First things first – we want to thank everyone who is involved in praying, as part of our large, informal but effective prayer support team! You guys know how living in Honduras adds certain risks to our lives – bad roads (extreme curves, minimal traffic laws, lack of guard rails, gigantic potholes, . . . ), reduced quality and availability of medical care, increased exposure to diseases, etc. We do our best to take certain precautions – like keeping our vehicles well maintained, and avoiding more dangerous parts of the large cities, especially at night (just like you would likely do in the U.S.).
With all this in mind, we know that God has called us to live here, and sometimes living and working here requires us to take certain greater risks. Many of the things we ourselves do day-to-day involve risks we would never expose teams to – like Trish (a woman alone) driving on back roads, or Allen eating unsafely-prepared foods in people’s homes.
In spite of the unsettled situation in Honduras, Friday morning Allen and Russell found it necessary to make a trip to San Pedro Sula and back. We had a guest who needed to get to the airport. Dennis has experience traveling in third world countries and he was in-the-know about the risks involved in trying to get to the airport on that day. We also had other guests, two men, who were already in country and arriving in Gracias, from Tegucigalpa, that evening.
It was slow going. Starting out, they saw multiple areas where protests had previously taken place, and had already been broken up, and the roads were clear.
Russell took this short video, during their trip.
At one point, they came to where a protest was in progress, and no traffic was getting through, except for motorcycles and pedestrians. Right then, the military police arrived, to re-open the road. Russell walked up to the front of the protest, to see and hear how things were working out. He heard the police say that they had orders to re-open the road, and they didn’t want to have to use force. The protest leaders said that they didn’t want to stop protesting. They negotiated an agreement where the protesters stayed on only one side of the road (the road is one lane in each direction), and the other side would remain open, with vehicles going north and south taking turns using that lane. It was handled peacefully, and the men were able to move forward along the road again.
Eventually, outside of San Pedro Sula (around 15 miles from the city), they got stopped in a roadblock that just didn't budge. After checking the situation to see if the blockage would be cleared, Allen and Dennis decided to walk through the roadblock, and pay for rides on the other side.
Once they reached open road again, they alternated between hiring taxis, walking, and hitching rides. They saw lots of action, but were personally unharmed throughout the trip. In one especially odd event, they had negotiated a price with the driver of a small, open-air taxi, to take them out from a roadblock. When the driver got them to their destination at the back of the protest area, and they were preparing to pay him, a crowd of protesters demanded to know, from the driver, how much he was charging his passengers. When he told them an amount (about half of what had actually been agreed upon), the crowd threatened to beat the driver - because he was price gouging! Fortunately, there was an off-duty policeman in the taxi with them, and he managed to calm the protesters!
Eventually, Allen and Dennis made it safely to a hotel near the airport. Once he knew they were safely settled for the night, Russell turned around and started driving back to Gracias.
Russell had a long trip, dodging protests and roadblocks at night. At one point, he and a caravan of other vehicles were led along back roads, for an hour, by knowledgeable locals on motorcycles, to get around a large roadblock (for a fee). Russell actually arrived home earlier than we'd anticipated, as the roads were basically clear for the second half of his trip.
Our guests coming from Tegucigalpa were having their own troubles. Traveling with Honduran friends in a pickup truck, they were caught up in traffic at several roadblocks, eventually arriving at their hotel in Gracias in the wee hours of the morning.
Saturday morning, when things were quieter, Allen headed off from the hotel, to make his way back to Gracias. (The guest had to reschedule his flight, as his previously scheduled flight on Friday was cancelled.)
He was able to get to the bus terminal in San Pedro, but it was all closed up, and looters were trying to gain entry. Since there were no buses available, Allen hitched a ride in the back of a pickup truck. (Hitchhiking - with a small amount paid to the driver - is a surprisingly safe and common means of transport in Honduras.)
Six hours and several different pickup trucks later, and absolutely covered in black soot from the smoke of the burning tires at all the protest sites, Allen made it back as far as Las Flores, a few miles outside of Gracias (normally a trip of about 3 – 4 hours). Russell and the guests picked him up there . . . and Allen went immediately to work, showing the visitors the work of the ministry in that area.
And that, my friends, is the short version of the story! LOL
Praise the Lord, throughout all of this none of these folks - Allen, Russell, or the guests - were ever threated with any harm. These are remarkable times – not at all the norm for Honduras - but we won't be afraid to continue the work God has given us to do here!
- posted by Trish (for a change)
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