We were up early to catch our non-stop flight to Tegucigalpa. They have remodeled the airport in Guatemala and it is much larger. We met a missionary on the plane returning from one of the Guatemala missions to his home in Honduras. He was SO excited. As we flew over Teguc lining up the plane for the "very exciting landing", we caught a glimpse of the new temple that would be dedicated in just a few days. A very beautiful and long-anticipated sight. As we approached the runway, we did the very low pass over the houses -
that has not changed - but they have removed the road that used to cross
the end of the runway and also gouged a little more approach space by
cutting into the rock and lowering the area 20 or 30 feet for perhaps
300 yards. I don't think the changes make it any less dangerous or
scary, however, as the runway itself is just as short and the approach
still is frightening for the first-timer. The airport in Teguc is
totally new and KR was very surprised at how nice it is (I had already
experienced the new version on a prior trip). All of our memories of
picking up missionaries in the old one are still intact, however. We
wouldn't trade them for anything. We got our rental car with no problem and headed out into a flood of
other memories. Honduras, and Tegucigalpa in particular, are nothing
special from the standpoint of comparison with other countries and
cities of the world. In fact, if you don't consider portions of
Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula, it is decidedly third world. What made
coming back emotional and special for us is what HAPPENED here and the
memories of those events. You know how you might associate a particular
song with an event, and when you hear that song the emotions of the
event come back to you? It is the same when we travel the roads of
Honduras. All of the joy, the pain, the homesickness we felt at times,
the camaraderie of such fine young people, the success and the failure,
the strength and the weakness, the deep emotional moments, and the
spiritual experiences of three intense years are tied to this place and
when you see it again, you relive it. It was already mid-afternoon and we were tired from the short nights and
plane flights, but we decided to look around a bit. We drove by the
Esperanza Ward building and to our surprise, the youth were in the
parking lot practicing their dance for the cultural celebration on
Saturday. We passed by the institute and luckily caught the participants of a
meeting that was just breaking up. We were able to see Samuel Cruz and
both of the Zavala's (photo below). Nelson is now the head of the
Institute, as Hermano Sierra moved to the States with his family. He
caught us up on all of the latest news. Note: the traffic through Miraflores is not any better. Dinner and early to bed.
No comments:
Post a Comment