News & Updates

Meet Allyson Harding. She is currently an AmeriCorps member with the Denver Metro Habitat affiliate, but was a part of the NC State Habitat Chapter as an undergraduate student, and served a year as an AmeriCorps Member with Habitat Wake.

It's incredible to think that this long awaited trip to Honduras is coming to an end.

As I reflect back on this week, I think about how I felt when I first arrived at the airport in San Pedro Sula. As we rode in the 5 hour bus ride to Gracias, Lempira, all I could focus on was the poverty and the sub-standard housing that lined the streets. I thought about the homes we live in in the US, versus the shacks that many Hondurans call home.

However, as the week went on and I got to meet the local members of the community, I noticed how much happier they were than us.

Today was our busiest day yet! On site, it was time for concrete: time to refill the trenches that we had just helped to excavate the two days before.  It was so rewarding to see our constant progress as each pile of gravel grew, was mixed into concrete, and then dwindled as it set the layers of carefully and skillfully placed stone. And then the most exciting moment of the day: construction moved above ground! The first two rebar skeletons, that many of the team members had spent time carefully assembling, were placed, waiting to be transformed into solid columns.

I really like this group. I wish I were a better writer so I could help you see what I see. I wish I could tell you in an eloquent way how when the right people’s paths cross in the right place - or just A place that invites interaction – it creates an intersection that can give you laughter on day one and camaraderie by day three. And, I wish I could show you how that intersection can enrich the soul. I mean, when it takes the whole table to figure out how to spell camaraderie, I feel like we’ve bonded.

Today, we moved the earth.

A lot of it.

Today, we began with our orientation to Gracias, Honduras, followed by a walking tour of the city.  As we strolled through unkempt streets, the crowded farmer's market, and past homes ranging from corrugated steel shacks to painted stucco with ornate iron windows, I was struck most by how happy everyone here seems to be.  Our guide, Luis, explained to us that Hondurans are generally positive, laid back people, who just don't stress about things as much as we do.  They mostly lead simple lives with comparatively simple homes and basic necessities, valuing family over possessions an

Today was the first day of our Honduras adventure.  The group has come together from many places, and even though we spent one day building together on a local Habitat home, many of us are strangers, coming together for a common goal to help build houses in Honduras.  Our personal reasons for coming are varied and what will will take away from the trip will be just as varied.

… hemos llegado a tierra plana.

This Spanish phrase translates as, “Thank God we have arrived at flat land,” and was purported to be said by the Spanish explorers when they reached the area that is now the city of Gracias in the western Honduran department (state) of Lempira.