The "Honduras Ten"

Today the “Honduras Four” from St. Andrew in Ellsworth, Maine took a road trip to Worcester, Mass. With Pastor Priscilla Hukki at the wheel, Donna Searchfield, Ruth Dietze, and Laurie Gardner traveled 5 hours (at times in pouring rain) to an orientation meeting with the other New England Synod Lutherans who will be with us on the trip to Honduras. During the trip, Laurie taught the art of Moravian star making. Four long strips of paper are folded, woven, and twisted to create 3 dimensional stars. We plan to teach the Sunday School classes to make these tomorrow for Epiphany. We made enough stars on the trip to give one to each person at the meeting.

We were greeted by Wendell Beckman, who has been our travel planner and will be on the trip with us. We got to meet the other members of our larger “Honduras Ten” group. They are: Bishop Margaret Payne, Pr. Michael Bastian, Mary Hansen-Joyce; Pr. Christian Holleck, and Pr. James Reemts. Invited to the meeting were Pastors Jim and Lisa Hazelwood, who are actively engaged in mission work in Honduras with their own St. Andrew congregation in Rhode Island. They gave us lots of practical advice and showed a slide show from 2 of their visits to Honduras.

The trip is only 8 days away! I am really excited to the point of waking at night to ponder and reflect. I have had my shot for Hepatitis A and will begin my course of malaria and typhoid prevention tomorrow.