Daily Life

Things at Emmanuel have pretty much been working like clockwork for us over the course of the past week. We wake up at 6:15am in order to bring the horses into the stables, feed them, take them back out to pasture, make our own breakfast, and then head over to the school to begin working at 8am. I have been doing different jobs just about every day. One day I was fixing toilets, another day I was putting memory cards into CPUs, another day I was painting signs for the classrooms, another day I was updating a list of which students are in what grade, and still another day I was writing the student’s daily schedule that will be implemented once school starts. Lauren has been working diligently on stenciling and painting the signs that hang above every room in the school to note its use (i.e. 1st grade, 2nd grade, boy’s bathroom, administration, etc). The funny thing about the signs is that although one of the staff members wrote out the Spanish list of signs that Lauren is stenciling, some of the words are misspelled. The lady that wrote the list is from Denmark so it’s understandable why they aren’t perfect. She speaks Danish, English, and Spanish fluently so she’s bound to make a mistake here and there.

Wednesday night was used to teach a separate boy’s and girl’s bible study using the horses along with scripture. The boys seemed to enjoy it, but not all of the boys were allowed to come—only the older boys were there along with some of the staff. The children are usually in the church on Wednesday nights for church, but the staff decided that they would use Chris and Tammy to teach a lesson before they left to go home to Tennessee. Their website, www.tnhorsevacation.com should talk about everything they do and you can even go there and learn how to ride horses if you want!


Our horse training friends from next door left on Thursday morning so Lauren and I have taken over feeding and caring for the horses every day We feed them in the morning and in the late afternoon and groom them on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. I think we’re going to start teaching “groundwork” classes with the horses in a week or two. The classes would also fall on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday since we’re going to be grooming them on those days already. We’ll be killing two horses with one stone, so-to-speak. When Chris and Tammy were here, they were working with a 6-year-old named Jessica who had a traumatic childhood before arriving at the orphanage. She never speaks, but through working with her and the horses together, they’ve gotten her to say 6 words! Now that they’re gone, Lauren and I are trying to spend some time with her when we can. I had her help me paint the signs for the school the day that they left because we knew that she would be more sad than usual. She didn’t seem like she was completely thrilled with hanging out with us, but she seemed happier with us than she did when we picked her up from the toddler house. She’s in the toddler house because she is mentally and physically developmentally delayed. She looks like she could be about 3 years old. It’s hard to believe that a child can look even sadder than she does in the picture we took together, but when Lauren took her back she said that she had very sad look on her face.

We’ve been taking opportunities to hang out with the volunteers here when time permits. We had a game-night at our casa last night and ten people came over! I’m not sure if that sounds like a lot of people, but that is the extent of Emmanuel’s volunteer staff. We have four chairs, a couch, loveseat, and an individual sofa chair so a couple people sat on the tile floor. Corey, one of the new short-term volunteers, gave us a bag of popcorn a few days ago and asked if we could pop it for our formal game night celebration. It passed around the circle about 5 times and people were taking a handful every time—it was like the 5 loaves and 2 fish that Jesus multiplied in the bible (refer to Matthew 14:13). Katie and Kaylee brought over some coffee grounds so that everyone could have some coffee. I know what you’re thinking, “Wait, I thought your coffee pot was your makeshift water pitcher” (refer to earlier blog). Don’t fret, we are now using our depleted gallon milk jug as a water pitcher and our coffee pot has resumed its former position as the coffee brewing specialist. Since we had a large group of people here and not many coffee mugs, we had to use our liquid measuring cup as a coffee mug. We did everything we could to be hospitable hosts.

Today during church, Lauren and I were brought in front of everyone so that we could be formally introduced and prayed over. We are constantly asked by the staff to stay for at least 5 years if not forever. I think if we stayed here any longer than the 3 months we are planning to, a couple of people back in the States would be a little upset. Rachel, for one, would probably fly down here and take Lauren by force and leave me here to fend for myself.

After church we ate lunch at the tienda on the orphanage property. Lauren had a chimichanga and I had a plantano (basically a banana) with ground beef, cabbage, potatoes, Honduran cheese, and hot sauce. The reason I bought such an interesting item off their menu was because I wanted a more authentic Honduran lunch. It was different…I don’t know that I would buy it again, but I’m glad I tried it. I had some of Lauren’s chimichanga and it was delicious! They each cost 20 limparias—the equivalent of $1.05. We enjoyed lunch with John, Corey, Katie and Kaylee outside on the patio. Lauren and I were facing the orphanage with the road to our backs. We had a view of a fence and the hills between us and the staff houses.

After lunch Lauren, John and I decided to walk into town to see if we could buy some ice cream from the Eskimo store. The pueblo outside the gates is called Guaimaca and is a very simple town. First, we stopped by the super Mercado to buy a few more things and get some cash back (since we found out they accept Visa!). The store doesn’t sell a wide variety of things, but like many stores in town, they sell machetes. They are used for just about everything you could think of. In fact, I used one this week to help butcher a pig at the orphanage. Sanitation doesn’t seem to be as big of a concern in Honduras as it is in the U.S. If Guaimaca were to have a health inspector pay them a visit, they would probably receive an “F” rating. The ice cream store is in the middle of town next to the bank and town square. We decided to only buy and share an ice cream sandwich which had French vanilla instead of plain vanilla in the middle. I, for one, thought it was delicious!




Just a couple of pictures I particularly liked from this week were these ones:






One is Lauren sitting by the fountain in front of the church while she checked her e-mail on our laptop and the other one was the sunset while Chris was giving a bible study to the boys of the orphanage the night before him and his family left.

Thanks for reading! Let us know you care—leave a comment! We really enjoy reading the comments we receive because it makes us feel like we’re close to you all!

And to update you on our “nerts” playing…I have won a few games now! My skills are being refined the longer we’re here.