Day #2

Sunday was a day for worship, rest, and orientation.  We started out the day with "gringo church", which is a worship service for just the MTW staff.  There is another short term team here as well, from South Carolina, and we enjoyed the worship service together in the our kitchen/dining room.

After the singing, Mike Pettengill gave a brief message, and then Phil administered communion for the group.  There is not a pastor here full time, so the only time the MTW team gets to partake in communion is when short term teams with pastors on the team come down.

Right after church, we piled into the van and trucks for a tour of La Ceiba.  It was a pretty brief tour, but we got to see a diverse set of places.  There is a lot of poverty, but definitely pockets of relative wealth.  We drove through some places with western stores and restaurants, but saw a lot of street vendors and shacks as well.  La Ceiba is named after the Ceiba tree, which are a soft wood tree that grows very wide.  Below is the largest in La Ceiba, but they said it's pretty small comparatively.

One of the things that looked funny to us was the telephone/electrical wires.  It was a mess at every corner.  Apparently whenever a new business moves into a building they just run more wire, and it was an absolute rats' nest.

We had some free time after the tour.  Half of our group took advantage of the time and slept.  The other half walked to some nearby sports fields and watched part of a men's fast pitch softball game and another soccer game.

We then went to a Spanish language church.  It was a different experience for sure.  Mike said the majority of Hondurans will tell you they are Roman Catholic, but typically that's because that's what their parents told them they were, and they are not practicing.  The church we went to was a protestant church, and it had a very concert like feel.  During the singing portion there was smoke and lights going everywhere, and camera guys getting different shots of the guitar players and it was all shown up on the screen like we were at a huge concert...but it was a small room with about 100 people in it.

We came back to the compound for dinner and then hung out as a team and talked about our roles in the week to come.