Update on Noe

A thank you to everyone who has been praying for Noe, whether you have met him or not.  He is a child from our village, Las Lomitas, who has been way behind in many ways. 
Intellectually (he is 10 and only passed kindergarden), socially (he has a bad eye and is constantly picked on), physically (he looks like an average 7 yr. old, always had a cold, and was malnourished for years), emotionally (his first father left before he can remember and his step father is a drunk and abuser), and much more.
In Oct. 2012 his mother agreed for him to be taken to Pan American Health Services (a nearby health center) to receive professional help in all of these mentioned areas.  He was restored to good health in a few months and ready to have surgery on his eye, cataracts is his problem.  Unfortunately the day they took him in for the surgery the anesthesiologist could not approve him to be put under because he had congestion issues.  So he had to go back to the center and go through many more months of treatment visiting many allergy specialists and taking expensive medication.  A few months ago he was taken back and approved for surgery again.  The date is set for Dec. 1st - this Sunday!  Thank you as well to those of you who have given to make his eye surgery a possibility.  We heard a while back from the health center that the surgery is completely paid for.
We are asking for your prayers this Sunday for Noe to be emotionally stable enough to undertake the surgery because he has been very nervous in other doctor appointments.  Also that his health would be extremely good so that there will be no excuse to not do the surgery.  And obviously for a successful cataract surgery and quick recovery in the days to follow.
Continued prayers for his family and his transition are appreciated as well as he will rejoin them after recovery.  His mother's name is Cristina, step-father Pito, sister Carmen, and two brothers Santillo and Jesus.  His mother is very committed to him and his recovery she will be with him in the surgery and the 4 days following.  They are one of the most poor families in our community please pray for the local body of believers to step up and reach out to them.

Winter, Staff Position, New Director Search, and Leadership Team

Nature is yanking on the pullcord of winter here. After having sat for the rest of the year, it seems like it is having a hard time starting. The typical nonstop winter drizzle has been interrupted with a day or two of sunshine here or there. Once winter’s motor is really running by the end of this month, the only thing to break up the drizzle will be the occasional downpour. Oh well, this is the price to be paid for beautiful weather 10 months out of the year. Overall, bearable, especially if you love mud and cooler temperatures.

For the most part it is fine. These days we have been spending a little more time in the shelters of Heart to Honduras’s offices in Santa Elena. Since September, we have been working officially as staff for the department of Community Development 3 days a week. This has relatively little effect on our daily lives other than the aforementioned increase in office time and other community visits since we had been increasing our time with them over the past year.  The rest of the week we spend in our community with the same vision as always.

This office time has also been augmented by our role on the new Heart to Honduras “Leadership Team” here in Honduras. The previous part-time Honduran director for HtH left in August to invest himself full time in his growing church in Choloma. In the meantime HtH’s president Gordon Garrett implemented a “Leadership Team” down here to fill the shoes best we can of a director.  We have been filling two spots at the table of six Honduran staff members acting as interim leadership while we seek a new Honduran director. This team has really risen to the occasion, and we feel that staff morale and unity are at an all-time high. This unity is a truly welcome improvement. Previously there have been some hangups within the staff that have prevented real “gelling”, but since this abrupt change and requirement to play nice, people seem to be truly addressing some previous issues, working to forgive, and even improve. We feel a little more of the environment that should come from a group of believers. This team as also stepped up to address issues that have laid dormant for a long time, it has been challenging, but each of us is relying on the Lord to direct us as we take on these giants.

Overall, these changes make us busier, which is not necessarily desirable, but not yet to the point of being overwhelming. We’ll try to be a little more on top of the blog over these next couple of months. Thanks for hanging in there with us! We love you all and appreciate your support.

A great opportunity to get involved!

We have several phrases we repeat over and over in Community Development.
1. We all have poverty in our lives because poverty is holistic (intellectual, spiritual, emotional, social, material, physical) and therefore development must be holistic as well.

 2."Development is not about the final project, but it's about the process" 
3. "No community development does NOT only do construction projects"

As a great example of a holistic "non-construction" development project we have a solicitation submitted by a girls youth group who wants to go to a long weekend Christian camp.  They have been dreaming about this all year and working hard to raise funds by having food sales.  They have come up with $225 in their account in the past year of work in their village!  That's $225 that came out of a small rural village.  They have decided, to not wipe out their account, they can invest $150 in camp.  So we started the solicitation process through Community Development with them.  It's $50 a girl to go to a Christian camp (this includes everything at the camp, a nice T-shirt, and transportation).  There are 8 of them committed to going, so they need $400 total.  They began to present their ideas to their families and the local church who then gave $50 total.  So between the girls, their families, and the local church they have 50% of what they need.  So here is where we can get involved Stateside in a healthy way!  It's a local idea with lots of local by-in, so we can come along side and support a development project!  

You can read about this project at this link:

http://hth.org/2011/get_involved/projects/

 

Under the village Las Lomitas you'll see "Send youth group to camp" Click on "Learn more about this project"

The dates they are shooting for going are the first week in December so if you'd like to support it would be appreciated the sooner the better so the money can be transferred to Honduras in a timely manner.

Thanks for your support in the holistic development of these girls!  Their lives will be changed in this one long weekend.  Please be joining us in prayer for God to work in their lives through this experience.

Honduran Residency

We want to deeply apologize for not keeping up with the blog for a while now.  In September we passed the 2 year mark for living here!  We have so many stories to tell and so little time to sit down to write them out.  It has been a very busy time for us for many reasons.  So we thought we would spend a few short posts getting you caught up on what has been keeping us busy.  First off...

RESIDENCY

As many of you know Honduras does not give visas for more than 90 days.  So, for the past 2 years that we have lived in Honduras we have had to according to the law leave the country every 90 days, stay out for 3 days, and reenter to renew for 90 more days.  This has proved to be a great hassle so we began to pursue the idea of Honduran residency.  We met a man who works with a ministry called Honduran Christian Fellowship and his job is to help the Christians working in Honduras get their residency quickly and smoothly through Honduran Immigration in Tegucigalpa. 
If anyone is interested we would recommend it, the website is:
http://www.honduranfellowship.org/index.php
For Residency specific information click on "Helpful Info" and "Residency"
We began the process with him in June 2013 and as of last week we are official "5 year Residents" of Honduras. 

We have ID cards and numbers now, so we no longer have to travel around with our passports all the time which is amazing!  Our final step is now that we are residents we are required to get a Honduran drivers license, so be praying for that next step for us to go smoothly!

Girl's Group

As many of you know Stacey started working with the teenage girls in Las Lomitas in July of 2012.  With anything we do we are most passionate about it being:

-Holistic (spiritually, intellectually, emotionally, socially, and physically)

-Sustainable (making it so that if we leave tomorrow it will continue)

-Appropriate (not imposing our ideas/desires/priorities, but listening to theirs)

So this is how it’s been.   We have been going through the book, “A young women after God’s Heart” as well as chatting about topics they decide.  The main rule about our Bible study time is to always see what the Bible has to say about them, no cultural or personal preferences but exactly the Word of God.  The girls tell me from time to time, “you have showed us so many things we had never heard, we never knew.”  They are always surprised as to ALL the things the Bible talks about!

We focus more than anything on purity, prayer, service, and preparing ourselves.  So as part of this I continually ask them what their ideas are and we together decide how to make it happen.   

Over a year later we have skills and services that didn’t exist before:

-Praying (this took a while for the girls to learn how to talk to the Lord)

-“Quitar pena” (not be so shy), have self-confidence and value in Christ and each other

-Baking (cakes, cupcakes, breads)

-Cooking and selling food for soccer games (enchiladas, empanadas, tajadas with ground beef, etc.)

-Go shopping at a supermarket in a town 20 min. away

-Ability to keep receipts,  manage finances of the group through a basic balance sheet, and always have 3 witnesses.

-Prayer partners within the group

-Scripture memory, Books of the Bible memorized

-English Conversational skills (we started studying English 30 min. a week in March 2013)

-Create lesson plans for Sunday School classes

-One-on-one chats with Stacey over coffee at our house

-Learning that they have ideas that are worth sharing and discussing (they were silent for months! It was like pulling teeth and now Stacey can’t keep them quiet.)

-Much more!

So what do they do with these skills and services?

-Home visits to families that have recently had a birth or death:    They introduce themselves and ask permission to come in, they pray with the family, and give them a loaf of banana bread they made themselves.  These 3 things they do during this visit each took an extreme amount development.  It may seem simple, but it’s a great development exercise. 

- Raise funds by selling food for the group fund

- Save these funds to go to camp and also have purchased some things for the needy

- Visit to a local children’s health services home to help care for the children, visit 2 kids and one teenage girl that are there from our village read Bible stories, and sing songs.  With their funds they were able to purchase 4 pairs of shoes for growing kids who did not have shoes.

- Learned and presented a choreography in 3 different sized communities

-Able to have short greetings/conversations with English speakers that visit (which gives them a lot of self-worth!)

-Lead Sunday School

- And more!

As you can read they settled into a group, learned skills, and now share them with others.  We continue to learn and use those gifts God gives us. 

Struggles

There are many struggles that these girls face daily that has caused our group to shrink or keep girls from regularly attending.  Parents are not always in favor of these activities/discussions, they prefer to have the hands at home helping.  With an average of 10 people living in a house teenage girls are in high demand to cook, clean, wash clothing, etc.  The parents/family/neighbors would rather them not learn about purity and marriage because they are ready for them to move in with a guy so there is one less mouth to feed in the house.  In our entire village of 400+ adults only 4 couples are actually married.  Free and local public education is over after 6^th grade, so this is the age (12) these girls are looked after to move in with a guy. There is no source of work for women in the village so if they hear of the opportunity to work somewhere else they leave to take the job, which is usually in an unhealthy environment with no chance to get involved in a church or any sort of youth group.  The group has lost many girls to all of the above reasons, so we could really use your prayers. 

Another struggle is education, 3 girls are studying in the closest high school so sometimes because of the traveling (walking and on bus) and lots of homework they are kept from coming to activities.  One of the girls is striving to finish 6^th grade, so she has more time competition as well. 

The assumption that these girls having nothing else/better to do, is completely false.  Three of them live with electricity and 5 have phones so they have struggles of time management with TV and texting.  5 of them walk 25 min. one way to come to our meetings and activities and it rains A LOT here.  1 girl is the local full time Kindergarden teacher during the week and goes to high school Sat. and Sun. 

The most faithful girls right now are: Dunia Carolina, Dunia Jackaline, Yolanda, Maritza, Kenia, Lidia, Amanda, and Elva.  If you feel led to pray for them by name, we would appreciate it.  We recently lost Maria because she moved in with a guy in another community, keep her and all the others we have lost in your prayers too.

Here are a few pictures from the past year.

The girls "baking" banana bread on the stove top in our house. (This was before we got our oven in April.)

These are "Pastelitos" in Honduras or Empanadas in other countries that the girls sell

Reading Bible stories to the kids at the Children's Health Service Home.

The whole group at the Children's health service home.

One of the boys who received the gift of shoes from the girls.

Selling food outside the church.

In the kitchen cooking to sell.

Cooking in Las Lomitas

 

Happy Customer

After seeing the ads for years and doing some online research, I decided to make the big jump. It was time for a new thumb. My previous thumb was becoming a little embarrassing, you know, with all the new thumbs out there and all. The nail on the old one came out a little crooked, and looked a little stained. Thumb Joint 1 (TJ1) creaked just a tiny bit in the mornings and TJ2 has never quite performed as well as the slick, flexible ones that some friends have. Plus, it was just getting kind of boring. The general look was outdated, and some of the freckles had lost their crisp lines; they barely looked like smudges anymore. I had never gotten a new one. I’d waited 26 years, I deserve this.

I decided on a ThumJam 5S. It’s the newest, fastest, smoothest thumb out there, and I haven’t regretted my choice for one second. The reviews say that its TJ1 flex time is 5 milliseconds faster than Original Thumbs, and TJ2 range of motion up to 1.5 degrees greater than the first several versions. I really think that I can almost feel the difference. Though, I think my favorite feature is the color-selectable nail. By pressing a hidden button at the base of the cuticle, you can cycle through 8 colors in 15 shades. I know that you can paint older models, but this is so much more convenient. I don’t know how I lived without this feature before. There’s no going back now! Another huge benefit is that ThumJam manufactures all of their products in an eco-friendly factory in Ethiopia (strictly self-monitored by ThumJam’s internal human rights team in order to avoid any possible abuses of their most valuable asset, their employees). All of their thumbs are manufactured from 100% natural, organic sources: all certified not to be stolen from the illicit Blood Thumb Black Market.

I know that some people would propose that Original Thumbs are completely sufficient, and there’s no need for replacement. However I think that my modern audience would agree that these Luddite arguments hold no water in today’s high-tech world. With personal efficiency increasing daily, those without Updated Thumbs will surely be left by the wayside as the rest of us gain valuable seconds of productivity with our super-capable appendices. I truly hope that these misinformed naysayers understand the seriousness of their decisions. These archaic opinions put themselves and their families at the risk of social ostracism and even financial ruin as they fail to keep up with the pace of progress.

Surely there were other ways to spend the money, but since the actual procedure was at 50% off for this month, it seemed like it was the right time. Besides, it seems to me that most major world issues are under control. Poverty is surely almost gone, I know that personally I never see any signs of it. I drive nearly 40 miles on that new interstate to get to work and see only nice cars. As humanity, I think we’ve moved beyond issues of suffering onto issues of progress. If we don’t focus on efficiency and innovation, we’ll surely become stagnant. I have my new thumb installed, integrated, and functioning for less than $4500, and with the basic maintenance plan, I’m only paying $110 monthly. Even if societal issues still existed, surely that amount wouldn’t make a difference. This was not just a purchase. It was an investment. Essential to progress, for the good of society.

So, here I am, another happy customer.

Rainwater Continued...

Rain is still a very big deal for us. Every facet of our life is affected by it. The condition of the roads, the water in our shower, sinks, toilet, and pila, the health of our garden, the sustenance for our animals, the ability to speak in our own home. Our cistern is continually filled by it's abundance here. We just found a scholarly work detailing that in our area we receive ~125 inches of rain a year. It is a lot of water.

We put together a little video below to show a few quick scenes during a typical nightly rainfall.

 

What you just saw may seem pretty trivial, if not boring, but for us, it is what keeps us alive (for that matter it's what keeps all of us alive). Rain on the roof, falling in the lettuce and cucumbers, drenching the rooster, going through the filters and into the cistern, and into the pila. Rain is a constant blessing for us, a way that we see God work nearly every day. Every time that the noise starts up on the roof, I breathe out a little prayer of thanks and relief. At the same time,  you can't help but think about places like Sub-Saharan Africa where they receive next to no rainfall and live in similar conditions. I can't even imagine. We all need to be so grateful every time we see the drops start up. In the States, we might be a little more isolated from it under insulated roofs, using running, purified water systems, but that doesn't mean that we need it any less. The fact that clean water falls from the sky is nothing less than a miracle. What a design.

Food pumps.

We have this amazing stuff growing in our yard, moringa. It is an extremely nutritious small tree, high in vitamins, high in protein. We planted it in our yard last year and eat it off and on. The raw leaves have a very unique, strong flavor -- a bit of clover mixed with tabasco. Not entirely unpleasant, but definitely an acquired taste. Or in the words of many, many Honduran friends, "It tastes like a weed." Not an inaccurate appraisal.

In the development world, moringa has been praised for years a vital tool as a nutritional supplement in poor, tropical areas. Originally from Africa, it grows extremely quickly in the correct environment. We planted ours from seed last July. As of January, the tallest was 8' tall. I cut it off at the 6' mark only to turn around and cut off the additional 12' feet of growth over the past 6 months. It doesn't grow like a weed, it spanks weeds in the growth department. Weeds grow like moringa.

Needless to say, these things are magical, natural nutrient pumps. You stick a seed in the ground and it goes to work turning air, water, and dirt into vitamins and protein in the form of green leaves. As mentioned above, it isn't our favorite thing to eat, however, we still mix it into soups, rice dishes, and others as a supplement. Used in this way, moringa has incredible potential to improve the diets here in rural Honduras. However, I have another personally preferred use for it.

As good as moringa is at transforming the elements into a usable form, there is another champion in this area. Our little friend, the humble chicken, is also a magic worker. Chickens are meat wizards. You can throw anything into their pen and they go to work, transforming your waste into delicious, tasty meat. Not only that, the females literally lay meat drops in a box every day. It is a miracle. If you feed your chickens highly nutritious things, they grow even faster and lay even more eggs. Enter moringa.

You see, chickens clearly don't care about flavor. So, they don't care that moringa leaves have a little whang to them. All they care is that there's abundant food. The only thing that I care about is that they love it and it means that we'll be eating more meat as a result. Chickens + Moringa = More food for the gringos.

Snapshots

I know that it has been a while since we've posted pictures, and the truth is that we haven't been taking many. However, I thought we'd throw up a few to give you a little visual insight into our last couple of months. Enjoy.

 

Clear Water. As of this week, we´re filtering the water that enters into the cistern. Once the water fills the prewash tank (on the right), the water now flows through a gravel/sand filter. The water enters the top of the tank then immediately passes through a screen, then gravel larger than 1", then pea gravel, then sand. At the bottom is a screened exit with large rock and pea gravel, from there it passes directly to the cistern. This should catch the remainder of the dirt that hits the roof during storms here. We'll see if it keeps the cistern cleaner. We're gone through a couple of strong storms now and the design has capacity to handle them. We'll clean the cistern this week to see if there's a noticeable difference in water quality.

 

True Development. The biggest news of these past couple of months is that Mountain Dew is now distributed in Honduras, and it's delicious (with cane sugar, not that yucky corn stuff). The can is even cooler than in the States, it's black with the new logo. Needless to say, I'm participating in this new cultural activity. So far, the majority of our acquaintances like Manteen Du, they're just lacking my passion. I'll continue in the evangelism though, in the hopes to win a few...

"Hau ar ju?" When the Ambassador students were in Las Lomitas, we had a "language exchange" with them. Lots of ladies showed up, but the sight of a bunch of young white women proved too much for the guys. They all hung around to watch them come out, but only one guy participated. I've ridden the bunch of sissies pretty hard on that one. Overall, it was a productive time and the teens of Las Lomitas had a great chance to try out they're language skills.

Yummy. This is a passion flower, which is what proceeds a passion fruit. These crazy flowers cover an even crazier vine. I was told by Hondurans that these vines grow like crazy, but they say a lot of things, so I paid them little heed. So, I planted three. After six months of waiting, they all of a sudden exploded into growth, and now my very life is threatened by their ever-encroaching presence. Needless to say, we're going to be making a lot of passion fruit juice. Good thing we like it.

Yummy? Our neighbors brought us a new meal. Chicken feet. No, it's not a joke. 

Authority figure. Without soliciting outside opinions, Fredy decided to cut off the bottom half of his goatee. This did not go unnoticed. When asked about why he invited this caterpillar to reside on his upper lip, he replied "It gives me a increased appearance of authority." I told him that was nice, but then took the low road and mocked him for two weeks. I'm happy to report that he has now shaved it off and the goatee is making a return.

  

Animals that aren't for eating. The dog is now starting to guard the house, and the cat eats all-comers in the house. They're performing their desired function. However, the cat enjoys using herself as a living shield against all attempts at reading, and the dog likes scaring the poop out of the chickens (not a difficult task, but still unwelcome).

 

Animals that are for eating. This is a close-up of one of currently-living, delicious-looking chickens. They really are beautiful creatures. But, as with all tasty animals, it's what's on the inside that counts.

Real professionals. We're indebted to the help we've received from Katie and Nick Mueller. These two are a couple that also happen to be a couple of engineers. Kate designed the purification system in Caliche, and her husband recently accompanied her on a fact-finding trip to analyze several potential projects: water purification in La Concepcion, water in Las Lomitas, and a sewage project in La Cuesta. This couple worked so very hard and accomplished a great deal. Thanks from us and the Moustached Wonder.

Achote. These are seeds from the achote tree. These are used as coloring and flavoring in some local foods. These were at a local lady's house for grinding. Most commonly, it is used in a local food called "pastelitos," which are more or less empanadas everwhere else. Delicious stuff.

Birthday celebration. The tiniest neighbor in this picture (Abi) just celebrated her first birthday. She was the surprise birth in Las Lomitas last year. We'd been living next door to her mom for months and had no idea she was pregnant, we found out later she was hiding it. It was a pretty neat trick. As you can see though, she very, very real, and very, very cute.

Pretty flower. We decided to plant flowers in the yard. This is our first one. It's pretty.

"Big Sexy Man." 18 months after meeting him, Buddy has grown up quite a bit. He's still very helpful, but his recent interest in the ladies has reduced his frequency around the house. Turns out that there are things more interesting than gardens and big ugly gringos. However, he's still our biggest fan and helps us out in more ways than we can say. He's still a great kid. He's trying out his English more and more, including the title here.

Ghetto repair. The dry-rotted leather seal on our rainwater pump pooped out and increased our pumping time from 20 minutes to 60 minutes. We've got a new one on the way, but we've made a temporary one in the meantime that works alarmingly well. Stacey sewed me up a nice ring of old jean, then we cinched it into a crease with some nylon. From there, we covered it with hot wax and then melted it repeatedly to impregnate the material. Necessity is the great mother here.

Toys in the darkness. This is a 10 second time-lapse of a glowing worm's trail across our living room floor. At different times of the year, different fluorescent bugs make spectacular appearances. These quick little worms are my personal favorite. They glow dimly until you touch them, then they explode with a million little pinholes of light.

War. The battle with scorpions has gone high-tech. At some point, I remembered that scorpions glow under UV light. And glow they do. When we find a glowing dot, we don't play games; it gets nuked with Raid. No hidey holes for you, disgusting creatures of the night. We're on the offensive now. We will find you, and we will kill you.