. Such s cool experience.

Sunday we drove forever to church! This is the village that we raised money for so they could drill a well and have water for the first time ever! Due to road construction, we were 30 minutes late, but they waited to start church until we got there. This village is in the hottest region of Honduras and as you can imagine, there was no AC in the church! They kept the service short, 1 hour, just for us! The music was so cool sounding, even though I had no clue what they were singing, but we all worshiped the same God! The kids then got up and performed a song for us and it was so cute! All of the people had to walk to church in this heat. I can't imagine walking to church and it's only 3 miles away! I almost late to church weekly because it's so close and I always think I have more time then I do in the mornings getting ready! I have no excuse not to be at church on time after seeing this!

Monday was back to latrines and Tuesday was finishing Santos house. It was great to see the progress on his house! It was great to see it being so close to the end and almost move in ready! The thing that stands out to me about Santos house is that it is 3 rooms for his family. About the size of my living room and kitchen combined. He is a father figure to many kids and has more then his biological kids living with him and his wife. He recently went to Haiti with Mission Lazarus and came back to Honduras and said he has never seen poverty like he did in Haiti.  I can't imagine living like his family does and here he is seeing how there are people worse off then him and him knowing how blessed he is.

Wednesday we spent touring the ranch. Mission Lazarus had vocational schools to teach locals skills. These 2 year schools for these people. Most do this in lieu of a traditional high school. There are multiple students that walk 2-3 hours one way to get here. Up hill, might I add! That's dedication. We got to see these schools as well as the coffee plantation. They roasted coffee for us up there and made it over a wood stove. I'm not a coffee drinker, but this coffee was amazing! So good! We spent the day riding around to these places and the roads are rough, and rough is an understatement. Everyday my Fitbit showed that I got about 1,000 steps each drive. This particular drive, I got over 5,000 steps! All from the rough roads!

I came home exhausted, but recharged from this trip. It's humbling to be able to go and do this and show Gods love. I keep calling this a vacation, but it wasn't really a vacation. Our group worked our booties off and it was amazing. It made me appreciate my nice office job and the comforts of my home that I take so Easily for granted.  Mission Lazarus is an amazing organization and there are some good things going on down in a country that is somewhat corrupt.  Please consider praying for he people who give their lives to this organization and for good things to continue to come out of this organization. Hopefully I'll be back on the ranch again!

http://www.missionlazarus.org

Insomnia Much?

In my 36 years, sleep hasn't been an issue for me. I can sleep anywhere in any situation, no problem! I can't sleep late, but I can fall asleep! Well, that's changed recently and I'm not a fan of it!

I'm convinced that my lack of being able to turn my brain off and go to sleep is a side effect of my anti-malaria medicine I started taking back in June, which is right around the time I started having sleeping issues. Last night I googled side effects of this particular medicine and  nowhere  did it say that  insomnia was a side effect. AARP and WebMD both confirmed this, I think they are wrong. Generally medicine has the opposite effect on me. If I smell NyQuil, it knocks me out  for 3 days! I avoid certain medicines because they take forever to leave my system and I'm loopy for about a week!

While I'm googling last night, instead of sleeping, I also searched for the following information.
-Is Mount St. Helens predicted to erupt anytime soon? The answer is no, but it will erupt again.
- Does crying make you fall asleep? Yes, it does help induce sleep. Crying may be inevitable for me if this keeps up.
-What are symptoms  of sleep deprivation? My favorite is "klutz". What?? All I could then think about was that I have been sleep deprived my whole life and had no clue.

Around 11:00 last night, I thought if I rearranged my bedroom furniture, maybe I could fall asleep. It's at this point that I realize that there is no good way to move my furniture around and give up on the idea.

My co-worker suggested journaling before bed....does blogging in the afternoon count?

I finish the malaria medicine tomorrow, so hopefully  I'll get some sleep soon. In the meantime, I'm wondering if malaria is really worse then sleep deprivation?!?!