Goat jumped over the fence of course.

One of our favorite children's book to read with Alida is The Little Blue Truck, a rhyming tale about a helpful old truck that is friend to all the farm animals. When Blue gets stuck in the mud trying to push out a big mean dump truck, the animals come running to help...

Everybody heard that beep, beep, beep.

The cow came running with the pig and the sheep.

Upon at a gallop came the big brown horse.

Goat jumped over the fence of course.

The three main concerns Update

When we moved back home to Honduras in October last year we asked you to pray specifically for three concerns and we said we would trial it for a while and see how they go:

1.      Security

2.      Alida’s Adjustment

3.      Stacey’s broken tailbone

We wanted to give you an update as of now (5 months later) on how we feel regarding these concerns.  As we mention frequently our life down here could change on a dime, so we just take one day at a time. But for now…

1.      So far we have felt great security wise.  We feel like God has given us a peace as we travel and stay home as well as confirmation from the people we talk with and current events.  We have had no issues.  We always keep our eyes and ears open!

2.      Alida does great here.  She loves the people, her animals, and is developing like a very average healthy baby.  She doesn’t seem to be phased by major temperature and weather changes, new people, places, or even her 3^rd - 6^th teeth that have come in.  Since the new year she has only gotten sick one time, a virus that passed in 4-5 days in January.  She has had a great routine since November of two naps a day and 10-11 hours of sleep through the night.  (which was only interrupted by the crazy Christmas travels) We have very little desire to travel with her any more after our last trip to the States.  She loves to travel, but sleeping in different places and getting behind on sleep were horrible.  We pray she will get better as she gets older.

3.      Stacey’s tailbone continues to be a source of great pain.  The PT doctor’s advice in early January was to wait at least 6 weeks after she stops nursing to see if her body returning to normal(hormonally) will allow the body to focus on healing.  She continues to do her PT exercises and we will work toward weaning Alida as soon as we have another option (since she is allergic to cow’s milk we are hoping the goats are an answer).  If she shows no improvement even after a few months of not nursing her next option would be injections to hopefully keep the inflammation and pain down and allow the bone to heal.  If that doesn’t work we would probably move forward with surgery.  So… needless to say, she needs your prayers as the pain is great and it will still be a long road ahead.

For now (again, our life can change on a dime and we follow the Lord’s lead) we have no plans to return to the US and are looking forward to a good year at home in Honduras.  We are starting Alida's residency process so she will not have to leave every 90 days.  We are truly enjoying being a family of 3 and being at home, sweet home.  At this point Stacey’s health will probably dictate when/if our need to return to the States for treatment.

Thanks so much for your prayers in these three areas, please keep them coming!

Honduran Landscape

Since the passing of our good friend, Canon G12 (the camera we had for the past five years), in the death grip of frozen North Dakota , I have been trying to console myself with the new addition of Fujifilm X30. The quality of images has helped me deal much easier. One of the slick functions on the device is the ability to create fairly high resolution panoramas directly on the camera. I'm sharing a couple of my favorites from our hideous local landscape.

Click any of the images for the full-size version.

Lake Yojoa on a Saturday afternoon looking west.

Santa Elena office grounds looking towards Cerro Azul National Park.

Another Las Lomitas sunrise looking out over the valley below.

The other half

All of January and February we both kept saying how we needed to get an update on the blog and never had time to get it done.  So apparently we both wrote "updates" separately.  Kaleb posted his on the 23rd not knowing Stacey had written one too.  So here is Stacey's version too.
.....
We traveled to the States for 3 weeks to see family for Christmas and have some meetings with our organization in late Dec. - early Jan. 

8 flights, 3 States, 4 homes, tendonitis, and 2 teeth later we returned or our home sweet home exhausted. To be totally honest we were at the end of our ropes in all areas.  Home never felt so good.  Alida does great on planes, airports, and meeting new people.  But, she did not do well when we continued to change her surroundings.  Her main problem is sleeping in new places.  Once she gets behind on sleep (actually I should say, once we ALL get behind on sleep) things went extremely down hill.

Between readjusting and all of us getting sick it took a few weeks to get back to “normal.”  We have been thoroughly enjoying “normal” now for well over a month!  We love HOME!

Some other new things since the new year include adding to our life Alida’s new puppy, Pimienta(Pepper), two goats, and 6 chicks. So we have been busy making our tiny plot of land a functioning farm.  We also have been building permanent garden beds out of stone and concrete to get the garden ramped up again soon.  No end to stories of God working in people’s lives as well.  We wish we had time to write up their stories.  Maybe someday we will.

Our three days a week with HTH have been quiet busy as well as more and more communities adopt the community development process to solicited assistance in the their own community projects.  More about Community Development in another post coming soon.