Honduras Mission Trip by Emily Ulrichson

Honduras Day 1

              The whole trip to Honduras was a whirlwind. I came with the group that left Sunday morning to drive to Chicago. From Chicago we flew to Miami and stayed the night in Miami before making the last leg of the trip to Honduras. In Tegucigalpa we met up with Kevin and his group. We all got on a bus together for a 2 hour ride from Tegucigalpa to Danli where we are staying .The 2 hour bus ride was my favorite part. It was so beautiful to see all the mountains and getting to experience driving in a foreign country was quite the experience.

              Today was our first full day in Honduras. We had breakfast in the courtyard area of the hotel before splitting up to do our activities. Part of the team went to Llamado Eterno Church to build bunk beds while the other part of the team visited one of the schools near our hotel. Visiting the school was such a fun experience. There must have been about 200 kids at the school and they were not shy. More than once I would be talking with one of the other team members or another adult when I would one of the kids wrap their arms around me in a hug. It was such a sweet experience. At one point one of the girls even started playing with my ponytail. Teaching them about Jesus and preforming our VBS skits in front of them was a lot of fun. The kids had such energy and were very excited to see us. I fell in love with how joyful and energetic these kids were. Their eyes were so full of light and they were just so happy to see people that were different from them.

              My roommate (Pam Young) and I have decided that we are going to be looking for the unexpected things each day to make the trip more interesting and so we have more to share about our experiences here in Honduras. Yesterday the unexpected thing I found was that there are literally cows, donkeys, horses, and dogs walking around in the middle of the city without anyone leading them. Stray dogs is not that unusual of a concept but cows, donkeys and horses? That’s funny! Today my unexpected thing was how easy it was to interact with the kids at the school even with the language barrier. They would come up and ask me questions and for the most part I could understand them and they seemed to understand the few questions I was able to ask them. Overall it was a great first day and I am very excited to see what God is going to do during this trip.

 By Emily Ulrichson