Pacayal - working with the Toulapan Indians

From December 5th through the 12th we were up in the mountains working with the Toulapan Indians. It was a great week and lots of new experiences. We were up on a mountain side - above the clouds - where the people say you can hear God better because you're so much closer. It was about 4 hours from our house and we went to serve along with 2 gentlemen that represent a church near Boston who is building a community building for the people and serving and loving on the people in many ways. They are serving this community holistically - microloans, church plant, community building, and all through working through the tribal counsel and tribal chief of these people. Very interesting. I think I was one of the first blonde North American's they say and apparently we were all quite interesting looking because for the whole week we had people just sitting and watching us - whatever it was that we were doing - quite uncomfortable at times. We stayed in a shack in the center of life there along with the other residents of the shack - mice and really big spiders. The outhouse was a block away on the side of someone's house which made nighttime necessities finding a bush outside. We were really thankful to get the shower working and for food we brought our camp stove and ate really well! Instead of writing pages and pages, I'll just show you in a few pictures the highlights of the trip.

Friday the 4th started with picking up Sergio and John from the airport, getting everything we needed in the city and then stuffing Christmas bags at our house for 150 kids up in Pacayal.

During that week we gave out the gifts - it was very fun to give all these kids a gift that normally don't get anything. We had enough gifts for the first crowd but not enough for the late comers.

Tristan's probably most exciting part of the week was butchering 2 pigs. We had a community dinner that was sponsored by the church in Boston and served 500 people rice, tortillas, and pig. This was a huge treat. Tristan was enthralled and since has been studying how to butcher pigs and make smoke houses - he's planning to butcher our pigs when it's time. (Even Sigel enjoyed watching the slaughtering - I stayed in the shack and read -too much fun for me ).

The dinner went great - people were very thankful - although I didn't do the cooking, serving up 500 plates of rice sure puts a cramp in your hand. :) It was very fun for me to work along side the ladies in the hot and crowded kitchen and be a part of the serving.

Work included moving and breaking rocks. We started with a 90lb. jack hammer which after just a few hours was obvious this type of rock would not be broken by a jackhammer. So we called a rental company and they brought us out a back-hoe the next day and Sergio spent the next 4 days on the back-hoe excavating the land where the community building will be built. Sigel got to ride along and that made his week. Tristan was hoping for a lesson and a chance to drive it but they ran out of time - we even stayed an extra day to finish as it was. They got many flats which ate up way too much time - but now Tristan can add to his list of talents changing a tractor tire with little tools.

The same night as the pig feed we also had a service with over 500 people in attendance. Sergio shared a message as did the community leader Carlos. Sergio performed a wedding for Carlos and his wife Gabriela. It was a good time. The last night we were there they did another service as a thank you and goodbye for us. There were about 300 people or more in attendance - there was lots of singing and dancing and preaching and 13 people committed their lives to the Lord.

This is a picture of the doorway to our shack - an example of the many eyes that we had on us every waking minute. Honestly it's very emotionally tiring to have people looking at you all day long. I guess I could take it as a compliment but I don't know...

There's lot more that I could tell you about the week - all the stories and such. I feel like I learned a lot more about the culture of Honduras by living so closely in a village and yet so isolated from everything else. It was a good week of learning for us and of serving - our job was to do what Sergio and John asked us to do. It went well and they were happy with the week and our help. We were also very blessed to be a part of it all.

Next post... The adventures of Christmas baking with orphans that have never baked before... :)