Gehlen Catholic Mission Honduras 2024: Day 3

Everyone was feeling fine today so we all were able to work. We headed to our storage unit to fetch all the tools we would need to make the bunk beds. While we were there, the military transport truck arrive to go to Nueva Capital with us. They carried our tools, but our real purpose for asking them along was to transport the house wood from the school to the work site. Unfortunately, there was no house wood in sight when we arrived at the school. Again, the construction people had not arrived. It was quite disappointing for us.

Since they were not there, we went to work cutting wood for the bunk beds. That took almost all day. We still have to cut the slats that hold the mattresses tomorrow.

At 2 PM Enrique, the head of the construction crew who is to build our houses, showed up at the compound. He speaks English so it was easy to speak with him. He did apologize for not showing up earlier but said that there were lots of problems with getting lumber at this time. We can understand this because Bruce said that it is also difficult back home. We spent a lot of time talking about how his crew would build the homes for us; then we talked about the problem with our concrete floors. Due to the way they were made, and being exposed to the elements for a year, the floors have had sections of concrete break away, like erosion. We could leave them that way, but our team agreed that we do not want the Hondurans to feel that we would turn over a home to them that was not made correctly. Bruce and Enrique discussed the best way to repair the damage, and it will cause a delay in building the homes. So, tomorrow and Friday they will be repairing the concrete damage, and on Monday the homes will be framed up - after we've left.

Team members - this would not have been a typical mission trip for you. We would not have been able to build any homes until the last couple days. We have seen very few children at the school or even anywhere around the school. It's really pretty sad and very different from what we have seen in the past. We have barely had enough work to keep the five of us busy, but we are setting some plans for future trips and how we want them to work. At least, that seems to be developing in a positive way. We truly pray that our future mission trips will again be productive and meaningful.