July 2011 – The Rottman Family Adventures

La Ceiba!

July 31, 2011 by Jeff 5 Comments

Well after quite a trip, we are all now in La Ceiba. The flights this morning were fairly uneventful. We had some meals, went through Darkness to Light training (child abuse prevention seminar, very helpful, darkness2light.org), went over the group orientation, and had “Gringo” church. “Gringo” church is what Mike call their English language fellowship. We sang songs, had a prayer time, Mike brought us the Word from Romans 8:28-38 (the so-called “Wow” verses) and were able to celebrate communion. It was really a beautiful time of worship in the Clow’s garage. It was very refreshing to come together in worship after the travel annoyances.

One issue remaining is that the group of 12 which arrived in La Ceiba last night has not received their bags. They were expected today, but after a run to the airport by John Clow and me, we found that the bags still have yet to make it to San Pedro Sula. Thus the bags are most likely still in San Salvador. Those effected were able to raid the Pettengill’s ministry closet to grab a change of clothes for tomorrow and we’re planning to take their other clothes to the cleaners. Please pray that the bags arrive tomorrow and for the patient endurance for those who are without many personal items and clothing. God is always at work, especially in difficulties. Pray that He gives us the Grace to serve ardently throughout this testing.

I don’t have a lot of pictures yet, but hopefully will get some tomorrow as construction and medical clinic both start in the morning and we teach an English class in the afternoon. Here are some of the group hanging out at the Clows prior to orientation:

Terrible System, Great People

July 31, 2011 by Jeff 2 Comments

The wait at San Salvador continued to grow and after about 2 hours of waiting as each person in our group got their boarding passes, we find out that the flight we are taking has been cancelled for some (still unknown) reason. Due to this event there is now no longer enough room for our entire group to make it to La Ceiba on Saturday.

TACA airlines has to be still in the 1990’s in terms of computer system, as the information desk was still required to type out each individual boarding pass and the system would take up to 45 mins per person to clear and print the passes. God is gracious though and has put some very helpful people that truly seemed to care about our comfort. This is what resulted:

First, 12 members of our group were sent a round-about way through Tegucigalpa, to San Pedro Sula, to La Ceiba and arrived at 7:30pm. These each received a $200 voucher (transferrable, hopefully we can use these on future trips). The remaining 5 of us (the Vandegeests, Greg Wates, Beth and me) were all delayed until the 7:15 flight out of San Salvador to Tegucigalpa. This meant an additional 5 hour wait and that we would not be arriving in La Ceiba that evening. We were given $300 vouchers, free meals and hotel for the night. They were nice enough to let us wait in the VIP lounge, which afforded us a quiet, peaceful place to get some rest and play some cards. They also provided us with a few meals. We arrived to Tegucigalpa last night and they had arrangements made for us for transportation, a hotel, meals and transportation back to the airport. I was very impressed with the level of customer service. A representative of TACA actually sought us out as we waited for our luggage (which all arrived) to give us the information. This was definitely from God, as attempting to find and book a hotel in a foreign country on little notice with little information about the areas would be a nightmare. After a short meal and a good nights rest we are up gathering our items to run to breakfast before heading back to the airport. We are scheduled to arrive at 9am to join the rest of our group that I got confirmation arrived safely last night.

Please pray that everyone was able to get some rest and refreshment last night and that God will continue to use us (and test us) in our time here in Honduras.

Airports aren’t all that fun

July 30, 2011 by Jeff Leave a Comment

Our flight to Honduras incorporated a 7 hour delay in LAX as our flight left at 1:40am. After boarding, there was apparently some sort of electrical generator failure that caused us to deplane. After getting a new plane and finally reboarding we got out of LA around 4am. While annoying, it wouldn’t be that big of an issue if we made our connections. Sadly we arrived in San Salvador about 2.5 hours after our connection left. We are now rescheduled to get in to La Ceiba at 7:25pm. Previous total travel time ~ 24hours, new total travel time ~30 hours. Ugh.

Pray for the team as we are all running on VERY little sleep and still have quite a trip ahead of us. At least we’ll make it to La Ceiba today.

San Francisco Day 3

July 13, 2011 by Jeff 1 Comment

Today was another traveling day with the morning starting with a trip over to Muir Woods after watching an exciting finish to the US women’s Wold Cup game against Brazil (one of the best soccer games I’ve ever watched). After Muir Woods we made a quick stop by Sonoma for a short wine tasting before heading over to Napa.

Strangely enough, Liam and Natalie, two of our great friends from Tucson, happened to be coming through San Francisco from Lake Tahoe so they met us in Napa. We ate a quick lunch at a barbeque place. I’m always a little wary of barbeque outside of the south, but this place was impressive.

We started out wine tastings at a vineyard called Frog’s Leap, a suggestion from Ben Hoffman. It was exactly what we were expecting in a beautiful Napa Valley Winery. An amazing house with a wrap-around back porch where we sat and enjoyed some wine. It was a perfect temperature, mid-70s with a slight breeze.

We then headed to another winery, not nearly as grand as Frog’s Leap, but it had a lighter, little more commercial feel. Most of the wine I wasn’t that impressed with, except for the 12-year Port that we finished with. It was exquisite: a much smoother feel than the aroma suggested, with a sweet and crisp finish. The lady helping us suggested that it would only get better with age and that the biggest change would happen between 10 and 20 years. Liam and Natalie got a bottle and hopefully we can get back together in 2020 and crack it open. Imagine how different our lives will be by then.

We finished with a trip to a small, up-and-coming winery called Tember Bey. We had a complementary tasting which was nice, but the owner was pouring and we were the only one’s in there so we just hung out and discussed how he got into the business. He then broke out the 2009 lines which they haven’t released yet (he had opened them to test how the wine was developing) and gave us a taste of the newest vintage of the wines we had already tasted. We ended up buying a bottle of his Cabernet Sauvignon and can’t wait to have a good occasion to break it open. It was the perfect end to a fun and relaxing day in Napa. We drove back to San Francisco and had a great (again, late) Thai dinner near AT&T Park.

San Francisco Day 2

July 13, 2011 by Jeff Leave a Comment

Beth and I decided to take it easy and just take a long drive around the bay area. We headed down to Palo Alto and toured around the Stanford campus. The campus is gorgeous with some amazing architecture, definitely a cool place to hang out.

We then headed over to Hwy 1 to slowly make our way back to San Francisco. We stopped by a cool little produce stand and got some really juicy and sweet strawberries. We then got to stop at Half Moon Bay to get some beautiful pictures and get to watch some surfers and enjoy the ocean.

We took the meandering drive back into San Francisco and headed back to Berkeley to meet up with Steven for a late dinner around 8:45, which has by this point become the norm. We went to a place called Summer Kitchen which provides dishes made with ingredients from local farms. Beth got a lasagna with various vegetables like squash, zuchhini, eggplant, grape tomatoes. And since we were the last people of the night, they gave us a free sampler platter of their desserts. What a way to end the day!

San Francisco Day 1

July 9, 2011 by Jeff 3 Comments

Beth and I arrived last night in San Francisco to visit Steven and tour around a bit before Beth’s job starts, etc… We did mostly “touristy” things today: walking around downtown, a visit to Lombard Street, some great food and a visit to the Golden Gate bridge.

We ate lunch at Calzone’s in North Beach and then made our way to AT&T park to try to catch a Giants game, but it was sold out and the scalpers were way to expensive.

Now to get some rest before heading out again tomorrow. Hope you enjoy the pictures!

The Rottman Family Adventures

The stories of a growing family in AZ

Month: July 2011