Day Three, hiking in

Day Three, hiking in

The day were waiting for. Now, in Honduras, everything seems to be hurry up and then wait. So we all got ready to go, and then had spend some tine in the town waiting for money to be exchanged, get some gas and pick up supplies. Then finally on the road. The ride to the mountains was a rough one... Here we are changing a tire on the side of the road, I say we, but is was mostly Donny, Bob and Eric. I was off with Ryan meeting some locals, finding random bulls tied up along the road, and trying to steal a feather from a Turkey. Thanks for changing the tire guys! Oh yeah, the person with the cane in the picture is over 90 years old, he farms the land where we were stopped, and his family was very friendly. So once we fixed the tire, we were off to the hills. We parked the van and had some lunch before we started hiking, a little later than we expected to. It is a little intimidating now to think of what we did, heading into the rain forest, with only a mule and a horse to get us out if we get hurt. I guess that is what faith is all about. So we walked, and walked and walked. And that was just the first hill. The hike was definetly the most challenging thing I have done physically in a long time. I heard a couple of numbers on how the walk is made up, but one said we went from elevations of 6500 feet to 3000 feet, another said the bottom elevation was 1000 feet. To put that into perspective, a mile is 5280 feet. SO the trail took us up and down some tough terrain repeatedly, adding to the challenge, I kept thinking, we are not hiking, we are climbing! SO we hiked for about 5 hours on the way in. We ended the hike in the dark, with a couple of minor injuries, but overall well. Myself, I had stepped in a hole sometime around dark and so was really wanting to get my knee under some cold water, and the stream was the only source of that. At the end of the hike, we were very exhausted. Ryan went to work cooking right away! Thanks Ryan. Donnie, Eric and myself walked to the stream to wash off. Now this may not sound like much, but to me it was really one of the most amazing things on this trip. I was repeatedly seeing any anxiety in me fall away on this trip. The bathing in a stream that I am not familiar with was one thing I was particularly not looking forward to. So in the dark, I faced that fear, and had no problem. SO at that point I had faced three anxieties I have, language barriers, heights and the fear of whatever may be in the water. I was starting to like this mission trip thing!