Tuesday, August 30, 2011

And Then I Went Shopping

I went on my first mission trip in May to Honduras at the ripe old age of 51. I've been supporting my kids and others for years on these trips but this was to be my big adventure. I've never been out of the country, so the whole experience was to be new.

I won't go into all the details, but I was on a medical mission trip with group of people from a different church than I attend. The doctor that leads the trip invited me last year, but I was unable to pull everything together. Actually, I was so nervous about the whole thing that I was really relieved. I kept thinking of all the things that would be difficult: plane trips (it goes better if I am drugged), bus rides in mountains (again, probably better if I am drugged), and bathroom issues..... (my imagination was not far from wrong on this one).

The flight down was great, first day was good, and then they were going to take us shopping. This did involve one of those bus rides that stressed me. They told us that we would be fairly safe where we were going, but to still stay with others. Of course, the first thing that happened is I kept getting separated from others. We only had a short period of time to shop, and I wanted to get gifts for my three sons, the two daughters in law, and my husband.

I ended up going to one of the larger shops and spending a lot of time on picking out earrings for the girls. Suddenly I realized that I only had a few minutes to pick out t-shirts and this shop was not organized well. There were a lot of gecko shirts that were sooooo cute, however I was trying to find different sizes, do the conversion for the money (I only had cash), you can imagine. So I found several shirts, including two that had lots of gecko's frolicking together. I was excited, still had money left over for essentials I might need.

So I head back to the bus with minutes to spare! One of my friends asked to see my purchases, I was so proud. I showed her the earrings, then the shirts. And that's when she laughed and pointed out that I had gecko's in all sorts of sexual positions, not innocent frolicking.

So now when I tell people about my mission trip, I have to humble myself and tell them how I bought gecko porn for my children.