I'm very sorry

wow, I have been sooooooo soo soo busy, I'm so sorry to everyone who has been reading this. I wish I had time to blog about each one of these experiences, but I guess you will just have to ask me.

Since the last post, I went to a surprise double wedding where one of my friends renewed his vows here and had a ceremony, because he did not have enough money to have it the first time. Then I went on a super-charismatic retreat for an entire weekend (this takes me an hour just to talk about), it was called an encuentro, or an encounter with God. I also went to a hidden waterfall that was about 200 feet high and got to swim on top of the falls, I went on a teacher's retreat for a weekend in San Pedro Sula and there was the Mr. and Mrs. CEAD beauty pagaent, where I took 2nd place, that was very interesting. My 2 brothers, Tim and Chris, along with my mom, and 8 other members of a group came 2 weeks ago and we continued to build a little church in a village called villa San Francisco, we had an amazing time.

All in all I have had so many incredible experiences here, but I have finally decided to leave and go back to the U.S. next year, I really think God is calling me to train pastors in 3rd World countries and I want to go back and get at least a Masters, probably an M-Div, and go back out into another country and start teaching. Sorry this is so short but it's all I have time for, thanks so much for all of your prayers and support.

Praying about next year

We'll this is the time where I really need to start praying about next year. The North American, missionary pastor, who is in charge of all of us asked me to come back next year. Him and his wife said they would love for me to come back and I told them I was definitely praying about it. I was definitely going to go back to chicago 1 month ago, but the apartment I was going to live in for free is no more. I would still love to live there, I have some incredible friends back in Chicago and I'm still seriously praying about going back there. Or I could go back to D.C. and save up all the money I make and have a guaranteed job, (saving money for seminary).

However I finally feel like I'm getting the kids attention and some are getting more interested in the Bible, and I've been handling respect issues a bit better too as of late. I'm just beginning to learn how to deal with kids in this culture, and my relationships with them are improving, with most of them at least. So I'm praying about coming back too for another year, please pray for me as I really want to do what God wants. Thanks so much

To La Nueva Union Lempira

This past weekend, I went to a pretty remote village with my friend Tristan and an American Pastor we know about 5 hours away. We know the pastor from the English service that we attend every Sunday at 5 PM. We had been trying to go with him to one of these seminars he does for pastors for almost 6 months now and we finally got to go with him.

We left on Friday at about 10 in the morning and about an hour into the trip, there was a huge traffic jam. There was only one lane and everyone was completely stopped on the right side of the road. However there was no one on the left side of the road. So the pastor, in his big diesel Dodge Ram, decided to drive on the wrong side of the road for a while to bypass traffic. And we passed soooooo many cars, it was awesome, however cars eventually began to drive on the left side of the road, coming towards us. So we decided to move even farther to the left and get on the shoulder of the wrong side of the road. We were able to bypass many more cars, then the shoulder ended, but there was a steeper hill we drove down to bypass even more cars. Finally we reached our limit, there was nowhere we could go on the wrong side of the road. The right side was still completely stopped, but the left side, (coming past our car on the shoulder) was moving at slow speeds.

So then Tristan got out of the car and stopped one of the cars so we could get back across the road. And we got on the right shoulder this time and passed the rest of the cars. We finally passed the accident, where a huge beer semi-truck ran off the road, and the back end was just off the road. Typical Honduran driving experience, it was amazing.

We finally got there 4 hours later, we spent the last 2 hours vibrating, hitting our heads and hanging on for dear life and we drove on the bumpiest dirt and rock road, I’ve ever been on.

We finally got there at around 4:30 and immediately we entered the house of an overseer of about 5 churches in the village. His wife and daughter cooked us some food and we sat in his house and ate. They had some really nice beds for us 5 or 6 blocks away at a place that was built for teams to stay in from the states. We went there next, dropped off our things and then went to church, where we sang a worship song or two and then Pastor John started to teach in Spanish. His Spanish was really good, and was really encouraging for me to continue learning it. He did his seminar on the 7 churches in the book of Revelations. The first night he taught for about 2 hours, his introduction took an hour and 15 minutes so it was kinda funny to see him rush a little through the last 45 minutes. We ended and the church overseer’s family wanted to feed us again!!! I was already full, but I couldn’t turn it down, so we at another plate or beans and rice, and pork.

We went to bed and woke up the next morning and at some more typical food at the leader’s house for breakfast. More beans, eggs and rice, and banana soda. Then Pastor John went into the church to get prepared, while we walked around the village for about 45 minutes to take some pictures. We walked into the center of town and apparently there was a really big Catholic Confirmation happening that day, so everybody was there!!! There were so many people all dressed up and going to the confirmation. We kept walking and walked up a hill where we had an awesome view to take pictures. We didn’t go all the way up, the road could have kept going for hours, but we got some good pics. We went back to church and got there around 9:00 AM, because that’s when the seminar started. It was to be about a 3 hour seminar, and so he started teaching about these 7 churches again. And particularly taught about how one can lose there salvation according to a passage in there that talks about erasing a beiliever’s name from the book of life. It really made me want to continue teaching and learning, because that view can really mess with people. Although, it certainly is a difficult passage to deal with. But there are sooooo many passages that point the other way. Anyways, this blog isn’t to give good argumentation on theological issues, but it fired me up to study even more and preach what the Bible says from it’s context and with good hermeneutics. And especially to teach the people good hermeneutics, they had no idea how to interpret the Bible it seemed.

So Pastor John was teaching for about 2 hours and at about 11 o’clock he announced suddenly that Tristan and I would be coming up to share our testimonies. This was quite a shock to us, since he had said nothing about it to us in advance. So, immediately Pastor John totally leaves the church, and Tristan and I hesitate up to the podium. Tristan says to me, “Do you want to go first, or should I?” I responded quickly with, “You.” So Tristan shared for about 3 to 4 minutes in Spanish, and then I got up there and I was able to share my testimony in Spanish. It was really cool, because I’ve learned a lot of words in the Bible from listening to sermons at church every Sunday, so that really helped. It was really really cool being able to encourage other believers in a different language. It definitely made me want to really learn another language and teach in that culture.

I finished, and pastor John was nowhere to be found, so we waited about 2 or 3 more minutes and he finally came back. He started teaching again and quickly ended his prayer at 11:45. As soon as he said, “Amen,” he rushed by Tristan and I, saying, “Pack up everything quick, I gotta go to the bathroom!” We packed everything, and we instantly knew why he called us up to share our testimonies. Something in the food made him run to the bathroom every 45 minutes and he felt awful. And the sad thing is, every gringo knows exactly how he feels because it’s happened to all of us too at some point or another. We drove all the way home after that. The view on the way home was absolutely breathtaking, there is one part of the road, where there is a huge, steep drop on the right and left sides of the road. We managed to only get on the wrong shoulder one time on the way back and made it home in about 5 hours. All in all it was a great trip, one that encourages me to keep learning and teaching Biblical Truth.

Antigua, Guatemala, Holy Week

Wow, sorry it's taken me so long to write this, it's a week late,

Anyway, during March 11th-to the 15th, I went to Antigua, Guatemala with the married couple Tristan and Beth, and another Honduran teacher named Dania. Antigua is the 2nd most popular "Holy Week" place besides a city in Spain that draws alot of people. So it was very crowded.

Anyways, we left on friday right after school, drove 5 or 6 hours to Copan, Honduras, which has many Mayan Ruins there. To bad we didn't have time to stop there. We spent the night in a hotel and then continued on to Guatemala the next day. Tristan and Beth had friends there who run a Youth With a Mission Base down there (YWAM). So when we finally got there at like 2 in the afternoon, they led us to there house where we stayed for the 4 or 5 days we were there. That night there was a spanish movie night for a bunch of little kids and their parents that all lived in the same village as the YWAM base. There was already a team of high school and college age kids there, but they barely knew any Spanish, so I got to interact with a few of them alot, since my spanish has gotten better. After the Christian movie was over the leader got up there and shared the gospel in Spanish. Then gave popcorn and juice to everyone.

The next day we went into downtown Antigua, there were so many gringos down there I wasn't used to seeing so many white people, it felt kinda weird. We went to church and it was a bilingual church, which also felt weird, preached in English and translated in Spanish. After that we ate lunch at the "Mono Loco" (the crazy monkey) the food there was definitely more expensive than in Honduras. We ate American food pretty much the whole time too, since the family we stayed with didn't like Guatemalan food that much. Although we did have some really good tacos the first night. The town is so cool because all the buildings are very colonial looking, and you feel like your in a city 2 or 3 hundred years ago. All the streets are made out of cobblestone, so it's pretty old fashioned looking. The city is also surrounded by 4 or 5 volcanos, 2 of them being active, we saw one of them erupt right before church, a huge plume cloud of smoke came out, it was unbelievable.

Monday, we did a little reading and then went into town. We went often catch public bus headed into town, it was usually like 10 to 20 cents, and sometimes they were so packed that I was literally hanging outside of the door, hanging on for dear life! That's the kind of bus ride I like! We went into the market, which was huge!! And right away I noticed the immediate differences between the markets in Honduras and Guatemala. In Honduras people don't barter as much, you can't talk people down to much here. But in Guatemala, it's like they almost automatically expect to lower there price at least 3 or 4 dollars, depending on what you buy. Also Honduras has alot of wooden carvings and boxes, things like that. Guatemalan's sew alot more and had much more fabrics and clothes at their markets.

I almost forgot, on Sunday night we witnesses what so many Latin American cultures are famous for during holy week. "Alfombras," basically what they do is they start making these huge designes or patterns in the street. Excepts to make these designs, they use colored sawdust. We saw some of the most amazing designs, they were unbelievable!!! Anyways, they have this huge procession or parade, and they have like a thousand people dressed up in these purple robes with white pieces of clothe tied around their heads. And there are a few people that are carrying big metal containers of burning incense and swinging them back and forth. All of these people take turns carrying this enormous wooden box, with Jesus on top of it carrying the cross up Calvary. It was basically like a big float for a parade, except made of wood and finished very nicely, and carried by maybe 30 men on each side. These took turns carrying it all day, it was carried to all sorts of different villages and then ended up in the city at the end of the night. When all they people and floats march through the streets they walk over the alfombras and ruin them. There were also many Roman Soldiers dressed up in real armor and spears. They had a leader who was accusing Jesus, and there was also a few smaller wooden boxes being carried by other people with the same purple robes. Mary was on the 2nd biggest box, and there were 2 more smaller one's than that, I'm not sure what people were on those boxes. I was told that all the people who volunteer to carry one of the boxes believe that they can help earn their salvation by doing that, it was really sad to hear that.

The procession probably lasted 25-30 minutes, it seemed like the people with the purple robes never ended. There was also like a mini-high school marching band type of deal walking behind the wooden box parade things. And then a bunch of balloons as well behind them.

Tuesday morning we woke up at 5:00 AM because we had to catch a shuttle in town at 6 that was going to take us to the bottom of a volcano. So we got picked up at around 6:30 and drove about an hour and a half to the bottom of Pacaya, one of the active volcano’s in the area!!! We got there and everyone was selling hiking sticks because they were saying that the rocks and the lava were really sharp and that you needed them in order to keep your balance up there. And just in case you fell, you could put your stick down and keep from falling on the really sharp rocks or into lava. However, I’ve been Latin Americanized by now, and I know he people try to sell you things you don’t really need. And I was very confident in my hiking ability, maybe a little nervous though, seeing as I have never been anywhere close to lava before though.

We started our descent up, the unusual thing about this trail was that it was a very steep trail up, the terrain wasn’t too difficult though. But they kept horses behind our group (there was about 12 of us) so that when someone got tired, they would pay 8 dollars to ride a “taxi” aka, horse, all the way up the horse. The guide was a native Guatemalan and we had Dania who was our Spanish expert, she’s from Tegucigalpa but she’s very light-skinned, so everyone mistook her for being a gringa. Anyways, she caught the guide saying that the “Honduran” is slowing the group down, which was pretty funny, be she did a good job making it up to the top.

It was about 2 hours to the top, and we were hiking on black sand for the last half of the hike, while avoiding huge horse turds the whole time. We finally got to the top, and what a view!!!! We got to see all the hardened black lava, that had obviously trickled down the volcano already. We were on top of a lookout point looking down of the hardened lava, and we could see a couple spots in the center where there was red-hot lava showing through. And there was people like 5 feet away.

So Tristan, Beth, Dania and I went down there, got some good pictures, and then Tristan and I went out to try and discover where the river of lava was coming from. It seemed like there was a steady stream coming down the center of the volcano, so we walked up the side trying to find the river of lava coming down to where we were. By the way the hiking stick salesman were right, the volcanic rocks were very sharp and if I would have fallen it would have hurt a lot. Since they were sharp, I never slipped on any on the rocks at all, it was perfect. However, a lot of the rocks instantly crumbled when I walked on them, so I had to make sure I walked on the big rocks. So Tristan and I were beginning to walk on rocks that were getting warmer and warmer, we knew we were getting close, then all of the sudden we saw our guide standing on a lookout point on top of some rocks. He told us we couldn’t go any farther, but he let some other kids go where we were who weren’t part of our group. We asked him why and he just said that the group was far away from us. Which was true, but a terrible reason. So we walked up to where he was and I asked him where the best spot to see the river of lava was. Instantly he knew where it was and pointed to the direction it was in. Tristan and I took off, but then he said we couldn’t go again, once again we asked why? He gave the same reason, the group was too far away from us. Then he said, I’ll lead you there if you do one thing for me. We asked what it was, and he said that we had to collect tips for him, from the whole group at the end of the hike, so we agreed and he took us right to the mouth of the river where the lava came up and formed into a river. The rocks were so hot, that my feet were really really hot, after being on them for 2 or 3 minutes. Tristan and I both got to put his hiking stick into the lava, as soon as it touched the lava, it burst into flames!!! And we each picked up a little piece of lava with the stick. We took a few pictures and videos and then I had to run off those rocks as fast as I could because my feet were so hot.

Unfortunately we only had about an hour to hike around the lava and stuff, we hiked back down and went back home to Antigua. We bought some groceries for the next days trip, because that was our last day in Antigua. So the next day we woke up at 5 AM again, and left, we stopped in Santa Barbara, Honduras, about 2 hours outside of Tegucigalpa and visited some of the in-laws of a teacher we know, Ms. Sabillon. It was in a little village, and her family was really big there. Everyone worked so hard in the village to make food and drinks everyday. They made us home-made “chilates” which are like a really hot healthy drink, combining cinnamon, ground cocoa, and 2 other things. It was pretty good, then they gave us homemade canteloupe juice, which was really really good. We left pretty soon after that though, because we were so tired.

When we were about 30 minutes from home, we got pulled over by a police officer, they have random police checkpoints everywhere during holy week. The police officer thought that we were all gringos, so he asked if we had a triangle reflector in our van, I guess it helps if you have a accident, you can put it in front of your car. Anyways he said it was illegal not to have one, and said his supervisor would write a huge fine and take away the driver’s license (Tristan). However Dania was in the car, and knew that the police officer was just trying to get a bribe. She was pretty ticked and kept asking to talk to the Police officer’s supervisor, since he kept saying that his supervisor would write the ticket. They argued for a while, then Tristan said he would buy one tomorrow and after about 10 minutes of intense dialogue, he just let us go, because he knew we didn’t believe him and we weren’t going to give him a bribe.

We were so thankful to have Dania with us, because the police definitely were trying to take advantage of us.

More to come later....

My brother comes to town!

Us eating watermelon with the Youth Pastor (Pastor Olman)




I will have to finish telling about my Roatan trip later, make sure you check back to look at that one, I’ll post some really sweet pics too.

This past week may have been the best week of the year so far, my brother and 8 other people came down here from the United States. 5 of my brothers friends from James Madison University as well as 2 others from Mary-Washington College, and 1 who just graduated from Randolph Macon. I knew all of those 3 from Summer’s Best Two Weeks.

They arrived last Saturday around 1 in the afternoon, and I went with Pastor Olman, the youth pastor here to get them. They brought so many books for the library here it was great!! The principal was so happy because they only had 1 set of encyclopedias and a few dictionaries in a school that has 800 kids. So we drove back to the church to drop all the books off. Then we talked a little bit about what we were going to do for the week and we needed to count all the money that everyone was able to raise for the church in Villa San Francisco. We raised about 1500 dollars initially which was pretty good. Pastor Olman seemed pretty excited and told us that the church was being built from the ground up and that all there was right now was land, a bunch of cinder blocks and 2 bags of cement.

The girls in the groups stayed at the girl teacher’s house and the guys stayed at my apartment with my 2 other roommates. We dropped all our stuff off and then went to the mall where everyone was able to get the currency here (lempiras) out of an ATM with their credit cards back in the States. We went to the food court after that and got a few snacks, and walked around the mall a little while. We decided to head back after that and went over to my apartment and they were all blown away by the view from 3 stories up. Then we all went on the roof for a while and had a meeting up there for the 2 chapels that we would have to do for Monday. We were definitely behind at that point and I was getting a little nervous, I’ll explain more about that later. But we had a bunch of good drama ideas for the chapels. The first chapel was to be for 7th-11th grade and the 2nd was to be for the elementary school kids. After that we went to Pupusas Miraflores which is a great Pupusa place, and really traditional Honduran food. Most people enjoyed it, and we went back and crashed that night.

Sunday we woke up and walked to church (about 6 blocks) and then went into the service. Everyone really liked the service and the worship songs were some of the best I’ve heard at church in a long time. Not only that, but there was a visiting pastor from the U.S. who was preaching. So everyone could understand perfectly because his message was translated. All the people I play soccer with every Friday with and help build churches with, were all at that service. So I got to introduce everyone, it was really cool. Then, one of my 8th grade kids was outside with his parents. They always make pupusas and typical Honduran plates of food for lunch. So all of us went into the cafeteria, and that’s when everyone experienced first hand the famous “water in a bag.” We each drank a ½ liter of water out of a bag, it was really fun for them. After that we went to Valle de Angeles which is a really big tourist town, and everyone bought souveneirs and other things like that, we came back that night and worked on our chapels.
No one had very much prepared and no one had rehearsed anything. So I was pretty nervous, considering that all anyone knew about the group was that they were connected to me, and I was hosting them. We worked on 5 or 6 dramas for about 5 hours that night, only got to rehearse them 1 or 2 times, and got a few worship songs in English that we knew. We went to bed exhausted and I was really the only one who knew what they were in for in the morning (or so I thought) as I have done a few chapels.

Monday we woke up and did 3 really powerful chapels for the 7th graders to 11th grade, after each drama 2 people came up and spoke about it, using some Scripture and we played a song or two also. It went really really really well, I think that the team was expecting them to listen and take it seriously a little more, but the 10th and 11th graders really did, and it hit home for a lot of them. Tim finished up the chapel with a presentation of the gospel, I think a few people ended up accepting Christ, and we sang another worship song. God really worked powerfully in that service, and it was the best chapel by far that any of the kids had all year. Then I had to leave because I had to teach class, but they did the elementary kids chapel afterwards. Apparently the kids really loved it and they taught them all these new songs and had a boxing match between Satan and Jesus, which they loved. When I walked out of class and went to get my lunch, I saw the whole team signing autographs, they probably signed over 100 autographs, it was ridiculous. That was the one thing I was not expecting. I also forgot the mention that all the high school girls and girls were swooning over the gringos and gringas, blues eyes and lighter skin are very attractive here, and people are obsessed with relationships, so they got a big taste of that.

They stayed and talked about there faith, a lot of them shared their testimonies in the classes, it was really really cool. My loudest class was as quiet as a mouse while many of the group members shared their testimonies. The day ended and the group went down in the courtyard to hang out with the kids and sign more autographs, and give their e-mails out to the older kids, plus get in a lot of pics with them. I got some Spanish worship songs, and my brother and I also met with the Pastor of the village we were going to in order to work out the details of our coming. We were able to raise about 1400-1500 initially which helped them a lot. We went back and everyone dosed off for naptime, while Lisa, Foo, myself and Kelsey all went to get glass bottle sodas at the mercadito across the street from my house. That night we had the best pupusa lady come over to our house and taught us how to make pupusas. They were soooooooo good. The best.

Tuesday, we woke up and got to church by 7:00 AM, two of my 10th grade students, Pamela, and Alejandra had volunteered to help build with us and since our guide and translator Pastor Olman had to go back into the city, we took them along to help and to translate just incase we ran into a jam. It’s about an hour and a half car ride out there, so we got there and I went with Pastor Rene to buy the supplies for the church. Kelsey had gotten 75 more dollars just in time and I gave it to him. With that money, he had just enough to buy everything he needed to at least start the building project. Basically the only thing that had been done so far was digging the foundation around the building. So we started digging and using a pick ax to level the foundation trenches. We also cut 300 pieces of re-bar with a hand saw and cut a lot of little pieces of little metal wire. We made about 12 really big framed of rebar for the building as well. And we certainly had a fair amount of blisters to go with our work too. That village had so many little watermelons in it, and the family that currently lived on the church property would feed us them usually twice a day. When we finished for the day at around 3:30 they gave us coffee and semita which is really good sweet bread to eat with coffee. We went home and showered, and then went to a little hole in the ground restaurant with typical Honduran food, called Carnitas Kennedy. Just to give you an idea about the food, the Chilaquiles I had have two hard taco shells on the outside, taco sauce, and cheese and the outside, more cheese and chicken on the inside, and surprise jalepeno peppers mysteriously in the chilaquile somewhere. Everytime I eat them my napkin basically turns into a big ball of greese. (yummy).

The next day we did pretty much the same thing minus my 2 students who were really helpful, because the youth pastor as the big church back in the city, Pastor Olman was there. He is one of the funnest guys you will ever meet and he just had a 2 month old baby with his wife, so it was a real privilege to spend time with him. He had such a great time with the group, we took a stroll through town and got a few sodas, it was pretty cool. We left around the same time again that day and went to a Baleadas place, which is like a big wrap with eggs, beans, sour cream, salsa and some other stuff, they are really good. The rest of the night we practiced a drama in the Bible of the sinful woman in Luke 7 who washes Jesus’ feet with her hair. We practiced 3 songs as well, and found out that we needed 800 more dollars that we didn’t have, to get thicker re-bar to put down before the cement. So we got 300 more from my brother and Kelsey and decided to call it a night.

Thursday we went to the Jesus statue, the best place to go in the city for a overlook of it. It is amazing, and also a very very popular place to take kids on field trips, which I forgot about until we got there. There were so many kids from public schools there, it was absolutely crazy. They were following us everywhere, so I took the group over to some rocks. I was sitting on one of the rocks and 4 little girls came up to me and were telling me about all their relatives in the U.S. And I got to tell them in my very limited vocabulary that I was a teacher at a Christian Bilingual School and the group had come to share the good news of Jesus Christ, the one who has come to save us from our sin. It was really sweet, I could have talked to those girls for hours, they were about 9 or 10 years old I think. We went back and ate at Bojangles the famous restaurant in the south that somehow made its way to Honduras. And then met Pastor Olman at the church. He was happy to see us and we got a chance to see his little 2 month old baby and his wife Gloria. We drove there and the pastor had an enormous sound system that we tested out. We rehearsed our drama, and a song. Then we split up into 2 different teams and went out into the village and tried to invite everyone that we could. I’m not sure how many times these people had every seen a gringo, for the kids it may have been there first time. We told them that we were having a special meeting or service with a drama, songs, and preaching, and a lot of people came. More than expected, maybe 70 or 80 in all. There were many many kids that came.

So we sang in Spanish and I introduced the group with my brother, Cally, one of the team members preached an amazing sermon/testimony all in Spanish, it was really well done and impressed a lot of the people. We acted out the drama and then quizzed the kids on the drama. If they got the question about the drama right, they reached their hand in the candy box and pulled out as much candy as they could with both hands. They loved it. We taught the kids a Summer’s Best Two Weeks song, and then closed out with Hope and Kelsey talking a little bit.

Afterwards we hung out with the little kids for a while, playing with them, and the family who had a house on the church property made us all dinner. It was really nice of them, we started back home and we took a 5 minute break to look at the stars in the village. They were so amazing!!! We got a few Cokes, by the way Coca-Cola is so much better in this country, reflected on the week for about an hour. God had done so many things and it was so cool to be able to talk about it. There is so much more to do at the church, but when I gave him the 300 more dollars that my brother and Kesley had gotten, Pastor Rene started to cry and gave us all the biggest hugs. And he said that the service that we had, laid the first spiritual stone in the church, which was a huge complement. God did so much, and He has so much more to do if He wills it. I had to teach on Friday, so my time was up with being out of school, 3 days was definitely a lot to take off, but it was worth it. The guys and girls packed up, went to the mall one last time to get some last minute souvenirs and coffee. Then they came by the school to say good bye, and 3 of them talked with the principal about possibly coming and teaching here in the future. And then they left and headed back for the U.S. And I went home and immediately took a nap, which I needed desperately.

This week has been pretty crazy so far as well. The seniors have been fundraising and yesterday they all sold themselves as slaves to the other students for the whole day. Which meant so many more distractions in class. And Tuesday, 6 teachers were absent and there are only 4 to cover classes, so they had the seniors put on a big soccer tournament the entire day. I was the referee for the championship game, and I was quickly reminded of how much everyone hates the referee. He never seems to be the good guy, always the bad guy. To my students who take the game of soccer very very very seriously here, it was even more so. But after this week is another week off of school.

To Roatan and Back!!

So last week was a week long of spring break!! Which means I went to the Carribean, an island off of the northern coast of Honduras called Roatan. Last Friday, we had a teacher's training day before we left, and we all learned how to make better lesson plans and played some soccer and basketball with all the teachers. Saturday I packed and ate out at a Restaurant. We left on Sunday morning at 7:30 AM, and got into the biggest coastal town of Honduras (La Ceiba) at 2:30.

When we got there we got a taxi to a hostel and put our stuff down in the rooms. Somehow in between the bus and the hostel, my camera and my spanish-english dictionary vanished. Which really really stinks. Everything was closed on Sunday though, it was crazy how many little shops were in the city, and everything was closed except for a few restaurants on the beach. So we went to one restaurant on the beach that had hammicks to lay in. My friends and I got some drinks and chilled on the beach for a few hours and then went to bed after eating at a different restaurant.

In the morning we took a cab to the big ferry which was leaving at about 9:30. Everyone was really worried about getting sea sick except for me. I bragged about how I had never thrown up, and therefore I would not be taking any drammamine. It was about an hour and a half boat ride and the waves were alot bigger than expected. Anyway to make a long story short I vommited about an hour into the boat ride. It was one of the worst feelings I've ever had. We got there and grabbed a cab down to the West End of the island. The island is 15 miles long and about 2 or 3 miles wide.

When we got to the West End, we rented a cabin for 35 bucks a night for 4 people. So it was pretty sweet. There was all kinds of cool different restaurants there. They had a few native Honduran places, a Switzerland place, a Thai and Vietnamese place, tons of other places. Plus a fish and chips little trailer was there owned by a British dude named "Chippy Banger," he was definitely the coolest guy that we met. He invited us into the trailer it looked like he had a Honduran girlfriend or wife who ran the place with him. In his amazing accent, he boasted about the only fish and chips place in all of Central and South America. Then he commented on how clean his kitchen was and said he had lived in Honduras for 35 years (he was about 60). Then he told us that he had 11 different kids. And finally told us about the people who really understand the Carribean culture of a slower pace of life. He said Americans didn't really understand.

The rest of the week was pretty fun too, we stayed in this place called the Mermaid Cabins, 35 dollars a night for a cabin, 2 double-sized beds, a mattress on the floor, air-conditioning, a refrigerator and a hot shower. And it was about a 2 dollar water-taxi ride from West End, where we were, to West Bay, which is the really really nice beach. Or it's a 45 minute walk from our cabin. We took the walk gladly, on the beach, up and back every morning and night.

I got really burnt the 2nd day from being in the sun all day, so the rest of the week I had to make my resting place on the beach under some palm trees, which was fine with me. I finished reading Desiring God, while I was there, it was well worth the amount of time it took me to finish it. I was convicted by so many things in that book, it was crazy. We went snorkeling too in West Bay, the water was unbelievable, but the fish were even better, the colors of the fish were amazing. All we had to do was swim off shore about 50 yards and there was a mine-field of coral reef there. Huge caverns and caves to swim through, it was really cool, and everywhere you turn there was another school of fish swimming through. We had a decent amount of frisbee time too.

We went out to eat every night at different places, usually spending about 5 to 6 bucks on our meals. We ate at a Thai place, a few Honduran Restaurants, an Italian place, I think that about covers it. They have some of the best Scuba Diving there in the World but that wasn't in my budgets, it was only about 25 to 30 dollars for each trip out, but on my salary that's alot of money. So that was pretty much it. It was a great time and the girls I was with got me sucked into an old TV series called Gilmore Girls, I still can't believe I got sucked into it. It was a good time though, and very very relaxing, probably the best place to just chill that I've been to.

El Picacho

Well last weekend, on Friday I went to the market and bought some oranges and mini-bananas. On Saturday, I went with some of the girls to the huge Jesus statue on top of one of the largest mountains in Tegucigalpa. It will a really cool spot overlooking the whole city, I’ll post some pictures of it on here. Jesus is really big….I mean the statue of course. The true Jesus is bigger than big. The statue was very large and Jesus has his hands out like he’s preaching to people, but then his feet are in the position like he is being crucified. And both of his hands had the scars of the nails on them. So, it was a very interesting statue. We had a super-bowl party over at our house last Sunday, unfortunately most Hondurans don’t really care about American football. One of my friends, (Aben) came over to watched and was talking on the phone for a lot of the time. And in the 4th quarter, the most exciting part, he fell asleep!!! Right in front of the TV.

The past week was pretty normal and chill. This past weekend I went to the market again to get some more fruit, and on Saturday I went to a country club that we go to sometimes and listened to a Tim Keller Sermon, which I’m beginning to listen to much more. And I’m getting exciting about getting his new book that comes out in 2 days, unfortunately I won’t be able to get my hands on that until I get back to the States.

I’m still plowing through Desiring God, and it’s still really good although I have to go through it kinda slow. I’ve definitely been really convicted through that book and it’s been good to have some edifying material around me since I don’t get too much at church these days. The internet has been really nice for that reason.