The Shorts In Honduras

Headlight switch, Brake Light Switch & One Door Panel

2012-02-10T23:56:00.001-06:00

Can I do have a chance to work on the mustang for a little while is lauren have a painting party at our house. It's obvious that the headlight switch is going out on the car so I went down to the local part store and purchased a new headlight switch. While was there I decided also purchased a brake light switch. The longest part of the install was probably taking out the instrument panel. After I installed the headlight switch I tested it and the head lights turned on with no flickering as I adjust the brightness. Unfortunately the brake lights still don't work and after spending some time diagnosing the issue I found that the problem is the turn signal switch. That will be the next project.

The driver side window rolled up fine so I went ahead and installed the door panel tonight. I also installed the door handle the window crank in the armrest base. Before I put on the door panel on I cut a piece of plastic that fit the size of the door and used some liquid nails to hold it on. This will keep out moisture and slightly help with road noise.

We're Home!

2009-04-27T16:30:00.002-05:00

Yes, I'm sure most all of you know that we have returned home to Southern California. We are in the process of settling back into California life and trying to find work. Since I am a teacher, it has been very hard to find a job. Lauren is unable to take any summer classes for her masters program since they are all filled up. Maybe God is telling us to slow down? Not sure what the next step is going to be for us, but we'll keep it in prayer and follow God's leading.

For now, its back to the grind of daily life. Thank you all for your love and support!

LeLu

Just a Couple of Days More

2009-04-15T16:33:00.038-05:00

I think that for this final blog, you can simply look at the pictures that I have uploaded and put it all together for yourself. What we would really like is for you to use one (or two) pictures and leave a comment telling us know what you think was going on. There are quite a few pictures that are questionable at best...there is always something interesting going on here at Emmanuel!

The past week has gone by pretty quickly and we look forward to arriving home shortly! We'll be arriving at LAX at 9:30pm on Saturday and we will spend Sunday with my parents, Rachel, and Steve. Monday we'll be driving all over the place meeting with different people and inquiring about jobs. When we first get back we'll have a busy schedule, but things will slow down until we actually find work...which hopefully comes quickly because as a newlywed couple, it's nice to have your own place and people won't let you live in an apartment unless you have a job....or unless you're on welfare--there's an idea!

Thanks to everyone for all of your support and love throughout the course of our trip! We appreciated all of your e-mails and comments on our blog. We'll be sure to post a blog to let you all know that we have arrived home safely and we'll probably post pictures from our journey home (which will take us about 10 hours). I'm sure there will be plenty of funny pictures to come.

God has definitely kept us safe throughout the course of our trip! I can think of a few times that we could have found ourselves in a shady set of circumstances, but He kept His covering over us. I'm glad I didn't have Malaria and that the diarrhea eventually passed after a few days. Things could have gone so wrong on this trip, but instead they went so right and He gets all the glory for it!

Packages, Babies and Dirty Horses

2009-04-04T08:02:00.021-06:00

As mentioned in our previous ,short blog, Emmanuel received their much anticipated March container a couple of days ago. It was nice to finally receive the packages that our family sent us back in February. The container always has some sort of stuffed animal that greets those that open the back door--this time it was a Christmas teddy bear. When all the dust settled after a day or so, Lauren and I had a total of six packages! We couldn't believe all of the cool stuff we had waiting for us in those boxes--Dried fruit, tuna, protein powder, olive oil, canned veggies, towels, popcorn, chocolate, etc. Although we're only here for two more weeks, it'll be nice to have things to help remind us of home. We've already had some chocolate, Special-K, oatmeal (with craisins and walnuts), protein powder, tuna, and green beans--of course, they weren't all mixed together.

On Wednesday we decided to give the horses a bath since its been extremely hot here the past couple of weeks. We thought they would like the opportunity to cool off and feel really clean for once. As it turned out, they didn't really care about being clean because once we turned them out most of them immediately rolled around in the dirt and hay becoming even more dirty than they were before we washed them. Horses like having a coat of dirt on them because it helps to detour flies and ticks...I would roll around in the dirt too if that was my only defense against those annoying bugs. I had two ticks (at different times) crawling on my arm during horse lessons today...maybe I should have rolled around in the dirt too.

Next week is "Semana Santa" here in Central America...otherwise known as Easter week in the U.S. This upcoming week is bigger than any other week throughout the entire year. Everyone goes home during this time, so many of the major cities are virtually empty. Lauren and I decided to do our weekly grocery shopping yesterday (Friday) since we did not want to deal with the major crowds in Guaimaca this weekend. We were told that more people die during Semana Santa than any other time of the year--because of drunk drivers, murders, etc. With the economy in a pretty bad state as it is, we didn't want to chance it with only two weeks until we come home. There is no school during Semana Santa, so Lauren and I will be doing whatever needs to be done around Emmanuel during that time--including working on the blog and website, in the school on projects, helping in the dental clinic, etc.

For those of you that might be wondering, "I know Leo and Lauren are volunteering at an orphanage, but where are all the kids?"--don't you worry, we found some! Last night the staff got together with the junior staff and had pizza around 5:15. Jenny, one of the junior staff members that takes care of the toddler house, was in need of someone to watch the toddlers while she went to the shindig. Lauren was more than happy to take care of the little guys since we are commonly working with the horses throughout the week. Although I thought I wasn't allowed to be there after a certain time, I walked Lauren over anyway. On our way over, we could see one of the wild fires buring on the hill right behind the dental clinic and new male volunteer house. The sky was filled with smoke, but it didn't seem to pose a threat because no one was concerned with trying to put it out.

When we arrived at the toddler house, they were all playing outside, but needed to go in to take a shower. They all stripped off their clothes and were running around. It's funny to see one little kid running around naked, but when you see 21 running around naked, it becomes hillarious. What makes it even funnier is when some of them are running up to you yelling, "Profesor Leo! Profesor Leo!" since a few of them are in my class. Lauren helped dry them and clothe them after they all showered together in the two showers available for them. All the girls were in one shower while all the boys were in the other. If you know Lauren and me at all, you know that Lauren really likes little boys and I really like little girls. Erika, a 4-year old, came up to me and wanted me to pick her up and who was I to say no? So the rest of our time there, if you wanted to find Erika, all you had to do was look for the tall white guy in a bright yellow Pipeline shirt. She was sooo cute! Lauren found a little chubby boy named Mimo who is three years old (but looks like he's 1 1/2). She was attached to him most of the time we were there. After showers, they were allowed to play in the park by the "toddler house" for about half an hour. After that they all went into the living room and were watching "High School Musical" dubbed in Spanish with English subtitles. When that movie was too scratched to work, they started watching "The Hulk"--all family friendly movies of course. Lauren was burried on the couch with about six kids sitting on her lap. I was sitting in a chair and only had about three kids on me at any one time. With no fan running, it got hot really fast in there. We were probably in there for about an hour before Jenny came back to resume her duty. Lauren and I helped put them all in their beds and said goodnight. Lauren gave them all a kiss on the head...I was jealous. They were adorable.

Today Lauren and I have horse lessons, and we're branching out into lesson two...tacking, leading, and grooming. I can't believe that we are moving on to the next lesson already. We taught both lesson one and lesson two to the same group (third grade) and it went pretty well. The kids were able to put a halter on the horse, lead it in the hall and into the pasture, and groom it. It was nice not having to groom the horses ourselves...I guess this is what it feels like to be rich and have servants. I suppose that for the rest of the time we're here, we won't have to groom the horses by ourselves! since we have little kids to do it for us. It'll teach them how to care for the animals instead of how to throw rocks at them...its a good life lesson. The kids did a good job getting all of the poo out of the hooves and making the horse's coats look clean. For the record, we didn't see any horses rolling in the dirt after the kids groomed them.

This afternoon, Lauren and I went to the toddler house to hang out with them some more. Take a look at the video below to see how things really are when you put them all in the living room:

As you can see, things tend to get a little crazy in that place when you put a bunch of little kids on a couch together. The girl on the right in the blue shirt in our above video is little Jessica whom we spoke of towards the beginning of our blog. She was the girl that was helping me paint one of the signs that was used in the school. We recently learned that one of our volunteers from Denmark (an physical therapist) has been working with Jessica on a regular basis using sensory integration therapy. She is doing much better now than she was even a couple of months ago. She is always playing with other children, smiling, laughing, making eye contact, and just enjoying her time being a kid. It's awesome to see what a little one-on-one time can do to help someone with a not-so-good upbringing.

Tonight we plan on going over to Robert and Karelia's house for dinner. They are making soup (which should go great with this super hot weather we've been having) and rolls and have asked us to bring some sort of "snack food" (i.e. chips, popcorn, etc.) I'm sure Terrez and Candice will be there to hang out as well. We only have two more Saturdays to hang out before we leave! We have tonight and next Saturday and then we're out of here! We'll have to start making time when we get back to hang out with our American (and Mexican--Greg) friends to replace our new-found friends here. Who were our friends again? I don't remember their names...

Amendment

The soup we ate tonight at Robert and Karelia's was cow stomach soup! They wouldn't tell us what it was until after we finished though...how considerate. The soup was served over rice and contained coconut milk, mini green bananas, plantains, carrots, potatoes, and cilantro. It was actually pretty good. To go along with the soup were some of Roberts famous honey rolls. It was a very filling dinner...although I don't see why it wouldn't have been since we ate a cows stomach!

Emmanuel Blog

2009-04-02T21:55:00.005-06:00

Hello All! For those of you who would like to see the "blog" that Lauren and I have slowly been working on for the past month or so. You can just click on the image bellow and it'll take you directly there!

We promise to upload a new blog as soon as possible. We'll probably do it sometime this weekend as we always have interesting things to say about our time here. We've now been spending a lot of time updating Emmanuel's original website as well so that has been keeping us pretty busy. We've added a link to the new blog as well as completely changed the link in the left column for "The Farm." The photo bar at the top was completely redone by Lauren and myself a couple of days ago.

Just a quick note--we received the packages sent by our families tonight and were very excited to see all of the goodies contained within! We had some canned vegetables, towels, Special-K cereal, tuna, protein powder (here comes my muscle back!), popcorn, candy, movies, etc. We are so happy to have received them before we leave in a couple of weeks. Thank you everyone who sent a package, and thank you for those of you who were going to send a package before we said not to due to the time issue.

Alright, that is all for now. A new blog to come this weekend! Here is a picture I took a couple of days ago for those of you who like horses. This is Pharaoh. He is pretty well mannered, but can be a butthead too. I like to think he was making a funny face when I was taking pictures of him...

LeLu

Don't Yell "Fire" In A Crowded Theater

2009-03-29T14:44:00.021-06:00

Updates...I know you all live for them. I live for writing them and uploading pictures so that you all may feel connected with us while we're here. I've been making more time to write them since I believe it is important (especially for the family that wonders what the heck we're up to down here). I really don't have a whole lot to say today, but at least a couple of interesting things have happened in the course of the past day and a half.

Yesterday (Saturday--and by "Saturday" I mean March 28th, 2009 since we aren't more than 1 hour difference from California), we woke up to feed and groom the horses before our morning horse lessons. Of course the horses looked spectacular after a nice comb through and brushing. On a side note, Wade said that they look the best they ever have through a dry season. I guess we must be doing something right then. John decided to get a little bonding time in with the colt since he'll be working with them more often as soon as we leave. We had 3rd grade girls on Saturday and they were certainly a handful to say the least. Some of the girls have been very good with the horses, but this was not one of those groups of girls. One girl decided to bring her soccer ball with her to keep herself entertained. The water trough in the pasture has come to look pretty nasty and it would seem that it was in need of a cleaning. I asked Wade if we could borrow his pressure washer in the morning to which he said that it would be available to use in the afternoon. I picked it up, got it ready to use, and after it ran for about 30 seconds, it decided to quit on me. Unfortunately after many attempts to restart it and checking all the fluid levels as well as the air filter, I gave up. I even had one of the junior staff members come out to look at it, but they couldn't figure it out either. I ended up using the shovel to try and scrape out the algae along the bottom. It looks a lot better now, but I'll have to give the pressure washer another try next weekend.

When Lauren and I were walking home from church this morning, we saw a lot of darker smoke in the sky in a spot that seemed closer to the orphanage than the usual trash burns. As we got a little closer to home, we could see tall flames burning the very dry field next to the horse pasture and corn crop on the edge of the property. We had a staff member radio it in to Wade while we continued on over to check it out. After a bit of research, we found out that there have been a lot of wild fires here lately. We just left California where wildfires were threatening Lauren's mom's house this past fall and now they are threatening the orphanage here! Honduras is in the middle of their dry season, so fires are very common since everyone burns their trash here. When we arrived at the property's edge, we could see that cows were grazing even with the fires burning about 200-yards behind them. We almost had free hamburgers for lunch!

As Lauren and I were on our way to lunch this afternoon and we approached the dam, we saw one of the illusive iguanas that we've seen diving into the pond over the past week. I had my camera with me since I had just been taking pictures of the fires, so it was the perfect opportunity to snap a pictures to share with all of you! Before I could get too close to him, he jumped into the water in a hurry to escape the clutches of danger. On our way back we saw one of our turtle friends sun bathing on the dam. Its hard to see him because he is so small, but he is right above the dark water spot on the damn. You can also see the orphanage cows grazing in the little valley behind him...what a happy family they have become.

While we were getting lunch at the tienda (store) near the entrance to the orphanage, Lauren was looking in the gift shop and found the coolest little bracelet. She showed an interest in it and I practically demanded that she buy it for herself since she liked it. I usually like accessories on Lauren and I like them more when they have a cool story behind them. For example, Lauren also has braclet that she bought in Africa when she went to Botswana in 2007 with Sandals. Now she has a braclet from Honduras when she went there with her awesome husband in 2009. Sounds like a new tradition has been born.

BREAKING NEWS:

While cleaning the dishes after dinner tonight, I found this guy in our shower! I don't know why they have gotten so brave, but they are walking on the walls and in the shower. I would hate to have Stinky crawl up my leg while I'm trying to shower. I still can't believe how loud they can be in the middle of the night, although they're nothing compared to the new found fly-like bug that has been introduced into our daily lives.

I Love Chicks!

2009-03-27T18:24:00.021-06:00

Well, the current team that is visiting Emmanuel from Union University has been doing various jobs around the orphanage, including painting, playing with the kids, and putting up new signs. The farm was previously unlabeled, but thanks to their hard work, we now have a sign that marks the entrance to the farm! Its kinda cool because we live on the "farm side" of the property, so now we have a sign to look at every time we walk home!

Today, as we walked past the sign, we heard a lot of little chirping. If you remember from our previous blog where we talked about "chickens running with their heads cut off", Emmanuel slaughtered every chicken on the property in order to have food for the kitchens. What could this noise be? As we walked in the door to the chicken coup, we could see that they had purchased around 300 baby chicks! They were put into a room that was about 10' x 30' with heat lamps to keep them warm. A large group of them were trying to run out of the room, so Wade (the staff member in charge of the farm) was trying to keep th em inside. From the sound Lauren made when she saw those little guys, you could tell that her heart just melted. We took a lot of pictures of them since we had taken a lot of pictures when the older ones had their heads cut off a couple of weeks ago--it was only right to take pictures of them alive as well (plus they're adorable). Lauren even had the opportunity to hold one in her little hand! When it came time to put them in a make-shift corral, John was picking them up by the handfuls! Wade claims that until a baby chick has had a drink of water, they are virtually indestructible...unless you step on one of course.

Later on while Lauren and I were sitting on the couch in our living room, "stinky" pooped on Lauren's foot! We know that he has always pooed in the corners and even on the bathroom sink, but now we are not even safe sitting on our own couch! Lauren was thoroughly disgusted when the warm poo landed on her foot, but after vocalizing her disgust the next thing she said was, "Leo, get the camera...we need to document this!" Lauren is such a trooper.

The power also went out while I was typing this which can be a very scary thing when everything is completely dark and the only sound you hear are the crickets and giant bugs through the open slats on the window. It came back on after about 5 minutes, so we're back to normal again. Life goes on.

I took a picture of the little pond by our house that we walk by every day. Its a pretty cool little man-made pond that the water from the kitchens drains into every morning, afternoon, and evening. Last week I could have sworn that I saw an alligator jump into the pond when we were walking to the school after lunch. As it turns out, it was an iguana! I had no idea that iguanas were able to swim under water. It freaked me out, but after I found out what it really was, I was okay with it. A few days later we saw TWO jump in the pond at the same time while we were about to cross the dam. I hear they're tasty...if you can catch one.

THIS JUST IN!!! While I was sitting here reviewing the blog with Lauren, Stinky pooed on me! Can you believe the nerve of that guy? We give him shelter from the elements and he poos on us instead of thanking us! I'm insulted. I hope you sleep with one eye open tonight Stinky...

Muchas Cosas!

2009-03-25T21:39:00.008-06:00

I know its been a while since I wrote in here last, but things have been busy and with our friends Abe, Rowe, and Cristin visiting us over the weekend, I didn't have a chance to post an update about our lives. Not a whole lot has changed. We're still working in our assigned tasks in the school and with the horses. One morning a couple of weeks ago, a boy in the school became very sick and needed someone to take him up to the clinic to see Karelia (the nurse) and I was selected. He was from one of the first grade classes and didn't look like he felt too good at all! From what my sources tell me, he threw up all over his pants and was then asked to sit outside his class until someone could come and get him. When I arrived at the clinic with him, there was no one there, and after a quick phone call I found out that he needed to sit outside the principal's office until someone could get to him. He just sat and waited. It was sad.

Speaking of sick children, Emmanuel had a boy that was staying in the clinic 24 hours a day which meant that at least two volunteers had to be with him at all times. What better reason to hold a meeting! In our meeting we discussed how it was the responsibility of every volunteer to take a shift in the clinic. They passed around a sign up sheet, so Lauren and I filled in our names for a couple of shifts. The boy's name is Byron and he is 12 years old, however he looks like a 7 year old, acts like a toddler, and cannot speak. His mother is severely mentally handicaped and extremely poor so he was neglected his whole life. At some point a couple of weeks ago, the older boy that was taking care of him every day decided to wack him over the head with some sort of bar. Most of the volunteers believe he suffered a concusion, but no diagnosis was ever made. He slept for a couple of days and refused to eat or drink (very unlike his normal character). After a couple of days, he began to return to his usual habbits and began eating and drinking a little at a time. One time when Lauren and I were in there with him, he was sitting across the room eating his beans and rice while Lauren did some editing work on the Emmanuel blog. All of the sudden, she had a chewed up clump of beans sitting in front of her on the laptop...Byron had thrown his chewed up food at her. Needless to say, she was shocked for a moment but then couldn't stop laughing about it since it was pretty funny. We changed his diaper and showered him on two different occasions because he is unable to do it himself. The second time it happened, he decided to walk in his diaper and track poo across the floor. Lauren gladly offered to clean it up while I showered his butt along with the rest of him. From then on, I have been smelling a random hint of poo everywhere I go--I believe I am suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. I must not be ready to be a parent yet.

We had a visitor at the horse pasture for a few days about a week ago. We're not sure what his name was, but he certainly had a desire to be loved and have horse friends to chat with. For three days in a row he would stand at the fence that separates the horse pasture from the field outside the orphanage. When we brought the horses in to eat, he would walk over to the stables to eat the grass next to them. The other horses appeared to be curious about their new found friend. The colt even watched him while he ate, but appeared to be a bit annoyed with him there. I went over to check him out and say hello, but upon closer inspection, I found that he was covered in ticks! Maybe I got one of my ticks from him...gross. I decided to leave the horse where I found him and I returned to the stables to finish taking care of our horses.

One day when Lauren was in class she was looking through some of the flash cards of words the last team left for the class. The class is supposed to be not only learning about math, science, social studies, and Spanish, they are also supposed to be learning character development. In that, they will be teaching them how to deal with bullies, how to take care of themselves, etc. Lauren found a flash card that peaked my interest. I really don't recall at what age I learned this word, or what the context was, but I do know that this is a word that every person needs to know in order to be successful in life--diarrhea! what a great word. Without it, how would a person know what kind of medicine to get in order to fell better? After learning this word, a person can go to any pharmecy and ask for diarrhea medicine.

Our friends from Sandals (from the Honduras '08 team) came to visit us from Friday thru Tuesday. We were excited to see some familiar faces from church! The arrived around 5:15pm on Friday which also happened to be Mikkel and Watson's b-day. Most of the volunteers and staff were in the volunteer pavilion eating Danish pizza, cake and cookies. Norman (the Honduran taxi driver for Emmanuel) drove us all over to our house so they could drop off their bags and settle in. Lauren and I decided to make them spaghetti and cheese bread for dinner so we could relax and catch up. John came over after a little while and partook of our fancy dinner. We spent Saturday morning doing horse lessons for the special needs children, and grooming the horses later on. After we finished that we changed and went into town to find something "authentic" to eat. We ended up eating in the town square at a stand in the middle of it. We spent a little over a dollar each and each had a fantastic lunch. We swung by the supermercado to pick up some food for their stay and then hiked it back home. Sunday after church, we walked around Emmanuel so they could see the new male volunteer house, as well as the cows and pigs. As it turned out, one of the mama pigs had just given birth to 12 little pigglets and we were the first ones on scene. One of the little piggies was on the wrong side of the pig-pen and was unable to walk back over to the mama and since we couldn't get to them, we had to call someone who could. So far they have all survived and are doing well. On a side note, a mama pig just gave birth to 8 pigglets about a week ago, but she mauled and killed 6 of them. They plan on killing her in about a month.

Abe, Rowe and Cristin spent a good deal of time shaddowing us during their stay here. It was great getting to see them, and it was also great to receive the packages they brought from some fellow Sandalites! We received movies, chocolate, liquid hand soap (which is hard to come by in Guaimaca), Pop-Tarts, granola bars, a dustpan, etc. (thank you Sandy & family, Theresa, and Karen). We also received a collection that was taken for Lauren and I at Sandals College United--my old small group. We were very excited to receive a letter from them as well as a little extra cash. Thank you so much guys, we love you! We should also be receiving 4 packages from my mom, Lauren's mom, and my aunt in Idaho sometime this week. We feel so blessed to have received so much from our friends and family while we're here in Honduras! Thank you all so much--especially Abe, Rowe, and Cristin for being our mules and awesome house guests!

We still have groundwork horse classes as often as the horses have food to eat. We had classes last week and the younger boys seemed to have a good time. We're hoping to get through as many of the grades as we can before we leave so that when Tammy comes back, she can work with the children on the next series of lessons. The children have been anxious to ride the horses, but without proper supervision, we're not letting them ride. We're also taking note of which children enjoy working with and feeding the horses, because they will be the ones that are allowed to ride the horses later. Some only believe that the horses are here for them to ride, but that they don't have a respoinsibility to take care of them as well. That mindset doesn't work for us. They need to show an interest in taking care of them before they can ride them.

Just today, Lauren and I were out there to feed the horses and when I went to open the gate, I saw what looked to be a giant, mutated fly. I don't know if any of our readers have any idea what this thing is, but if you do, please let us know. It had wings and a face like a fly, but it was a little smaller than a perscription medicine bottle...that is huge as far as insects go around here. Maybe it was a fly that was mutated somehow...only God knows.

Today was John's birthday! For those of you that don't know John, he hails from our church in California and was our on team that visited Emmanuel in August of 2008. Today he turned 23 years old and we celebrated it in the volunteer pavilion after our Wednesday night church service. We baked him oatmeal cookies (from a bag that we bought at the supermarket) and also brought our coffee pot to make coffee. Hele, prounounced "hell-uh", (the woman in blue) baked him Bedstefar's skaeg or "Grandpa's Beard" in English, which is a Danish birthday cake that is very delicious and has a merange topping. His girlfriend (Jenny) was also in attendance and is pictured to John's left (your right). They sang him "happy birthday" in Danish--which by the way is a very long song. In America, the happy birthday song is very short because we want to get down to eating some cake and ice cream! In Denmark, they are content just singing and singing some more. Someone then started singing happy birthday in Spanish, but it was short-lived since know one really knows all the words to it. Later, John and Mikkel had a staring contest, and Mikkel won--chalk up another point for Denmark. The contest lasted for about 5 minutes and I'm not sure why John just gave up like he did, but Mikkel was very excited about winning. The Danes taught us a new Danish word--its pronounced "who-guh-lee" and it is used when friends are just hanging out doing nothing. Another word they taught us sounds like "cell-tech" and it means "your welcome." If you wanted to say thank you in Danish, it would sound like "tech." Good times. Oh, and if you want to say "see you later" you say "see see-na" whereas see you tomorrow is, "see see-moan" or "seis" for short. Before we know it Lauren and I will be coming home speaking three languages! I think we'll continue to work on Spanish before we get into learning too much Danish though.

Thats all for now friends and family. We'll have another blog up soon I'm sure...as things develop anyways. Oh, we have internet sitting on our couch in our living room now! You have to sit in the same spot in a certain way, but it works! Yay! That makes writing blogs/e-mails so much easier for us.

Good Day and God speed.

Hasta luego!
See see-na!
See you Later!

"And scene"

When Ticks Attack!

2009-03-23T17:03:00.009-06:00

I think this is my 5th tick since we've been here. The sad thing is, I had just taken a shower and had to pull one out of my shoulder too! I can't believe I had two at the same time. My friends Abe, Rowe, and Crisitn are visiting and Abe let me know that you needed to use heat to make the tick release before you pulled it out. Hence the reason we used a match on my neck. It all worked out in the end.

New blog to come...maybe this weekend.

Running Like Chickens With Their Heads Cut Off...

2009-03-09T10:12:00.001-06:00

Hello all! What an eventful week it has been indeed—although nothing will top me thinking I might have had malaria and Lauren getting a tick sucking on her neck. I continue my work on the blog/website for Emmanuel in whatever spare time I have. It’s still not ready for the eyes of the world to see, but when it is, you’ll be the third to know. I was given the assignment of updating the actual website for Emmanuel since nothing has been written about the school and the “farm” section also needs a massive overhaul. I spent one afternoon this week taking pictures all around the farm and came across an interesting occurrence that apparently only happens once every few months. Emmanuel bought about 400 baby chicks to raise, get eggs from and then slaughter after a few months. This particular day was the day of the slaughtering—what a treat! They had quite a production line going by the time I arrived at 1:20pm. Two of the older boys were using a knife to cut the heads off while another boy held the chicken down by its feet and wings. Once the head was lobbed off, it was chucked into a 5-gallon bucket while the other boy ran over to the grass to hold the chicken down while its wings tried to flap and feet tried to run. Blood would squirt out until all the muscles relaxed at which point the boys would toss the chicken into a bucket where it awaited submersion into hot water. Wade’s dad (who is visiting for a few weeks from Alabama) was in charge of keeping 3 pots of water between 160-180 degrees by adding either fire or cold water depending if the temperature was too high or too low. Between that magic temperature range, the feathers would very easily to fall out. The chickens would then make their way into the slaughterhouse where they would be thrown into a type of “de-featherer.” One at a time, the chickens would be thrown into this whirlwind machine where most of the feathers would be knocked off the chicken. They were then taken to a table where a group of ladies from town would pluck out the remaining feathers, cut off the feet and gut out the gizzards. They were then bagged and put into the freezer. How lucky was I to witness all of that?!

After taking some pictures of the cows across the farm, I discovered that the orphanage sold 11 of them and will be buying some new milk cows. They need these new cows because the ones they have now are no good for milking, thus becoming a waste of time and money for the orphanage.

I also made a stop by the pig’s home near the cows. I was fortunate because I came around feeding time so they were all eager to be my friend and come close to me to take pictures. Lauren loves little piggies, so I was able to take a lot of picturesof the younger ones for her to see later. They are cute when they are small, but as soon as they get bigger they become very ugly. The big ones were standing up on their hind legs, using their gates to hold themselves up while they foamed at the mouth and squealed for food—it was a sad sight indeed…almost like something you would see at the McDonalds around the corner.

When I returned to the slaughterhouse, I saw that Wade had asked one of the boys to count all of the heads that were chucked into the bucket in order to get a better “head count” on the number of chickens that had been killed that day. The boy put the heads in piles of 50 on the ground…it sure made a great picture! One of the chickens was “no good” according to their standards so they threw it to the massive amounts of buzzards that were waiting on standby in case the tables of blood and guts was left abandoned. They certainly ripped it to shreds in very little time. I don’t think they liked that I was so close to them, but they still weren’t too shy when it came to eating.

After church we went to “la tienda” with most all the volunteers for lunch and had a nice little chat about all the things that have been happening around here with the volunteers. The staff has “re-introduced” the rules into the mix. We were not given any set ground rules when we arrived here, but they decided that we were doing things “wrong” (even though we didn’t

know we were doing them wrong). We would all hang out at the girl’s volunteer house since they have such a large living room, but apparently that is a no-no. No males are allowed there at any time even if they are accompanied by their wife. There are currently 4 married couples here serving as volunteers at Emmanuel. It makes things difficult since we all enjoy hanging out together. No one is very happy about the new/old rules that have been re-established. We would also have a bible study on Monday nights in the volunteer house where a staff member was present and led it, but that too is now not allowed; something else people were not happy about. Everyone spent lunch venting over it. When we got home Lauren thought that it would be a good idea to bake all of the volunteers cookies to make them feel a little better. I thought she had a good idea, so we baked them and then spent about 20 minutes walking around the orphanage to hand them out in little snack sized Ziploc bags. We purchased some chocolate chocolate chip cookies in town the other day and they proved quite useful today. We were saving them for a special occasion, and one presented itself to us.

We’re very much alive and eager to come home. Keep us in your prayers as we work through the last half of our trip. We’re looking forward to visitors from our church in less than two weeks! Abe, Rowe, and Cristin will be arriving two weeks from this past Friday and will be staying for four days. In the mean time we’ll continue our work in the school, on the orphanage blog and with the horses.

Finally....An UPDATE!

2009-03-05T18:12:00.000-06:00

Written Saturday Feb. 28th

Life here at Emmanuel has been very busy for us and we have been unable to update you as to how our lives have transpired over the course of the past week and a half. The last of the Tennessee team left this morning, but had no farewell breakfast to say goodbye. They simply drove off into the sunrise and waved their goodbyes. While the team was here, we were lucky enough to have electricians swap out our leaky washing machine for one that didn’t leak all over our floor…well not after their second trip back anyway. It leaked at first installation and made a lake out of our laundry room and a river/puddle out of our kitchen. They came back the next day and replaced a washer (not a washing machine, but a piece of plastic used as something to create a seal) which seems to have solved our problem. They also found a dryer and brought it to us! How fortunate can we be? As it turns out—not very fortunate at all. We put a load in the dryer as we got into bed last night and it got all the way through the cycle, however the clothes weren’t dry and when we tried to restart the dryer in the morning, it sounded like a car that wouldn’t start. Then came the burning smell…we just unplugged it and cut our losses. We’d rather have semi-wet clothes to hang up than dry clothes that are burned to a crisp from a house fire that started with a faulty dryer. We were living a dream for at least a moment—a dream of owning our very own dryer to dry all of our clothes. We’ll just go back to hanging our clothes on the back of furniture for the duration of our trip. At least we have a washing machine!

A few days ago during dinner with the team, I decided to engage in a friendly game of beanbag toss into a hole carved out of a sheet of plywood. Normally this game is a bit challenging when tossing from a moderate distance, but I threw in a few extra challenges. I was wearing my laptop bag (15 lbs.), my gigantor knife, and was holding an 18 month old baby. I still did pretty well, but I think the baby was holding me back from reaching my true potential. Is that what having a real baby is like? One can only wonder…

Our lovely horses have now been without feed since Tuesday afternoon and they become angrier every day. I have been hounding the person in charge of getting them food since over a week before the food was gone because I’ve been taught that “the squeaky wheel gets the grease.” We have still been giving them hay twice a day to at least give them something to eat, but that doesn’t seem to satisfy their hunger. When we walked out to give them their hay yesterday we saw Pharaoh gallop from the back of the pasture to the front of the pasture just to get food. We have never seen him run to get food before—that’s how we know they must be really hungry. We needed to groom that day so we tried to bring in two at a time, but Pharaoh decided to push his way through and run out of the pasture to find greener grass (and yes, the grass was greener on the other side). That horse sure knows how to run when he needs to find his own food. We continue to find a tick here and there on he horses. We found another one on Grumpy’s forehead that was as big or bigger than the last one we found. Lauren had me pull this one off as well and it seemed to put up more of a fight than the last one.

School has been going well as we worked through week two with the kids. Lauren is still working with the special needs class and has been doing a fantastic job. This week she had the help of a Pennsylvanian high school student who translated between her and the teacher as well as a lady who gave her input on activities that the teacher can do in the classroom. Lauren has really been enjoying her time working with the students in the class although they can be very trying with her patience most of the time. Most of the students have behavioral problems more so than learning disabilities. I have been semi-working with the English teacher over the past week. It has been decided that I will be the teacher in the math lab starting on Monday. I will have two classes a day for about 45 minutes each and will then continue to assist the English teacher with his classes for the rest of the day. This week I was asked to do various jobs around the school such as moving bookshelves into classrooms, organizing boxes of jumbled math lab stuff, and to observe the English teacher to see what he is doing well and what areas he needs improvement. Friday I did some cement work at the school and also hung a bulletin board outside of the office of the primary school’s principal. Today (Saturday) I will be doing more concrete work at the school and possibly putting some memory cards into the computers in the computer lab. My job description is very broad in the school.

There have been cases of rabies throughout Guaimaca so when dogs are seen on the orphanage property they are to be shot. Our Danish friend Yentz very much enjoys using the semi-automatic riffle that he was given to use in killing the pigs and cows for butchering. The dogs often come to the back of the orphanage property (where the horse stables are) to feast on the flesh of cows that are thrown behind the meat house (pictured to the right of Yentz). Yentz simply walks out the back door, levels his riffle and shoots. He is a pretty good shot and has thus far killed four dogs. For some reason, Yentz thought that it would be a good idea to throw two of the dogs into the trashcan right next to the horse barn. After a day they smelled like death and the horses would get spooked when we would try to walk them past the trash can into the stables. We had no idea that the dead dogs were even in the trash can until after a few days of the smell worsening. I finally walked over to the trashcan and saw what looked to be maggots crawling all over a dead dog—disgusting!

Written Thursday March 5th

Life doesn’t really slow down here at Emmanuel. Just when you think you’re going to have the chance to post a blog, things come up and time slips right through your fingers. Saturday, ,after we worked in the school the first ½ of the day, we went to the store to get food, we worked on Emmanuel’s new blog (more on that in a minute), and before we knew it, there was no more internet until Monday. The rest of the week Lauren and I have been working in the school and I have also been working on the Emmanuel blog every chance I get. I started teaching the math lab on Monday and I would say that so far it is going very well. I have every grade one day a week and with more than one of each grade in the elementary school, it works out so that I have every class once each week. I have two classes for 45 minutes each and then the English class starts.

Lauren had a great idea for Emmanuel to start a blog in order to update everyone that wants to know how things are going here. She mentioned it to Katja (the volunteer coordinator) when they were talking about how to easily keep everyone around the world up to date on what goes on here. Katja loved the idea and asked Lauren and I to get to work on it right away. Of course we have both been giving it our all and it has bee

n coming along quite nicely. We’re hoping to have it at a point that others can check it out by the end of the week. I’ll post a link so that you can all check it out and see where I have been spending my extra time and why I haven’t posted an update more recently.

The past week has been very Eventful—two things could have potentially died. One of the horses and me! I have had almost all of the symptoms of malaria on two separate occasions over the past few weeks. I’ve had a fever, cold sweats, nausea, diarrhea, headaches, body aches, and tiredness. Lauren was very concerned for me and wanted me to get checked out in the town clinic. I had my blood tested while being watched by the doctor’s daughter and my friends in the entryway/patient room. After waiting 2 ½ hours, I found out that I do not have malaria….we still don’t know what I have, but I hope its not life threatening. Lauren still chooses to call me Malara-Lee though. When we got back from the clinic, Lauren found a tick on her neck…eww, I know! I guess if I can have a tick on my stomach, she can have one on her neck—we’re even.

A few days later while walking out to feed the horses, we saw Pharaoh sitting on the ground (which is strange for a horse anyway because they are very vulnerable in that position). After taking out one of the other horses, he finally got up, but only to return back to the sitting position. He then started to try and roll over which is very dangerous for a horse to do because it can twist its intestines and cause it to die. It appeared that he had colic. We put a halter and lead line on him and started walking him to try and help it pass. We walked him for 3 ½ hours and tried to get him to drink water since he was dehydrated. We ended up using a syringe to squirt water into his throat on multiple occasions to re-hydrate him.

When Wade (the staff member that works the farm) finally came over, he really had no advice on what to do with him. We finally let him lay down—so long as he didn’t roll over—since his legs were almost buckling under him from exhaustion. We tied him up behind our house so that we could check on him throughout the night. By morning he was back to having his old attitude, so we knew he was going to be just fine.

We’ve had a new Danish couple move in next door—Daniel and Annette. They seem to be a pretty nice young couple. It’s interesting to see some of the frustrations they have that we also had when we first got here. They’re not big fans of the lizards and other insects…but who is? We also lost two of our male volunteers—Jack from Cali and Corey from Greenvile, SC (where my mom’s side of the family is from)—and by lost them, I mean they left the orphanage, not this game called life.

Update: Here is a close-up picture of the annoying bird that wakes us up around 5am every day. If you ever see one, you have permission to shoot it on sight—especially if it is anywhere near where Lauren and I are living.

Update #2: We have received our wedding pictures and thought we would share a few of them on here with all of you people. I’m sure they are copyrighted, so unless you want to see us in court, keep them for non-commercial use. Thank you and good day.

2009-02-18T18:15:00.001-06:00

Written on Sunday (Feb 15th)

Let us (and by “us” I mean me) first explain how awesome the weather has been since the day we arrived in Guaimaca, Honduras! Almost every day has been cool and breezy. We have even, on occasion, had some rain during various parts of the day. The sky is always beautiful as clouds pass and birds fly overhead. Lauren made a comment about how the sky looks different here and in Africa when compared to the sky in southern California. I don’t know why it looks better here—it just does (Lauren assumes it’s the lack of pollution…she’s probably right). The temperature has been in the 70’s during the day and even in the 60’s at night! We have been so blessed to have such great weather during our stay. We have noticed it start to heat up a little bit and fortunately the Tennessee team has electricians so they came by the house and fixed our ceiling fan so that we have air circulation during the night. It is a lot cooler at night when we sleep now!

This week we spent preparing our classrooms for the students to arrive on Monday. We can’t believe that school is about to start, but the time will pass so much faster once school is in session. Our days will be very structured and I’ll have to figure out a schedule to sit down every week and write a blog to update all of you back in the States as to what we’re up to. It is a lot more difficult to get a classroom ready for school in Honduras than it is in the States. There are a lot of supplies that we don’t have access to here in Guaimaca that have to be created from scratch (i.e. the alphabet that goes above the board). There aren’t many supplies for the English classroom, but it all works out because we don’t know how much English the kids know anyways and the first couple of weeks will be spent gauging where we should start each class of students.

The bugs are everywhere here in Honduras. Everywhere we turn, we find another bug in our house that needs to be taken care of. We have smashed a large number of giant red ants in our bathroom over the past week. The funny thing is, they are always seen in groups of two at a time. You will never find only one wandering around the bathroom. If you see and smash one, another is somewhere near by. Stinky is still doing his best to keep Lauren and myself awake during the night. He has decided to become adventurous and hang out above our California king bed during the night and squawk his heart out at random times. I have tried to capture and dispose of him on many occasions. Lauren makes fun of me for not being able to catch him and has told me to just leave him alone. We also discovered that there are at least three (count ‘em—three) stinkys in our home as we speak. I’m always looking up at the ceiling to see if I can find them venturing out of their home. Spiders still roam the interior of our home as well and we take care of them the only way we know how—by smashing them. We had what looked to be a centipede walking on our tile floor a few nights ago, but we didn’t smash him. We simply allowed him to walk onto a piece of paper and then put him outside in his natural habitat. While we were feeding the horses at the stables one day last week, we came across a caterpillar that was walking along the brick walls that separate the horse stalls. He was a fury looking fellow that was about 3 inches long. We don’t know how or why he was crawling around in the stables, but he seemed happy.

We finally found out what a scary noise was that we have been hearing early in the morning—they are woodpeckers outside our window. We thought they were raccoons engaging in cage fights for money, but they are just tiny little red-headed woodpeckers searching for food. What an annoying little creature. I wish I could upload what they sound like, but I’m sure you can find a sound byte by doing a google search—good luck with that.

The horses are doing better than they had when we talked about them in previous blogs. They are cooperating more when we try to clean their hooves. One of the horses (either Faith or Joshua) decided that while they were in their stall eating, they would poop on the top of the wall for fun. In case you have never seen horse poop on a wall, we included a picture for your visual pleasure. As we have been grooming them, we have been checking for ticks in their “armpits”, ears, and butts. Grumpy (the scapegoat of all the other horses) had one on top of his head in his hair. It was about a 1/3 the size of a dime and was growing. Using a Kleenex, I pulled it out and took a picture of it for you all to see. I also included a picture of it after we smashed it on the ground. I had never seen so much blood after smashing such a relatively small object! That thing was part vampire or something. Yesterday, Lauren found a tick in the colt’s butt and kindly allowed me to pull it out while she kept him calm (you would have had a fit too if someone was pulling a tick out of your butt). I pulled it off and cut him in half since he wasn’t as easy to smash and was much smaller.

We’ve been continuing on in doing “groundwork” lessons for groups of about 10 children at a time. They have been going pretty well for the most part although we had to do one of the lessons with no translator…I think the kids got the basic message, but it was frustrating trying to talk to people that mostly speak only Spanish.

Of course our Tennessee team is still here and they have been feeding us like kings and queens. This morning Lauren and I decided that we would get up earlier in order to make it to the team house to have breakfast while they’re still here. During the week we have been making our own breakfast after feeding the horses so we could make it to school by 8:00am. We might as well get up 20 minutes earlier in order to make it to some delicious breakfast while it lasts. The team should be here about another week and a half, so we’ll make an appearance at all three meals each day. Our neighbor “Mamoo” (whose real name is Kathy by the way) breeds and trains mules back at home and has been helping here on the farm most of the day. She is a bit of a “country gal” and it’s usually her way or the highway if you get my drift. Anyways, while we were walking home from dinner with one of the staff and her two daughters, Mamoo came up in conversation. The younger of the two daughters said, “Man, my dad said she has been driving him up the wall!” The mom couldn’t help but utter what sounded like an embarrassed and nervous laugh. We hadn’t yet had any run-ins with her, so we couldn’t really relate to what she was saying…until the next day. Lauren and I found a few minutes to take a short nap before dinner one weeknight until it was interrupted by rapping on the door. I, being the gentleman that I am, got up and answered the door while Lauren lay as a witness to what was about to transpire. Mamoo noticed that she had woken me up and apologized for the intrusion. She then asked which horse would be the best one for her to ride. I informed her that we were instructed by Tammy that no one was to ride the horses for now. Mamoo responded, “Well I’ve been walking around all day and I don’t have 25 year old feet so I’m gonna ride one. I just thought I’d come over to find out which ones were broke.” I again said, “Well Wade also told us that no one was to ride any of the horses. Some have saddle sores and one has a cut across his back and should not be ridden.” To make a long story short, she went ahead and picked out the only horse that would come to her which incidentally was also the horse that had the cut across his back! Some people just don’t care what they’re told; they’ll just do what they want, when they want.

On a happier note, that very same lady sat across from us at dinner the next night and told us that she had been watching us while Don was talking to everyone and she really thought we had great facial features. Since she is an expert in mule breeding, she has determined that we will breed very good looking children one day. That’s very comforting to know.

One of the pigs here had a litter of 10 pigs, but two of them were very sickly and had to be taken special care of. Mamoo, being the animal lover that she is, kept the two pigs at her house for the night. On our way home from dinner, we stopped in to see the babies and check on how their health was progressing. Mamoo asked Lauren if she wanted to hold them and Lauren being the pig lover that she is couldn’t resist. It was cute to see Lauren holding the tiny pig, and was even cuter to see him poo on her. Unfortunately, neither of the pigs made it through the night.

We have a fairly new male volunteer here at Emmanuel. He is from San Francisco, California and his name is Jack. He is in his early 20’s and has been traveling all over Central America for a few months now. He has very long, blonde dread-locks and looks like what most Americans would consider a “hippy”—some of you reading this may have even living during the 70’s and have lived the hippy lifestyle; we don’t judge you. He is a very happy-go-lucky guy and very pleasant to be around. He brought a little guitar that he bought from a man on a beach in Costa Rica and he lets me play it when I see it laying around (and by “letting me play it” I mean that he hasn’t stopped me yet). He said that he will stay here until he feels called to move on—what a way to travel!

Lauren and I bought a cell phone in town last week and it has already come in handy! We primarily use it to communicate with the staff here at Emmanuel who are very hard to get a hold of otherwise. We live at a very detached part of the orphanage and it is difficult to find people without walking a mile. We also have it on hand in case something “shady” goes down at the property’s edge by the horses while we’re out there. It’s nice to be able to call someone here rather than spend 30 minutes trying to find them.

Lauren and I spent our first Valentine’s Day together! Last year we didn’t have the chance to see each other so it was awesome spending it hanging out. The first part of the day wasn’t the most romantic of times. We went to the stables to teach “groundwork” lessons at 9, 10, and 11 o’clock to three different groups of kids. The last group didn’t show up and since it was grooming day and the horses were in, we decided to groom them early rather than late. We shoveled some poop, pulled a tick, swept some hay and got all sweaty—none of which sound very romantic. I spent the afternoon in town looking for two white polo shirts to wear as a “profesor” in the school while Lauren cleaned the house and worked on e-mails. We ate dinner at the team house where they strung pretty red lights and had balloons hanging from the trees in the courtyard. They put chocolate candy on the tables and had other decorations strewn about. It was a good night—together at last.

I have so much more to tell since school started this week, but it will be in a later blog. I have been swamped and have not had much time to sit down and write, although I’m trying to make the time. Stay tuned for more stories about our life here in Honduras.

The Boys of Summer Are Almost Gone

2009-02-09T09:01:00.000-06:00

The past week has flown by for Lauren and I—although today (Saturday) has seemed to go by at a record slow pace. I took ill last night at the very end of our day and spent the rest of the evening and into this morning feeling gross. Nothing to worry about, I’m sure it will pass, but its’ just a horrible way to spend your Saturday in another country. I’m still not sure what it was that did me in since Lauren and I both had the same diet throughout the day. I suppose women simply possess an anti-sick gene that men do not.

We have still been getting up every day at 6am to feed the horses, clean up, feed ourselves and then walk to the school. This entire week we have been walking past the “small boys” playing in the park area by the school. The children rotate between various areas at the orphanage throughout the week so that everyone has an equal share of time at each location. This particular group of boys still calls me “El Transportador” because they are referring to the actor (Jason something-or-other) that acted in the “Transporter” movies over the past few years—they think I look like him. I happen to think it’s kinda funny.

One of the boys—Armando Samuel—has taken a particular interest to my wife and I since we have gotten here. He is probably about 8 and comes across as one of those “tough” kids, but is really a softie. I was taking a picture with Pedro (the boy on the right), but Armando ran over and literally jumped into the picture and it turned out perfectly so I couldn’t delete it. He was off his feet when the picture actually taken which is why I think is so cool. A few minutes later, three of the boys decided to try and push me over, but as it turned out I was able to hang Armando by his feet while the other boys tickled him.

When we finally make our way over to the school after hanging out with the kids for a little bit, we sit around and wait for someone to show up. We’re told to be there at 8, but there usually isn’t anyone there until about 8:20-8:30. One day we decided to just lay down under the Honduran and Danish flag while we waited. I think Lauren took a pretty good picture, so I thought I would share it with you. When someone does show up we have been spending the better part of the day in meetings (my favorite way to spend my time) discussing how to be an effective teacher in the classroom (i.e. discipline, decorating, etc). It’s funny because Lauren and I are sitting there with a group of teachers listening to Robert talk, but it’s completely in Spanish so we are using our handy-dandy Spanish-English dictionary to look up words we don’t know. We are probably catching about ¼ of what is being said, but I think its one of the better ways to really learn Spanish. Lauren spends almost all of her time at the school around people that don’t speak English. At least when I’m there after the meetings, I’m working with Felipe who is going to be teaching English with me so you know that he speaks English. Lauren has been working with the special ed teacher who doesn’t speak a lick of English and who might be a new teacher that has never taught special ed. I think Lauren has been encountering more obstacles than I have during this trip, but hopefully her Spanish improves as a result. She has definitely improved on her artistic abilities! She drew all of the signs and painted most of them for the entire elementary school and high school! She finished and the wood shop varnished them for us. Don't they look wonderful?

One of the staff members (Kim) went to Tegucigalpa to do some grocery shopping so she asked us if there was anything that we wanted/needed while she was there. We instantly came up with cheese, milk, and chicken. She bought us a 2 lb. block of cheddar, a gallon of 3% milk and a 14 pack of boneless/skinless chicken breasts and all to the tune of 433 limps ($22.92). We can’t buy cheddar cheese anywhere in the local town. Instead all we can buy is cheese made in town and it is white, crumbly and very salty. Milk is also harder to come by and more expensive. Meats in town are “at your own risk” so we choose not to risk. We made chicken fajitas that very same afternoon for lunch…tortillas, chicken, bell peppers, and onions! They were soooo delicious—one of my favorite meals of the trip thus far. That night for dinner we put some cheddar cheese in our bean burritos and they too were mighty tasty!

The power was down here for about 10 hours last week which means that we needed to open our refrigerator and freezer as little as possible so our food would hopefully not go bad. When the power finally came back on at 4pm we noticed that the refrigerator was not getting very cold after a few hours. I turned up the temp in hopes to get our food cold. The next day I noticed that the water in our make-shift pitcher was semi frozen, so I turned town the temperature. A few days later Lauren and I wanted to use some eggs to make an egg burrito for breakfast so we pulled out three eggs, but after cracking them open, they were a little more stiff than usual. As you can see in the picture, it took a little work to turn these frozen eggs into the scrambled form they needed to be in.

Lauren, being the sweet and lovely girl that she is, brought some candles (compliments of Gail) to make our home more homey. American Airlines, being the airline that it is, broke one of our big, glass Gold Canyon candles rendering it useless…until recently. We have had our eye out for something to put the candle in to make it usable, and this week we realized that we could use our Hunts pasta sauce can to place the candle in. The candle was about 1-inch larger in diameter than the can, but since wax is so pliable, we were able to push it down into the can causing the excess wax to sever off like skin under a doctor’s scalpel. We chose to use the candle to light our spaghetti dinner that very same night.

The orphanage receives new children fairly regularly and one of the most recent children came down with chicken pox. To keep her from getting the rest of the children sick, they have quarantined her in the medical clinic 24-7. Naturally, someone needs to stay with her every hour of every day, including the evening. Lauren and I have stayed with her for 4 hours on a couple of occasions while some of the other volunteers have a break to do other things. Lauren isn’t sure if she has had chicken pox, so to discover the truth about the matter, she e-mailed a family member. They (and by they I mean Marianne), for one reason or another, has yet to respond and it has been five days. Lauren doesn’t appear to have chicken pox yet, but she will be staying with Roxanna (the girl with chicken pox) for a while after lunch today. We’re both hoping that she stays pox free, but if she doesn’t then I’ll take care of her here at our humble abode.

We’re still feeding the horses 7 days a week (6 with feed and hay, 1 with hay only—don’t worry Tammy, we’re following your instructions) and grooming them 3 days a week. On Tuesday we noticed that one of the horses had a cut on the top of his back that was about 3 inches long. This particular horse is bullied by all the horses in the pasture (except for the little colt). We are guessing that he was pushed into the barbed wire fence by one of the other horses creating the cut across his back. We (and by we I mean Lauren) have been putting medicine on it twice a day per instructions from Wade (the agriculture staff member here) and it appears to be getting better. During grooming days, Faith (the momma horse) has been extremely difficult when we (and by we I mean me) try to clean the poo from her rear hooves. She will pick up her feet and move around so that I can’t get to them. We consulted with Tammy via e-mail and she explained to us how to deal with the problem. Lauren stays at the front of the horse to correct her whenever she throws a fit during hoof cleaning. Thursday she was a bit of a pain, but Saturday was the day that she really had a tantrum. She went as far as to kick her foot at me and almost stomp of my foot. She eventually corrected her behavior, but it took some diligence on our part. No one wants to have their foot smashed by a horse, so it’s easy to simply quit and try another day. Unfortunately, if we allowed Faith to get away with her behavior, it would only encourage it in the future.

We have a new team from Tennessee (among other states around the country) visiting here for the next three weeks. The team has invited all of the volunteers and staff to breakfast, lunch, and dinner during their entire stay. So far we have had a dinner and breakfast and it has been fantastic! They have had 7 courses in each meal, including fresh fruit, cinnamon rolls, banana bread, chicken, etc. They have had fruit punch, lemonade and sweet tea to drink which has been a pleasant change to our usual diet. Dr. Don is heading up the team and it is composed of people of various professions from different areas. Don is a dentist and is also the man responsible for packing and sending the packages that people in the States send to volunteers such as Lauren and I. Lauren and I talked to him this morning and he informed us that the next shipment wouldn’t leave Tennessee until March 13th and wouldn’t arrive at the orphanage until the beginning of April. We know that some of you (and by some of you I mean my mom and aunt) have already sent us packages and we anxiously await their arrival. But for those of you that have expressed an interest in sending us a package and have yet to send it, thank you for the thought, but by the time it gets here we will be about ready to come home. We were pretty bummed about the news on the care packages, but that’s the way the ball bounces. If you’re thinking, “Well I can send a package directly to the orphanage instead of to Tennessee first!” I regret to inform you that it is VERY expensive and takes about 2 months to get to here. Thank you all for your support though!

When Lauren and I were here with Sandals Church in August, we were leaving church on our last Sunday here and after seeing a white arch Lauren jokingly told Sandy (our team leader), “I could get married here!” Sandy took it from there and got the discussion started amongst the team about Lauren and I getting married while we were at the orphanage. We had a daily team meeting at night and that was the topic of discussion for at least half an hour. Lauren and I decided that if it was God’s will for us to get married then we would move forward. We saw the arch on our way out of church today so we had Felipe take a picture of us to show all of you what we were almost married under last August. We know at least a small group of you are glad that we got married in a country where you were able to attend. We should have pictures of the wedding sometime around the end of February and we’ll be sure to post some of them on our blog so that you can see them as well.

Daily Life

2009-02-01T16:16:00.000-06:00

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.

One Week Anniversary

2009-01-27T18:10:00.000-06:00

Lauren and I have officially been in Honduras for seven days now!

A couple of nights ago Lauren and I were laying on the couch in our “living room” and we were praying together when we heard the high pitched squeal of our little friend Stinky the lizard. He sounded a lot closer than I was comfortable with so I stopped praying and looked around to see where the noise was coming from. That little guy was on our ceiling staring at us while we lay on the couch. As you can see by our picture, he is a very tiny lizard. He is standing next to a screw that is coming through the roof so that should give you an idea of proportion. You wouldn’t believe how loud he is—his screams will wake you up in the middle of the night.

We have been cycling through the same six foods since we’ve been here: Egg burritos, cereal, pancakes, bean & cheese burritos, mac & cheese, peanut butter & jelly sandwiches…we try to stick to foods that have the word “and” in them. I’m still enjoying our fat filled burritos, but I think Lauren is ready for something new. We buy pre-packaged refried beans from the Super Mercado in town and they have a fairly high fat content, but they’re pretty cheap so we eat them. We buy a pack of 5 tortillas for 10 limparas (the equivalent of 50 cents U.S.) and the hot sauce we use cost about 80 limparas (about $4) but will last us for at least a month. We bought a flat of 3 dozen eggs for less than we bought the hot sauce so we’ll be buying more of those for our protein source.

I have been using hot sauce on just about everything we eat here at the orphanage. I’m not what one would consider a hot sauce person, but it has tasted pretty good on most food here. I use it in my morning egg burritos, bean & cheese burritos, chicken, and hard boiled eggs on a fork. It is even pretty good on spaghetti. We had it last night for dinner and I couldn’t help but think out loud when I asked, “Lauren, do you think hot sauce would be good on spaghetti?” She responded, “Probably to you.” Lauren has been making fun of my hot sauce cravings, but she can make fun of me all she wants and I’ll still use it for the duration of our trip. I’ll update whether or not I’ve come up with new foods to add my heaven-sauce to.

There are so many bugs crawling all over the place! The other day I killed two biologically engineered red ants in our bathroom, a moth in our bedroom, some other unknown bugs and then a black widow and its baby in our living room. Lauren and I were sitting in the living room and as we looked up at the ceiling, we saw a white patch and weren’t sure what it was so I stood on the armchair below it to investigate. Upon closer inspection, I discovered that it was a spider and had to be dealt with quickly. I grabbed a paper towel, rolled it up, lit it on fire and stood back on the chair to do my manly duty. I held the flame up to our new friend and up he went into smoke. I wish I had a picture of that to show you, but there was no time to get a camera to capture the intensity of the moment.

Yesterday Lauren and I went to Katja’s office to be assigned jobs for the duration of our stay at the orphanage. She directed her attention to me first as she explained that I would be doing maintenance around the school before the children come back on the 15th of February. Upon their return I will be assisting a teacher in the classroom in the high school. I will probably be teaching English, but that has yet to be determined. Lauren was told that she will be working with the special needs children at the orphanage as well as the kindergartners. I was a little jealous because I taught kindergarten for about ½ a year beginning in January 2008 and those little guys were so precious. Lauren may also be working in the dental clinic for a few weeks when their annual dental team comes in February.

Lauren spent the rest of the morning working with the school’s computers to see which were working and which were not. When she determined which were good, she moved them to where they needed to be. I was given the job of checking all of the schools bathrooms and asked to make a list of what I would need to repair. I’m not exactly skilled in the area of plumbing or bathroom fixtures, but I went about my job anyways. Once I had my list compiled, I went to the warehouse to see what parts I could find and was fairly successful in getting what I needed. One of the jobs I had to do was to put a new valve on a urinal in the high school boy’s bathroom. They don’t have the normal flush lever (guys, you know what I’m talking about), instead I had to put in a lever valve between some PVC pipe that the child turns on, then off to flush their business. Most everything is very makeshift here, but it works.

The second half of the day Lauren and I were at the stables with Bryce learning the basics of horse riding. We groomed and saddled our horses and went into the smaller riding area to get our first lesson. After we finished we unsaddled our horses and put them back in their respective stables while Bryce put a makeshift “bareback” pad on Grumpy. We learned how to mount a bareback horse and then how had the opportunity to ride him around. Gentlemen, you can imagine how “uncomfortable” it is riding a horse while you straddle its spinal chord. Of course when I was riding him, he decided to walk a lot faster than he did for Lauren. We each had to wear a helmet in case we were bucked off so wearing that in combination with my bright yellow shirt, I looked like a special ed kid on a field trip.

Our last responsibility was to clean the stables, feed the horses and then put them out to pasture for the night. As you can see in the picture, the horses know when its feeding time because they are all looking our way as if to say, “Come on guys, we know you’ve got something for us!” The horses from right to left are: Grumpy, Pharaoh, Joshua, the new colt, and his mother Faith. Pharaoh is a good horse, but he can be a bit of a stubborn horse as well. He jumped out of the pasture a few nights ago and broke the top wire fencing him in—he’s a bit of a rebel.

While the horses were eating Lauren and I decided to go take a look at the pigs that wake us up in the middle of the night. They tend to be noisy because they are located on the edge of the orphanage property where wild dogs roam, and where trespassers often come to try and steal the animals to sell for money. On a side note the local police told the owner that if trespassers come onto the property after 6pm, they can be shot and the bodies would be disposed of by the police themselves. I, for one, would not want to be caught on this property as a trespasser after 6. Anyways, we imagined some cute little “babe” pigs, but instead we saw some overweight, ugly, lazy, fly covered porkers. They are a good distance away from our humble abode, but since they are housed inside a concrete pin, their screams echo and travel a pretty good distance to reach out weary ears. If they’re going to keep us awake, at least we could get some bacon out of them when they’re slaughtered.

Stayin' Alive

2009-01-25T12:09:00.000-06:00

Today is Sunday (Domingo) and it is marked by a historical event in the life of LeLu—it’s our anniversary! Lauren and I have been married three weeks now and still get a long great. I know that may sound trivial to say, but when you are around someone 24/7 in a very literal way, it is possible to really get on someone’s nerves. In a “traditional” marriage, the husband and/or wife work and are away from the house 9-10 hours of the day. With our marriage being a somewhat un-traditional marriage thus far, Lauren and I are with each other every waking hour of the day as we go about our lives around the orphanage. You would think that spending that much time together would cause us to get annoyed by little habits, but we’re very un-annoyed with each other. We’ll continue to make our marital bliss last for as long as we can—hopefully forever.

The first few days here at Emmanuel were spent in a haze of uncertainty as we aimlessly walked around the orphanage looking for something to do. We talked to a lot of different children here as we stopped by some of the different yards. In some cases the children’s English was better than our Spanish! We went by the medium boy’s house a couple of days ago—before I go any further, let me explain something:

The children here at Emmanuel are not separated by age. They are instead separated by gender and size. In the past the children were put into separate houses based on gender an

d age, but due to problems with bullying among other things, the structure was changed. Many of the children here have been malnourished throughout their lives and as a result

are very underdeveloped. One of the “children” we talked to for a couple of hours looked to be about 10, but in fact was 18 years old! Due to this unfortunate fact of life, he is placed in the “medium” boy’s house.

As I was saying, we went by the medium boy’s house and spent about 2 hours there sitting and talking with a group of the boys. Two of the boys we talked with spoke very good English and were quite outgoing with us; their names were Watson (a black boy) and Josway. Boys would come and go while we sat there talking, but they all just wanted someone to give them a hug and play with them. Somehow they learned about the great sport of thumb-wrestling so, using both of my hands, I played two different boys simultaneously. Someone taught them how to cheat too—tag-team (using the index finger) has also made its way down to Honduran children.

The past two days Lauren and I have been working with the horses (caballos) that are stabled about 100 yards behind our house. Our neighbors are from Tennessee and train horses so they have been teaching us how to take care of the horses so we can continue without them when they leave next week. Our fellow Sandalite (a person that goes to Sandals Church in Riverside), John, will be in charge of the horses and we will be working under him. The horses here are used to teach the children about God in a different way. There are many uses of horses in the bible, so Tammy has written 20 lesson plans that incorporate that into her teaching about horses. I’m fairly certain that I won’t be working with the horses as my primary job once the children are back in school, but it’ll be a lot of fun for the next few weeks.

Lauren and I will be meeting with Katja tomorrow at 9am to discuss further what we will be doing for our short stay here. We talked with her yesterday for about 10 minutes and she gave us an idea of what we might be doing based on what skills we have. It sounds like I may be teaching English to the 4-6th grade class…that’ll be interesting since I’m pretty sure I don’t have a curriculum and I don’t speak much Spanish. I’m ready to do whatever it is that they want me to do though! Lauren may be working with the special needs children in a ½ day classroom setting since the orphanage currently has no program in place for them.

We still hear all sorts of crazy sounds in the middle of the night. We have discovered what one of the undistinguishable, eerie sounds of the night is—it’s a lizard! It sounds like a bat, but its not. We found a baby one in our bathroom light fixture and we (and by we I mean Lauren) think that the momma lizard was looking for its baby so they would call out to each other in the night in an attempt to reunite. We heard the screeching sounds during the night (as usual) last night, and after checking the bathroom light the next morning, the baby lizard was gone. Lauren believes that it is happily having an ice cream cone with its family while talking about the whole ordeal. We still hear other sounds such as pigs squealing, or horses neighing, or animals walking on our roof throughout the night. Lauren has resorted to wearing earplugs to help drown out the sounds. We had a new sound added to what is becoming a diverse listening palette last night and we can’t quite put our finger on what it may be. It sounded like raccoons battling outside our window, but we’re 95% certain that there are no raccoons anywhere around here. We’ll keep you posted on what we discover it to be.

We’ll spend the rest of or Sunday cleaning our house, doing laundry, and hanging out with other volunteers. We have a washing

machine for our laundry; however we have no dryer so we are hanging all of our clothes and towels over other furniture in the house (i.e. chairs, bunk beds, tables, etc.) It seems that we have had to use items around the house for jobs that they were not intended to do. Since we don’t’ really drink coffee, we are using our coffee pot as a water pitcher that resides in our refrigerator to provide us with fresh, cold water at any hour of the day or night. We also use our towels as a floor mat to place at our door and by the sink. We’re also using a piece of cardboard found under our bed as a dustpan! We’re lucky to have found it! It’s been a fun journey so far and I look forward to everything that we will learn as a newly married couple while we’re here.

Keep the prayers coming, because we can always use them! Especially pray that I will be able to handle loosing to Lauren in a card game called Nerts…she really kicks my butt at that game and it can be frustrating.

Update Soon!

2009-01-24T17:39:00.000-06:00

Lauren and I would like to apologize for the delay in our bloggage. We have had no internet since we have been here. I believe that we now have a fairly stable connection so we will update more frequently and also include some pictures if the connection allows.

STAY TUNED!!!

Leo and Lauren

Travel to Honduras

2009-01-24T17:34:00.000-06:00

We have arrived in Honduras! The trip itself was fairly interesting. Lauren’s family dropped us off, some hugs and tears were exchanged and from that point forward, Lauren and I were on our own—well Lauren, myself and God of course. We used the self check-in which was way shorter than waiting in those other lines to receive the assistance of an American Airlines employee. We then had to have 4 of our bags checked so we waited in a short line for that. When our bags were weighed, we were informed that 2 of them were over the 50lb. limit set forth by the FAA and were asked to fix it. We stepped aside with all of our luggage and began shifting luggage between bags in hopes of keeping all of them under the weight limit. After some strategic movement, two of our bags were a couple pounds under while one was 49.5lbs and the other was exactly 50lbs. We squeezed right by the weight limit and went through the security check-point upstairs.

Our plane left on time and Lauren’s head went right for my shoulder to try and catch some shut-eye during the flight. I tried also tried to get some sleep, but wasn’t as successful as Lauren. We arrived in Miami, Fl at 6:30am east coast time. I have had a cold recently and I believe that contributed to my left ear staying plugged during our assent and descent during our travels. It felt like someone was pushing a knife deeper into my ear. Lauren called her father (a doctor) to see what he recommended we do. He suggested purchasing a decongestant such as Sudafed to alleviate my ear pressure. Lauren and I started wandering around the airport looking for somewhere that had a decongestant such as this. It felt like we walked all over the airport before, at the last place we were going to look, we found a pack of Sudafed! We bought it and gladly paid the $8 it cost. On the flight from Miami to Tegucigalpa I didn’t notice the painful pressure building in my ear, so I’m guessing that it did its job.

Our flight from Miami to Tegucigalpa (commonly referred to as “Tegus”) was shared with the entire Honduran men’s soccer team returning from winning the national title against Chile in Miami. I sat next to one of the players, but since I know nothing about soccer, I didn’t bother him with questions or autographs. The flight was quick and little sleep took place between take off and landing. We waited in line to go through customs in Honduras and were both granted a 90 day visa to remain in the country. All of our luggage arrived safely (with the exception of some broken glass) so all we needed to do now was put our bags through the x-ray machine and find our driver Norman.

It was difficult to find our driver because the lobby was packed with people and media that had come to see the Honduran soccer team that shared our flight. We kindly asked people to move by saying “Con permiso” as we walked by. We found our driver, exchanged some cash for the super market, and left the airport.

The supermarket was only about a mile from the airport and our driver simply waited in the car while Lauren and I shopped. We kept tabs on what everything cost so that we could stay under the limit of what we had on hand. Since we need to get cleaning supplies as well as food, we were very limited on what we actually bought. Much of what we had on the list was not purchased (i.e. cereal, eggs, etc.) We spent L2,120.00 which converts to about $112.50 U.S. We wanted to be sure to still have the money we needed to pay our driver, plus money for food on the way back in April. We loaded up the car and began our 1 ½ hour drive to the orphanage.

Driving in Honduras is very different than driving in the United States…depending on what part of the country you live in I guess. There are no painted lines on the road and people commonly pass each other while driving on the wrong side of the road. The fastest driver is king and it would seem that people are earning points in an unseen videogame each and every time they honk their horn. There is probably one dog on the street to every car on the street so they become obstacles on the road. Many people in Honduras ride their bike as a form of transportation so that is another thing to watch out for while driving. We were stopped at only one police checkpoint during our drive to the orphanage and we were let go after about 3 minutes.

Norman got us to the orphanage in a timely fashion and we were met by Katja (one of the long-term volunteers) who gave us the keys to our home for the next 3 months. We’re staying in a two bedroom apartment duplex on “the farm”. We unloaded our luggage and gave Norman the $80 U.S. he required to drive us to the supermarket and orphanage. We met our neighbors—Tammy and Chris as well as their son and students that came with them. They gave us a few tips to Honduran living at the orphanage and told us to come by any time if we had questions. After unpacking most of our luggage and situating our room, we went over to the short-term volunteer house as we were invited over for dinner. I had never been so excited to eat in all my life! We had a chicken/vegetable soup, rice, roll and some canned mixed-fruit. I ate up knowing that we didn’t have much food in our house. The orphanage owner and his wife also provided us with a cake that was baked in the town (Guaimaca) outside the gates.

We went to a bible study put on by the visiting group at 7:30pm and felt at home because their group is about as big as our Sandals group was in August. They also had fun personalities like our group did. They made jokes and just enjoyed each other’s company. Their group is from Georgia and will be here until Sunday. I felt bad because I was nodding off from time to time despite my attempts to stay awake. I had been going on only a combined total of a few hours of sleep and was ready to hit the hay. When we got back to our house, Lauren and I got ready for bed. We put in an episode of “The Office” on my laptop and watched it on our California King (i.e. two twin bunk beds pushed together) under our romantic mosquito net. I pretended to be awake when Lauren would pick up her head off my chest and look at me to see if I was awake. I made sure to wake up when the episode music began to play at the end of the show so that I could turn off the computer.

That will be all for now, but stay tuned for the next blog which will include some interesting stories about animals…you won’t want to miss that! We appreciate your prayers as always.

Lets Get the Ball Rolling!

2008-09-15T12:31:00.001-05:00

After going on a Worldwide trip to Honduras with Sandals Church in August and coming so close to getting married right there at the orphanage, Lauren and I decided to bump up the date of our wedding from May 2009 to January 2009. We then started talking about traveling once we get married, and decided to return to the orphanage for a longer period of time to serve the children and staff. We choose the month of January upon returning from our honeymoon to begin our stay at the orphanage. When arriving in the country, you can be given a 3 month tourist visa (at the agents discretion) and then have it extended another month as you get closer to that visa's expiration--if you do your math correctly the stay would total 4 months. Lauren and I are both very excited to begin our marriage serving God with absolutely EVERYTHING we have. We won't be spending pointless hours working to make ends meet to live in the great state of California amidst the decline of the mortgage/banking market and we won't be spending as much time doing leisurely activities to entertain ourselves. There is no local movie theater, miniature golf course, bowling alley, beach, couples to double date with, or restaurants to casually dine at. We're limited to each other (whoop whoop), the volunteers, and the children of the orphanage--not that that's "limited" in a negative way. It'll be good.

A lot of preparation goes into leaving the country for an extended period of time. Lauren and I are excited to return to Orphanage Emmanuel in January and look forward to the way that God will use us once we're there. We have been communicating with the orphanage contacts in the United States over the past month in hopes that we can experience a smooth transition between here and the States. It's good to make sure that someone is there to pick us up from the airport and that we will have a place to live once we get there. So far all of our questions have been answered and they have made us feel confident that everything will be fine once we're there. We've had a family offer to help us while we're there by sending money to the orphanage now so that it is ready for us once we arrive. God has most definitely been supplying for us and we haven't even left yet.

We know that the plane tickets will be around $3000.00 (round trip) for the both of us so we are hoping that we will have support in that area as a wedding gift/participation. That would be a lot of money for the two of us to come up with right now--especially since we are both full time students that are also trying to plan a wedding in less than 4 months. God is always faithful to provide for us so I have put it in His hands.