survive the month on the mountain

Have you ever lived in your tent on a mountain for a month?      I HAVE!!

 

Got to our new home for the month on  Sep18th on the side of a mountain in Honduran.

We are about 1 and half hours up the mountain.

There is about 30+ people sharing one toilet and 3 showers that don’t always work.

We have no electricity. They cook all our food on their fired stoves, it’s pretty cool!

We have been doing a lot of different things. The first full day we went to a farm and picked coffee beans, cabbage, carrots. This farm was on the side of a mountain, it’s crazy how they farm on the side of the mountain like it was straight down, a lot of people were falling it was so funny!!

So this is kinda what our first week looked like.  Construction work, carrying wood over the mountains on our shoulders, helping build benches, finishing the porch railing, and mixing concrete to lay bricks for the septic tank.  

Since there is no electricity we have to hand saw everything which took forever.Super grateful for all that my Dad and sisters taught me about construction work growing up, it definitely come in hand this month!!  

 

Two days were spent evangelizing, and after the first evening in the community, Pastor Paul took the next morning to teach us more about the culture and beliefs of the people who live on the mountains around us. While beliefs vary from person to person, some things remain fairly universal in the area. The majority of the people who live on the mountain are Catholic. In this area, that means that they believe that Jesus came and was crucified on the cross, but there is not understanding of his resurrection from the grave and that he will one day return to separate the believers from the unbelievers. Because of these beliefs, it changes the way that we go in and share the gospel, integrating Jesus into the conversation as we are able, but knowing that who Jesus is is still widely an unknown to the locals here. Additionally, the women here are not allowed to read the Bible, so it is extremely useful to share stories from the Bible connecting to real life conversation that can encourage and challenge those we speak with. Overall, the main goal of evangelism is always to share the love of Jesus and build relationship with them.

 

Thursdays are our adventure days so we went to a waterfall and you could go on a tour behind it. It was so cool there was so much pressure under it. There was one point were you couldn’t see or hear anything and you just hung on to the rope, I had my phone in my hand (bad idea, but I found out that my phone is actually waterproof) and the guide had to grab me and pull me through the torrential onslaught of water cascading down from the falls. 

When we were hiking back up we got to jump off a cliff near the base!  It was one of the best waterfall experiences I’ve had!!

I also got to zip-lining across the river and the waterfall it was beautiful!!!

Friday is our Sabbath day so Thursday night we stayed at a hotel, it was So nice to be in a bed and to be in town. Living on a mountain you realize how much you taking going to the store for granted. Like seriously not being able to go to the store to buy chocolate cake is killing me!;) 

God has been teaching me a lot, some cool things that have happened.

One day as we were working Abby, our SQL, who was standing there taking picture so I was asking how she was doing and she was telling me how her back was hurting so she couldn’t help us work cause moving really made it hurt, so I asked if we could pray for it so a few of us stop working and prayed for her at first she said it still hurt so we prayed again and she was moving all around and start jump she said all the pain was gone!!!! Been having a lot of opportunities to pray for my squadmates!     God is so cool how he heals people!!

God has been revealing a lot of things to me this month. So many lies that I have been believing about myself that I didn’t know I was believing.

It’s a work in progress but learning how to deal with all my emotions and feelings, knowing that it’s good to talk about what’s going through my head. Talking to God about everything and learning how to hear His voice more and learning the different ways he talks to me, it has definitely not been easy. God shows me things at random times. Like crying while walking up the mountain to carry wood for the second time that morning, like come on God you didn’t have to make me cry in front of everyone to teach me this?  Yeah, I have definitely got mad at God this month.  if you want to find out more about yourself that you didn’t know just go live in your tent on a mountain for a month with no electricity and no wifi to distract you. And people around you 24 -7  So you have to deal with how you’re feeling. It has for sure been a growing month!

Funny things that have happened!

One day there was ants all over the girl’s tents everyone was yelling and freaking out, I just sat there laughing, it was so funny!! They never did get on my tent!

When it rains it gets very muddy and slippery so people fall a lot, people will be walking down the hill to the eating place and just started sliding it looks very painful but always very funny to watch!!;) 

One day the local people that we are staying with (Paul, Tania and their family and their team) said that we were going to get trees to plant, so we thought that we were just going up the mountain little ways to some houses to get trees well No we thought wrong. One thing about the World Race you never really know what you’re going to be doing, nothing surprises us anymore.  anyway back to the tree story. We start walking and we walk and walk we were pretty much going straight up and it was very muddy so you know people were off and sliding!!  it was really pretty though and we were in the jungle and on the top of the mountain. At one point we were not really on a trail, it was literally just muddy and we were hanging on to root and trees trying not to fall. We got to a river where they told us more about why we came here and why we were planting trees. The river we were at is where our shower water comes from, that’s why sometimes we run out of water for the shower. The community up there is building a damn to help the water situation. The men carry bricks all the way up the mountain which is like a few miles straight up.  Ok so the funnies part was going down we went a different way and it was muddy and straight dawn so it was like a muddy slide we just sat down and went for it, some people tried to walk down and there feet would just slid right out from underneath them. Except Jacob managed to stay on his feet. It felt like an adventure day it was so fun. I just stood at the top and videoed everyonefalling It was so FUNNY!!!!:) 

 

Well, we are headed to our next country Costa Rica!!!

we are taking a bus from Comayagua Honduras to San Jose Costa Rica. Then another bus from there to a ferry that will take us across a gulf where we will be picked up by our ministry host.

You know we are going to be on that bus for 2 days. I’m actually pretty excited about it, getting to drive across a whole country, going to get to see so much more then we would have if we would have flown!

We do have to cross 2 borders so prayers for that to go fast and smooth would be greatly appreciated!!

Thank you for reading and for all the prays! 

Adios!!

here are some pictures!!:)