The River Runs Through It

Sunday, the Lord's day, is probably different in Honduras than for us on any given Sunday in the states. You just never know what will happen, WELCOME TO HONDURAS.
We left the mission house about 8:45 am for worship with the Christians at the San Miguel church. This is the church this Torch team funded for construction last summer. Everyone was really excited about going because the construction of this church happened after our group left last summer, so the group had not seen the project finished and serving the community..these are pic's of how the community near the church looked just 3 days ago. We loaded two big yellow school buses and headed for the village. When we arrived we found that the community had experienced a flash flood the day before and huge amounts of water had made its way through the center of the community. The river had swelled to where it could no longer be contained and it destroyed everything in it's path. (pics of how it looks now) I tell you it looks like Tsunami pictures! Because this community is built up on the sides of mountains, houses where washed away and the main access road into the community was no longer and more importantly the soccer field was gone!!!!!! This is the community Mark had chosen for us to work because of our involvement with the building of the church, and now it seems that our time there will be more of a blessing than anyone could have imagined, God is good!!! In the midst of a washed out road and stuck bus, our group hiked through LOTS of mud, a running river across a make shift bridge to worship while some stayed back (Justine, Tyler, Joe and Chris) to help dig out the main entrance into the community so that water and food trucks and community residents could get in and out and some of normal life could resume. We had a joyful time of worship with our Christian family in San Miguel and enjoyed bible class time with the many many many children that attend this church. Being with the children is always a highlight for EVERYONE that visits here as Joel found out and shared in devotional tonight. Raquel, Rachel,and Hannah helped lead the children's bible classes and many of our young men took part in the bilingual worship service. It is always very special to see our two cultures worship side by side. As Steve was watching the community working to begin to "fix" the damaged to the river he commented on how very different life is here and how resilient the people are and how resourceful. He is right the people here simply live day by day and live in the truest sense of community. When we left we went to the warehouse to pick up boxes of food to bring to the community, Nueva Oriental. We had the pleasure of bringing food to over 100 families! When the buses arrived the children began dancing and chanting knowing that a blessing was on its way. It is often sad because the need is always so great and today we did not have enough food for every house in the village. It is always hard for first time Torchers, and all of us really, to have to leave anyone without. But it is in those moments that our hearts can understand and develop the compassion of the Christ as he looks at humanity.
Tomorrow will be a very busy day and we have much to do...Our fearless leader(that would be Mark Connell) now has a nickname....Pharaoh and it appears, as Larry said, "he is NOT letting his people go"!!!! Pray for us!!!
Good things are happening!!!