1 Year Old Alida Fe

On May 25^th our baby turned a year old!

Mom, where do baby coffees come from?

There is a huge pile of dark black topsoil in Las Lomitas. Fortunately there is a road (of sorts) that leads towards where it rests. Unfortunately, the last little tail of the road ends at the base of an enormous slope about 100 meters downhill from where that beautiful dirt lies in waiting. A friend in town, Len, told me I could take as much as I wanted since he was done with it. So I and a couple of my gardening guys have been filling feed sacks and hauling them through the yucca fields and down the slick path on our shoulders. 100 pounds at a time, each sack gets chucked onto our car's roof rack every time I get a spare minute. We've hauled about 40 sacks so far and there is still at least that much again to be brought down.

Mahogany Men.

In April, a five of us from Las Lomitas drove down the PanAmerican highway to Siguatepeque (See-gwa-teh-pek-eh), the next major wide spot in the road heading south. It is a beautiful drive for those of us that enjoy beautiful drives up into the mountains. For thirteen year-olds who have scarcely ridden in a car, it is apparently a nauseating, terrifying death trip. However, an hour later we arrived at Semillas Tropicales (SETRO) with no vomit in the car. SETRO is a company that collects/distributes/sells/stores high quality seeds of trees utilized for lumber, fruit, and other agroforestry endeavors. We had arrived to attend a workshop with Don Oscar, the owner of the company.

Labor.

Those of you familiar with Community Development projects may frequently notice that labor is often listed as a contribution by the beneficiary. What does that mean exactly? Lest we under-appreciate this portion, we should examine it a little more closely. The concept varies from project to project and community to community, but might be explained most easily by the following example. 

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.

2015... So far.

After spending some time in the States (Honduras>ND>PA>OH>Honduras) for Christmas, we returned more than a little tired with a little goober more than a little off her schedule. However, after a few weeks, a fever for each of us, and hideous weather, life and the climate have finally begun to equalize yet again. The sun has returned to Honduras from its foggy, drizzly mess and things are drying up a little. Without beating you to death with details. Here are some of the more significant things that have happened since the last update.

1. HTH Community Development 2015 Report: A comprehensive report of last year's projects focused on collaboration and community involvement. Full post to follow on the interesting results.

2. Increasing mentorship with local pastor: Recently a couple of older, more experienced pastors have begun to get increasingly involved in the life of a young pastor very important to us. This is very significant for Las Lomitas and us. Please be praying that the new dynamic is healthy.

3. Raised beds in the garden. Full post coming up.

4. Possible microbusiness training with Guys Group. More to come if it comes to fruition.

5. Increased community leadership training. Via the new HTH/CPH leadership, we will be more intensely focusing on training local  leaders and providing learning opportunities. More to come on that this year.

6. Dairy goats at home. We have now been living with free goats on our porch for a month now. We're working on providing them with a living situation more convenient for all of us. Full update to come on how we came to acquire Pasas and Gota and how that's going.

Hope you all are doing well. We'll be fleshing these topics out with more details in the coming day.

Grace and peace to you all.

Photo(s) of the Day:

On the way to visit a community today, we spotted this alongside the road.

 

An orchid in full bloom as the dry season begins. Many trees are flowering now and the heat is beginning to slowly increase, as will hopefully the blog posts. Be looking for a full update soon.