Carolyn Rogers, 17, was awakened at dawn June 28 by a roar above the mountain retreat center overlooking the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa, where she and 16 other volunteers from John McMillan Presbyterian Church in Bethel Park were receiving orientation for their mission trip. She knew it wasn't from trucks rumbling up the highway.

Outside on the porch, the Rev. Charlie Berthoud was reading the Bible when the same roar made him look up. A jet flew over, low and fast.

"It seemed pretty unusual," said the pastor of John McMillan, who was on his 10th trip to Honduras. A few hours later they heard that Honduran President Manuel Zelaya had been awakened by soldiers and forced to board a plane out of the country.

"We think that plane might have been carrying the president," said Carolyn, a senior at Upper St. Clair High School.

Their trip gave them a close look at the turmoil. Mr. Zelaya's supporters call it a coup. His opponents say it was a legal action taken after he tried to alter the constitution so he could run for re-election. A one-term limit is central to the 1982 constitution.

They canceled a trip into Tegucigalpa but left as planned for a rural village to build two cinder block houses. The McMillan team, whose ages ranged from 17 to 60, worked with Presbyterian missionaries who serve the Heifer Project, which provides livestock to poor families, on the condition that they give some of the animals' offspring to others.

Two families in the village had received heifers, which they housed in the only shelter they owned while renting houses for themselves. The volunteers built a home for each family, while staying at homes in the village. They lived without electricity or indoor plumbing and ate the local diet of rice and beans.

"We weren't able to finish the houses, but we got them off to a really good start," Carolyn said. She didn't sense impact from the coup in the village, but the Rev. Berthoud was keenly aware that a curfew kept people from working in the evenings.

"It was more of an inconvenience from our perspective," he said. "The people who are suffering are the Hondurans trying to live on $3 per day."

It was hard on families back home. Communication was limited to brief exchanges via satellite phone. Carolyn's parents, Bill and Louise Rogers, called the U.S. embassy in Honduras and were told to monitor its Web site.

"At first they recommended that Americans avoid going through roadblocks. But it got more restrictive as the week went on. By the last day they were recommending that Americans curtail all travel that wasn't essential," Louise Rogers said.

It wasn't until July 4, when they left their village to visit Mayan ruins on their way out of the country, that tension became more visible.

"There were military checkpoints and guys with big guns, but we were never in any danger," the Rev. Berthoud said.

They saw a demonstration in one town. Carolyn, who speaks no Spanish, didn't know what the people wanted but said they wore white and were peaceful. "They had accordions and were playing music and singing," she said.

That was a protest on behalf of President Zelaya, the Rev. Berthoud said. Most Hondurans he spoke with had mixed feelings, he said.

"I think more people supported the ousted president, but they also had concerns about corruption in his administration. It wasn't a clear, black-and-white consensus," he said.

They spent their last day in a major city, San Pedro Sula. That same day in Tegucigalpa, the ousted president tried to re-enter the country and a protester was killed when demonstrators confronted soldiers at the airport.

From her hotel balcony, Carolyn saw a troop carrier and protesters in red gathering around speakers who shouted from the back of a pickup truck. Again, she was unsure what it was about, "but the next day on our way out, we saw communist symbols spray-painted on the church," she said.

They arrived home last Monday.

The Rev. Berthoud believes most Hondurans are optimistic. They are proud that their nation avoided the civil wars that killed thousands in nearby El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua in the 1980s.

"Hondurans like to think that's due to their ability to reconcile and to the agrarian reforms that are in place there. Their hope is that they can resolve this without great bloodshed and social conflict," he said.