Saturday

We're coming up on my first week here. Today marks a week from the day that I actually LEFT home. Tomorrow night will be a week from the day I arrive at Loma de Luz.

Wow-only a week. It feels like I've already taken the full journey and yet there's MORE. More for me to do. More for God to do. How exciting.

This week has gone by pretty fast now that I look back on it.

Today was a struggle for me. It was the first day that I didn't have my work for the day clearly cut out for me. In fact, the first day I didn't HAVE work for the day. At first I got a little worried. I kind of panicked when I realized that I had nothing to do today and the girls wouldn't be around for me to tag along with. But-sure enough- I found things to do.

I finished The Kite Runner. What a great book! It was especially cool to be reading about a different culture and living in a different culture at the same time. Like a double wammy. I really liked all the literary elements that he incorporated and REALLY liked how the ending doesn't make you feel sad and it doesn't make you feel ecstatic, it kind of makes you feel like things just.. go on. But in a good way. If you haven't read it, you should, if you aren't easily effected by some intense dramatic content.

I also did quite a bit of housekeeping today. Washed my sheets, made breakfast, tried to fix my coffee pot, scrubbed, wiped, etc.

One of the best parts of my "day of rest"- My Sabbath. My Saturday. - was the time I had to study some Spanish, Old Testament, and Christian Beliefs. I brought two spanish textbooks with me and two Bible textbooks (one OT survey & the other a Handbook of Christian Beliefs). So, I've been doing a lot of independent studies with those books and today I got to really invest a good chunk of time to all of them. I read the story of Noah, as well, always a classic. I think it shows two aspects of God that are foundational, complimentary, and incredibly moving. That is, His desire to see righteousness in His people and His desire to preserve those after His heart.

After I did some studying, I took a walk up the hill a little bit to a cluster of missionary houses. I took several pictures on the way that you can take a look at on Facebook. It was a nice chance to take in some of the beauty that I'm now living in. When I got home the girls invited me to go meet them down at the beach. I was going to but my next-door neighbor (a young pediatric nurse) Joelle got in and wanted to make pizza so I thought it probably would be a good time to get to know her and stuff. We had a lot of fun, making pizza in Honduras is quite the adventure. The ingredients are no problem but finding a stove to cook it in, that's the biggest obstacle.

But, in the end, we were successful! We made pizza and shared it with some of the Honduran staff members that live on the other side of staff housing.

So-God really blessed me with a great day to have some alone time with Him and have some great fellowship.

I look forward to the adventures tomorrow brings!

Filling "Spare" Time

Wow-I've had quite a bit of free time lately. Schedules are wierd around here because of all the stuff going on with the government we had a toque de queda (curfew) yesterday & today. Thankfully, that'll be suspended tomorrow which will open up traffic again. It's not a good thing for Cornerstone to have transportation restrictions considering they have a lot of teams/short-terms doctors coming in and out right now. We were supposed to have a little missionary conference that was going to start tomorrow but because of the political issues and insecurity of the issue of transportation, it's been cancelled. Therefore, all the students who were working hard to finish this week's work before tomorrow now find themselves with a lot of free time. I do have one student, though, whose parents want to make the most of this time (can't blame them with the way things run around here-you can be eight steps ahead and in three steps end up ten steps behind...) and she'll continue to do school for the rest of the week. Which means I will continue to do school this week. Today I worked with just her and we finished at 11am so I'm kind of expecting that to be the deal for tomorrow and Friday.

Yesterday we finished around noontime and I went back to my house for lunch. I was studying some spanish and chatting on Skype when one of my girls came in and asked me if I wanted to "hang out". This is 10yr Sammey who's just so sweet and spunky. So, she and I went to her house and played Yahtzee, watched some of Hairspray, and then walked down to the children's center (foster home). Her older sister, Sidney (14), has a horse so she let Sammey and I ride it down to the beach. AMAZING. My first time riding a horse was bareback down to the Caribbean. Woah. It was great. Definitely scary at first (and I'm incapable of getting on a horse alone) but worth it in the end.

Today after school I went back to the house, ate lunch, Skyped with Andrew, and then went to the hospital to clean glasses. Someone donated thousands of pairs of vintage glasses to Loma de Luz so they're cleaning them, checking the prescription, and entering them into a computer data base so they can be fitted and given to patients. I went in there and washed a hundred or so for an hour. Then, I came back. Skyped some MORE, and at 4pm went to the lady's bible study that was held at the Rumbaughs. The Rumbaughs are a missionary family here who are pretty much in charge of all the ministry aspects. I'm pretty sure they have some sort of study going on at their house every night. It was at their house that the Perspectives (missions study I went to Monday) was held. After the Bible study, I went to the Merritt's house. The Merritts are the couple that my home church supports and so it was cool connecting with them. They're very sweet, hospitable, pleasant people.

Now I'm back in my room. Updating people, Skyped a little MORE, and getting ready to get stuff ready for tomorrow and study some Spanish.

Pray for Honduras. Pray for the missionaries.

Nitty Gritty-not so gritty.

Today was my first day of work with the kids. It started bright & early at 6:30am. I had breakfast with the short-term team from Kentucky (mostly because I wanted to steal their coffee!) and they were very nice to chat with. I also had one of the most interesting shaving experiences of my life (ask me about that later). I got picked up around 8am and we went to the place where we're holding classes, the "Cabildo". There were four girls for classes today. Three were probably in the 4th-6th grade range and one was in 9th. My role was pretty straightforward, I helped them when they asked for help, and graded their assignments as they finished them. Some needed more help than others but for the most part-they seem to be very easy to handle and teachable.

We took a break around 10am and played marbles! Yes, marbles. I remember playing SOMETIMES as a kid but I never really thought people played marbles anymore. It was fun-mostly cause I'm pretty darn good. Got back to work and broke later for lunch. We went down to a small restaurant by the gate and had fried chicken, Honduran cole slaw, and refried beans. Oh & I can't forget the little bag of water they gave me to drink out of. Quite entertaining.

Once we had finished with school, Mrs. Yount took me for a little mini-tour (tours come in bits and pieces around here) to see some of the missionary housing up the hill. Wow-these guys have some REALLY nice houses. Just absolutely beautiful. And, she said hers cost them under 50,000 to build. I mean, you've got to be kidding me! That was crazy.

After my tour I went back to my room, studied some Spanish and cooked my first meal. (Rice with green pepper and onion.) I made some phone calls at 6pm and then went to a study at the Rumbaughs at 7pm. It was a great time for me. They're doing a study on how to be an effective missionary and exploring all the different sociological things that come into play on the foreign mission field. It was really great just to listen to the different opinions and hear them all bring something a little different to the table. In the end, they essentially agree to disagree on the non-essentials and have a like mind when it comes to the important stuff. What more could I ask for?!

It was a really good day. I feel like I'm gradually making this place my home and the transition so far has been a smooth one.

Pray for the political state of Honduras-not so great right now.

Foreshadowing

"12 hours since I began this journey. Not one minute has been void of adventure. The adventure began at 3:30am with the new alarm clock my sister, Alex, got that simulates sunlight. The dim light that progressed as the “sun” was “rising” mixed with my anxiety and inability to sleep are what woke me up to what would be the most eventful day in my travelling life. Stumbling to the bathroom in my sister’s house, I started my day with a cramped but refreshing shower. It wasn’t an hour before we were headed out the door and on our way to the airport. The sky was pitch black except for a strip of orange glaze just above the horizon. That orange glaze didn’t just tell me that in a few hours the sun would appear on the horizon, it foreshadowed the journey ahead of me. The great and beautiful adventure God had planned just for me, had planned to happen on September 19^th, 2009. I arrived at the airport on time, checking luggage was a breeze. My dad was able to get a pass so he could escort me all the way to the gate and see me off before I boarded the plane. While we waited I sat with his arm around mme, my head against his chest, my eyes shut. And, although I’m sure onlookers thought I had dozed off, there was a hurricane of thoughts-the same hurricane that had been keeping me from sleep for the weeks prior. Perhaps a tornado of thoughts would be a better use of words because it’s not like I was living a life of unrest. I felt totally secure and at peace in my Father’s arms despite the weather of my internal state. Again, a foreshadowing of what was to come. Today, situations would seem hectic but I would be at peace, in my Father’s arms. He was the eye of the storm, and that is where this day took place."

I wrote those words in my Moleskine on my flight to Miama from Atlanta. After I had spent a good 5 or 6 hours in the Atlanta airport.

As you can see from that snippet, travelling here was a pretty big ordeal. My flight from Richmond was seemingly going smoothly and on time. Right when we boarded I konked out and woke up an hour later to find that we were still on the runway...

Needless to say, I arrived in Atlanta and my connecting flight had already left. Making arrangement to get to Honduras was relatively easy. Delta had already rebooked me (Go Delta!) and it was just a matter of waiting to leave and waiting to hear from people in Honduras to make sure someone would be there to pick me up. Sure enough, I got a call from Dave Fields, one of the Loma de Luz missionaries RIGHT before I boarded in Atlanta saying that he would be there to meet me at the airport.

I met several very sweet people in the midst of my travelling and had a chance to talk to a lot of loved ones back home. It was a real blessing to see how supportive all these strangers were of what I'm doing. On the Richmond flight I told the couple sitting next to me about it and the man was very sweet talking about how inspiring it is and we got to discussing his missionary connections in Honduras. By that time, several people had started listening to the conversation. When we were getting off the plane he insisted on getting my bag down for me and as I was walking out another kind man offered to carry it off the plane for me. That was a true blessing considering my carry-on weighed a good 35lbs. Then, on my flight from Miami to San Pedro I met two girls, one from Colombia and one from Venezuela, they were so excited for me and were a lot of fun to talk with. So-God was watching over me the entire time. He ensured that I wasn't scared, confused, or alone. I REALLY appreciate that. It was a very potentially scary situation for someone travelling alone for the first time but there wasn't a single moment that I was worried about what might happen or concerned that things wouldn't work out.

Finally-I arrived in San Pedro Sula at 9pm (11pm our time) after a long day of going in and out of airports. That night we stayed in San Pedro with a very sweet couple who I'll see again this weekend at a conference we're going to. This morning I took a bus to La Ceiba and had lunch with the Fields. Then, they took me to my new living quarters where I spent the rest of the day up till now getting my room put together and unpacking.

So far-I've really enjoyed being here and have felt really at home with everyone I met. Praise God.

This picture is of a rainbow I saw on my way to Miami. It's cool to see rainbows up so high.