Another Day, Another Fire...

No, I'm not trying to sound complacent.  Not at all.  And, yes, there was another huge fire today in Honduras.  This one was in Comayagüela, which is part of Tegucigalpa, about an hour and a half away from Comayagua.  It happened in the mercado, the market. 

Thankfully, it appears that there has been no loss of life from this fire.  Several people were injured and many, many people lost their entire businesses, but no one died.  Thank God for that!

The fire appears to have mostly affected the part of the market where people were selling clothes and shoes.  500 stalls burned! The businesses were not insured, so that basically means that these people lost everything.  Here's an article that was on Yahoo! News about the fire.  On the news here, it's getting lots of exposure.  Lots of pictures.

And lots of looting.  Before the fire was barely extinguished, the police were trying to control the looters who were going in to find (and take) anything salvageable.  I was watching a few minutes of it on TV and saw several people sifting through rubble, including a woman who kept lifting up a pair of singed jeans, with the tag still on it, trying to determine if they were worth taking.  She kept looking at the TV camera, then back at the jeans, holding them up, surveying the damage.  In the end, the jeans won out as she walked away with them.

Right now, there's an overall attitude here in the country of "What next?  What more will we have to endure?" But I believe that the Honduran people are resilient.  I believe that Hope will be brought to people who have no hope right now.  I believe that Peace will come to people who are in turmoil.  And I believe that Light will shine in a country that is so engulfed in darkness these days.

I was going to write today about this morning's bike ride ~ something a bit lighter than the news I've had so far this week.  What I didn't know was that as I was riding my bike, soaking in the sunshine and enjoying the sights and sounds around me, tragedy was striking the country once again.

Please continue to pray for Honduras and for us.  Pray that we will shine as God's light in dark times, and that we will know how to meet people's real needs.