After breakfast I walked to Pride (Prayer) Rock and then on to the Ranch offices.
I spent the next couple of hours cleaning up my emails and catching up some on Facebook. Cameron then gave us a tour of the Children’s Home and the rest of Mission Lazarus. A few went horseback riding.
After lunch we were to leave for San Marcos. This was delayed nearly two hours because of the tardiness of a man from the other group that had arrived Tuesday from Texas – Allen was delighted. Finally we made it down the mountain for the last time and on to San Marcos to see the house they had bricked last year.
We next went to and toured the Early Childhood Learning Center that we were supporting for the next month. This center feeds the neediest of the needy children two meals a day and engages them in fun and educational activities. It was a public school holiday so only a few children were present.
Upon leaving the center the SUV David was driving bottomed out in a rut (just one of many) and something sounded broken. A tire looked low and there was a grinding sound for awhile. As we entered the town of Choluteca for the final time, a passerby motioned that we were smoking from the right rear of the vehicle. We had broken a seal and bearing and were not going very far in that condition. We limped into the parking lot of the Pizza Hut a block away. God moments were soon to begin. It just so happened that the Mission Lazarus mechanic was in town on errands and only five minutes away. While we spend the next two hours in the Hut, a team of three fixed the SUV in the pouring rain in the parking lot. To save the luggage from being soaked in the back of the 4-wheel-drive 4-door pickup trucks, all that had been stowed in the cabs as we went indoors. We ate supper and waited while the lightning flashed, the thunder rolled, and the lights dimmed and flickered numerous times. Another God moment was that the market in the same parking lot had large trash bags so we could wrap the exposed bags for the several-hour trip to Tegucigalpa. We were to stay at the Clarion and catch our flight back to Atlanta the next day around noon. It was a rather harrowing trip through the dark and the rain on hilly, curvy roads to the Honduras capital. Once uneventfully there we had comfy rooms (first time Chuck’s ankles didn’t stick out over the end of the bed). I was in bed by 9:30 p.m. Unfortunately the events of the day precluded our enjoying two final highlights of this trip: visiting the children's hospital in Choluteca and seeing Espartaco one more time to bid him a very fond farewell (he was an incredible help). Hopefully those will both be on the agenda for next year.
Day 7, Friday, June 11: I awoke at 3:38 a.m. but went back to sleep until 6:35 a.m. After a shower and packing, I went to the restaurant for a delicious buffet breakfast. The travel home was wonderfully uneventful. We actually landed 45 minutes earlier than scheduled in Atlanta; but we lost that time and a little more waiting for Chuck’s last bag to show up on the carousel. Seems there was a security question which shall remain a mystery. The drive home found us at West 7th just before midnight. Marty dropped me off at home. After unpacking and unwinding, I passed out on my pillow about 1:30 a.m. It was a great trip!
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