Friday, June 15, 2007

Rainy Season

Don't know where you live but, if you have never lived in a place that only has two seasons and one is called "The Rainy Season", well - just say it's WET!
The good news is that a little (or A LOT) of rain and mud won't stop the work or the workers. It just makes for a little more adventure. For instance - yesterday I was in Santa Ana with a couple of the interns and Noel - the minister of the congregation in SA. We were out surveying the locations of 4 new houses that will be built when the next team arrives. It had rained all night on Wednesday (HARD - HURRICANE STYLE RAIN) and the main roads had mostly dried. Not true however about the back roads. I have a 4x4 and was in L4 which made me confident that my truck could roll through anything. Confidence and mud are a poor combination. Noel had just said - "this is a great truck" - about then I drove into what appeared to be an average sized mud hole. I was wrong to think this because my tires began to spin and before you could do anything about it we were stuck - the truck was so deep in the mud that it appeared to be sinking - the bottom of the doors were at mud level - and my truck sits high off of the ground.
I laughed and decided that this was going to be another part of our adventure and it was. We were rescued by a lady that had a large rope and a nice 4x4 of her own. We also had about 15 guys that came to assist in the push out - everybody was covered with poo-mud and everybody was smiling about it. (For the uninitiated "Poo-mud" is the result of combining rain or any other water source with close proximity to a poorly built outhouse - email me if you still don't understand).
I laughed at our adventure because I knew that we would get the truck out, that we were gonna get really dirty, and that we would finish our day in a shower and with a hot dinner. God has blessed those of us that were in my truck with these things.
The rainy season also reminds me that the mountains of Honduras are surrounded by families that really suffer because of the wet, the cold, and the mud. Three years ago, I was with a group of TORCH members that were building 2 houses in one of the most beautiful places on earth. We finished the houses and prayed together giving God thanks for the shelter for the 2 families that would live there. Just as we finished praying, a t-storm blew in and it poured. The rain that day showed us that the shelter was not good enough - until that day, we had build homes with dirt floors. As the rain waters poured through the dirt floor and the dirt became mud, we all knew that we could do better and we did. From that day forward, we have built houses with wooden floors that are raised above the mud.
Every time it rains here, I think about all of the families on the mountain and how an already difficult life becomes miserable. I especially pray for all the children and I hope that you will join me in that prayer.
Blessings,
Marc

No comments: