Henderson Missionary Family

In Honduras and pretty much all of Central America, the week before Easter is known as Semana Santa (Holy Week).  The whole week is celebrated but people usually don’t start getting off of work until Thursday.  This week is usually spent traveling to see family or laying around in a blow-up swimming pool.  We spent the week traveling and ended up doing a little swimming ourselves.  Monday we traveled to Santa Lucia, Francisco Morazan, Honduras to visit friends that work with the mission.  They invited us to stay with them in their house in Santa Lucia.  Santa Lucia is located about 30 minutes outside of the capital city of Tegucigalpa. The drive from El Plan to Tegucigalpa consisted of one road for 4 hours.  The ride wasn’t that bad except for mountain roads and having almost the whole road occupied by buses.  Once we got to Tegucigalpa our friends, Aquiles, Lucia, and Swan, met us at a gas station and we followed them to their house in Santa Lucia.  Once we got there, we checked out the town and saw a lot of cool places.  That evening Aquiles cooked some meat on the home made grill that is made out of a wheel barrow and a long rack thing.  We put charcoal in the wheel barrow then put the rack on top of it and there was a grill! The next day we all went to a town beside Santa Lucia called Valle de Angeles.  Here we walked around on the streets and ate at a really cool restaurant that served pizza and pupusas. Pupusas are basically a very thick corn tortilla stuffed with cheese and pork.  They were interesting but they were also very tasty.  After we ate, Swan tried to take us to a secret place that is supposed to be very beautiful.  We were on our way through the back roads of Honduras.  When I say back roads, I mean someone’s backyard.  We were driving in between these two rows of fences, and all of a sudden the fences started getting closer and closer and the truck would not fit through the narrow way.  Swan tried to get us to park in front of some lady’s house, but we didn’t want to leave the truck there because something could easily happen to it.  Swan was pretty upset but everything worked out okay.  The next day we traveled about 2 hours to the village of Teupasenti where Pastor Luis Santos lives.  He is the Honduran pastor that leads all the church services when we are out in the field. On the way, I got a call from my pal Luciano who works and is living at the mission. He had also traveled to Tegucigalpa to visit some friends during Holy Week.  He called me to see if he could ride with us. He was going to catch a bus to Pastor’s house but since buses are the main way of transportation for Honduras, the bus station was so backed up he wasn’t going to be able to get one. He called us at the right time because we just entered Tegucigalpa on our way to Pastor’s house. We picked him up at the bus station and then we were on our way.  It was a pretty rough ride to where his house was but it was well worth it.  When we got there we went to his house and then on to the river for some swimming.  When we got to the river there were a good many people there swimming.  People were on the shore cooking and playing music. We swam, ate some watermelon, and then went back to Pastor’s house for lunch.  For lunch his wife cooked rice, potatoes, and some kind of really good meat.  The meal was excellent. We left shortly after that and Pastor showed us all of the churches in his village.  I really hope that we can go and stay with him for an extended amount of time. He is a really great guy who loves serving the Lord. It shows because it is not easy for him to get from his house to El Plan due to the fact that he does not have an automobile. He has to catch a series of four buses to get to the mission compound.  It usually takes him anywhere from 6-8 hours just to get to where we live. He travels like this each time a team comes in. He is truly dedicated to serving God.  The trip this past week was great.  I really felt like my family and I are becoming more like Hondurans each and every day. Please continue to pray for everything that is going on here.  Thank you so much for your support and I hope to see you all soon!

God Bless,

Brantley Henderson