Hands In Service Projects Part 1

While we were in Honduras our group was able to see and tour most of the other projects that Hands In Service built. The only project that we were unable to see was the houses that were built for the grandmas in the mountains.

The first place we went to was the orphanage. This orphanage was started by Wayne Merz and his wife Char. The founded Hands In Service, and Wayne was with us on the trip. When they first started the orphanage, Hands In Service was known as All God's Children. All God's Children is still an organization but Wayne and Char don't do anything with that group anymore, they are self sufficient and help run the orphanage.

We went to the girls orphanage, the boys work on a farm, we were unable to go see that one. We walked to Church with the girls in the orphanage. They girls are very well taken care of, they have their own clothes, they are clean, they seem happy, they are just very deprived of attention, affection and love. There are 300 girls housed at the orphanage, and it is nearly impossible for the workers to have one-on-one time with each girl. The girls are not shy and they literally run up to you and swarm you and grab on to you and hold your hand and lay on you. This was a little hard for me because I'm not great with kids and I like my space. But the girls were sweet.

This was a mural that was painted on the side of a garage. Sammi, one of the girls at the orphanage took this picture. I think this picture was important for these girls.

This is the building with the beds in it.

This is a girl on her bed. She wanted her picture taken on her bed because that is the only thing that is just hers. They don't have toys or books or anything that is just theirs. She was proud of her space.

These were the girls that came running to me. They are both 11 years old. The girl on the left with her face covered is Suma, she really did want her picture taken, then changed her mind. The girl on the right is Sammi. Sammi was very good with my camera. She took a lot of pictures, and I didn't have to show her how. She even knew how to delete a picture! I was amazed!

Suma took this picture of her friend taking a picture. The thought it was hilarious! They were funny to watch with the cameras. I was scared I wasn't going to get mine back for a second!

Sammi took this picture of Suma in front of their flower garden.

I would not like the chore of doing laundry!

I didn't get all of the pictures I wanted to here because the girls were having fun with the camera, so I just let them take it over for the day! It was an eye opening experience to see all of these kids just craving attention. We stopped at a couple of other Hands In Service past projects, I will post about them soon!

Clothes and Toys Distribution

Back to Honduras.

While our main purpose in Honduras was to build a day care center for the village of Independencia, we also made a couple of other stops to hand out used clothing and used toys to different villages and the Children's Hospital in Comayagua. Here are some pictures of those stops.

First we went to a town in the mountains called Las Uvas which translates as The Grapes. We saw no grapes. The truck ride to Las Uvas was crazy! Rocky, windy roads on the edge of the mountain.

This shows the other two truck loads of our group on our way up the road, if you look on the top right corner of the picture you can see the road continuing up the mountain, it was close to straight up.

This shows the beauty of the mountains but also how high up we were in comparison to the other mountains. My ears popped the whole way up.

We made it to Las Uvas, and it didn't take long for a crowd to form. We didn't tell the people at Las Uvas that we were coming because last time they were told a group was coming, the group's truck got hijacked and they took everything. I thought we had a good turn out and this was about all the people we could handle.

My dad liked this picture, he figured that little girl better hold on to her toy tightly, otherwise the other two would swoop in and grab it! Don't worry though, they all got toys and clothes.

This little girl was adorable, but look how dirty her face and legs and feet are. I don't believe any of the kids had shoes up there. You can see the moms wore flip flops though.

We started our way back down the mountain and stopped at one more place before finishing our decent.

This was the 'water plant' those two concrete domes with the white x on them is the water reserve. I'm not sure how that spot got chosen or why, but that was it...I don't think it was full very often.

Again, it didn't take long for a crowd to form.

On another day before work, we stopped out at the brick factory. I will blog more about the bricks later, it was quite a process. But for now I will just blog about the give away and show the kids.

I know all of the pictures look the same, but I thought it was so fun that the crowds of people just came. It's not like they have phones to just call each other up and let everyone know what was happening. I didn't even see any homes near by the brick place.

Suzanne also brought along her Polaroid camera and took pictures of the kids and family pictures because none of these people have any family pictures because they don't have cameras and wouldn't be able to develop the film. Suzanne took her camera to Las Uvas too. People were thrilled with the pictures, we had fun with that.

We also had a day at the work site where the women who are running the day care center handed out rice mixed with milk, cinnamon, sugar and raisins. We also took Polaroids during this since everyone in the village was out.

We also stopped at the Children's Hospital on our last day before work. Don't worry, I didn't take many pictures here!! I felt kind of bad taking pictures of the sick and injured kids. We just handed out stuffed animals at the hospital. The hospital is a little different than ours. When you bring you child to the hospital, there needs to be a caregiver there at all times to take care of the child. The hospital provides the medicine and the beds, but he caregiver/family must provide the food and blankets and bathe the kids and feed the kids. So the parents were there at all times, leaving the rest of the children at home, usually unsupervised.

I'm not sure what was wrong with the baby in the top pictures, I think he had some sort of problem with his eating. The boy in the bottom picture had some sort of furniture dropped on his foot and I believe he lost a toe.

It was amazing to see how happy just a stuffed animal made these kids. I was worried I was going to be really sad to see how these people had to live but everyone seemed happy and it was a very joyful and rewarding experience.

Bright Idea!

I'm taking a break from Honduras to post this fun and inexpensive project.

I receive emails from ReadyMade. They send all kinds of creative ideas and projects you can make yourself. These lamps that are hanging in the picture is one of the projects. It is just string wrapped around an inflated balloon, papier mache style.

I think I will do this! I am not quite sure where I'll hang it yet, but I'm thinking it would be nice to do a smaller one and use it as a bedside reading light on either side of the bed. I think there are already holes in the wall too!

DIRECTIONS:

Inflate your balloon to the desired size, and tie it off.

Take one end of the thread and tie it to the knot on the balloon.

Begin wrapping the thread around the balloon, keeping it taut but not letting it distort the shape of the balloon.

Keep winding the thread around until you have good coverage over the whole surface of the balloon. The final trip around the balloon should end up back at the knot.

Cut your string and tie it to the knot of the balloon.

Cover your work area with a drop cloth, and fill a shallow bowl with fabric stiffener.

Wearing rubber gloves and using the foam brush, gently apply stiffener to the entire surface of the balloon. Be generous, making sure to saturate the thread completely.

Hang the thread-covered balloon with a clothespin and let dry overnight.

Once it’s completely dry, pop the balloon with your needle and remove it from the globe.

Cut a hole where the balloon knot was, and insert your light fixture.

Install the ceiling hook in a nice spot, hang your new light, and let it shine.
{ TIP } To suspend light bulbs within larger globes, cut a small hole in the center of a round plastic takeout lid, and make another cut from the outer edge to the hole. Tie the cord in a loose knot, and slip the lid above the knot. To insert it into the fixture, fold the plastic lid and push it through the hole in the top. Once inside, the lid unfurls and the bulb remains suspended in place.

The Food

We definitely didn't go hungry while we were in Honduras. I took pictures of each meal we had to prove that we didn't have to eat scary things.

For breakfast we just had toast and cereal, I didn't think I needed pictures of that. Lunch was turkey, ham or pb&j sandwiches, again, pictures not necessary.

Day 1: Steak, rice, veggies, baked potato and a sauce for the steak. The drink is an orange/pineapple juice, it was delicious! I could have had that everyday.

It was Suzanne's birthday so she got a surprise princess cake.

Day 2: La Tuna y El Coyote. The appetizer is Honduran Fondue. So good! It is basically a warm meat and bean dip with a thick layer of melted cheese, yum!

The main course was Mexican Tacos. They were tortillas with ground chicken (and a few bones) with different salsas to put on them.

Let's not forget las cervesas (beer). These were the three big Honduran beers. The most popular is Imperial it has a very strong beer taste. Barena is similar to a Corona and Salva Vida (which translates to Life Saver) was my favorite but I don't know what it compares to.

Day 3: Chinese - just like in the States! No joke, fried rice, sweet and sour chicken, shrimp chow mien, egg rolls. Very tasty.

Day 4: Pupusas and Honduran tacos. The pupusas are the flat round pita looking things. They are filled with melted cheese and seasoned ground beef, these were really good. The Honduran tacos were very much like toquitos that you get in the freezer section and bake in the oven, crispy shell filled with meat.

Dessert, ice cream at Eskimo

Day 5: Mid-day snack, hand made Pineapple Turnovers, these were my favorite food from Honduras.

Lunch: Gringas - cubed steak and melted cheese in a grilled tortilla with rice. (gringa is also slang for 'white girl' so I'm not sure how gringa the food is suppose to translate.)

Dinner: The Log Cabin, we had bbq chicken, fried plantain, chili, and veggies with tortillas. My chicken wasn't cooked all the way, I did not like the plantain, the chili was ok, so I mostly had veggies rolled in tortillas...we are suspicious that this meal is what made the team sick, since I showed no signs of illness.

Day 6: This might be the scary meal I suppose, it was really good, but looks quite scary. Deep fried tilapia with fresh lime juice.

Day 7: The lady's running the day care center invited us over and made us chicken fajitas with fresh veggies and a warm potato salad. Others are suspicious that the warm potato salad was the culprit in the sickness experienced by some team members.

Dessert was Tres Leches - translates as 3 milks. It is a white cake soaked in condensed, evaporated and regular milk flavored with vanilla malt. It was very good. This comes in as a close second to the pineapple turnovers. Some believe this was the culprit to the sickness, I disagree strongly.

I told you I took a lot of pictures!! I hope you enjoy them!

Day of Travel

The first day we were there was mostly spent traveling.

We flew into the airport in San Pedro Sula.

We had a 4 hour bus ride from San Pedro Sula to Comayagua. We actually rode in a very nice bus with air conditioning. In previous years they took a very old bus that barely made the trip.

Along the highway we saw a roadside fruit stand and we decided we would stop and have some fresh pineapple and coconut milk. The pineapple was delicious! The best I've ever had.

We also stopped at Wendy's to get a pop.

After the fruit and pop, we needed a rest area! We found one that had an amazing nativity scene set up, a beautiful tree and a bird sanctuary.

In case we got hungry later, a man had his catch of the day ready for us on the side of the road, he also made it easy on himself and sold his fish in his front yard.

We saw so many things on just the first day, I was excited to see many more new things during the week ahead!

Stay tuned for more to come!

Hondruas

I went a mission trip with Hands In Service to Comayagua Honduras.


My team started building phase/building two of a day care center that is located in Independencia.


The day care center has it's first phase/building one mostly complete and is open. It is being run by a catholic group of women and is available to children with single mothers so the mothers can work during the day and the kids have a safe place to stay.


There are many single mothers in the area, the fathers tend to leave.


I took over 700 pictures, and I won't post them all, but I thought maybe I'd post a few pictures at a time highlighting certain parts of the trip. It will be a 'to be continued' series of posts.

Scarf and Mittens

I made this scarf out of this book. I wanted to just try out the pattern so I used some old cheap yarn that was laying around. I believe it is Red Heart Yarn. It actually turned out nice! It's really warm and the kinks the pattern made really turned out well and held as kinks. I will try this scarf again in a lighter yarn.

I also made these mittens. I have no idea where the pattern is from. It was laying around in my loose-leaf patterns. I used Filatura di Crosa Sempre Yarn color 7.