Dear friends and family,
Thank you for all of your prayers. Things here have not changed much since my last letter. Honduras is still in lockdown. Every time they begin to open things up, there is a spike in cases and they shut everything down again. It has been very hard on the subsistence economy. Most people live off the money they make daily. With their businesses shut down, they have no incomes, and many have no savings to live off of in the meantime. However, God has blessed our church here. We go out twice a week to visit church members and give them bags of food supplies. We offer meals and give out small bags of beans and rice to all who come to church on Sundays and for the midweek services. We have continued with Bible clubs and evangelism once a week. I have seen God open many doors during this time.
Here’s what a typical grocery shopping day is like for me. I live about forty minutes outside the capital where I do my shopping. First, I have to make sure that I’m allowed to circulate on that day. The last number of my ID tells me what day I can circulate. This week, 1s can shop on Monday, 2s on Tuesday, 3s on Wednesday, 4s on Thursday, and 5s on Friday. If you have 6-0, you have to wait until next week. Now, one person may go with you that does not have the same number, but that person will not be allowed into any stores. They aren’t even allowed to slip inside to use the restroom (I know from experience). They must stay in the car. Your ID# is checked before you go into every store to make sure you are allowed to circulate that day. I even saw one man actually make it into the store with a wrong number, but the cashier refused to ring up his items after realizing his ID was the wrong number.
At one point, the government decided that even with this arrangement, there were too many people out and about. So they decided to also restrict circulation based on the last number of your license plate. If it’s an odd number, you may use your car on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of this week, and Tuesday, Thursday of next week. If it’s an even number, you have the opposite schedule. If your DL# is a 2 and your car an odd number, sorry, but you can’t take your car to go shopping today and there’s no public transportation. Needless to say, it caused a lot of problems. We were all relieved when that part didn’t last very long.
Even though it sounds a little crazy, things have actually been calm around here. Compared to the busy school year, it has been a time of rest. We still do not know what we will do about the coming school year yet. The government has not given us any indication as to when things will open back up. Please continue to pray for us!
In Christ,
Ericka Wright