End of the week

It's Saturday night and the week is quickly coming to a close. It was another great week in Honduras - we were able to build a house for Maria and her 3 kids on Wednesday and another for a man named Nelson and his 4 sons. I love building houses and these were great families that needed a place to live. On Wednesday - about the time I drove into the property, I got a call that a container was in town and that they needed help to unload. The container was full - very full - of medical supplies and many people will be helped by the shipment. I went back to Tegucigalpa to help unload the 60,000+ pounds of goods in the shipment.
On friday Pamala was finally able to have the surgery that she needed on her foot. This will hopefully help her to be able to walk and play without the pain that she has had for years. When she was little she was hit by a bus and the surgeon didn't quite replace her heel cushion - the surgery yesterday was designed to correct that. I was able to leave the house sight to be with Karen and Pamala for the surgery - she seems to be doing well and her pain is under control.
Last night - was the one night of the week when we don't have staff sleeping in the house with the kids - Karen usually takes on that task. Since she spent the night at the hospital, I voluntered for the duty. All went well with the kids. Everybody was asleep within a few minutes of bedtime and everybody was up and at it by 6:30 this morning becaue - today was the day that I had promised to take them to lunch and a movie.
We went to lunch at a fried chicken fast food place so that the kids would have a place to play for a few minutes before we went to the theater. As soon as we were in the resturant, Rosita started with the pee dance - she loves to go to the bathroom in any new place - she went in but came out pretty quickly because she couldn't unfasten her belt. Undoing a belt when somebody is doing the pee dance isn't easy and everybody in Popeyes was watching and smiling. The kids love Popeyes because first it is chicken and second, they have free re-fills on drinks. I thought the free re-fills on drinks was a good idea until we left to go and sit through a 2 hour movie. We headed out to the cinema - at one of the local malls. Nobody trusted me to take 12 to the movie by myself so - one of our workers went along to help me out (thank you Lord). We parked and unloaded everybody and grabbed hands so that we could keep up with everybody. Good plans don't always work. About 100 yards into the mall I heard Saundra say - "DORIS!". That was our Oh crap moment. Doris wasn't with us. I quickly made sure that the 11 remaning were close by and Saundra ran to find Doris. Thankfully, she had just stayed behind at the van. Well, we were off to the movies - which didn't start for another 20 minutes. While sitting there, there was a massive attack of free re-fills and everybody needed to GO. I took them 3 at a time and the first to visit the bano was Cindy, Daniela, and Sisi. Everybody was doing the dance so I let Cindy and Daniela go into the ladies room and since nobody was using the mens room - I sent Sisi in. The first 2 came out in a reasonable time and we were waiting on Sisi - I decided it would be a good idea to open the door to check on her. I just about fell over when I opened the door to see her washing her hands in the men's urinal - she said look poppie - they put soap in it for me.
I was able to get everybody else to the restroom - without any other happenings before the start of the movie. That wasn't the end though. After about 30 minutes of the movie, the pee wiggle started and before the end of the movie I had made 9 more trips to the restroom. Of course one was with Rosita. As you may or may not know, Rosita is unable to hear. She always thinks she needs to lock the door - so she did. While she was in the restroom, a line started. We could all hear her - first the flush and then the water and then the hand dryer. The first lady in line was really needing to go and I could see her relief when the hand dryer stopped - I could also see her panic when it immediately started again. She started knocking on the door and I told her that it wouldn't do any good beacuse the person in there couldn't hear - she kept knocking. The hand dryer went off again and started again - 6 times. There were 9 ladies in line when Rosita finally came out.
When the movie was over, I took 9 kids with me out the front door and Saundra took another 3 to the restroom. When Saundra came out of the restroom, they wouldn't let her exit the same way as my group so - we were split up. It took a while but, we both finally figured that the best thing to do would be to go to the van to wait. We finally had a reunion and were able to head home with 12 happy tired kids. Just as we pulled into Santa Ana, Jackson had a bit of car sickness hit and he left all of the chicken, popcorn, sprite, etc on the van floor. I was happy that he waited until we only had a quarter mile to go and not 20 miles.
After everybody was out of the van and it was all clean from the car sickness, I realized that in the rush to get out of the theater, I had left my backpack in under the seat - 25 miles away. My backpack contains much of my life - including my passport, my notebooks, and this week - the money to pay for 2 houses. I didn't believe that I would ever see it again. I just figured that somebody would open it and say "look what the Lord has given to me". More than $2000 in cash and a passport that is worth about $10,000 on the blackmarket. I prayed and then I called my friend Milton Estrada to rush to the mall to see if he could by chance find my backpack. Then Terri and I jumped into the car to head that way. We were barely out of Santa Ana when Milton called and told me that he had my backpack and it looked like everything was there. Our God answers prayers - even for something as simple as a backpack. We met Milton and all is well.
The end of this week was one that I won't soon forget.
Be a blessing to somebody today!
Marc