From June 17th until the very wee hours of the 25th, I was on a trip to Cantarranas, Honduras with a team from my church here in Charlottesville. Our church has befriended a family and ministry there and visit annually in the summertime. The father is a pastor and helps run several community churches. His ministry and our team are helping start a new church in a nearby community called Yamaguarde. We worked with the locals to put up a big yellow tent for worship services and our VBS program the week we were there this June. The Yamaguarde church owns the property now and hopes to begin on their building soon.

These images were taken with Kodak Portra 35mm color negative film.

For four days or so, we visited Yamaguarde daily for VBS and evening services. Our lessons were on several of Jesus’ miracles, including feeding the multitude and healing the man born blind. We used scratch cards that were black with rainbow underneath to teach about the man born blind. We had them last year as well for another project and I really enjoy seeing what the kids draw. Maybe I will include a picture of one that I did in a later post.

This is “Mateo” (Matthew) below playing with some of the kids. He teaches Spanish here in Charlottesville at UVA and was very helpful in translating messages across the language barrier. Our other two main translators were Danny and Angie, two members of the family we visit. Several of us on the team do have some Spanish comprehension. Some of the returning members make sure to practice their Spanish. Personally, I can understand more than I can speak. I could not always understand every Spanish speaker while I was in Honduras, but I could follow Pastor Flavio’s and Matt’s Spanish fairly well when they were speaking to the group.

We played several really fun games with the children during recreation times. It was a riot to see Danny and his friend play one game in particular that was sort of like Marco Polo and Danny had to chase while blindfolded. I have photos from recreation on my digital point-and-shoot camera.

Below is a view of Cantarranas (known as San Juan de Flores on the map). This is a view towards the more central part of town. The old Catholic church at the center of town would be on your right and Pastor Flavio’s church is on your left (for those of you who have visited). The roofs of buildings are generally either the terra cotta tiles or corrugated tin sheets. Walls tend to be cinderblock and home entrances tend to be protected with bars, gates, and barbed wire. There is a moss/air plant that likes to grow on the electrical wires that run above the streets.

Thank you for stopping by! I will be sharing more as I work through the film rolls. I am becoming a bit more convinced that next year I will take a DSLR instead of a film SLR and a point-and-shoot. We shall see!