Stressfully Exciting

Just to give a bit more of a balance and to perhaps encourage those of you are struggling and think that we are not...today we went to Valle de Angeles...alone! No locals. No missionaries. No friends. No help.* It was suppose to be an exciting "lunch date". Drive in to Valle, have lunch, get some needed groceries, and come back. Sound easy, right? We did it in Tegucigalpa. Well, I suppose that in my overconfidence in myself, God was going to use to humble me a bit.

Let's start off with the vehicle that was graciously lent to us. It works great...after it gets started. I think that the starter is about gone, so the "easiest" way to start it is to park it on a hill and roll in down in 2nd gear with the clutch in, then once moving fast enough, pop the clutch out and pray that the engine starts up...it usually does...just don't find yourself at the bottom of a hill without the engine running. With all of this in mind, it took me 20 min driving around to find a place where I felt comfortable enough to park the Land Rover: headed downhill, reasonably clear street, long enough or steep enough to start the engine.

After I finally killed the engine, we walked around a while trying to find a place that someone had told us about. I never found it. So we stopped in at a nice looking place that was probably designed for tourists in mind...and so were the prices! Not especially high for the US, but certainly high for other Honduran places we had been to. This was a bit of a disappointment for me.

After the stress of the drive and the unsuccessful hunt for a particular eating place, I was beginning to feel hungry; I was not a happy camper and was a bit glum that everyone was having a horrible time. Well, thankfully I have a wife who is not so easily set back by setbacks. She observed that the kids were having a grand time at the table waiting for the food and she, herself was delighted to be in Valle with just us. So after slapping me around for a while (i.e. smiling at me and telling me how wonderful it was to be there), I had to agree that things were not as bad as I had imagined. We all ate our lunch happily, bought some groceries, prayed for the Land Rover to start (and it did!), and headed back home!

Enjoy!
Taylor

*Of course, we had each other and are precious God who knows us. And yes, we (including the kids) were praying at every corner.