A Very Honduran Thanksgiving...

Any good blog about Thanksgiving is going to start off with things to be thankful for, so here we go... A warm place to sleep and plenty of food, a God who sees me and who has called me by name to be his, a family back home that is more loving and supporting than I could have hoped for even though they are far away, a brother who is always an encouragement to me, a sister that makes me laugh, a mom who understands me better than anyone, a dad who never lets me forget that I'm loved, grandparents who make me nothing less than very proud to be their granddaughter, an extended family that will take up the battle of prayer for me in hard times, an incredible house-mate that will pick up my slack, say the hard things, and not get too tired of me, an unbelievable pair of stand-in parents that will cry with me about being far from family, and the list goes on...

Anyone crying yet?  I'm almost there.

Let's start with Wednesday.  Emily and I go to the grocery to get the green beans to feed 35 people.  The guest list for the dinner included all the missionaries from school, the Brewsters, the girls in both the Misericordia project, and Buen Pastor project, the tias, a few friends, and our spanish tutor and husband.  Needless to say it was a LOT of green beans.  It was a little awkward as we went to the cashier and we were laughing feeling self-conscious while they just stared.  Lol.  We took the green beans to the Brewster's house and started cooking...

I was in charge of the green beans, while Emily started making pie crust for the individual pumpkin pies for everyone!  Yum...  Now, I had lost my voice and could only whisper which wasn't so fun.  I was feeling kinda  down because it was the day before Thanksgiving, I was away from family, and sick.  Boo.  But in all the little things God continues to show me he wants to be my provider and the two things that I had been wishing I had Momma Brewster pulls out of the closet:

Yes!  that is Mucinex and Lemon Mint Ricola drops!  It could not have been more perfect.  That night we wrapped up the pre-Thanksgiving cooking and headed home.

Thursday morning my voice was still very weak and that morning I'll admit I was having a bit of a pity-party.  I was in a foreign country away from family on Thanksgiving (which I've never been), having to go to work to teach classes, and on top of everything I didn't think I was going to have a voice to be able to talk to my family with!  Prayer, prayer, prayer and we headed to school.  Without a voice I asked for a sub for my fifth grade classes and tried to save my voice as much as possible with the others.  Thank the Lord that by the time I got to Skype the family I had enough of a voice to chat for two-ish hours.  I started crying when I saw all of my family on the other side of the screen and cried when they sang me Happy Birthday together and cried when I said good-bye, but it was all the kind of crying that's really good for the soul.

A few hours later we were sitting down to dinner with all the friends and family I've grown so close to since coming here.

And then we started serving the food, and in true Honduran fashion, here's what it looked like a few minutes later...

No, Hondurans are not romantics that like to eat their dinner by candle light, the electricity went out.  Ha!  Of course.  The good news was that we had finished all the cooking so it was doable to get the food served in the dark and then the electricity came back on just in time for us to start cleaning.  What a night.  But the food was delicious and the company spectacular.

Top Left: Me and Alexandra, Kadian, Mercedes and her baby girl, Fernanda
Top Right: Me and Emily Morris (the missionary from Nebraska)
Bottom Left:  Me and a few of the precious angels from Misericordia (Gloria, Yojana, and Vanessa)
Bottom Right: the missionaries with Luz, another Misericordia girl


And my favorite photo of the night just for kicks and giggles was Vanessa on Mario's motorcycle:

 She doesn't look happy, but I think that's her "ya, that's right, I'm on a motorcycle" face.  Lol.

Graduation and the Retreat

This morning I woke up with the desperate feeling of needing to update my blog on life-happenings, because by the end of this year I want to remember all of this stuff!  So starting with two Monday's ago... Our precious Brit friend, Kadian, missed her graduation ceremony!  Why it was in the beginning of Nov I have no idea.  (We keep telling her that Brits are a little weird...)  But the point is that we through a graduation ceremony/party in their living room and it was hilarious!  (I should also mention that my mom and wonderful family bought me an IPOD and EXTERNAL SPEAKERS for an early birthday present so we used them to play Pomp and Circumstance!  Lol!  But the birthday post will come later)  We made Kadian put on a red sheet as she marched since there was no gown for her and of course she had to throw it in the air instead of a hat:

 Haha, I love this one!

I was proud of us because Kadian doesn't cry much (or so she says) and she cried several time that night :-)

 I think it's funny that she's a little outlandish herself but she won't hesitate to give you a "What-ARE-you-doing?!"  look and this is it:

 Good times:-)  After the party that night I decided I was going to work really hard to get all of my work done so I wouldn't have to do anything on Tuesday.  But when we got to school Tuesday we heard about a retreat that the secondary students were going on that coming weekend.  We just had to go!  So my Tuesday off didn't really work out, but we did have a really nice weekend in Valle de Angeles (a small town outside of Teguz up in the mtns).  Emily has most of the pictures but here are a few... (after we arrived of course, which was an adventure with our bus breaking down on the side of the highway, missing lunch, etc.)

One of the activities was going on a hike up one of the hills to a lookout, but no the picture here is not from the lookout because we never actually found it.  We hiked up and up and up until the teachers all got separated with their groups of students and word got passed down that the leaders didn't know where they were going anymore.  It was not so fun for the students but enjoy hiking anyway :-)




I wish I had more encouraging stories about good conversations I had with the students or how they were really encouraged, but really it was just a weekend of getting to know some of them a little better especially as the electricity went out for two hours Saturday night... haha, so many crazy things happened.
Finally we ended up at a mall for two hours on the way home Sunday.  Emily has got some better ones of us with the students in front of the big christmas tree, but here's a cute on of her and two of our 7th graders.

So that was the week before last.  And the next blog (maybe I'll get to it later today)  I can catch up on Thanksgiving!  We had a good time :-)

A Thought on Suffering

It never ceases to amaze me at how many different messages can be pulled out of one piece of scripture.  This morning before church Emily and I were listening to a sermon by Matt Chandler given to the students at Southern Seminary last fall.  He was preaching from the same text that has been the closest thing to my theme verses for my time here as I've got, Hebrews 12.  His sermon jumped around a little bit but the overall message was this:

there are faith victory stories and there are faith suffering stories (Heb 11), since you don't know which path you might be on you should answer this question "Is Jesus enough?"


This is a major paraphrase, but the gist of it is there.  Is Jesus going to be enough if your story is one of suffering?  Are you so intimately in love with Christ that no matter what else happens, you are going to be able to run the race marked out for you?  To endure because of the joy set before you?  In my own life, I have to answer that question with a "no."  But here is the grace of God:  at this point in my life he has not yet asked me to endure great suffering.  The realization I have had since arriving here, however, is that he would have that right.  He has the right to ask me to endure great suffering.  And the mistake that I have made most often in my life and am willing to bet is a very common mistake among the believers I know is to not prepare for it.  Practicing a reactionary faith rather than a operative faith. 


Whether in great ways or small ways, trials of suffering are going to come to everyone.  And it my mind, trained to think  in college survival strategies, the way to go about surviving is to know your basic Biblical truths and be ready to turn to them as soon as the storm hits.  Have that reflex ready to go.  Practice that reflex well.  So instead of simply remaining tethered to the anchor that can hold us secure, we know how to find it quickly when things turn south.  That is my practice anyway.  It allows us to live a comparatively effortless faith, that takes little self-discipline and little intentionality.  But there is a good reason for Christ to have commanded us "Abide in me."  Not come when you need to or come when you feel me drawing you or hang on to me in time of need.  He says "Abide in me." (John 15)  The goal here is not to weather the storms.  The goal is to be fruitful.  When I make this journey about surviving the storms, I am making God's invitation to me to participate in the grand story of his redemption and glory into a crutch to comfort me in hard times.  Talk about throwing pearls to swine.

Holy Father, as you have taught our predecessors in the faith the true purpose and intention behind all that you have done and intend to do, teach it to us.  Teach us the grand story that we might not think highly of ourselves but that we would understand in humility the part you have asked us to play, not for our own betterment but for the sake of your name that we now get to enjoy because of your salvation.  Anchor our hearts to you, that we may abide in you and find joy in all circumstances.

Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin that clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising its shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

Quick Updates

Week one of November = already gone.  Wow.  Time is really flying by.  Which has got me thinking about the rest of my time here...

What do I want to be able to say about the time I've spent here by next June?  What will I regret not doing?  You know, all of those big questions that are easier just to ignore... if you can.   In a short discussion with Emily about it I decided that I needed to make some goals, so that I can focus my efforts instead of just wandering around with my feelers sticking out trying to get a tap on something that may or may not be there.  All that to say, this week I am going to spend time praying for God to give me a handful of names of people (students, colleagues, Buen Pastor girls, etc.) that I should focus on trying to invest in and get to know.  After all that's what Jesus did with his disciples, right?

In other news, the AIDS Festival (or Expo Sida in Spanish) was a riot.  5th thru 11th graders answering all kinds of questions about HIV/AIDS to play games and win prizes.  There was also this great movie they showed  about the consequences of poor choices in such subject matter.  It was a pain trying to get the kids to stay quiet and listen, especially since they were sitting on the floor of the auditorium trying to lie down, play with each others hair, use their cell phones, etc.  Discipline is my least favorite part of teaching... and maybe when kids fail my class.  Right now I have about 22 of my 150 that failed this quarter.  Not good.  But apparently 22/150 isn't bad.  And most of them were well aware that they were border line.  The good part is that I can say with certainty that non of them failed for lack of intelligence, only lack of effort.  Sad but true.  If only there were some way to get them to understand the privilege of education and the benefit in their lives... the age-old battle of parents and teachers alike I'm sure. Lol.

More exciting news: my birthday is in 22 days!  Thanksgiving is coming up!  there are only 5 weeks until vacation!  and ONLY 6 WEEKS UNTIL MY FAMILY GETS HERE!  I am so excited about seeing them! Costa Rica and Copan, here I come!

Honduran Halloween

This past weekend... fun in its own Honduran sort of way, but missing Homecoming and Halloween all in the same weekend was not so much fun.  Thankfully, we were able to figure out our own way to carve pumpkins, aka cutting out pumpkin-shaped sugar cookies with knives for lack of cookie-cutters, lol.

And thanks to Mom, we had some Halloween plates to eat them off of :-)  The beautiful finished products:

I still miss American football, fall leaves, hiking, and the first time the heat gets turned on, but next year it'll all just be so much more special :-)  The challenge is appreciating everything that is going on here while missing things at home because I know that by the time June comes around I'm gonna wish that I'd enjoyed more things while I was here.   

This week is exam week for the students, so thankfully we get to leave school at noon everyday!  Except Thursday when we have a "festival" for AIDS awareness... yes, festival, complete with games and food if I understand correctly.  A little unusual in my opinion, but we'll see how it goes :-)

On a more serious note... Here's the devotional from My Utmost for His Highest from yesterday:
Trial of Faith

It's fantastic and very applicable to what I feel myself going through right now.  Some days are harder than others but all in all I'm learning a lot about God, myself, and my place in light of who God is.  It's a pretty cool thing.

And right now I'm feeling a nap coming on, so I'm out :-)