Trip Log (Letter written December 15, 2007)

reh@knology.net — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 06:00:00 GMT

Saturday, December 15, 2007

5:30AM Drinking a cup of coffee and making some notes for my 5 minutes at the Lutheran Church this afternoon. An aside: The restaurant, patio, and (just beyond) pool area faces the back of the hotel and one floor below the lobby. Along one hallway from the elevators is the obligatory shoeshine station with one of the traditional elevated mahogany chares with the Kiwi Shoe Polish logo. The shoeshine boy is the same boy that has been there since I started coming here. He really does an excellent and I always make a point of getting my street shoes polished. He charges $1, I give him $1.50 or $2.00. I never figured out if this is the standard price or the gringo price (he has to pay rent for the space so must charge much more than the boys on the street). He always tells me how he is studying English; he has a text book and he listens to an English station one hour every day. He wants to learn English so he can become a waiter in this hotel (waiters don’t speak English that well so it is an achievable goal). I stopped by yesterday and while polishing my shoes, he asked when I would return to the US. I told him Sunday. He asked that, since I would be here on Saturday, would I be in church. I answered with an inquisitive yes. Well then, I’ll see you there. It seems that he is one of Teguci’s Lutherans. Small world.
3:00PM At the church. Usually service starts on time. Today people were setting up pill 3:20. Pastor Victor has developed a 2 page liturgy. A copy of the two page liturgy was distributed. Pastor Victor explained the process; service went very well. To me, this is a huge step forward. In the past, the pastor worked through a liturgy of sorts and the congregation followed, kind of. This is now a liturgical church and it works well. I wrote my little homily just to be sure my thought process follows. Once I wrote it, I realized it would be much easier for the translator if she could read my notes and have an idea what was coming. Finally, I actually took my notes and followed them very closely. While it was obvious I was working very closely with notes, it also let the interpreter stay very close to my discussion.
This is a community that likes to make an event out of a gathering and actually likes to listen to speakers. The service lasted till 4:45.
5:30PM Dinner with Leslie Lineras and her two sons. Jorge is bringing 5 busses to Honduras and will cross into El Amatillo in the late afternoon; the same time I will be touching down in Dallas.
7:00PM End of day. While staying in Honduras an extra day for the church service and to have dinner with the Lineras family is not directly connected to L4L, I believe that maintaining and developing these ties has an intangible value and the time was well spent.
9:00PM End of day.

The Motorcycle Diary

Trip Log (Letter written December 15, 2007)