Hey homies, Matt here. We're at a place where they do church retreats, met up with the girls here a little while ago. We're gonna go hiking tomorrow at La Tigre park. Everytime I hear the name La Tigre, I think of Derek Zoolander's looks and Will Ferrell's rant at the end of the movie: "Blue Steel?! La Tigre?! They're all the SAME look!! I feel like I'm taking crazy pills! I invented the piano key necktie! What has he done? Nothing!!" Sorry, I know a couple of you get it.
So this past week has been pretty flippin' cool. Me and this guy Jason from Cedarville University have been hanging a ceiling and today we were welding a desk together. The churches here (well, the poor ones like the one we've been staying at) have a problem with staying afloat financially, so they have to come up with ways to make money. They're gonna open up an internet cafe and the building was built by Mark (the missionary we're with) last year, so we're putting up the ceiling and desk for it. Computers were donated awhile back and they're supposed to be on their way by boat, but they got lost in the Bermuda Triangle or something. So yeah, the place is looking really sweet now.
We lived in that same building all week and slept on cots, and lemme tell you: Tegulcigalpa is the noisiest city in the world, especially at night. Everything from dogs barking and fighting, roosters crowing at all hours of the night (in the movies they only do it at sunrise, what's up with that?), kids crying and adults getting wasted. I had earplugs but they didn't make any difference; plus they just fell out at night. I got woken up at least 10 times every night, except for last night, I only got woken up like 3 or 4 times. I think it's cuz I had good dreams, too... I dreamt I was Batman. So yeah, I wouldn't recommend raising kids there, unless you had your own reality show.
The churches next door neighbors grow pot and they're not ashamed to smoke it on their porch. Yesterday morning, me, Jason, and Jiovani (Pastor Pablo's brother) were working and jamming some music. Jiovani is hilarious, he loves all the hits from the 70s and 80s and some other random stuff like Allison Kraus, so I really wanna take him to the States and let him listen to BOB FM, it'd blow his mind. So Jiovani brought a burned CD of Bob Marley's greatest hits, and at like 10 am we're jammin' Marley and the neighbors are smoking so much pot next door, it smells like we're in the car with Bill and Ted. I think we got them in the mood or something since we had the radio on pretty loud. (no one has glass windows in the slums, just bars and maybe screens cuz there are no air conditioners). I was gonna plug up some Jerry Garcia on my iPod, but once the humidor got cloudy, I decided against it.
I know Honduras is an impoverished nation, but guys I promise you this: we have not missed a single meal. It's very common to just pop into someone's house and say hey, and in their culture they feel obligated to offer you some food and soda or coffee. Great thing is, Pablo is a pastor, so it's totally normal for a pastor to go around to their people's homes; he takes me and Jason with him, and we're the interesting white boys, so the love to give us some great food and make us coffee and stuff. I joke around with them in Spanish too, so it's fun. And his wife Dina is a good cook too, so we've been eating great.
Pablo's church is called Betel (Bethel w/out the H, and put the emphasis on the second syllable). They have 4 services/Bible studies every week! He talks to me and Jason a lot about the difficulties of being a pastor there; he used to be well liked in the community, but once he became a pastor, he lost a lot of respect from people. He's a young guy, only 35. One of their neighbors is a girl named Gina, and I helped her with her English homework the other night. They live right there next to the church, but she never goes. So I asked her what she was doing last night right before church started, and she said "nada", so I pulled her into church with us. Pablo likes it when the gringos come and do stuff like that. He says it's harder for them to say no to us than to him. Plus I helped her with her homework, so she kinda owed me.
It's a very, very tough neighborhood. We're not allowed to walk anywhere alone and the other night when we went to the museum, we HAD to be back before 7:30. Pablo has a really big heart for this area and he always talks like he's burdened for the people there. It's tough for him, cuz the kids that go there will sometimes fall into drugs or prostitution, or both. After I helped Gina with her English and she came to church the next night, Pablo was telling me about how bad they need good English teachers in their schools. The teachers just hand them worksheets that are all in English and just tell them to do it; no instruction whatsoever. He said it'd be a good ministry to teach English in the schools and then teach the Bible or invite kids to church. The schools allow people to come in and teach Bible, and they'd allow someone like me to come in and teach English. He said if I wanted a job at the school, they'd hire me in a second.
So yeah, it's been absolutely great so far. Jason and me are gonna be working on some homes next week, Allie and Amy are going to an orphanage. Check out Allie's facebook for pics; she's got mine of the ceiling and desk, and some of the kids we were playing with. If the coffee continues to be this good, I'm just gonna burn my passport and stay here. Love you guys.
---matt
**disclaimer, I really don't have Garcia on my iPod, that was solely for a joke
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