August 6th - Visiting Eduardo

Sorry about the delay in posting, we found out when we arrived to Orphanage Emmanuel that there was no longer wireless (ask me about it when I get back...there IS a reason why). So, to backtrack for you...

On August 6th, I woke up around 5am, showered and read my Bible while waiting for Jenny and Andrés to wake up. We went to a place called Super Donuts to have breakfast quickly, then headed back to our hotel room to wait for our ride to visit Eduardo. Eduardo is the child that Andrés sponsors through Compassion International.

A man named Oscar picked us up just after 9am and took us to the Compassion project. Eduardo, Elena (his mom) and various Compassion staff were there to meet us. They were all surprised to see that Andrés was the same age as Eduardo...aparently Andrés is an OLD MAN´s name in Honduras. They showed us the church (which has over 1300 members) and classrooms, and talked about the Compassion program which takes a holistic approach to educating children (spiritually, academically, medically and socially).

We made a quick stop at Eduardo´s great-grandmother´s house. She is 83 years old and cares for a 6-year old and another child all by herself. She walked with a limp, because she was on that plane last year which crashed in that lake in New York (sorry, I can´t remember the details well). She had been visiting her daughter in New York City.

Our next stop was to Eduardo´s house where we sat and talked. He showed Andrés his room which has a twin bed that he shares with his 11-year old brother Guillermo. So I told Andrés that when Noah crawls in with him in the middle of the night (which happens a lot), Andrés should be thankful that Noah is only 4 years old and still pretty small yet! Andrés gave the family all of the gifts we had sent to them and even had time to play Kerplunk (a family game that was included in the gifts) with Eduardo and Guillermo so they would remember how to play it after we had left. They played twice and set it up for a 3rd time, but we had to go eat to stay on schedule.

We gave them a picture of our family with our names on it, so they would be able to more easily remember. I guess Andrés has never sent a picture of himself to Eduardo! We let Eduardo choose where to eat and so went to Burger King in a very upscale mall in Tegucigalpa. After that we headed to the mall´s arcade where Andrés and Eduardo started by playing a basketball shooting game, then moved on to air hockey, followed by soccer & ended up playing balladium - which was probably the game they had the most fun at...Ask Andrés about it or he´ll most likely have it on his blog when he gets it posted. We treated the group to some ice-cream before saying our goodbyes.

I had some great chats with Eduardo´s mom (who accompanied him the entire time) while the boys were getting to know each other. For those of you who think that Bob & I have a lot of children, Elen had TEN children (2 have since died)...and she´s only 45 years young! She is such a nice person and you can definitely see that she LOVES her family.

We took a taxi to EL CENTRO to blog and eat at the Mexican restaurant. Then we headed out to look at Honduran clothing. Both Jen & I got a couple of cute things! Our taxi driver got lost on the way back to the hotel, so we saw some pretty rough parts of Comayaguela. (I´ll bet you´re asking why I wrote Comayaguela & not Tegucigalpa) These two cities are 2 very different cities, but two that have grown so much they seem like one...sort of like Neenah-Menasha, they are only separated by a river. Because Comayaguela is not the capital, it is not as well kept. Hotels are a lot cheaper on this side of the river, which is why we´re here. All-in-all it was a great day and I´m so glad that Andrés had this opportunity!