A week at the orphanages

In our last post we begged my mother-in-law to come to Honduras and spend a week in San Pedro holding babies in an orphanage. Well, after an incredible and potentially life changing week, Edna and her sister-in-law Deanna left Honduras on Saturday!! Thanks again to you both for coming down here and loving these amazing children.

Before last week, Sean and I had been to the Nueva Esperanza orphanage twice, but only for fairly quick tours. It´s amazing how you start to see the heart of the matter when you spend consecutive days there. The first day and a half we spent nearly all of our time with the babies. There are roughly 25 babies and severly handicapped children in this room. The bottom line is that the workers are taking care of the basic needs of these children and have no time for loving, bonding or cognitive development. We tried to give the kids some much needed one on one attention and cuddle time, along with singing to them and playing games. Potentially my favorite moment was when I was holding a child (probably about 1 year old or a little younger) and I just stared into his eyes and he stared back. He would switch between staring at me and searching my entire face, just taking it all in. Here are some of our favorite pictures.

Sean and Denise. She looks just like a kewpie doll!

I absolutely love this picture. Deanna bought a bunch of baby toys (there were a few stuffed animals, but no toys at the center). This little girl just looked and looked and looked at the new toy. So precious.

This was Sean's cling on all week. She is an adorable little girl, but only smiled a handful of times while we were there. Sean got her to warm up a little, but only after a LOT of loving.

The best part about this picture is the kid in the back. What exactly was going through his mind when we took this picture!










This is Cynthia Gabriella - a.k.a. Princess. If Deanna could adopt, this child would be heading to the States!









Edna and Deanna holding some of the youngest.














This was our all time favorite picture of the week. Edna just gave this little girl's hair a trim. It looks like she's not too sure about her new look. Then we have Cynthia Gabriella in the back with her gigantic eyes thinking Oh, no!!! Am I next???


This is where our time at the orphanage got really hard. I debated on how detailed I should get with this story, but Sean said that I should tell it all, so here goes. This might be hard to read, but I do believe this child deserves for his story to be known. It´s very detailed, but I don´t want to forget a moment of it.










This is Richard.

His sweet smile and the hell that he lives in has really rocked my world. Whenever I let my mind wander, I always come back to him and to what we experienced last week. Tuesday afternoon was the first day that we did much with the older kids at this orphanage. After lunch we bought some watermelon and wanted to give all the kids a piece. As Edna and Deanna were cutting the melons, Sean and I were in the cafeteria with the boys (ages 5-12). It was incredible chaos. I noticed 2 boys fighting and went to break it up. One of the boys was Richard. He was crying and the boy he was fighting with was laughing. I seperated them and tried to get Richard to talk to me, but he was crying too hard. Other boys kept coming up and were pushing him or taunting him as I tried to talk. So I just became his protector during the watermelon ordeal and made sure the kids stayed away from him more or less. Later in the day, I was talking to two girls when another fight broke out. Again, it was Richard, with another boy. The female employee was standing a few feet away doing absolutely nothing. I asked her why she wasn´t doing anything. She said that she doesn´t want to get hit. I asked if I could do something. She said I´d get hit too, but that I could. I grabbed Richard and pulled him away. He struggled for a while, got away from me and ran outside onto the gravel driveway. He then started throwing rocks at people in the building. At this point 4 of the older boys came strutting down the stairs and across the courtyard. I wish that I could describe the way they looked. The image is burned into my brain. You could tell that this was not the first time they have been called upon to take care of Richard and you could tell they reveled in the power they had been given. Each of them grabbed either an arm or a leg and started dragging Richard upstairs to the boys room as he struggled with all his might. I followed closely to make sure they didn´t pull a limb out of its socket or bash his head on the floor. A crowd of boys was following throwing things at him as well. We got to the boys room and I thought they were just going to lock him in there to calm down. Nope. They were going to force him to calm down. They were shoving him against the wall. Pushing him down and sitting on him. Hitting him. At this time we had about 12 other boys in the room joining in on the fun. I couldn´t take it anymore and asked the worker if we could have all the kids leave. As they were all leaving Sean came into the room with me. The worker left with the kids and locked the three of us into the room. Richard was crying and yelling so hard and loudly and he was tearing the cloth covering of one of the mattresses. I held his hands to try and make him stop. He then took his shirt off and proceeded to shred the shirt into tiny pieces. Sobbing and yelling the whole time. Sean and I just sat next to him as he yelled "I want my mommy!" "I don´t want to be here!" "God help me!" After about 30 minutes the worker brought him dinner, but the rest of the boys filed in as well. We sat near him and made sure that no one took his food as he ate. Then he went off by himself and laid down on a bed. It killed me to leave him that night, knowing that there´s a good chance all of this was going to happen again.

I saw him again on Wednesday. We talked for a while. He had two shots that morning and he definitely seemed calmer. I talked to some of the girls about him the day before and they said that Richard doesn´t have friends because he is crazy and he had the devil living inside him. It absolutely kills me that he is growing up believing this. I definitely think that he has many issues, but I did not see a crazy child. I see a child who is DAILY being abused by his peers and has absolutely no power to stop it. He tries to fight back, but he hasn´t hardened himself enough yet to fight ruthlessly and without emotion. Therefore, he is an easy target for these boys who need to constantly prove that they are tough (in hopes that others won´t mess with them.)

During our conversation on Wednesday I also learned more about his story. (I am hoping to go back again on Thursday this week with a truly bilingual person so I can make sure that I fully understood him.) He was born in Veracruz, Mexico. When he was four, his family decided to illegally travel to the States by riding on the tops of trains. This is dangerous for healthy, athletic, 20 something men, much less a family with small children. Click here for more info about the trains. At some point in the trip, he was seperated from his family. The government couldn´t find his family so he spent time in an orphanage in Mexico. Then he was adopted by a Honduran family. They fell on hard economic times and gave him back to the Honduran government. Can you imagine if this is true?? Can you imagine having a poor, but loving family that you are seperated from, then grow up in this absolute hell??? He gave me the full names of his parents, uncle and brother. If anyone has any idea how to go about searching for this family I could really use some guidance.

And now the question for us is what are we going to do? I saved some of the rocks the boys were throwing at Richard because I do not want to forget and go back to life as usual. Have you ever read Lord of the Flies? This is that book brought to life. And we kept being reminded that these are children! On Wednesday, Sean and I were hanging out with them and they were showing us all of their gang signs. One of them reminded me of glasses, so I turned the gang sign upside down with my fingers and made "glasses" over my eyes. The next moment all these tough, violent boys were ALL making sunglasses as well. One person I´ve talked to about this said we need to get this place shut down. But if we shut it down, they are just going to go to some other overcrowded, underfunded place. Also, Sean and I kind of have free reign in that building. The director trusts us and allows us to come whenever we want. I don´t want to have these doors closed on us so that we don´t even have access to the kids at all. So, we are going to be rallying the troops here. We´ll be trying to gather as much information as possible about adoption options, hiring more staff, training the staff, moving some of the boys (Richard!) and babies to other, less overwhelmed locations. I am open to suggestions, information or expertise that any of you may have. Uncle Larry - how do I track down Richard´s parents? EZ - do you know how to find information about immigration/adoption laws in Honduras? And once again, for anyone that has even an inkling of a desire to come down here, there is a need, and no matter what skills you have, they are needed here. And for everyone else - please pray for these children. Pray until you can´t anymore, then keep going. And pray that this stays at the forefront of Sean´s and my mind. We want to move a mountain here, and it´s really easy for doubts to creep in about whether or not that mountain can really be moved.

Orphanages and updates

Hello everyone!
I feel like I have so so much to talk about today, but don't know where to start. So I'm going to start typing and see what happens...
We have had an incredibly full month. Towards the end of February we got to work with the team from Mountain Park Church in Phoenix and got to see Allison! This truly was an incredible team. Every day with them was filled with laughter, but also lots of time for deeper and more serious conversations. And I gained an eccentric senile Aunt Susan! (She told me to think of her like that. I promise.) We were so sad to see them go. The Pastor in El Progresso (city where we worked) is a man of great vision. It's amazing to see all that he's done in his community in about 10 years. His church has grown from 3 members to 500! And he has established a partnership with Compassion International in which about 250 kids are served. We love that we had the opportunity to get to know this Pastor and hope we get to spend a lot more time with him this year. Hopefully his vision and ability to persevere will rub off on us!










Marvellous Mountain Park Members. Hehe.

Then this week we worked with a team from Clarkston, MI in Borboton. The kids in Borboton really blew us away. It was mainly a painting project and usually you want 12 year olds to stay very far away from painting, since they aren't awesome at paying attention to detail. There were definitely some that we had to confiscate their paint brushes, but I was amazed by this group of 5 or so boys that worked hard and well with us throughout the project. I talked with them for a while one day about school. They are all in 6th grade which, for many kids here is the last grade they attend. 4 of them had plans to attend collegio (high school), but one boy already had stopped going to school and had no interest in going back. He said he was going to be a fisherman. Can you imagine?? Being 12 years old and just deciding not to go to school anymore. I told him that in the US you could be put into Juvenile Detention if you don't go to school. His response? I'm not in the US. True, true. The team said a very tearful goodbye yesterday to the people of Borboton. It was really neat to see the relationships that had formed this week regardless of the language barrier. The only downside of the week was that my purse with our camera in it was stolen! The director of the school and the pastor are still investigating the mysterious disappearance, but I fear that it is loooooong gone. =( So the only picture I have from this trip is a link to a picture of Mark from Clarkston and our painting boys. The boy that is not going to school is the 3rd from the left with a striped shirt. I hope sometime this year I'll be able to report that he has changed his mind and gone back! http://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?pid=901579&id=1450541440
Speaking of updates - remember the man that came to the medical clinic in January with a chainsaw wound to the leg? Well, I'm very happy to report that his leg is completely healed! A few people visited him thinking that the wound would be infected and he'd need more care - but they said that it had healed well and you could barely even tell that anything had happened. What a blessing!
Now for what has really been on our minds and hearts for the last few weeks. Heart to Honduras has recently made contact with another organization - Orphan Helpers. They work in about 8 different orphanages or juvenile detention centers in Honduras. We were incredibly privileged to receive a tour of 3 facilities in San Pedro. We left there feeling incredibly overwhelmed by the needs that we saw, and yet hopeful for what we could do this year to make a difference in their lives. The first place we visited was a home for teenage girls ages 12-19. Richard told us that about 90% of these girls have been sexually abused. There are currently around a hundred girls sleeping in 2 rooms, 4 girls to a bunk bed. Being a teenager is a time of independence and becoming your own person and to spend it sharing a twin bed with another girl with absolutely no personal belongings (they all share clothes and have no dressers, closets, tubs, anything) just seems awful. Absolutely, they are in a safer place, but not ideal. Orphan Helpers employs 3 teachers at the facility, otherwise the girls would get no education. Walking through there filled me with so much motivation to really buckle down on learning Spanish. To spend the day there just having one on one interaction with these girls would go so far. To be able to talk to them about their dreams and fears, that is reason enough to study Spanish when I don't really feel like it. Looking into the eyes of some of these girls you could just tell they've still got so much fight left in them, they just need some love, some safety and some direction.
Then we went to Nueva Esperanza (New Hope). This is a home for boys and girls ranging in age from newborns to 11 year olds. This one filled us with the most sadness. They are incredibly understaffed. There is a very, very high number of special needs kids in this home, which stretches the few workers they have even thinner. Then we went to the room where they keep all the babies. The youngest one was 9 days old when we were there. Around 26 babies and 2 staff. The babies were relatively clean and fed, which is so good, but are only held when being cleaned or fed, so are severely lacking in emotional warmth and attention. My best friend, Jen, is visiting us next week and we are planning on spending at least half a day just holding babies, singing to them, praying for them. And I'm trying to convince my Mother-in-law to come for a few days or a week and just spend time with them. Come on, Edna, it would be so good for us! =) And seriously, anyone reading this who is moved by their need right now - I will help you figure out how to get down here and where to stay so you can hold these precious souls in your arms. It doesn't take a whole lot of defined skills, just a whole lot of love!

Beautiful babies at the orphanage.

And now for the much anticipated update on our little Chamaco. He's getting bigger!! He has a tendency to flee when we let him out to go to the bathroom. When we first got him, we would chase him down the street and carry him home. Now, that's not so easy. He's pretty heavy!! He is adjusting to the pampered dog life very well. Here are some recent photos....

They were both asleep. Chamaco using Sean's leg as a seat and with his nose and paws shoved between 2 sections of the couch!

Allison playing his favorite game. Chew, chew, chew, Chew. Look at them ears.

This is probably the only time that he has ever been calmly sitting next to one of us while we read. Usually he's trying to lay on the book. A little jealous, perhaps?

Running full speed at me. Ears flopping everywhere!

We brought him with the team one day. He preferred riding on laps as opposed to on the ground.

This one's just so dang cute.

Teams and a little surprise...

Hola!

After a few weeks of working with teams we are back in the office with regular internet access - so time to blog!! Last week we had the priviledge of being translators for a medical team. But let me be more specific - the team needed 7 translators. Sean and I working together were counted as 1 translator and we were placed with the kids who were waiting for their parents to be seen. So we didn't need to say much more than 'come here', ' Do you want to color?' 'More?' Things like that. Even though we didn't get to work with the patients, we were still so excited to be working with this team. I've wished so many times that I could stomach blood and pain because serving people in this way makes such an impact. We went to different villages each day and every day we had between 150-300 people waiting for hours to see one of the 5 doctors on this team. So many people here have limited, if any, access to medical treatment. We also had an eye doctor who fitted hundreds of people for glasses. Can you imagine going through life with everything blurry?? The best moment for me was on the second day. We had been seeing patients for a few hours when a man hobbled in with a blood soaked leg. He had cut his leg right above the knee with a chainsaw. (Super deep, but not to the bone.) One of our doctor's was an ER doc who had brought a kit with her just for this sort of thing. She was able to clean the wound and stitch him up in less than an hour. (No numbing the area though. This was a tough guy! Sean said he was even joking and laughting at times.) He was bandaged and sent home with medication and strict instructions to clean the wound and rest. (Most people who know me know that I have a very sensitive gag reflex when it comes to physical ailments, which is why I don't have a picture of the man getting stitches on the front lawn. Sorry to disappoint.) What amazes me is that if this man had cut himself the day after we had been there, this story would probably end very very differently. For the 10 minute walk to our clinic he didn´t even attempt to bandage the wound. So he may have simply bled to death. If they could´ve stopped the bleeding it is very likely that the wound would´ve gotten severly infected resulting in him losing his leg. But that´s only if he was able to get to a doctor. Chances are good he wouldn´t be able to afford to pay so wouldn´t have gone at all, resulting in death from his infection. I know I´m painting a grim picture here but a trip to the ER just isn´t a possibility for so many people here! I am just so incredibly thankful to God that this accident happened when it did. This man is the father of 11 children. Can you imagine being a single parent to 11 children?? Being in that place at that time was such a blessing!

People waiting in line to see a Dr. (Las Colinas, Santa Barbara)

Inside the school that we were using as a clinic. We also had a gynecolegist on this team. Her very `private` room is behind those sheets!

On this day we didn´t have an actual room for the kids. But they were just fine with coloring on a tarp in the middle of the road!

And now for other very important news. Sean and I have a new addition to our family!

Just kidding! This is a very friendly little monkey named Sasha. Our last day was my favorite. We went to an orphanage near our house to give all the kids medical exams. I was completely blown away by this place. The orphanage has existed for 50 years and you can see the wear and tear on some of the buildings, but these kids are sooooo loved by the people who run it as well as the staff. Many of the kids here have living parents, their parents simply cannot afford to feed them so they come here very malnourished. But with love and the right nutrients these kids are flourishing! We worked mainly with the little ones because all the older kids were in school, but I got to tour the living quarters of the older kids. Very nice new buildings and their rooms looked like typical kids´rooms, which was nice to see. Also, a student from the orphange (or the child of a person who grew up in the orphanage) has been the valedictorian at the local school for I think 3 out of the last 4 years! It was also really neat to meet some of the staff members who grew up here and consider it home so they want to give back to the kid that are living there now. Incredibly inspiring. AND they have a pet monkey. How could you be sad when you have a pet monkey?? If you want to learn more about the orphanage you can visit their website at http://www.blogger.com/www.panamhealth.org.

Finally, and all joking aside, we do have a new, furry addition to our lives. On our 3rd day we had our clinic at a church. (The picture with the kids on the tarps.) In the back of the church were 3 dogs tied to trees, starving. Now, one of the first things that rips an animal lovers´heart in a 3rd world country is the state of the animals. Honduras is no different. Sometimes I wish I was a vet and could fix many dogs and put many many others out of their misery. But most of these dogs are free to roam around the village in hopes of finding scraps of food. These poor dogs were pets so they were at the mercy of their owners who didn´t have enough money to buy them food. This little guy captured our hearts right away. Gigantic ears. By far the worst of the 3. And tied to a tree with roughly a foot and a half chain.

We bought him for 500 lempiras - about 27 dollars. They told us he was sick and there was something wrong with his back legs. Sure enough, the first night it looked like he couldn´t extend his legs far enough and he was so weak that every time he tried to stretch he would fall over. BUT with less than 24 hours of regular food and room to move around we are happy to say his legs are totally fine. A little weak, but fine. We gave him a bath the first night and he very passively let us pick off a bunch of fleas and ticks and clean inside his ears. Again, after some regular food, he is no longer the passive, lethargic pup he was last week. Now when we try to search for unwanted visitors he thinks it´s play time and his goal is to bite those tweezers!! Since he is now in full puppy mode we´ve decided to call him Chamaco (rascal) and we believe that he will fully live up to his name!

Just coming over to say hello!

Waiting patiently for Sean to make his scrambled eggs. (We read that eggs are high in protein so good for malnourished animals...)

He REALLY likes to chew on stuff. Bad Chamaco!!

This picture is from our 5th day with him. He is still incredibly skinny, but his ribs are less defined now. And here´s a little video to show just how much energy he has. =) Another crazy thing is that our neighbor kids absolutely LOVE him. We thought for sure that we were going to have to talk to them about not kicking him or throwing rocks at him, since they do it to all other dogs. Nope, they think he´s the greatest thing. They stand at our window calling his name. When we walk him they want to take over the leash. So he went from being the starving, neglected dog behind the house to the King of Santa Elena! Pretty good week for him I would say!

What do you do when a rooster is killed in your yard?

This blog will answer that very important question. A bit of clarification before we begin, it is not uncommon for us to walk out our door and find 5 – 15 chickens hanging out in various locations around our house. This was so abnormal to us when we first got here that I took a picture of some of them the day we moved in. I mean, that’s what you do. You see something different and you take a picture of it, right?

Now I laugh when I look at this picture. It’s so commonplace that is wouldn’t cross my mind to take a picture of it today. Now, what happened this weekend? That was worthy of a few hastily taken, therefore poor quality, pictures. (aka The pictures aren’t great, but I want to have at least some visuals to go with the story!) On Sunday, Sean and I were having a nice relaxing morning filled with books and Honduran coffee when we heard some frantic squawking. We go out on our porch to find two dogs and a bunch of feathers. We looked over our wall to find a surprisingly smart rooster who had jumped off our wall into the bed of our truck.

The dogs were completely dumbfounded. They’d run up our stairs and stare down at the rooster from our wall, then run down to the truck and circle it for a while, totally unable to recreate the view from the wall from their current view on the ground. We continued to be impressed by the rooster until it crowed. I mean, really, does he not have any sense of self preservation whatsoever???? One of the dogs was pretty big so it nearly jumped into the bed of the truck, causing the rooster to jump out of the truck. And, well, you know what happened next. (In my defense, I was yelling at the dogs the whole time. The dog-human relationship is not the same in Honduras as it is in the US. And they completely ignored me.) The thing is, the dogs didn’t eat it. They just roughed it up and left. We stared at it a while wondering what to do. We asked a neighbor that was watching us if we could borrow a machete. (He was still breathing a bit and we didn’t want him to suffer.) Thankfully, he breathed his last breath before the machete arrived. But now, what do we do with it? We went back inside to brainstorm. We’ve heard that even though the chickens run free, they do belong to someone and everyone knows whose chickens are whose. So, find the owner? That seemed like way too much work. And we were a little skeptical about that being true. Sean has said since we’ve arrived here that he wants to slaughter, defeather and dress a chicken, and we’re trying to spend less money. So, eat it? Suddenly Sean didn’t want to actually do it nearly as much as talk about it. =) And we’ve heard something about roosters not being good to eat. (What is the point of a rooster then??? They don’t lay eggs and you can’t eat em.) Option number 3 – put it in a more visible location and let some of the starving dogs eat it. That was my favorite option. After a few hours of talking about it, forgetting about it, then one of us saying – “We really need to do something about that rooster.” We finally went outside. I tried to coax some dogs over to it, but once again, the human dog relationship is not the same here and these dogs did not trust me enough to come anywhere near me. Sean found some pieces of wood and tried to move it.

It wasn’t working very well and at one point he dropped it and it nearly rolled on his foot. (Gross, but super funny.) Once again, we had neighbors watching us that were kind enough to bring over a shovel.

So Sean picked it up and I asked if we should throw it over the fence for the dogs. We got a resounding “NO!!!!! Go find Irma.” So there we were, two gringos traipsing through our neighbors yards with a dead rooster on a shovel looking for a some woman named Irma. (At first Sean thought Irma was a place, which made things even more confusing.) Thankfully, one of the neighbor kids ran ahead of us, found Irma first and explained what had happened. I just heard her saying ‘dos perros’ (2 dogs) and thought “Phew, hopefully this means she won’t blame us for it!” And I was soooo thankful we hadn’t used that machete. I can imagine the conversation – ‘I swear, 2 dogs killed it, we just needed to put it out of its misery. That’s why it’s in two pieces!” We only know a portion of those words in Spanish. She wasn’t angry at all, just kept pointing up the hill to a chicken coop. She’s a nice woman, but speaks very fast and we weren’t catching any of it. Put it back in chicken coop? That seems a little morbid and scary for the other roosters. Bury it in the yard next to the coop? Well, we do have a shovel, so I guess we could. Nope, just throw it in their trash hole hidden behind the coop. Now that we can do! So, apparently it is true that all the chickens belong to someone and next time we’ll know to find the owner right away!

On to more important things – we had our first English class since being back in Honduras. We were both thinking that no one would show up. They hadn’t had class in 4 weeks and what are the chances they would remember that this is the day they start again? We normally have about 12 kids in class. 30 minutes before class was supposed to start we had about 8 kids sitting quietly at the tables we have set up. And none of them had ever been to our class before. So I decided that I would start from square one again and pretend like this was the first class. Then, all of our regulars showed up. We had 18 kids this weekend!! We usually have 2 tables set up and we don’t let the kids sit on our couch during class because couch = good place to goof off. Well, we had to this week. We had 6 kids on our 3-4 person couch! And ALL of them were there at least 20 minutes early so we just started class. They really blew me away. I made a packet of homework for the regulars to do over their 4 week English break and ALL of them did it and the new ones were asking me for more copies. (Could’ve also been the suckers I gave to all the kids who turned their homework in.) All in all it was a fun and encouraging class where the kids really seemed to be getting what was being taught and the oldies were helping out the newbies. The time flew by and our hour long class ended up being about an hour and 40 minutes long without the kids even getting restless. If only every class could be like this one…

Many, many students studiously writing!

As soon as he snapped the picture they all were immediately distracted, of course.

Happy New Year!

New Year´s resolution number 1 - blog more often and spread the posts out a bit...

Sean and I have just returned to Honduras from a wonderful 3 week Christmas visit in Arizona. (Have you ever noticed just how good the US smells??? Mmm....) We had such a good time at home that we were nervous we´d have a hard time transitioning back to Honduran life. Amazingly enough, as soon as our plane hit the ground we were excited to get back to everything Honduran which was incredibly affirming that we are where we`re supposed to be.

As some of you know, there has been a temporary leadership change on the Honduran side of this ministry. Our Executive Director will be on sabbatical for the next 6 months. Jose Reyes has stepped in as interim Executive Director and Sean and I have immediately taken to his leadership style and are excited with his vision for Heart to Honduras. This vision is true to the original founding vision of the ministry. Jose wants to ensure that we are the absolute best that we can be. One thing he said to me today was "if you can see a way to make it better, good is no longer enough." He´s the kind of leader that quickly makes you excited about things you haven´t thought much of in the past and inspires you to action. We´re excited to see how he will affect this ministry.

Which leads me to a few prayer requests. There are many dedicated people involved in this ministry, but referring back to what Jose said today – we know that we can be better, so good is no longer an option. And from the few conversations we´ve had with him, we know that Sean and I will be an integral part of his plan to start making continuous improvements. Because he is such a leader, we are excited by this challenge, but it is still a challenge, and that is what we need prayer for. That we will rise up to meet these challenges. That we will consistently give our work everything we have. That we would always remember why we are here and what we are doing. And that we would refuse to settle for anything less than our best and would be constantly working towards what is better. I have wanted this year to be one that I could look back and say "I didn´t do this on my own." I want this to be the year that we learn we can do so much more when we are relying on Him. And I think we´ve discovered how that is going to happen!

As always thank you all for your ongoing support and love. We wouldn´t be here without you!

December

When we came here we knew that Sean would be focusing on building the camp in Santa Elena but my future was a bit murky. Soon after we arrived I realized that a common suggestion from numerous sources was that it would be a great help for me to teach English. To the employees, to the women in our church, to the kids in our neighborhood. English, English, English. There are few things that I am truly skilled in, but thankfully speaking English is one of those things. Unfortunately, teaching is not! But regardless, I started teaching English to a group of 6-13 year old kids a month ago. The first thing I've learned is that English is a difficult language! We have so many weird rules and then we go and break most them! And I feel like I'm a Speech Coach as much as I'm a teacher ("Put your tongue under your teeth and push air out to make the 'th' sound"). I had a hiccup the second week in which I could tell the kids just weren't getting it, but thankfully my friend Jackie is an ELL teacher and she gave me great tips, so we're back on track again! The kids are so excited to learn which makes it so much easier to teach. Here is a video of us playing bato, bato, ganso (duck, duck, goose). Click on the link and it should bring you to a youtube video. I know that you can't really hear them, but they're so darn cute!!

And I wanted to get some pictures of the actual class, but kept forgetting so here's a picture of Sean playing UNO with some of the kids after class last week. AND it's educational because Sean had them say the color they wanted in English after playing a Wild. =)

We will also start having a TON of North American teams. Starting the first week of January we'll have at least one team, but up to three, every week til June! Sean and I will most likely be participating in some of those teams. I'm hoping to help build a bunch of Widow Houses. I mentioned these in one of our earlier posts, but I'd like to post some pictures of them now.

This is an example of a rather nice house in Honduras. It has dirt floors and termites. Over the years and many, many rainstorms a small ravine had been carved through the middle of the house. So when it rained, as it often does here, their house would get flooded. Also, if you look to the right of the door there is a large hole behind that blue ball. Not only were they battling against water they were also battling against unwanted visitor like dogs, rats, etc. That being said, this is seriously one of the nicer homes that HTH has rebuilt!

This is a photo of their 'kitchen' which was little more than a table and a few pots and pans.

And here we have 2 of their 3 beds. So, in one 10x10 'house' they have 3 beds for 4 people and a table in the corner that serves as their kitchen.

These are 3 of the 4 guys that built the new house. They were truly amazing. If you add the ages of these 3 together they have over 220 years between them. And yet they were able to come to Honduras and build a house! I really want to still be doing this when I'm their age.

And this picture is of the house dedication with the family and the volunteers. The Widow Houses aren't much larger than this family's original home, but it has concrete floors as well as 3 feet of concrete blocks that should deter the termites a bit. And it is normal for one entire family to live in a one room house. (Remember the first time our neighbor walked into our house and kept saying '2 people? Only 2 people??')

So hopefully more of these houses will be in our future. It's such an amazing and simple way to completely change the life of a family!

Nakedness and Vulnerability

One of the best things about living in a laid back culture is not feeling the pressing need to hurry on to our next task. Since becoming settled in our house we have been able to develop a regular routing of reading our Bibles daily, something that was easily pushed aside in the States. I really liked what Sean wrote recently and feel that it captures our desires for the year well. The verse is Isaiah 20:2

The Lord spoke...'take off the sackcloth from your body and the sandals from

your feet.' And he did so going around stripped a barefoot.

When I read this verse my only thought was 'Wow, that's awkward.' But Sean saw a little more depth in the verse than I! Here is what he wrote:

"The idea of being naked and barefoot is a good image of being completely vulnerable and exposed with no way of hiding. This is kind of the way that I want to be a missionary here. Not trying to wear the clothes of a good missionary or Christian, but be who God made me, exposing my flaws and realness. And how humbling a feeling that is. God I pray for nakedness, for the strength and courage to expose who you made me. Not to shock or to make people think "how can he be a Christian if..." but to show through my actions that I am a Christian, follower of Christ, humble servant. And this is because of who I am, not the rules that I follow.

Even though we haven't been able to understand an entire sermon yet, we have definitely picked up the key points and it has often been about the rules we should follow as Christians - like what music we should and shouldn't listen to, etc. We long to show the people in our little village that Christianity is more than a set of rules to follow and yet we also want to be respectful of their culture so we don't want to swoop in and tell them all the things that need to change! So our constant prayer has become that we can build relationships with the people around us and that we would have the confidence to be ourselves. And our hope is that by being authentic, people will see that there is so much more to living a life for God than rules!

Along the same lines, there's a song by Jars of Clay called Light Gives Heat that has been rocking my world the last few days. It's all about missionaries going to 3rd world countries, and it's not exactly positive about it! Here are some of the most thought provoking lines:

"Heroes from the West, We don't know you, we know best" (This is what we want to avoid like the plague. Yes, we do things differently in the US and yes it works well for us! But that doesn't mean everyone else has to be just like us. We are here to serve, not to bring the US to Honduras.)

"You treat me like I'm blind. Setting fires around houses on a hill, but light gives heat." ?(What this means to me is that Sean and I can't stay in our little house on the hill - our house literally is on a hill!- we need to get down into the village with the people. We are the 'light of the world' but it's not good enough to just set fires from far away. Light gives heat, it gives warmth. Again, this is what we want to do and to be. Authentic warmth that is immersed in the heart of our community.

We would greatly appreciate your prayers on this subject!

Now, a blog never seems complete without some pictures, so here are some of our most recent:

These are a bunch of our little neighbors. (all of whom at one point or another have spent a large amount of time watching us through the windows...) And this is what happens when Sean becomes a human jungle gym. These kids are so sweet. This picture was taken on a day when they were trying to find us through the few windows we have left with no curtains. Sean and I didn't feel particulary sociable so we were hiding on our couch, where no one can see us. Sean eventually went outside to tell ask them nicely to stop. 15 minutes later and still no Sean - so I went to see what was going on. They are just so cute that you can't resist hanging out with them once they get you outside!

I actually have a few more pictures of this. It was just impossible to get them all to stay still and look at me at the same time! The little boy in the front right was the funniest. He's not looking at the camera for a single picture. I don't know if he even realized pictures were being taken.

This is a gift from our 12 year old neighbor Michelle. It's a living room made out of matchboxes, candy wrappers, complete with tiny hand sewn pillows. So sweet!

Sean and our friend Samuel 'mowing' our grass with machetes. Sean would like me to say differently, but Samuel was much faster.

Our first dinner guests! All on a short trip from the States. (L-R) Doug Endsley (Head of Construction - Stateside) , us, Gordon Garrett (President of HTH) and Bob Abel (Architect who has lent his expertise to the camp)

Now some pictures of 'problems' that have been resolved. This is a 5 gallon bucket that as you can see is almost completely full of water. This water was mopped up by the towels over a period of 3 days. Where did the water come from you ask? From a pesky leak in our 2nd bathroom. That's a lot of water to have on our floor on a daily basis! But it has now been fixed which means...our extra bedroom is ready and waiting for visitors!

Finally, we would like you to meet Rosa. As many of you know our initial vehicle was quite a nightmare. In the first 3 weeks, it had to be towed twice and seriously took about 20 minutes to start every morning. Thankfully, the car salesman agreed to take it back and after paying for the $1000 difference we now have this beauty who starts up the first time every time. It's an incredible feeling to know that your vehicle will definitely take you from point a to point b. Plus since it has an open truck bed we can now give people rides. So many people walk miles and miles on the mountainous dirt roads. It is such an easy and huge way to help people by simply letting them hop in the back of the truck!