Discovering more of Honduras!

The day before we left for Guatemala, we had an extra vacation day. So Tori, Jenna and I decided to head half an hour away to Comayagua while Bethany hung out with her family while they were in Honduras. Needless to say, we had a blast! 

This is me in front of the Catholic church in Comayagua. Please note the Common Grounds bro-tank! It was a gorgeous building! Every time I see a gorgeous church building, I'm blown away by the intricacy and the beauty of the building. This time, I was given a thought, what if, the church, like the actual church known as "us" were as spiritually intricate and awe inspiring as this building. Buildings like this often point people's eyes towards the church. What if, we, as the church, pointed people's eyes towards Jesus Christ? What if the unity among believers, which we often have to fight for, was so beautiful, people couldn't help but look and wonder at the beauty that is the Church of Jesus Christ. Just food for thought! 

And here's Jenna and I. I am so blessed by the friendship I have with this girl! She's been an encouragement to me even before I considered coming down here to teach! 

Nice view right? 

And here's Teeny Tori!

The builders made the stones on the ground in the shape of the shadow cast by the church building. Pretty cool right? I thought so too! 

I do love panoramas. Take a look at those beautiful mountains!

And on our way down, we saw a bat! I told my dad that as soon as I took the picture, I realized the flash might scare him and make him go crazy and I would get rabies from bat bites. His reply? "I don't think the flash bothered him. Ever heard the term, blind as a bat?" Hmm...

Here's me in the teeny-tiny stair case! Any of my friends from Alpine remember Fat Man's Misery? This kind of reminded me of that!

Tour buddies! We stopped at a coffee shop and got a cookie! 

And that was our trip to Comayagua! 

My 4th grade class!

Took me long enough to get these pictures up. Oh well. Better late than never?

This is 4th grade class. I've discovered that assisting in this class is my element. I think I enjoy being an assistant much more than being a teacher, though I still enjoy my first graders. But, when I'm assisting, I have the ability to get on the same level as these kids and just be their friend and be an encouragement when I can. This class is also at the age that I just love. They're old enough that you can be silly with and play with maybe even a little sarcastic, but they're also young enough that they haven't hit the rude and crazy age of the teenagers. 

These are some of my Fourth Grade girls getting ready to get their "cereal." The cereal they have at school only comes on Mondays and it has oats and rice and sugar (I think). It's supposed to stick to their ribs a little bit longer to keep them from getting too hungry. 

This is my Recess assistant and awesome roommate, Teacher Bethany with some of the girls. I can't get over how sweet this picture is!

And then, we have my boys. I thank God so much for these sweet boys and continuously pray that they will grow into the men that God desires for them to be. Pray with me that they would break the chains of alcoholism and adultery that has entangled Honduras into a life of poverty. I pray that one day, these boys would become the spiritual leaders of this country, pointing all towards Jesus Christ.

This girl...is a character! Her name is Jasmine. Just look at her! Does she not make your heart melt?

Aaaaaand, this is Milton. We're not saying this out loud...but uh...anyone ever heard the term, "teacher's pet?" Don't know why that term came into my mind. Nope. Not at all. 

Jasmine, Isis (pronounced ee-sees) and Kenssi drinking their cereal!

Dilver, is such a sweet kid! One day we were on our way home from school and it started raining. The windows in the bus were down as always. I was getting sprayed with rain but it didn't bother me too much. But Dilver decided I didn't need to get wet so he reached up and closed the window and then patted his chest like, "I've gotcha teacher!" So adorable! The other day, Teacher Kathy (4th grade teacher) asked him if he would like to pray. It was such a sweet prayer that I had to blink back tears. Nothing but thankfulness in this kid's heart! 

And here's Milton and Jonathan. Jonathan is so stinking funny. His desk is closest to the teacher's desk where I sometimes sit to grade papers or organize folders or other such fun things. A couple Friday's ago, the kids had a vocabulary and spelling test (in which they all did AMAZING). I was putting their test results in their folders (which go home every Friday) and Jonathan, poor boy, was so nervous about his test score he couldn't concentrate on anything Teacher Kathy was saying. He peaked and saw his folder was on the top of the stack. He looked at me and grabbed his head in anxiety and scrunched his little face. So, being the pushover that I am with this class, I gently and discreetly held up his test score, 100%!!! He almost jumped out of his chair and then did this little quite dance and smiled the biggest smile I've ever seen. 

And here's some of the kids with Solomon, the husky dog that belongs to Rhonda's kids but just kind of wanders everywhere...especially where there's food!

And here's some more of the girls! The one posing is Claire. That is all her personality right there!

And Ingrid on the swing with David not looking at me haha!

I love this picture. Enough said. 

And last, but not least, here's my boys playing some form of Football Americano...I think. Either way, there's usually at least one band-aid after recess. 

Gozo

For the first time since I've been here in Honduras, I'm actually starting to REALLY enjoy life. 

Life has been the hardest I've ever experienced in this first month of living here. Not only was I dealing with living on my own for the first time, but I was dealing with living on my own in a third world country. There was so much to get used to: Shower heads that tried to kill you. Bugs that decided your shower was their shower (I have a love hate relationship with slugs). A grocery store that really has no rhyme or reason to it's organization (they have sugar on the baking aisle, the snack aisle, and the...um...female aisle). The lack of hot water. The vinegar washing of vegetables. The public transportation. The walking everywhere. Not knowing the language. New food (some good, some bad). It's just been extremely difficult. 

But now, for whatever reason, I am finally starting to feel comfortable in my surroundings. In church this morning, I finally gave up my last battle to God. It was a weight lifted off my shoulders. 

And to celebrate my freedom from current anxieties, I sat on the hammock in our backyard and saw these wonderful clouds! God is good! Dios le bendiga!  

Week 3 of school and some photo evidence showing I survived!

Here's to Friday! I love the kids that I work with, but yes, by Friday, I am exhausted! 

I won't lie, teaching First Grade has been one of the most frustrating things ever. They are sweet kids but there's always the few who can be a pain. We have the talkers, the tattlers, the kid that everyone tattles on, the whiners, etc.. I still love them SO much though! My biggest battle has been lunch duty. 1) I've never done anything close to lunch duty. 2) The kids don't understand me and I don't understand them. Their English is still very minimal and my Spanish is very minimal. 3) I have 27 kids, and there are two stalls for their bathroom. 4) They also have to brush their teeth during the time allotted for lunch. 

So, for 1) I'm clueless. 2) Major language barrier. 3) The bathroom situation ALMOST made me cry, we were starting 15 minutes later than we were supposed to, which is valuable teaching time with the kids. 4) Yes, there are the few who like to spit on each other. 

Thankfully, after week 3 of this, we're working things out. Yay!!! We actually started 10 minutes earlier today which was an AWESOME feeling! 

And here's some pictures!

I sat on the bus with these two girls for a couple days in a row. They kept asking me to make the sound of a "cat" or a "dog" or a "duck." From the picture I'm sure you can tell I made them do the sound of a pig!

 

 This is Kayra. She's one of my first graders and is SUPER smart. She's also incredibly sweet AND accepted Jesus into her heart at church on Sunday! Such an awesome thing! And She likes to make faces. 

 This is Elkin, one of my fourth graders. I had to take a picture of him today because the band-aid on his eyebrow was just too cute. He was playing "Football Americano" and that should explain it. I think I put a band-aid or clean off blood from at least one boy every other day. God is gracious and has strengthened my stomach so that the sight of blood doesn't make me queasy (And to anyone who is wondering, I do wash my hands afterwards!). 

And this picture is for my dad! This is Claire! She is another one of my fourth graders and is also Kayra's older sister! Please notice how my skin is getting darker! Please, please, please notice ;)
Also, the two teeth, one nostril, and one eye that you see at the bottom left-hand corner, that is Roger. 

Shenanigans and What-not

So, I'm super late with pictures. There's been a bunch going on! And I'm ashamed to say, I haven't taken that many pictures. But here's a sweet selection of the documentation of my life in Honduras. 

This was my first day of school and Bethany's second. But I felt like we needed a picture together!

 This is Tori's Prepatoria class (Kindergarten) that I assist with. These kids are incredibly sweet! 

 This is Josue. Short little background. Josue is from Los Germanias II, the village our group did a VBS with back in March. My sister fell in love with this sweet boy and was worried about him growing up in the village he was in. Long story short, Brittany and Dayna had to go back to Los Germanias II with Rhonda and ended up meeting Josue and his mother. Rhonda was able to talk with Josue's mother and now Josue is attending Destino Del Reino! Watching him get on the bus is one of the joys of riding that bone-jarring vehicle. He's so tiny that, from where I sit, all I see is the top of his head bobbing up and down until he jumps up and lands in one of the bus seats. I wish you could see it! It's so adorable!

This picture is for Eric and Kevin! Recognize this sweet face? For the first time David 1) Actually recognized my existence and 2) Actually played with me. We stuck an entire bag of magnetic letters to one of the metal shelves in the English resource room. He thought this letter was funny looking. 

 Ignore my big mouth. I was just too excited! 

 And of course, we wouldn't be complete without some photo documentation of our shenanigans. 

Below, we see my roommate Bethany holding her new guitar that we found at "Target."

 And here, is me, defying every rule of safety I have ever implemented. I am pointing to the stool on which I will be standing. The stool is on my wobbly desk. We have no ladder, no step-stool, only creative (*cough cough* stupid, minds). But, I'm still alive so I guess it wasn't that bad! 

 As you can see, the result is utter Pinterest-ness! 

And my room is no longer boring, but is becoming more homey! Yay! 

"Praise him in the morning, praise him in the noon time..."

There are so many things on my heart right now. Some of them I probably should have blogged about on Sunday when it was happening. But of course. Life got busy.

To recap.
Week One: Money troubles.
Week Two: Lice.
Week Three: Stomach Bug.
And to top it off...
Week Four: A really bad sinus infection/cold. I can handle a sinus infection until it gives me a high enough fever to the point that I don't even have enough energy to stand. For some reason, it was the least scary trial that made me break. I broke down in church on Sunday morning. I broke down in front of my roommate Sunday afternoon. And cried on Skype with my mom for about an hour. I was frustrated with Honduras and it's #thirdworldproblems.  I missed readily available hot water. I missed clean air. I missed having my sermons in English. I missed my family. I missed my friends. I even missed the things I never thought I would miss.
On Monday, God kind of gave me this awesome revelation which was a really big "duh!" moment for me.
I could focus on the problems and create a "woe is me" vibe about my life in Honduras. OR I could focus on the blessings and quickly answered prayers that came out of these situations. So, the REAL recap.
Week One: God provided answers on why my card wasn't working and had the ability to fix that problem.
Week Two: We caught the lice before it spread to my brush, my bed, or anywhere else. And I no longer have lice.
Week Three: It was only the stomach bug and not a deadly disease like I was imagining (although I'm still working on gaining back the nine pounds that I lost).
Week Four: I'm getting MUCH better!

To mention another praise. There was no way, by far, that I understood the entire sermon tonight. However, thanks to one of my fourth graders helping me with some vocabulary, I was able to get the gist of the sermon.
What is the church? Que es iglesia?
The church is the body of Christ. Christ is the head and everything is under his feet, therefore, everything is under our feet because we are the body of Christ.

Oh! And here's another praise! Coming into the school, I knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that I had NO idea what I was doing with First grade. They don't understand hardly any English, they only know a bit of vocabulary that they learned in Prepa (Kinder). So half the time, when they're disobeying, it's because they don't have a clue what I'm saying. And it's been frustrating. Thankfully, my neighbor/roommate/other teacher, knows quite a bit of Spanish and communicates certain rules to the kids. And slowly but surely they're learning English. I just about jumped for joy when one of the boys said, "thank you" instead of "gracias." And I probably scared him with the hug and squeal and all that accompanied my "you're welcome." Not only are the kids learning, but I'm learning as well! I just about kicked myself when I realized I was using the "sit and get" method with the kids rather than a "self-discovery" type teaching. It has always been my desire to do one-on-one with the kids so they can really understand what they're learning. And last night, about 8 o' clock when I was getting ready for bed. I had the idea of setting up stations. I wish I could claim this idea as my own because it's BRILLIANT. However, someone much smarter and wiser and older than me came up with this. Basically, I had one table coloring, one table playing a matching game, one table doing a puzzle, one table looking at a stack of books I grabbed from the library, while I worked on the vocabulary aspect with a small group of children and Tori worked with a small group of children on phonics. This was when the kids, who I knew weren't understanding a thing, started understanding. And let me tell you, seeing their faces light up when I point to one of the pictures and they say the correct word, priceless!

With all these hardships I've been hit with, the blessings have outweighed the pain. With a new hardship presenting itself every weekend (I have a pattern going), I look forward to the hardship of week five simply to see what kind of blessings God will pour out!

"I'm a son of God"

Sitting on a vintage couch, in a different country, drinking a chai latte, with the windows open, I felt blogging was the proper thing to do. And maybe also because this is the first chance I've had to actually sit down and record events and work out thoughts. 

***Disclaimer, if you read anything, please read the last section. All else in this blog is nonsense compared to that last story.

This week has been crazy. 

Saturday night, the stomach bug hit me. And it hit me hard. At first, I only had a fever and thought that if I took some Motrin, the fever would be gone by morning and I would be able to go to church. About 8 pm...that was not so as I uh...gave up the fight against nausea. 

These are the thoughts going through my head as this is happening.

Did I forget to wash that tomato?

Did I accidentally drink some water?

Do I have that disease from mosquitoes?

Does this mosquito bite look infected?

I wonder what the Hospitals in Honduras are like?

I want to go home. I'll bet I could get a seat by the restroom on the plane. 

Oh wait, I'd probably have to ride in a taxi or a bus to get to San Pedro. That might make me worse. 

I'm going to die. 

I wonder what they'll say at my funeral. 

No. 

Don't think that. 

But did I wash that tomato????

And so ensued my night. 

By Sunday morning, I was fairly dehydrated, had a pretty high fever, and couldn't sit up, let alone stand. My roommate, Bethany, and my neighbor, Jenna, stayed home with me, gave me medicine, made me soup, and made me drink some gross stuff (Apple Cider Vinegar & Water is disgusting). By this time we had ruled out any kind of food-borne or insect related illness and had it down to the 24 hour stomach bug. I didn't know what I was going to do if I didn't feel better after the 24 hours was up. But I didn't worry. I slept all day Sunday and still had a slight fever into Sunday afternoon. This led to my decision to not attend the first day of school (boohoo) but everything else at school is crazy enough without a stomach bug epidemic. 

On Monday, I cleaned a little, slept a lot, cleaned a little, slept a lot, cleaned a little, you get the picture. 

TUESDAY! This was my first day of school and it was exHAUSting. I've discovered that in First Grade, the students don't know as much English as they did when I was a substitute (in March, after they had been in school for almost 8 months). So the kids didn't understand hardly any of my instructions and kind of went wild. My voice, what was left of it after being sick, was pretty much gone. I also have lunch duty, which had no idea what that meant. The lunch ladies and other Spanish teachers (so sweet, and so patient) were trying to explain to me what to do, which is a lot more than I originally thought. You have to give the kids their vitamins. Make sure they don't make a mess. Pass out their cups. Pass out their toothbrushes. Put toothpaste on 27 toothbrushes. Make sure they don't spit on each other (they brush teeth in the courtyard). And then there's the bathroom. *phew* I also helped in Prepa (Kinder) and those kids are SO sweet! I'm getting to help teach the boy Brittany fell in love with last time she was here, working in the village of Los Germanias II. And I see why she fell in love with him. He's the SWEETEST thing! At the end of the day, I  help with 4th grade, who I substituted for in March when they were in 3rd grade. As Teacher Kathy says, they are a JOY! So sweet! So smart! And for the most part, obedient. So 4th grade is always a good class to end with. 

Wednesday. 

Ah, Wednesday. For the most part I had things under control. My amazing assistant, Tori, has been a huge help! She helped think of some fun games so the kids would have fun while they were reviewing some of their vocabulary. Wednesday was much better. Much. Much. Much better :) 

And then there was today. I have lunch duty down to a science. Still working on the bathroom portion though. 2 stalls. 27 children who don't understand most of what I'm saying. It's interesting for sure. 

***Read this part if you don't want to read the rest!

If we were verbally talking right now, this is where you would hear me squeal, "Oh! I have to tell you a story!!!" Kathy had the kids write their spelling words in a sentence. One of their spelling words is, "I'm." One of the sweet boys asked me, "What is hijo in English?" So I told him, "Son." He nods his head and begins writing. I was called away but came back to check on his work. I just about cried when I saw his sentence. 

I'm a son of God.

And I knew, that though the work was hard, frustrating, annoying at times, it was that sentence that made it all worth it. 

THIS KID KNOWS IT!!! And it makes me SO happy! Now that I'm at home, away from prying eyes, I can cry. And boy. Am I crying. Because that truth that he knows now, will get him through this world into the anxious, waiting arms of his Father which is all I can ask for in the lives of these students.