June 15 2009 Helene

So hard to know where to start today… it’s our first full day here.
I woke up well rested and sweating already and in Honduras. Wow.
Today felt a little like Survivor.
My team of kids was paired with another team and our morning job was to haul construction materials through the jungle path to a house where we would begin installing a floor in a new home.
Our guide is an island teen named Hormand. A way down the road we encountered a challenge. The path is washed out in a deep ravine and there are two logs stretched across, so we had to figure out how to get all the lumber, a ladder and a wheelbarrow full of tools across. The kids problem solved, worked together and got most of the stuff across before David, The Alternative Missions construction project manager found us and said, “Hormand, why did you go THIS way??” and off he and I went with the wheelbarrow along a path with slightly less challenges.
After lunch we tore down a wall in a bunk house so that it could be converted to a classroom.
Amidst iguanas and swimming off the pier and meeting too many people to remember names today, the thing which sticks out for me is a better understanding of the Christian buzzword “missional.” Everything here is missional. Completing tasks is missional. Being warm and friendly and genuinely interested in people is missional. Telling your own story is missional. Throwing a game night for the islanders is missional. So, I am off now to lose big, i imagine, at dominoes with the islanders.