May 8, 2007: The room has cooled a bit, due to a somewhat oxymoronic-sounding solar-powered fan. (It’s night. How could the fan be solar-powered? But I think any electricity we have is solar power stored in batteries.) And I’m writing again via the batteries of my laptop saved to my desktop … which I’ll transfer to the blog once I have internet access again.

So, on Monday May 7th we once again awoke early. We weren’t exactly sure of our plans, but we knew we had to be on the road at 7am to see Beckyts recovery center, called Brazos Abiertos (”Open Arms”). Last time I was there it was under construction. This time there were amazingly beautiful kids, recovering from malnutrition. One girl in particular had these haunting eyes. Just unbelievably sad, although at the moment she seemed okay. I can only wonder what she’s already seen at such a young age to produce such a deep-seated sorrow.

We left there and rushed up to the HeRO feeding center. This was a remote village in San Juancito, long ago abandoned by the gold mining company, with the miner populations remaining, becoming more and more poor. We played with the kids there for quite a while: soccer, an odd form of peek-a-boo by Stacie, and bubbles. (Yes, those cheap bubbles (basically soapy water) are quite a hit with kids that have so little. Something to remember when I go back … balls and bubbles, and the kids are happy.)

We dedicated the center to Stacie and 267 because Stacie’s donation made that center possible.

We went back to the hotel, where I had a nice opportunity to wander the mall for a few minutes and buy lunch. It’s just nice to be in a completely foreign culture… very interesting. Unfortunately, due to a tax rule exempting foreign restaurants from taxes, most of the places are american chains. Yuk. We went to the orphanage (same one as last year) and played more games with the kids. I fell in love (again) with Jocelyn … so wonderfully sweet, what an amazing kid. When I showed her my sunburned arm, she rolled the cuff of my shirt down and started buttoning it, as if to take care of me.

We left there and dropped off 4 of our Forum members at the airport. The Forum Retreat portion of this trip was over.

After an interminable drive, where we saw dozens of wildfires along the road (out-of-control fires originally started to burn the fields by farmers) and a night filled with lightning flashes every few seconds, we finally arrived in Copan. Even with “room problems” we decided to stay anyway, swayed by the dozens of oil-lamps that lit the place.

Finally … a comfortable place to sleep … what a long day!

This entry was posted on Friday, May 11th, 2007 at 3:02 pm While Jason was in El Salvador/Honduras. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.