Arrival weekend in Tegucigalpa!

Hola a todos desde Honduras!

(Hello to everyone from Honduras!)

After weeks of anticipation, we are all happy to be here in Tegucigalpa at last. We have had a good start to our week and I am happy to be able to add to this blog - and even happier to have the means to upload a few photos for everyone to see.

The flight here was uneventful - which is good considering that Toncontin Airport is famous for having one of the shortest runways and perhaps the most dangerous final approach of any commercial airport in the world! Check out this YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_z5HtME9n8

And then see what our own landing looked like from my seat on the right side of the plane:

After arriving at El Hogar and settling in to the visitors´house, we were immediately treated to a delicious meal of chicken and rice, which then left us ready for afternoon naps to try to recover from waking up in the wee hours of the night in order to make it to Boston Logan at 3:50am.

Later in the afternoon, Jason gave us a tour of the site and we got to see the new dormitory for the children here, which was finished last February thanks to the generosity of previous donors.

The children all live in this dormitory and also take their meals there, although the food is cooked in la cocina, a separate cooking facility, and then carried to the dorm by the children.

Our dinner last night was a more typical meal of plantains, refried beans, and tortillas - a repeat of which we enjoyed for dinner tonight as well. It´s a simple but delicious meal and I´m sure it will be even tastier at the end of long days of construction work ahead.

This morning before church we had an hour or so of quiet time to relax on the front porch of the visitors´house. (The main door to the house is in the background and several bedrooms are entered through doors in the wall at left.) The porch has become a nice gathering place where we have been eating some of our meals and getting to know each other better as we prepare for the work week ahead.

We visited the Episcopal cathedral near El Hogar for church this morning. The bishop presided over a Morning Prayer service; it would ordinarily have been a service of Holy Communion but it had been decided to switch due to concerns about sharing a common cup while swine flu is still spreading.

I especially enjoyed meeting Moises (Moses), one of the older boys from El Hogar who provided the guitar accompaniment for the service, and comparing notes on our favorite Spanish praise music!

Children here are even more excited about McDonald´s than children back home, so we treated a few of the El Hogar students to the rare treat of lunch there after church, as a reward for those who have been especially well-behaved and diligent in their schoolwork during the past week.

Othe way back to El Hogar we saw a few scenes typical of life here in Tegucigalpas:

This afternoon was a wonderful time of playing with the children here and getting to know them better.

We discovered during a very hot and sweaty impromptu game of kickball that the boys here can be fiercely competitive!

Now we are all ready to get underway with construction work tomorrow. Originally we had planned to perform some demolition work on one of the old dormitories; later we heard that last week´s team finished that work and we might be constructing a basketball court instead. Now the latest word is that we´ll be digging ditches and pouring concrete for a drainage system behind the new dormitory. However we wind up contributing, we are just honored and happy to be a part of helping the children here. And we are especially grateful to all of you who are contributing financially and in prayer to our mission.

Signing off for now,

Mark (aka Marcos)