june 26th

June 26, 2010 today was a free day for us. Emma, Emily and I went walking around and did some shopping, I bought some cool stuff for me friends. I went to the bank to exchange some of my money that I brought with me. At the bank there were at least 5 armed guards who had good size shot guns on them, but they let me in with no problems, I felt like I had a ton of money when I walked out of there because 100 American dollars was 1,886 Lempira so I had this huge wad of 100’s and a 500, so to me it feels like a lot but the locals probably not so much, I can’t imagine what 2000 American would look like in the Lemps.

I was stuck in the office today, we had no keys to lock the building and no one was there when we wanted to leave, so what we ended up doing, there is a side door that leads to an ally way that has a gate at the end, this gate is about 10 feet tall with spiky things on the top, so I locked the side door and went and climbed over this fence, it took me about 7 tries to figure out how to get over it, with the help of the ladies who gave me footings with their hands I managed to maneuver over the top and make it down, leaving me very dirty with rusty hand prints all over my clothes.

I got to know a good portion of the town today walking around and wandering, it is really small and amazing. I also met a lot of other missionaries who are doing work in Honduras, most of them in more rural cities around Copan and some working in Copan! Every one is so friendly and it’s amazing to hear about all the other work that is being done in the area. This group I met last night when we played the scavenger hunt were here for two weeks have been working on digging a whole for septic system.

After shopping for dinner food today we had to carry all of our groceries up the huge hill that we have to walk up to get to our house, and when I say huge hill I mean huge, it’s like 3 blocks and between 50% and 60% grade uphill, I was so covered in sweat and tired! And my calves were hurting for a while, I had to come into the house and take my drenched shirt off and lay on the cool tile floor.

I bought a doll from a little girl today and I only gave her 20 lemps and felt kind of bad afterwards thinking I did not give her enough so the next time I saw her I gave her some more money, and the next thing I new I had like three of these little girls following me around with puppy eyes and dolls! And I did not know what to say to them! They were so cute and staring at me and would not go away oh my gosh! So no more of that!

Dwayne, our camp director heard from Rachel Nelson that I cannot turn a dare down, so he dared me to shave my beard! My reputation goes ahead of me apparently, when he first met me he said wait, is this the crazy guitar hyper Chad? It’s nice being known where I go by people I have never seen before, this actually happens all the time for me.
So I have decided that we are going to play the shaving of the beard into a skit, I have not come up with how yet, but we are creating characters for ourselves, Blair was duck tape man last summer and yeah stuff like that, so I decided I should be kidnapped at some point in the summer by one of the villains and have them shave my beard as torture to get info out of me or something, I will let you know where that idea goes, but I am kind of mad I have to shave my beard. I wanted to grow it out, stupid dares! Oh well ☺