Wednesday August 1, 2007

Today was another work day at San Pedro Cerca del Rio. As the work continues at a steady speed, I thought I would take the opportunity to explain exactly what we are building. Thanks to our previous help in building the second floor, we are able to focus on creating a new space on the first floor. The hopes are that this first floor will serve as a sacristy, a small kitchen, and a patio for the future pre-school. On the first day we demolished the former sacristy, in desire to give way for a smaller sacristy and bigger kitchen. Currently the small kitchen is made up of a small gas stove, which is located behind the last row of pews within the church. With the renovation of the first floor, the kitchen will be big enough to provide meals to a pre-school, something which is not possible currently.

In previous years we have used the to-be patio area as a place to mix concrete, stack building materials, and play with the children. To create a patio, we must lower the ground level surrounding the church. This is necessary because currently when it rains all the water runs down into the church. However, with the renovation, the church will be a few steps higher than the ground, thus solving the problem.

In order to complete all of these building tasks, during this week we will be focusing on creating the exterior wall for the first floor renovation. Presently there are a few bricks that serve as a foundation; however, as we discovered today we will need to build a new foundation, which will most likely incorporate re-bar and concrete.

Today we focused on moving all the rubble from our demolition area out of the first floor space, and onto the street. This will be very helpful when we start to lay the foundation, and eventually, when the floor is laid.

As today was indeed a work day, it was also a day of new discoveries. Upon talking to a woman who works at the site with us, Mirabell, we learned that she had a baby at home who was twenty-eight days old. She showed us a picture of her baby on her cell phone, but secretly we all wanted to see the baby in person. Today our wish came true, after finishing the day’s work at the site, we all drove down the road and visited with the small baby. However, this proved to be only our first discovery. Shortly after leaving Mirabell’s house, were driving on the road to San Pedro Sula. On this road, about eight kilometers outside of the city, we stopped to visit the second church under direction of Luis, the rector of San Pedro Cerca del Rio. The church’s name was Iglesia Episcopal San Isidro. It was a beautiful church, it had a corner where all the baptisms occurred, and on the two walls in this corner was a beautiful tile pattern than included words like “La Paz” and “Jesus”. The altar area was a calm sea-foam blue, with gold stars surrounds the central cross. Its beauty exemplified the beauty that is possible at San Pedro Cerca del Rio too.

Our day ended by visiting one of our favorite restaurants in Honduras, Ginos’s; a small Italian restaurant just around the corner from our hotel. We had been looking forward to this meal the entire week, because it is only open late on night a week. Boasting of traditional Italian dishes, it brought me back to Italy, where I went on vacation in June. However, the best part of the meal was dessert, with every dessert from sorbets to lemon tarts, this brought out the sweet tooth in all of us. My night ended with a huge piece of chocolate cake, making the day truly sweet!

-Jane Tingley