Honduras - part 2

Honduras: Part 2

This and the next few posts will be organized by months. If you're viewing this post on your email, click here to view it on the blog. There are a couple videos later on that won't show on your email. 

January: 

School started out very well. Stacey came and stayed for a week as part of a practicum she was doing for a class. She gave so much good advice during her time there. 

Every month the church has a ladies's meeting. This is my sister-friend Brinis. She and her sister Osiris are some of my best friends there. They both LOVE God, love the Bible, and are faithful at sharing the gospel. I cannot wait to see them again.

Some of the ladies in the church.

My housemate and sister-friend Kristel. Kristel is another best friend. She has a heart for God, is good at witnessing, loves to go on adventures with me and Kara, and is great at speaking Spanglish with us. 😅

Kara and I with Mrs. Rolston

Kara, Kristel, I.

February:

Our whole American team went to a getaway conference for missionaries in another city. One morning before the conference Trenton, Kara, and I drove to this little coffee shop. 

It had a cute upstairs with a swing and old food truck. :)

Also, I don't have a picture of it but Honduran power lines are a wonder to behold. lol. There were some right next to this coffee shop so close you could touch them. The power lines looked like a huge, tangled mess and were close to the building. I've seen a lot of these tangled messes around the city. The power lines next to our house were attached to tree trunks. That's one huge difference between Honduras and America. 😄

 Kara and I stayed in one of these hotels.

We learned about president's day at school. 

On our way back from a shopping trip in San Pedro Sula.

Valentine's day party! 

Dara & Ricardo

Emiliano & Jair - best friends

Jaydon & Steven

Rosalyn & Genesis

Love these little kids who I played with in the nursery. The boy is Ezekiel. (Forgot the girl's name.)

We celebrated LOTS of birthday parties during school. 😊

Another fun thing we were able to do besides teach in Hope Christian Academy was teach an English class to adults on Tuesday and Thursday nights. Anyone from the community could attend. Kara and I taught phonics/reading and Trenton and Miss Marti taught grammar/sentence building. 

March:

Hondurans celebrate Father's Day in March so we had a party for the dads of the students. The kindergarten class and 1st grade class sang songs and recited things they learned. This video shows 1st grade singing "Obedience" song. 

We also went to a Christian rodeo. Toward the end of the night the hosts led singing and preached the gospel. This is a video of a song they sung. 

Kara & I did almost all of our shopping together. She has a great personality and is such a fun friend to hang out with! I miss her tremendously.

Kara and I took our students on a field trip to a farm. What a fun day that was! 

Cousins Genesis & Ashly

My favorite Genesis 😊

Alejandro, Rosalyn, & Dara

Jaydon, Ashly, & Christi

3 Amigas 💕

The owner brought this sweet donkey out so the kids could sit on him. 

This farm is gorgeous and sometimes they host weddings. At this first section they have a pavilion, a large swing, an area with hammocks, a sitting place to enjoy refreshments, and picturesque plants and flowers. We walked across the road to their animal farm. They raise, harvest, and sell fish. 

Video of the fish ponds.

They had the most adorable fawn at their farm! 

Kindergarten & 1st grade

To be continued..........

My Experience in Honduras - part 1

Hi Friend! 

It's been a couple of months since I've returned to the U.S. from Honduras, but I still wanted to give the photos a permanent spot on this blog. I'm making them into a series or else this post will be forever long. lol. 

Let's start from the very beginning.....

 

It was my first time flying outside the U.S. and Honduras is such a beautiful country to fly over with its mountains and vast fields. 

I lived in a gated community in Santa Rita, Yoro. The guardhouse is that little building which was right in front of my house. 

The gate. A guard stayed at the guardhouse 24/7.

A panoramic of the inside of my house.

The Scenery:

Everywhere you look you can see beauty - the mountains.

One Saturday we attended a conference near the beach. 

This is outside a mall.

The sunsets never ceased to awe me. 

This was one of the stores we shopped at - La Colonia. That's a guard stand in the middle of the parking lot. 

Standing in a Texaco gas station near the school, you can look out and see the school/church building off in the distance.

This is the view from the porch of the school.

This next picture was taken a few months later. The grass turned brown from lack of rain.

These houses are across from the school/church. 

Honduran Food:

My housemates and I made tortillas one night for supper. They turned out thick, but okay. :) 

This was a sampler of chicken: barbecue, tenders, and something I think was the equivalent of wings.

This was one of our first meals: A Pupusa. It tasted like a corn tortilla with slightly cooked cheese inside. Not the best, to be honest. In my opinion, Honduran cheese does not taste good. 

This dish is missing some ingredients, but it's plantain chips on the bottoms, then meat, cheese (optional), pickled onions (so yummy!), cabbage, and a salsa mixture Hondurans make which is called pico de gallo, I think. We often ate this during Sunday school because it's so easy to put together. The fried plantains called tajadas are another good food. 

Rio Grande:

On Wednesday January 10, Kara, her sister (who visited for a week), another friend named Stacey, and I went for a boat ride on the Rio Grande in a boat similar to the one pictured below. So fun!

This river was fast flowing and sometimes we swam in it. 

Scenes from my neighborhood: 

Almost, if not all the houses there have bars on the windows and most have a gate/wall around the house. But people are very friendly there. You can just stand outside someone's house and yell 'hola' or if their gate/fence is open and they're outside, you can walk in and talk. 

Walking down the road in my neighborhood to the Pulperia.

This and the next picture shows 2 different Pulperias. Pulperias are individually owned, usually part of someone's house, and they sell drinks, food, soap, cleaning supplies, all the basics. If you need something quick, pulperias usually have it. Every neighborhood has them and different ones may sell different items. One pulperia I stopped by sold homemade chocolate bananas which were just the best. 

Saturday witnessing

Every Saturday morning people from the church would meet, the pastor would share a devotional thought, then we would head out in different groups to different communities and walk to each house, passing out tracts and engaging people in conversations about God and the gospel. Like I said before, people are very friendly and are willing to stand and talk. I've gone door-to-door witnessing on Saturdays in the States before and most of the time no one was home, they didn't want to talk, or they didn't answer the door. Hondurans are different in that they spend most of their time outside, swinging in their hammocks, working, cooking, chatting with neighbors, etc. 

One group I particularly enjoyed going with always went to the country and sometimes to the mountain country. 

My sweet sister-friend Alexa. This adorable baby was at a house we visited.

Another sister-friend, Brinis.

The owners of this house had many animals. There was a hen walking around with her chicks...and a duckling! It was the cutest thing to watch. 

Here's a short video. (If you're viewing this post on your email click here to watch the video.)

The Town:

To get around a lot of people ride in 3-wheeled cars called Motor Taxis. They are pro at weaving in and out in traffic in the town. lol. Here's a short video. (If you're viewing this post on your email, click here to view the video on the blog.)

Paintings:

Often after work my housemate-friends and I would paint, sometimes while we watched a movie. These are some paintings I did. This next one is a painting of a picture I took of the sunrise. 

To end this first post here are pictures taken on the return trip to America.

Revelation 14:6-7 ~ And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come: and worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters.