And so it begins!

I flew out of Atlanta to Tegucigalpa at 10am then met up with a team that’s going down there for a week so that I could ride a bus with them to the orphanage.

The bus ride took a couple hours, but it was pretty interesting. It’s always really cool to see in person what another country looks like. There were a lot of houses really close together on big hills, and it kind of reminded me of the scenery in parts of the movie Fast Five. In case you haven’t seen that movie (and even if you have), here’s a picture:

There were places with a lot more houses than that, but it was hard to get a good picture while the bus was moving.

When I got to the orphanage I realized that it was a bit bigger than I thought it would be. The entire place is like 9,000 acres or something, and it kind of feels like a small town or city. They’ve got about 6-8 houses for the children, a girls’ volunteer house, a boys’ volunteer house where I’m staying with a few other guys, a team house for people that are here for a short time with their church, a school, a church, a farm, staff housing, La Tienda (a small store that you can buy food from), a main office, and probably a lot more that I don’t even know about yet. But now the moment you’ve all been waiting for...

The kids! There are almost 500 kids here, and they all want you to know their names. So far I have about 20 down, only 400-and-something more to go! I really can’t wait until I know a good bit of them. Most of the kids are really friendly. Some of the kids are a little too friendly (aka 16 and 17 year old girls that try to hold my hand and make me feel really sketchy). I’ve had a ton of fun playing soccer and getting to know the kids so far though. I’m supposed to be meeting with the staff at some point to figure out where they’ll have me working most of the time, but no one has said anything to me or Carol (another volunteer that got here the same day as me) about it, so for now I’ve just been following Allan and his dad (two of the volunteers I’m living with) around and playing with kids**. Any of you who know me well at all will know that I’ve pretty much been in heaven since I get to use Spanish so much here. It’s preeeetty much the best thing ever. I especially like hearing things in Spanish that aren’t meant to be understood by me and the other volunteers (like when Allan got called a pig the other day for sucking the juice out of a lime). I still can’t understand everything, and there are about a billion words I don’t know, but I’m able to have conversations with people, and that’s ok for right now. 

I’m really glad that God has pushed me out of my comfort zone in coming here. It’s an amazing place, and I’ll hopefully be growing a lot in my faith over the next two and a half months. It’s a beautiful truth to know that regardless of where I am on the planet or how far away I am from friends and family, God is always with me. “If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast” (Psalm 139:9-10). One thing that I need some prayer for is that God would help me to see these kids as he sees them and truly have compassion for them. The kids always seem so happy that it’s really easy to forget that their parents are dead, in jail, can’t provide for them, or just plain don’t want them. They’ve grown up with some really rough circumstances. I’ve already heard of one girl who saw her mother murdered right in front of her, and apparently stories as gruesome as that aren’t that uncommon of a thing here. I think a decent number of kids have been involved in gangs as well. That’s why I don’t want this to just be a summer spent playing with some kids in a foreign country; I want this to be a summer where God pours out His love through me, because these kids truly, desperately need that.

**Update (I don’t feel like rewriting the other stuff): I met with a lady named Katja today with two other volunteers and she gave us the rundown on what we’d be doing here. I’ll be working a lot with the small boys house (the boys have given me the name Chimichanga), and I’ll be helping teach English classes for 7th-11th graders (and eventually teaching them by myself!). It’s nice to actually start getting a schedule instead of wandering aimlessly all the time/shadowing Allan and his dad. Well, that’s all for now! I’ll try to post on here a good bit, but I’m using someone else’s internet right now so I don’t want to get on too much. ¡Hasta luego!