lions and zebras and bears, oh my!

A few months ago our church had a "ladies luncheon" after church one sunday. Heather, Lauren and I decided to attend. It was good fun, but let me tell you, the spanish version of "Cranium" is REALLY hard for some non-native speakers. At this luncheon, our pastor's wife, Karen, decided to go around the table and as a little get-to-know-you activity have each person say a few things about themself including one thing they are good at. For some reason I said "painting" although I wished shortly thereafter that I had said "baking." Anyways, Karen remembered from then on that I was a "painter" (lol), and since she is very intentional about seeing to it that every member of the church is using their gifts, I was recruited to direct the painting of a mural in the nursery at church. Oh boy!

Thankfully, we also have in our church a man named Luis who is actually a professional mural painter... he has done the paintings on the inside of all of the Espresso Americano's (read: Honduran Starbuck's) in the city, and he was also recruited for this project. So... professional Luis, draws the outlines of the Noah's Ark with all the animals, leaves a tray full of a plethora of colors of paint and takes off, leaving me in charge. Here I am, supposedly directing a team of about 8 people only 3 of which speak English. Needless to say, I was a bit overwhelmed. But once again, I was blessed to have a number of people on my team who are also skilled and gifted at painting, so my only job was really giving the ok for each of the colors chosen for each of the animals. And even those decisions I think I ran past Lauren about 90% of the time.


We worked on the mural for about 4.5 hours on Saturday. There is still more work to be done, but at least we made some good progress! Here are some pics of the process and the (for now) finished product.

por fin!

SURPRISE! I'm still alive, and I haven't forgotten about my little ol' blog... though it is taking some time to scrape off the dust that has accumulated on it. Since it has been nearly three months since my last post I will give you a quick photo update of some of the exciting happenings of February, March and April to date (p.s. you can click on any of the pictures to see them larger). Then I will try to give you some insight into what's going on in my little world now and what I'm looking to in the future. Ready?? Here we go....

First, I promised an update on the flower-growing process. I have been taking pics along the way, but never had time to post them til now. The cosmos broke through the surface at the end of january, within a few days had grown to be about 2-3 inches tall. By the end of February they had added several more inches to their height and were boasting large feathering leaves. Then finally on April 2, we got our first flower!


In February, we had a week-long break from school, so Megan, Myself, Anna, Lauren, Corrie and Leah took to the road and made the long, arduous (but well worth it!) trip up to Ambergris Caye just off the coast of Belize. We spent the week relaxing, reading, snorkeling and tanning before making the 2-day trip home. Here we are with all of our gear ready to take the 7am ferry back to the mainland.


Every year at IST we take all 4 sections of Kindergarten up to a retreat center in the mountains just outside of Tegus. We had fun playing games and learning stories about God Almighty. Anna and I were finally able to relax a bit on the bus ride back after we got our students to play a "game" of "who can pretend to be asleep for the longest time?"


Ricardo won the game when his pretend sleeping turned into actual sleeping.


Here Kristi and I are showing some Honduras pride on a teacher's retreat we took in March.


I was able to go home for the first week of April. While in California, I got to see the Dodgers beat the Angels!


I also participated as a bridesmaid in my little sister Kimmy's wedding to Eric.


When I returned to Tegucigalpa in the middle of Semana Santa (Holy Week), all of my teacher friends from IST were already all off on various traveling adventures around Central America. So I took the opportunity to spend some time getting to know the people of the Micah Project. Now, for those of you who don't know about this yet, I am planning to work full time with this ministry after my contract with International School ends in June. The Micah Project is a non-profit organization here in Tegucigalpa that ministers to street children. Tegus has hundreds of kids that live in the marketplace or under bridges, many of which are addicted to drugs and to sniffing Resistol, a yellow glue that they can buy for about 50 cents. Throughout the past 10 years, Micah has helped about 25 of these boys come off the streets, overcome their addictions, become followers of Christ, receive an education, and live a life of hope and purpose. About 12 of these boys (ages 12-18) live in "The Micah House," the main group home, and another 4-5 who have graduated from High school are in the "Leadership House" while several more are attending universities in other countries.

I am very excited to work there in the future and have a lasting impact on the lives of these young men. It has been fun hanging out with them the past few days, getting to know them more and more. We went camping on Thursday and Friday, and the boys just had a great time playing in the river, catching crabs and tadpoles, roasting hot dogs and marshmallows over a big (hot!) bonfire, playing hide-and-seek in the dark, skipping stones and eating raw sugar cane.




It is crazy to me to think that even six months ago some of these boys were homeless, hopeless street kids, wondering where they would get their next meal and their next high. Now I see in them carefree spirits, excited to run and play and be normal kids, not beggars, not thieves, not drug-addicts. I see them and I think to myself "God is SO good!" THIS is why Jesus died. THIS is why He rose again. It's because of Him that we have hope for a future. It's because of Him that lives are changed. It's because of Him we live and move and have our being! Praise be to God Most High!

If you are interested in learning more about the Micah project, check out their website at http://www.micahcentral.org/