Making "Sense" Of It All

Travel day is always tough.  You get up early (really early!).  You travel from airport to airport like herded mules.  Mules, because you are responsible for transporting your luggage and personal belongings from home to church to bus to airport to terminal to immigration to customs to school bus to dorm room.  Today, I was reminded of how tough a travel day is on your senses.

Sight - We left Nashville in the middle of the night (OK, by the time we were actually on the plane the sun was just beginning to come up, but that’s middle of the night for me!). During the course of the day, our eyes transitioned from dark to light and from the blandness of the plane to the blazing colors in the city of Tegucigalpa.  The Hondurans do like bright colors!  We saw affluent Americans filling airports to fly to unknown places, and we saw the hovels on the mountainside in unpronounceable places.  We saw the bustle of the city stores, and the remoteness of the village pulperias.

Smell - In Nashville, we smelled bacon and coffee in the airport terminal.  Once we exited the airport in Honduras, our nostrils were assaulted by the city smell of diesel fumes.  There was no escaping them.  With the windows down in the bus, the diesel exhaust odor was almost overwhelming.  As we left the city behind, the smoke from cooking fires floated on the breeze.  Oh, and don’t forget the bathrooms.  In Honduras you don’t flush the toilet paper.  It goes into the trash.  Enough said.

Taste - From scrambled eggs, bacon and biscuits for breakfast in Nashville, to trail mix and granola bars for lunch, to Honduran spaghetti (heavy on the carrots) for our first meal in Honduras, our taste buds were tickled.

Hearing - This was perhaps the most dramatic of all the sensational contrasts.  We left our homes in the quiet stillness of the predawn.  All through the day, we listened to friends shouting greetings to one another. Pilots and flight attendants reminded us regularly to keep our seatbelts fastened when seated.  Our ears and brains transitioned from English to Spanish.  Then, came the cacophony of city sounds. The growl of the previously mentioned diesel trucks was deafening.  A motorcycle backfired and more than a few of us in the bus ducked thinking we were hearing our first gunshot of the trip.

Touch- We hugged friends we had not seen in a long time.  Several experienced touch in a not so pleasant way while going through airport security.  Shoulders bumped shoulders in the crowded plane and the even more crowded bus.

Beyond these five common senses, I thought of the other “senses”.  We are here with a sense of purpose.  God has gifted us with skills that we can use to help his people.  We are here with a sense of belonging.  Dr Ponce and his wife Ivonne, Pastor Nelson and his children - all friends from our last visit here - met us at the airport and made us feel immediately welcome.  We have a sense of provision.  God provided the financial means for each of us to be on this trip.  God provided us with good health and good leaders to bring us to this place.  Finally, we have a sense of protection.  We arrived safely, and almost all of the bags made it.  Rick and Becky, who joined us in Miami from Orlando, were not so fortunate with their luggage.  But, as Becky said, her carry on with the ten Diet Mountain Dews made it, so they will survive! Oh yeah.  A sense of humor helps, too!

Tomorrow, our clinics begin.  Thanks for your prayers.  We sense them already.