Bienvenidos a Honduras

It's been over 3 years since I've posted something on this blog, and I wanted to revive it to document for my recent Honduran trip. Let's get to it!

H4HC
My family and I decided to do this trip about a year ago. My mom heard about this opportunity from a woman in her family ward whose family was on the trip with us. In all, there were 3 families and 2 parts of families, including the illustrious Karen Godt. Karen and her husband started and continue to run the Hope for Honduran Children foundation. Their foundation serves children in multiple villages in Honduras and focuses on Casa Noble, a house for teenage boys. My dad is a doctor, my mom is a medical assistant, my brother is pre-med, and my sister is interested in the medical field. So they wanted to help with the medical side of the trip. Lisa Mitton, from who my mom heard about this trip, got together with Days for Girls and brought feminine hygiene resources. Then the rest of us brought games, lessons, and crafts to do with the children.
To learn more about H4HC, click here.

DAY 1
The Ericksens and Mittons traveled from Portland to Atlanta to Tegucigalpa all night Friday and into Saturday. We arrived, dazed, to the airport and found out that the plane was too heavy, so they took lots of our groups' luggage off the plane in ATL before we left. We had all our supplies and donations as well as our clothes in those bags. Luckily, they delivered our baggage the next day, but we were nervous for 24 hours. Also, you should know that pilots have to be specially trained and the weather has to be ideal in order for them to land in Tegucigalpa. The capital city sits at the bottom of a tight bowl of mountains, so it's a tough landing. Thus, the relieving of baggage in ATL.
Before we left the city, we stopped by the Centro Americano version of Costco for a change of clothes and some snacks. That was a funny experience.
We drove about 40 minutes into the mountains to a nicer city called Santa Lucia. For this portion of the trip, we stayed in a hotel called Texas Guest House. The owner is Honduran, but he worked and lived in Texas for 50 years of his life, so he brought his love of Texas and started a hotel in Honduras.

Flying into Tegucigalpa

View from the bus

My favorite spot from the hotel.

The whole hotel is decorated like Texas and the rooms are called by the different Texas cities.

The local LDS meetinghouse is right across the street!

Our first night, we visited the Casa Noble boys. Casa Noble was started about 14 years ago after Karen and John visited Honduras and heard about a barn filled with 24 teenage boys who hadn't eaten in 4 days. No shoes, no running water, no toilets. When these boys would get out of school, there would be a high chance that they would get into gangs to survive. There are few opportunities for young people in a country where unemployment is at 80%.
Now there are 22 boys and 1 girl in a nicer place than a barn, where they are sponsored in order for them to have opportunities after grade school. We met the boys Saturday night and they gave us a mini concert.

DAY 2

Even though we were staying literally right across the street from the LDS church, they were having stake conference that Sunday in a place we couldn't get to, so we missed out. BUT we got the opportunity to join Karen for a Catholic Mass in Santa Lucia.
We then got a tour of the town by the Casa Noble boys who went to Mass with us. Honduras is just stunning. It's a beautiful rain forest with beautiful, kind people. I gotta cover myself in 100% deet bug spray all day and not drink the water, but it's a beautiful place. :)

We had a pool party with the Casa Noble people at a nice house. The people who own the house rented it out to us and fed us food. We had a lot of fun with the group.
Sunday night, we relaxed and planned for the week of doctoring and teaching and playing. There was an AWESOME thunder and lightning storm that I watched on the roof terrace with my mom. We compared it to a very big giant taking a picture with flash of the mountain.

DAY 3
I was SICK all Sunday night and Monday, so I took it easy and missed out on the first day at San Juan de Rancho.
It was someone's birthday from our group and the birthday of a Casa Noble guy named Jose, so we had a surprise mariachi band and cake Monday night. Got to get my dance on, in sickness or in health.

MORE TO COME!