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.

Fight for the Light

It has been a long time since we've talked about the electricity project in Las Lomitas, but that doesn't mean that we haven't been working. We have been, just not in the traditional sense. No sweat, no blood, but plenty of crazy. For the past months, we've been chasing down every politician that will give us a meeting. So to update, after a long dead spell, we made a connection a with a powerful director within the national electric company, the ENEE in March. At his word, we informed some donors that made some very generous gifts to prepare ourselves to work starting in May. The donors came through, the director did not. No action was taken.

Soon thereafter, I was summoned by a neighbor to come meet the "mayor" who had just arrived in our little village. This confused me since I already know the mayor, but assumed it was I misunderstood the Spanish. I didn't. It was a mayor want-to-be from the other party trying to make friends with the Gringo. I thought, "It won't hurt to meet this new guy. Any connection is a welcome one." Soon after I shake his hand, he starts to promise about how the electricity project will arrive for free, that the people shouldn't work on this project, he would provide it all, just sit back and wait he says -- IT'S ON ITS WAY! He and the Gringo probably won't be friends after all. It was a really hot day, my stomach was a little off, and I had grown weary of political types abusing the people here. So, in as many words, I let him know that all help aimed for the good of the people here is welcome, but the help of lying selfish politicians not so much. That was a couple of months ago and people still joke with me about it.

Since then, we've been on the phone innumerable times with the Electrical Director Supreme, the Upright Infallible Congresswoman, and the Mayor. We've been in personal homes, offices near and far, and vehicles of all shapes, sizes, and numbers of functional tires. We wouldn't be doing this however, if there weren't two people with us every step of the way: Pastor Erick and community President Pablo. Together, these two represent the leadership of the community of Las Lomitas, and they have endured lie after lie after lie long before we arrived. As leaders, they've arrived home late from meetings, chased down lead after lead, and given up a great deal of personal money in transportation and days of work lost. Pablo faithfully meets with the community to encourage and unite them even after hope seems lost. But hope is not lost.

The community has decided that enough is enough, and we are right with them. As a community, we are shooting for a start date of August 20. Should we not have irrefutable evidence that the project will start in the imminent future, action will be taken. After meeting today with the Electrical Director Supreme and Mayor, it was decided that Pablo and I will be traveling to Tegucigalpa with the Mayor tomorrow in order to determine the truth about the project at the national headquarters of the ENEE. The Director will also meet us there, and the opposing party's congresswoman called upset informing us that she would also like to come. Tomorrow will dictate the future of electricity in Las Lomitas.

This is a perfect example of development as we often share. Yes, we could have pushed through and tried to do it alone (all with donor money) and fast (according to US timetable) but all of this true, lasting, personal and communal development would be lost.  Our goal is not the project, but the process. This is why we are passionate about "community development" and this is where we see God doing great things.


Tomorrow will be the climax of a year and a half of running around. Should we manage to squeeze all of these egos into one room and ask the important questions, we may actually discover the truth. This has been an incredibly frustrating several months, but it is looking like action will soon happen. This flurry of action and emotion has done incredible things in the community though.

It is an election year here in Honduras, and the whole country is in a red vs. blue battle. Politicians feel overempowered and begin to crank up their aggressiveness, taking advantage of uneducated people in small villages and turning them on each for a color without meaning. Promises are made to keep the oppressed waiting while the politicians never take action.  Unfortunately this tactic has been highly effective in Las Lomitas, but on the flip-side has opened up a dialogue that presses for unity. The most powerful thing that can happen to unite a people is to give them a common enemy, and the emotion that the word "politico" inspires has recently become more powerful than a respective color. Using some red and blue colored water, we demonstrated the potential in a united community, a purple community. The idea that lasting change can only come from within the community is now beginning to take root. As faith in politicians fails, hope in the potential of a small community and recognition of worth in Christ is beginning to rise. We are crossing through a critical moment in this small community's history.

Our neighbors have been oppressed by lies for years now. Because of its size, no politician has considered Las Lomitas worth their time or effort and that sentiment is reflected in the people's self-esteem. They know that no-one cares. Part of our goal of being here has been to instigate development through relationship building and this has been a case study in its merits. Tomorrow I hope to see with my own eyes, a resolved leader from a tiny, rural Honduran town in the national capital, hours away from his home, meeting with leaders at the national level looking for truth to bring development to his people. 'To loose the chains of oppression, and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free.' That is our charge.

Independence

Well, I just saw today's date, and the last post date. This pretty well confirms my suspicion that I'm a lousy blogmaster. Sorry if anyone depends on these posts as a source of happiness. If you do, please find something else to keep you entertained.

Life has been busy, but we're doing well. Since I last updated, we've been through our first legitimate case of parasites. Fortunately they were giardia, not the wormy kind. So, we just ended up burping Hell's air freshener for a few days and seeing how fast we could liquify things and move them through our intestinal tract. (If traveler's diarrhea is a 1990 Mustang GT, then giardia puts us in a brand new Ferrari). But, we're back on our feet and off of the toilet; life is good.

The rain has started back up and the garden is planted out. So, that's nice. Nighttime temperatures have returned to sub-baking temperatures, and I seem to be sweating much more normal amounts. Our puppy is becoming Dog and beginning to do Dog things. Like get stupid muddy and then jumping on us. She's also proven her worth in identifying multiple toads and then barking until they can't hear.

We've also been hanging out with a group of students for the past couple weeks. The students from the ambassador students have bounced around, visited, hiked, lived, and vomited with us. We really hope that they'll be able to learn from what they've seen. We hope that Aubrey, Taylor, Genelle, Stephanie, Micah, Colleen, Chelsea, and Jesse follow their hearts, make hard decisions, and love hard. 

Happy 4th!

A helpful addition!

Stacey has been cooking on a little borrowed table with a 2 burner propane stove on top for almost 2 years.  The time came to make the step up.  Our home improvements for this year are a basic concrete kitchen counter we made ourselves with a few blocks and concrete and…. an oven!  It’s a 4 burner propane with a small oven underneath!  Since then we have enjoyed cakes, brownies, cookies, transparent pie, quiche, baked chicken, pizza, and much more!  Our diet has changed! 

As always, with the purpose of demonstrating Asset Based Community Development Stacey is now in business.  With a little sign out front she now sells cakes/bread to the village.  Two assets/resources she brings to the table are the knowledge of baking and now the material necessity of the oven.  She continues to give classes to small groups of teenage girls for them to learn and in the hope to eventually turn the ¨mico-business¨ over to them.

 

Perhaps you would be surprised that what you consider a “poor” village that has a hard enough time getting the meals on the table could buy a cake.  Since birthday gifts are non-existent a food like tamales or cake is about the only way these families do celebrate birthdays or special occasions like Mother’s Day.  Stacey cranked out 4 cakes on Mother’s day.  It’s also something several people/families can pitch in and enjoy together.  It turns out sharing a cake is a great and special joy for these people.  One of the first things the girls from the youth group shared they wanted to learn was how to bake.  You never know what you’re end up using in life, thank Momma Reeder for teaching Stacey baking skills!

Between eating & selling the vegetables from the garden, small meat production with rabbits, our chickens laying eggs and fattening up, and now selling the cakes we are making strides to model sustainable practices in our life and find our way to make a small income on our own.  What we make from veggies and cakes is nothing through U.S. eyes and will never pay for insurance/etc. but by rural Honduran standards, it’s something. 

Middletown Middies

As this second year away from our previous professional jobs in the States comes to a close we wanted to say “hello” to Stacey’s previous co-workers and students at Middletown where Stacey was a Spanish teacher for 3 years.  We do sport the Middie’s shirts down here from time to time.  Congrats especially to those graduating this 2013 who started with “Señorita Reeder” in 8^th grade Spanish and now 5 yrs. later are graduating high school.  Congratulations Seniors!

Hot.

Sometimes, a Honduran will say something that makes my hair stand up. For example, I was recently digging into a plate full of interesting-looking crabs with a great big Honduran in a restaurant located on a back waterway that smelled suspiciously like used diapers. The constructor of said restaurant clearly wasn't familiar with advanced construction equipment like bubble levels. About halfway through the plate of crustaceans, he looks at me, laughs and says. "We'll see how long this puts us in the bathroom." It's chuckle-worthy when a gringo says it; terrifying when a Honduran does.

However, sometimes a Honduran will say something that makes you feel feel justified about your suffering. For example, when you're weakened from aforementioned intestinal distress and so are all your neighbors. Instead of them saying, "You wimpy gringos," they say, "These are trots of historic proportions." And, when you're laying on a concrete floor trying to cool off, they raise their dripping heads and say. "Que insoportable." This is unbearable.

This may come as a surprise to you, but sometimes, in Central America, it gets really, really hot. Like, really hot. We're at the tail end right now of our "summer." Summer here is defined as the time of year that is very dry and (as already mentioned) very hot. In theory, this will end in the next few days as the nightly rains get cranked up again. More than ever, we're ready for the rain. Once we're swimming to get to the car, I'm sure that we won't want it anymore, but for now it sounds great.

When I walk out the door now, the animals inform me that it's too hot for the gringo to be outside. The chickens are squished under their coop trying to stay away out of the sun. The horse is scooted up against a scrawny tree in the shade. The dogs roll over miserably and glare at me like somehow it's my fault. The rabbits pant, probably near death, and the vultures take to the air as 180 lbs of white meat saunters out into the light. I know that earth passes closer to the sun during other days of the year, but every now I glance up to check to make sure that we're not actively falling into our closest star.

The sun, delightful fire that it is, also bakes everything. The good news is that the crap you just stepped in won't be sticking to you. The bad news is that all excrement in a 100 mile radius has been made into instant dust that will shortly try to get into your lungs and give you some kind of bizarre infection to confuse  doctors. Dirt (known the rest of the year as knee-deep mud) converted into its weaponized airborne form, assaults your eyes, nose and lungs everytime something moves. As our car approaches people walking along the dirt road, shirts come up to cover faces until the worst is over.

If you're thinking, well, at least you're not as muddy, you would be wrong. You see, the neat thing about floating dirt is that it adheres to anything wet or sticky--which would be you. Wipe your face with a light-colored towel in this situation, and you'll see what I'm talking about. From the moment you wake up on a hot day until the moment you wake up on a cool day several weeks later, you are sweating. Not just sweating, leaking water from every little pore on your body, which in the humid tropics, won't be evaporating anytime soon. Have you ever tossed a towel onto a spill and watched the water slowly spread to the edges? If you have, you can understand the function that our clothes have been performing over the past month. Ah, the romantic tropics.The good news is that some of the modern synthetic materials used in shirts today really do a great job of getting that sweat off you. The bad news is that today I'm wearing cotton, and it is an underperformer.

I promise I'm not trying to whine. I'm just trying to share the joy. The climate here is one of extremes. If it's not raining, it gets really hot. If it's not hot, it's raining... every night. And when in starts to rain during the day in November, it rains a long, long time, sometimes weeks without stopping. The huge blessing here is that the temperature here, in our area of Honduras, most of the year, is very bearable, especially up on our little hill. We're really, really grateful for that. We just got back from visiting Choluteca, about 8 hours from here in the southernmost tip of Honduras. Choluteca is close to the ocean and is at sea level. It is also the driest zone in Honduras. As you can imagine, the driest zone in Honduras, combined with an altitude of 0 ft. makes for a very warm town. I really did feel bad for the folks there. I can't imagine living with that kind of heat year round.

Sometimes, a Honduran will say something that is truly magical--something with the ability to lift your heart out of the depths of despair. For example, Alexandra (Fredy's wife) just walked into the room and said, "I just made some watermelon juice out of purified water, with ice made from purified water. Would you like some." Alexandra is a wonderful woman.

Why?

Our beliefs have lead us to the strange place we find ourselves now. Many mornings I walk out the side door, watch a family patriarch pass by on horseback, look down to see baby chicks peeping, smile and wave to our little three-year-old neighbor, brush the growling puppy off my pant leg, smell the woodsmoke from traditional stoves, glare at the clouds waiting for the dry season to end, and I just sit down.

I sit there and I think the ancient question. Why? Why am I here? I have an answer.

I have passed long months, years actually, without being able to answer that question. I have sat unfilled in the office chair, making decent money, living comfortably, doing okay work, getting into the car I wanted so badly, driving home to my beautiful, loving wife, opening my Bible in the morning and evening and serving people around me to some degree. I had faith. I had work. I had my money, family, car, even passions. But it still wasn't enough. You see, you can understand something, you can even react to it with some degree of passion, but there is no substitute for giving it all up.

In Christianity, there is the concept of the "law that gives freedom." For me, many other believers, and nearly all non-Christians, this idea often rings as ridiculous. But over time, I am beginning to understand that only by our willingly and freely relinquishing control of our lives to a capable and all-encompassing goodness can we ever truly be free. Because we're all slaves, as much as we, especially us raised under the red, white, and blue, fail to acknowledge it. Our desires, our confusion, our mixed feelings and even our dreams quietly slip in and capture us. And before we can even cry out, we're done. Life has passed by and we didn't even resist. We peacefully followed the path that our silent chain led us down.

I have passed sleepless nights, hanging on my chain over the pit of sweet existential doubt. Our proximity to the pit brings us clarity; the closer we come to the edge, the clearer things become. As we doubt our being and question our deepest assumptions, two possible answers emerge from the darkness, and a choice must be made. We are confronted with the only two options: I exist for a reason or I exist for nothing. Our choice is then in our reaction.

Should we decide that our lives have no meaning, we must respond accordingly. Should we truly accept that we have no significance, that we have not been created for a purpose, but have instead risen from nothing for nothing, then our only logical response is hedonism. Should existence have no purpose, why should we treat it as if it does--for a meaningless future? However, we exist in a culture full of moral expectations and principles that we insist on forcing onto others. "No!" our culture cries out, "I believe each person has the right to choose what is right for him or her." But do we really? Or is genocide always wrong and there is a moral responsibility to oppose it? If we do believe that, then why? If our understanding is that there is no absolute overriding principle, why do continue to treat humans as if they have innate value? Why should we respond to humanitarian crises? We lie to ourselves when we live as if people have value when inside we know that they do not.

However, should we, in our trip to the pit, admit to ourselves, no, accept that we do have meaning, that we exist with purpose, then we must respond to this truth. Whatever this truth is, whatever this meaning may be, we have an obligation to ourselves, as seekers of truth, to do everything in our power to respond to its principle and purpose, and no amount of half-hearted partial commitment will do.

Should any part of this discourse interest you, please read The Reason for God by Tim Keller. He takes a much more intelligent, comprehensive look at some of the logic and philosophy that surrounds Christianity and discussed here briefly.

Meat

 

 

As you can imagine, without a refrigerator, eating meat turns out to be a bit of a rare activity. However, just because we don't have electricity doesn't mean that animal flesh is non-existent. In fact, we're surrounded by it, the only little job is to catch it and get the feathers, fur, feet, scales, etc off of it. Although at times I've considered grabbing the chicken pecking at my feet or the insomniac rooster, the truth is that we've decided it is probably best to not steal hungry children's only protein source. Noble, I know.

So, up until now, our meat quotient has been met in various ways. The one time that we bought old cow rubber out of the back of the rusty pickup truck that serves as the Sunday meat wagon convinced me and my aching jaw that this was not a suitable avenue. Four hours sitting in a leaky boat with a hook, line and  suffering worm and only a half pound of minnows to show for it was also a non-starter. The truth of the matter is, we eat meat when we go down the hill, when our neighbors slaughter something, or when we catch or are given a wild animal.

On that last point, we've eaten two or three kinds of doves, tepisquintle (lowland paca), chachalaca (a big bird), and way more than our fair share of armadillos. Everyone else also includes iguana, rabbit, guatusas, possum, boas, and maybe the occasional anteater on the menu. We'll probably try them eventually, we just have missed the opportunities up until now. Armadillos would almost be a reliable food source if it didn't require traipsing around rainy tropical mountainsides at night with a flashlight, stupid smelly dogs, and an hour's work to convince them they don't need to spend the night in their holes. It turns out that they are even less interested in getting out of their shells. Thankfully the excitement and newness of showing up on the gringos porch with a live armored possum has also calmed down.

So, all that leads to where we are today. With our own little two-story meat factory.

The Steinbeck Memorial Petting zoo. Everyone dies in the end.

It has been the plan to raise chickens for some time, but the garden prevented us from just free-ranging them. In addition, we've had a few wild rabbits for a while now and thought it might be nice to eat their babies some day. So, we built this little cage and fenced area for them to live in relative safety. The chicken was actually given to us some time ago as a little one from an ancient townsperson, but it was happier with the neighbor. Arjelia benefited from the chicken's eggs until the moment that she brought over a plastic bowl full of ten tiny pollitos and the mama gallina under her arm as we finished the coop.

People seemed a little concerned at first. Apparently, chickens don't like to be closed in. In fact, if you just leave them in a small space they will die! And, and if you don't give them more shade, they will burn to death! And, if you give them just chicken food, they won't make it!  In addition, they had too much water. Sounding a little bit like the "dogs and cats just eat corn" advice, I took their help with a healthy dose of skepticism.
 
But as it turns out, contrary to popular predictions, the chickens are just fine. More than fine in fact. A week after getting them, somebody came by.
Visitor: "Who gave you more chicks?"
Gringo: "No one."
Visitor: "Those aren't the chickens you had."
Gringo: "Yes they are, why?"
Visitor: "They can't be; they're too big."

So, the chores are growing as well as the chickens. Not only do we need to weed and water the garden, feed and water the cat and dog, but now let the chickens out, check the water, give them food, come back at night and shut them back up in the coop and feed and water the bunnies (maybe rabbits is a better term if we're going to eat them). In additions our little serving-size companions generate a substantial amount of brown bi-product that is certainly helping the garden.

The rabbits have been pretty low-maintenance. Water, high protein green stuff, vegetable biproduct, a little space, and they grow like crazy. A guy name Luis walked past while I was working in the garden sometime in early March and said "Do you like rabbits?" I hesitantly replied yes, and was immediately gifted with three tiny rabbits. Since then, they have easily tripled in size if not more. They seem very content. They're in the top story of the meat palace and have a pretty good view. Before they moved in, they were in a hastily constructed cage hanging from a rope. Maybe they miss the boat-in-a-storm experience they had before, I hadn't even thought to ask. And, I don't know if they're male or female, if anyone is a rabbit genitalia expert, feel free to chime in. I've tried a couple of times to flip them over and look for informative shapes and such. They don't appreciate it and there doesn't seem to be a whole lot to see. So, who knows. I'm tired of checking and little ashamed of bothering them so.

But, all in all, it's worth all the goofiness, and is generating a lot of positive conversations. A lot of the food for the rabbits and chickens come from garden leftover and other beneficial species that we planted. We talk about the value of water that improves personal and animal health and allows for the garden to be a possibility. All of this is done in a way that gives them confidence and hopefully inspires them to replicate the efforts in their home.

Special thanks to Bob and Kim Westfall for their donation making this project possible.

A frequently asked question

We get the question from time to time: "what does a typical week or typical day look like?"  Or, "what do you guys do?"  So we thought we would try to answer.  Obviously it's hard to answer because of how "routines" and "normal" don't really exist for us.  We never know what a day will bring!  The bottom line every day goal is to be most effective for the Lord.

A Typcial Week:  We try to spend 5 days a week in our community and our main goals there are two fold.  Number one: Supporting the local pastor, church, and community leaders in their development.  We are not leaders in the community, we only support and encourage the locals.
Number two: Creating and living in a demonstration area.  Modeling sustainable technologies such as rain water harvesting, gardening, small animal production, hygine, security, education, etc.  Not just material modeling, but as well in our lifestyle (spiritually, socially, physically, and emotionally).  We're not perfect and never will be, but as all Christians we all need to be at all times ambassadors of Christ.  We attempt to model positive thinking, conflict resolution, manners, etc.
The other two days of the week we volunteer with the ministry Heart to Honduras specifially in their Community Development department with their Coordinator Fredy Martinez.  We spend one day in the office organizing, planning, reviewing solicitations from communities/churches.  The other day we spend in the field working side by side with community pastors and leaders in their own development. Everything we do in our village, but just with less frequency.

A Typical Day:  We wake up at 5:30/6am, have coffee and a bread/cracker (very cultural for early morning here) while we have our personal devotions.  Remember that the village doesn't have running water, electricity, or public transportation, so all that implies (you can imagine) changes to our day.  From there Kaleb hits the garden (weeding, plating, watering, etc.) and Stacey hits the pila to wash clothes by hand.  Making 3 meals a day also takes much more time for Stacey.  Without your typical refrigerator, microwave, oven, etc. we eat a lot of what the locals eat plus what we harvest from the garden.  The 5 most eaten foods in our village are: rice, beans, plantains, yucca (cassava), and corn tortillas.  If we are caught up on projects around the house (currently it's a rabbit/chicken cage) we have time to visit families and help out with community projects like the pilas, rain water catchment, gardens, etc.  When we're not out in the community we are supporting, teaching, and training locals.  We also have Sunday School and Youth Group to plan and execute with local leaders.  We wrap up our day around 8pm and are usually asleep before 9:30pm.

Hope that helps catch a glimpse, it's about as simple as we can write it out.

Rusty Movements

Something is happening at the church in Las Lomitas. Something strange. Something great. We have a pastor who has been very much a preacher of obedience, of wrath, of a great and terrible God. But over these past three or four weeks, a different flavor has begun. In our personal talks with Pastor Erick, we’ve begun to talk about the person of Christ. Who was he? How did he behave? What were his wishes for his disciples? How did he propose that the church would change the world? Our conversations have taken a shift towards the fatherless, the widow, the abandoned. During the services, the name of Jesus is now being mentioned as a thing of hope, not a brick to beat over someone’s sinful obstinate head.

And (Gasp!), it seems that the church is beginning to move itself. The joints seem a little creaky, and the pastor a little uncomfortable, but from within, locomotion is beginning. During this past week, several signs of hope are bubbling up. The group of young men is starting to realize that they could actually  make a difference here. It’s a small start, but there’s already a new bench next to the soccer field, standing as a proud monument to the power of change. In addition, this same group of young men put forward $25 to match the church’s $25 to help a local widow. We have an elderly lady who is very sick and whose children are very poor. Word trickled down through the grapevine that her bed was literally rotted through, and that she is entering her last days. The church took action and last night, we had a service in her house, where we turned over her new mattress, sheets, blankets, and pillow. I had to hold back the tears as Erick passionately urged his congregation to not forget the community’s widows. To not wait until they were gone and then put something pretty on their grave. We must take care of them while they are still with us.

Then (Gasp again!), when little Noe’s need for eye surgery came up. Erick invited Noe’s Catholic mother to church to explain his needs. Then, the people responded by providing $50 to help offset the cost of the surgery. This is a culture that doesn’t typically allow for this kind of interactions between protestant and Catholics; this gesture rips apart many preconceived notions that hold down many church bodies.

Then today (nearly fainting), Erick and I went down to another widow’s home today and split firewood for a couple of hours while she wasn’t home. This particular widow has a delightful story attached to her. She goes by Doña Berta and is old, toothless, and tiny, but so full of spunk that rowdy puppies seem listless around her. Her image isn’t dampened by the bandana she constantly has tied around her head. Every other word out of her mouth is “Dang this” or “Heck that.” Enough said, she’s a fireball.

When a medical team was here from Apex, I had the pleasure of translating for her as the doc asked her for her complaints. Her reply (gesturing grandly).

“Well, you see, I have this air that starts here. RIGHT HERE in my legs. Then I feel it rise up into my stomach where it rumbles around. It makes all kinds of godawful noise. But, then, it doesn’t stop there. It keeps RIDING up, HIGHER and HIGHER! Eventually, it gets into my dang head, then comes hissing out my ears. Puchika. That’s when I know it was the air, when I hear it sliding out my head through my ears. What’s causing that Señor Doctor?”

As deadpan as possible, I translated her complaint. The doc and I looked at each other for a moment, neither of us trusting our mouths should we open them. Then, with all the professional constraint of a good practitioner, he replied. “I really don’t know.”

All of the craziness aside, my heart jumped in my chest as we were discussing what she would think when she arrived home to see all of the wood prepared. Erick said, “I wonder what she’ll think when she gets back? She’ll ask her daughter who was here.” And the answer? “Jesus.”

These are the changes that we have prayed for, cried for, and gently encouraged for more than a year now. Our dream, our vision, is to come alongside the local church and help it recognize its potential as an agent for social change. That true hope would be shared with the world. A hope that doesn’t stop at a prayer of salvation, but encompasses someone’s whole being. Let us assure ourselves that we are not simply walking coffins for a fake, dead Jesus. Our faith was never meant to be locked up and used as a weapon against those with whom we disagree, but as a viral hope: something that starts in the visible and infects the soul, overriding our cynicism and changing history.

 Written early February.