Set!

Went over to the Micah house today. All the boys were unexpectedly gone playing soccer, and didn't get back for a really long time. Luckily I had thought to throw the game "Set" in my bag before heading over, so I used the extra time to teach Megan, Stephen and Hauner how to play Set. We had great fun!

try it out with today's daily Set Challenge
http://www.setgame.com/set/puzzle_frame.htm

thought for today

When i got up this morning and decided i wasn't in the mood for another cold shower (my ducha hasn't been heating my water since last Tuesday), i opened up my Bible and picked up reading where I left off. Thoughts of Jose Daniel were still fresh in my mind after writing last night's blog post, and perhaps that's why this stuck out to me so much. (if you haven't read "perro de agua" yet, read that one first) I have been praying for that kid a whole lot lately, and one Tuesday a few weeks ago Michael, the director of the Micah Project informed me that Jose Daniel had "almost" spent the night at Micah one night, and he had promised that he would come back and spend the night the following Friday. What great news! I was so excited. I started praying more and more that he would hold to his promise, that maybe just maybe after 2 years of the Micah Project trying to get him in, that he would finally accept the offer. Friday came and Megan and I tried to make it to our weekly soccer game with the street kids, but other circumstances prevented us from meeting up with them. I continued praying that Danny would stay the night. On Sunday as soon as church had ended I found Becca to ask her what had happened with him. She regrettably informed me that not only had Jose Daniel not spent the night at Micah, but also one of the boys, Erick, who has been a part of the Micah Project for 6 years now had decided that his addictions were too strong for him to keep fighting and he had left the project. WHAT?? I had been riding this high of excitement thinking that God was about to do something great by finally bringing victory in Jose Daniel's life, but instead Danny and Erick are both now on the streets, Erick's brother Cristofer and best friend Juan Carlos feel abandoned by him, and my heart is breaking once again with all the pain I am seeing. I feel burdened to continue praying for Jose Daniel, now add to the list Erick, Cris and JuanCarlos, plus the rest of the Micah boys and staff who are confused at everything that's going on. I begin to see that working at Micah next year is going to be quite the spiritual battle. There are so many needs to be met... so many big needs that only God can meet. That place is in desperate need of faithful prayer coverage, and I am just one person.

But THEN, God once again opened my eyes to see something great He is doing. A group of 10 people from Houston, Texas came down last weekend to see the Micah project. I quickly discovered that these servants (among hundreds of others) are fighting the battle for these boys by faithfully praying for and financially supporting the ministry. Most of them have been doing so since before I had ever even heard of the Micah Project, much less tried to carry this burden on my own. Although the staff at Micah might be a small number of people, we are in no way alone.

Now back to my Scripture reading from this morning. I Cor 3:6-10 says "I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor. For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field, God's building. By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as an expert builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should be careful how he builds."

WE ARE NOT IN THIS ALONE! God has raised up Pauls and Apollos's all over the world. God doesn't tell us, "sit tight, don't worry about it, I've got it all taken care of." Nor does he tell us, "OK, it's all up to you, I'm gonna let you handle this one on your own, let Me know when you're finished" NO! He has given us work to do here on this earth, but He has also given us COMMUNITY. We are not expected to fight our battles alone. That is why he surrounds us with Pauls and Apollos's to carry our burdens with us. If we find ourselves planting seeds, we should also be looking for faithful servants to water them. Or if we have the watering can of prayer in our hand, let's be looking for seeds that need some watering. I'm so encouraged by this verse and by my recent realization of it's significance in my own life. I hope you can be encouraged by it as well!

I challenge you to be someone's Apollos today!

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.

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/