In the Barrios of Honduras

Today we went into the barrios of Honduras.

We went to two separate churches, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Small shacks by our standards, but compared to the houses they were very nice.

We were able to speak to the people and hand out food boxes filled with staples like rice beans and noodles. It would take them two weeks to earn enough to buy one box. We handed out over 100 of them just from our team... there were six teams. So awesome.

The second place we went took a while. The bus stopped and wouldn't go any further. The driver said not without a police escort, and the police refused to go into the area we were supposed to go. We had to call the chief of police of San Pedro Sula to order the police men to escort us.

They then rode on a motorcycle behind us with two police officers on it- one to steer and one to point the gun. When we finally got there an hour late the people had been waiting in the little church for us the whole time. It had to have been over 100 degrees in that building! We spoke and handed out the food.

Afterwords we found out the reason the driver and the police didn't want to go there. Not only was it one of the roughest areas of San Pedro Sula, but three days before a woman had been murdered right where our bus had parked. There were people there that were hurting deeply from the sudden loss of a friend. We were able to comfort those closest to the victem and invite them to the festival this evening. A pretty intense day to say the least. After all of this we came back reloaded the bus and headed to the first of two major festivals. It is eleven o'clock at night as I write this and I am exsausted. We will try to get some pictures of today up in the morning but for now I am going to crash.