We went to Rancho Ebenezer, a farm where
CEPAD raises goats, chickens, and rabbits. They train people how to care
for the animals, what type of food and shelter they need, and they give
the people animals.Pictures from Nicaragua, Honduras, and Mexico.
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NICARAGUA
I spent a week in Nicaragua with fifteen members of the Presbyteries of Greater Atlanta and Cherokee County. We have a partnership with a Nicaraguan NGO called CEPAD which works for sustainable rural development in Nicaragua.
We went to Rancho Ebenezer, a farm where
CEPAD raises goats, chickens, and rabbits. They train people how to care
for the animals, what type of food and shelter they need, and they give
the people animals.
These are folks from a town in
northwestern Nicaragua. They were trained at Rancho Ebenezer and now have
a small animal project with rabbits and chickens.
Twenty or more of us rode
down this road in the back of a pickup truck to a tiny village where we
had a party with two piñatas and 150 children. CEPAD built a small
school for the children there.
HONDURAS
After a week, everyone headed back to the U.S. except me. I hopped the 4 a.m. bus to Tegucigalpa, Honduras. From there I headed to see the Mayan ruins at Copan.
Two views
of the ball court at Copan. Under the green tarp is the hieroglyphic staircase.
The intricacy of the sculpture throughout the ruins is incredible.
Here I am in the main plaza of Copan
with a stellae of one of the later kings. I think it's 16 Rabbit. This plaza
was paved with white stucco and the buildings were painted red. Wow.
Next I went to Gracias a Lempira, a very small town at the foot of the highest mountain in Honduras, Celaque. (Lempira was an indigenous leader tricked and killed by the Spanish during the Conquest. Honduran currency is also called the lempira.)
Of course I climbed the mountain.
I went up and down in one day, six hours to climb the 1, 450 meters (change
in altitude) and four to come down. I was sore for a week, but seeing the
cloud forest (like a rain forest, but higher up) and view were well worth
the climb. The mountain is hard to see in this picture because of the haze
and backlight of the sunset that followed.
I took these pictures from the castle on the hill in Gracias. There I
met a 16 year old named Oscar. He has been an orphan since the age of three
when his mother died. He is from Copan but found work doing construction
in Gracias. He had not eaten all day. 
Continue and see pictures from Mexico.