Friday started with breakfast on the rooftop, a ride with Chaca through the city, and Lacy Janssen winning our Rock, Paper, Scissors tournament after morning stretches.

For the second day in a row, we split into two groups – half stayed at la Iglesia Misionera de Cristo, and half rode out to Villeda Morales, but we all spent the day laboring to improve church buildings and playing with children. My group painted our Pepto-Bismal-pink church a lovely shade of mint green.

It was Jason Pagel’s last day in Honduras as our youth minister, and it was a nostalgic day for him to be back at a church that he and HHYG built 12 years ago. He recognized a man from the community who was 16 when the church was built – he invited Jason into his home to meet his two children and to see the Polaroid pictures of Stan Ezell and Caity Hewitt and Caleb Joseph that still hang on his walls, 12 years later.

Back at la Iglesia Misionera de Cristo that afternoon, our freshman class presented food packages to several families from the community. We stayed and talked and played so long that we had to alter our usual evening plans and went straight to dinner and showered afterward. At our devo, we lined up along the edge of the roof to sing and pray over the city of Tegucigalpa.

– Shelby Smith