Chuck asked me to tell about my mission trip to Honduras, since many of you were praying for me as I went. Thank you for your prayers. God answered in awesome ways.

When we first got to the work site at Barimasa (a suburb of Olanchito, Honduras) on Feb. 27th, we found, as expected, the walls which had been built over 3 years ago and grass was growing where we wanted to pour a cement floor.

The church had decided that they wanted four more courses of cement blocks and the reinforced cement cap all around before we put on a roof, so we did a lot of block hauling to build the scaffolding towers with wood across the top to walk on.

While the men and Denise (our nurse) were laying blocks, I started helping others clean out the grass. The children were eager to help so I was kept busy with the shovel, pulling out the grass and giving it to the kids waiting 3 or 4 in line to dump it out the side “door”. Some of the boys also helped tie the rings to rebar to make the vertical “towers”. I cut a lot of wire ties and made a lot of wood and wire braces for the fabricating of cement forms too during that first week.

It was hot—many days in the 90s with 90% humidity, but I got frequent breaks from what I was doing as I was called away to translate for the Hondurans or Americans. I usually grabbed my water bottle during those breaks.

By Sunday we had cleared the altar area, but realized it would take too long to do the whole floor, so we found a Bobcat in LaCeiba and Jeremy went to work on leveling and grading the floor.

The first five days I was focused totally on the construction. One day we worked 14 hours—from 7 AM to almost 9 PM to meet our goal. And the Honduran volunteers were right there working beside us! Next time I’ll tell about the Children’s Ministry that started on March 3rd.
— Sylvia

The story continues tomorrow with part 2.