perro de agua

This, my friends, is Jose Daniel.
He is 14 years old.
He lives on the streets of Tegucigalpa.
He enjoys swimming in the dirty river...
...or he fell in by accident one time and thus picked up the street nickname: Perro de Agua (Water Dog).
He tries daily to forget the pain of his difficult life by inhaling yellow shoe glue from an empty coke bottle.
He is one of the most hilarious kids I have ever met.
He is one of God's most precious creations!

He has been offered countless times the opportunity for a new life, a home, a family, safety, love and so much more. He knows the doors to the Micah house are open to him if he will just accept the offer, yet countless times he has come so close and walked away. My heart breaks to see the hold that his addiction to yellow glue has on him. It breaks to know the enemy is laughing because he still has him at his fingertips. But my heart also knows that there is a God who is soooo much bigger than a silly addiction. The God I serve sees the devil laughing to think he has Danny in his grasp, but He reminds me that He still holds him in the palm of His hand.

Please PRAY with me that God will continue the process of setting Jose Daniel free from the bondage he is trapped in. Please PRAY that the glue will stop clouding his vision long enough for him to make choices that lead to hope and a future instead of despair and fear. Please PRAY that it will happen soon. And please REMEMBER that our God is Mighty to Save.

"For the Son of Man came to seek and save what was lost." Luke 19:10

i keep getting in this rut.

i wish there was more time in a day... or that somehow I was able to manage it more carefully. sometimes i try to. I make lists of the things that i need to do, with hopes of crossing everything off by the end of the day, yet i frequently add so many things to my list that there is no way I could possibly accomplish them all in one day, and probably not even in a whole weekend. one of those things that usually ends up on the list if I even have enough time to sit down and make the list, is writing on my blog. throughout my week, situations arise or i take pictures of something interesting or one of my students just says something absolutely hilarious and i think to myself "oh! that will make a good blog post!" but when it actually comes to sitting down and remembering those situations or uploading those photos or recalling exactly what it was that he or she said, it's just so time consuming. a blog is great, if you are dedicated and update it frequently. however, if you wait... a few days can easily turn into a week, one week into 2, 2 weeks into a month and so on, until the thought of writing a new blog post seems a formidable, daunting task. do i just pretend that the last 2 months didn't happen?? should i try to summarize everything that went on sparing no details?? a balance between the two must be found. highlights?? probably a good starting point. but will people be disappointed if there are no pictures? this is the rut i have found myself in lately. every monday morning without fail i receive a reminder email (i set it up) to post on my blog so it doesn't get like this. and every monday i think to myself "naw, it can wait... i have other more important things to do today" So the email sits in my inbox reminding me every time i open my email that I need to do this, until sometime around thursday or friday i delete the email, only to be reminded again the following monday. it's a vicious cycle, that i wish i had the extra time to tend to. wow, what a rant. ok, i'm hoping by writing this that i will be able to somehow talk myself into keeping the blog more current. my goal for this week is to post once a day, whether that just be one sentence or a photo or anything, but at least I will be getting into the habit of frequent updates and maybe i can train myself off of this pattern i have developed. please help keep me accountable!

mi cachorrita

Honduran Labor Day is May 1st, and this year it fell on a Friday, which meant we had one of those rare occasions known as a three-day weekend. My friend Blanca is from a small village called Manzaragua, about 2 hours outside of Tegus and she offered to take Lauren, Heather and I out there to meet her family and have fun in her village. Sadly at the last minute Lauren got pink eye really bad and couldn’t go, so it was just Heather, Blanca and I. As we were driving out there on Friday, I randomly thought to myself “what if I got a puppy while I’m out there this weekend?” Now, I’ve been thinking for a while that when I start working and living downtown next year that I’m going to want a dog who will help to deter any potential robbers I might encounter. But, I didn’t really think anything would come of this random fleeting thought about getting one now. Friday was a good day, we ate good food, relaxed, hiked, took lots of photos, had a bonfire and more. Saturday morning Blanca had planned for us to visit Doña Tila, one of the ladies who lives in the village and who makes homemade bread in a 40-year-old stone oven. We made the 15-minute walk to her house. She welcomed us warmly and we pulled up chairs to observe her as she whipped the bread dough around with her hand. They have electricity in the village, but she would rather mix the dough by hand than “waste” money on using an electric mixer. Her simple little house was bustling with life: 2 of her daughters were handing her the ingredients she needed for the dough, 3 grandsons were running in and out of the house kicking their little plastic soccer balls, 2 cats, a dog and 2 puppies were scouting out the kitchen for crumbs. And that’s when I fell in love. Those 2 puppies were a couple of the most precious little creatures I’ve seen. I couldn’t keep my hands off of them. I was petting and holding them so much, that by the time we had finished the bread-making process Doña Tila had offered to give me one of them. I had to make some phone calls back to Tegus first to get permission from my roommate and my landlords, but finally the deal was sealed and I had my very own 3-month-old puppy!! Sunday, when we got home she got 2 flea baths. Tomorrow Sadie is going to get her shots and very soon she will start potty training! Oh the joys of little pups.