Day of the Bible

I had to put this in here before I forget, today was "the day of the Bible" so there was a huge march with huge sections of different roads shut down, in order to make way for a huge parade that lasted for over 3 and a half hours. I guess it happens once every year. All the churches from all over the city and all over the country got together and marched in support of the importance of the Bible from churches all over the span of the country. It was very very cool to see, and I was just thinking how different the culture is here because of that, you would never see that kind of activity in the States. It was so cool to see all of the different denominations united over this issue.

Yikes

So I'm very very busy this week planning for a very busy week because mid-term grades are due on wednesday. Also I'm going to a soccer game at the stadium in Tegucigalpa this wednesday, between the two biggest rivals in the country, Olympia and Motagua, I already bought an Olympia jersey, so I guess I'm pulling for them. I'll take some pics and try to post them.

Earlier this week there was a student in 9th grade, whose parents came to school and warned our principal that they had gotten kidnapping threats and in those kidnapping threats they told the parents when and what time their kids did everything during the day. And a teacher was robbed at gunpoint right outside our school, someone took his cell phone and that was it. No one is sure if the events our connected at all, but the school is on pretty high alert.

One of the teachers from our school has family on the Northern Coast near the Carribean, and right next to San Pedro Sula (the 2nd biggest city in Honduras). Her family really wants to have all of the North American teachers to come and stay at their house. So that's where I'll be going this weekend, I'm really excited about it, and it should be really fun!! One of those nights we will be in a beach house which I'm pretty excited about too.

Hopefully I'll be able to post some thoughts later, not much time to do that now though.

Oh I almost forgot, the teacher conference on friday and saturday was really good, they had 3 breakout seminars and the ones I went to were all in English. The most helpful was probably "20 ways to engage your students" that was very helpful. It was at a private Christian school up ontop of a mountain about 30 minutes away, and there was a ton of really experienced North American teachers there who knew their stuff.

To my surprise, the Bible teacher there just happened to be a graduate of the Moody Bible Institute in 1991. So we had a good talk about which teachers were around still. He remembered Sauer and Dr. Marty, and DeRosset. He also had Quiggle for Philosophy and Cornman for church history, which was very cool. He taught in Senegal I believe before he came here, at an academy there, in which he did say that a girl named Jennifer was teaching there now. I'm not sure who she is though. But it was very cool to meet a fellow Moody here in Honduras!! He was a youth min major with a pastoral emphasis, and he talked alot about the importance of worldviews. Which I think are definitely important but I don't have time to share any of my thoughts on it now.

Discipline

Sometimes I feel like I'm here to discipline kids, not necessarily to teach them. It's definitely very very difficult to teach when I always have to discipline first. This past week was by far the most diffcult in terms of discipline. I handed out 5 or 6 punishment assignments, one detention, and got in 2 or 3 arguments about punishments with students, my weeks ended with giving a detention to one of my students name Carlos who proceeded to yell and argue with me for 5 minutes about how it wasn't fair that he got a detention. I will be glad when this initial period of disicpline is over, and the students know what I expect in class. But by the end of this week I was beginning to question why I was here, which I've come to find that whenever I begin to ask that question, it means that I'm in over my head, and I have no choice but to rely on God's power, Word, and prayer to sustain me.

I got my stitches out on Wednesday, my cut is healing up pretty nicely, there was never too much pain, which was nice (except for the 2 tetanus shots I got).
This week is a shortened week, because of a teacher convention we have this Friday, so that should be very interesting. I went to a really cool restaurant on Friday night called "La Creperia" where they have Crepes of all different kinds, and dessert crepes, which are really really good. So that was fun, but besides that, I've been doing some grading and other reading this weekend, so pretty low key. Please keep praying that I would continue to grow closer to the Lord, and that He would help me through these difficult times, to accomplish His purposes, for His glory.

La Tigra

The first national park in Honduras is in Tegucigalpa, it's called La Tigra, and we got to go last weekend on Sunday it was a beautiful hike and it led to one of the most amazing waterfalls I have ever seen. I got some great pictures of the city and some great pictures of the waterfall. The trail was pretty nice, it was a very muddy hike though, we heard about a volcano that you can hike to but we were not sure how to get there, maybe next time. It was a little expensive to go there too, like 10 dollars for each of us to enter the park. Here are some pics

Addresses

My address for letters is :

Jonathan Miller
Carrier: Bill Strickland
TGU 000158
P.O. Box 025387
Miami, FL 33102-5387

For packages:

Jonathan Miller in care of Centro Evangelistico
Colonia, San Ignacio
Contigua al Texaco, Tegucigalpa (Honduras)

Sorry I got this out so late.

Ouch

Wow, what a week it's been. Thank you to everyone who prayed for me on thursday, chapel and preaching went pretty well, a little better than I expected. I still wish I had more time to prepare though. But for the first time so far in chapel, God's Word was preached which was kinda nice to hear points directly from the Bible. Hopefully God worked in the kids lives because he certainly worked in mine.

In other news...last night we had a teacher's banquet, because it is teacher apreciation day on monday, which means no school on monday. So it was very cool, I sat next to one of the administrative assistants in the office "Au" I think that's what he said his name is. And one of his friends Pedro, who I met earlier and found out that we are very similar theologically, which was pretty cool. After that Tristan, (another North American teacher and I, with 3 of our friends to cheer us on, follow Joel, one of the Honduran teachers to our new friday night routine, arena soccer.

We were the only Gringos there, so were had our work cut out for us, we lost every game, and finally tied one at the end. During our last game in the first 10 seconds, I went up for a head ball and this other guy did as well, we ended up butting heads pretty hard. He immediately went down and was holding his head so no one could even see his face. I felt a little pain on the left side of my head, but I figured it was not anywhere near his injury so I went over to see if he was ok. I felt my head quickly as well to see if there was a bump, there wasn't really any bump, but when I looked at my hand there was blood all over it!! I was very surprised because it wasnt that painful, but I knew that I was the real one who was hurt, everyone took me over to the side and started spraying my head with water and then like 30 of the players surrounded me, and everyone was staring at me and talking to me, a few guys trying to comfort me. I heard from a few guys, "Ya al un Hondureno" which means, now he's a real Honduran. So everyone was welcoming me to the country via my head injury in a soccer game.

We called up the principal of the school, who shows us around and takes care of any emergencies, and she told us where an emergency room was. So we went there Joel was with us, showing us the way with his friend Algar, and Ms. Godoy, the principal met us at the hospital. So I got to experience the Honduran emergency room for the first time. And Ms. Godoy was translating for me. They cleaned my head up and told me I was going to need stitches, I wasn't sure at this point because I hadn't seen my head yet. Then they asked me when the last time I had a tetanus shot was. I said about 9 to 10 years, and they said then you need one tonight. So they gave me some stitches, 6 to be exact, the cut looked like an upside down "V" and gave me a tetanus shot in both sides of my but, which was probably more painful than the stitches. That was it though. After all that, it was a little over 100 bucks American money and they gave me some triple antibiotic ointment to place on my cut every 8 hours and got some headache medecine for me head, which was only about 10 bucks. I finally got home at about 2 in the morning, and was ready for bed. What a crazy night but I'm totally ok now, I get my stitches out in 5 days and in the meantime I have to clean it and put the gel on it every 8 hours. Everyone was so nice though and I had so much support from everyone. And God certainly used them to take care of me.

So I'm just chillin today, takin it easy, doing a little reading. I've had enough exitement to last me for a while. I guess this is why Mom and Dad wanted me to have insurance (which I have). It was also nice not having to wait in an emergency room for 2 to 3 hours before I was seen by a doctor, as soon as I got into the building, they took care of me, there was only 2 different room separated by a curtain, and of course my feet were too long and hung off the bed, which wouldn't have been bad except for the time when the cart went crashing into them, trying to get by. But overall I would have to say that my first trip to the emergency room here was a pleasant experience. I'll post some pictures of the place we played at.

Chapel

I don't have much time, I just wanted to get this out. I'm preaching in chapel on thursday on courage, so I decided to preach on 1st Samuel Ch. 17. (David and Goliath) Please pray for me. Thanks so much. Things are going pretty well this week, but if anybody has any creative ideas on how to teach philosophy or sociology, please let me know. So far I'm lecturing until my voice runs out almost everyday. Which is actually kinda fun. Gotta go!

Update

It's been a very interesting week for me. First why don't I update you on the Hurricane, Hurricane Felix was heading right towards the coast of Honduras and everyone was expecting the worst. The last time there was a hurricane this big in Honduras it was Hurricane Mitch, the storm just camped over Teguicigalpa for about a week and dumped a ton of rain. There were so many landsides that 10,000 people were killed and 8,000 missing. That's what many had in their minds when preparing for this storm. The secretary of education canceled school for tuesday and wednesday and the teachers showed up at school tuesday morning before going to the grocery store and stocking up on food, which took us hours because of the insane lines. The hurricane hit the coast on tuesday morning at 150 mph, and was expected to get to Tegucigalpa by wednesday morning. So we were all prepared, all the restaurants were closing early and we were getting set for a killer storm, or at least some killer rain. By the time the storm got to us on wednesday it was just clouds. No rain at all that day, when most places were calling for 10 to 15 inches at least. So through God's mercy, many people's homes were saved. And we resumed school on thursday.

Teaching has been pretty difficult this week. My first week I think was such a shock that it was hard to tell what a normal class would be like, and what my normal job entails. But this week I got a better view of what that looks like.....discipline.....lots of discipline. I just want to focus all my energy on teaching, but I cannot do that when there are discipline problems all around me in every class. It's very hard, very challenging, and I really really have to rely God totally to be able to really teach effectively and to discipline effectively. It's so hard too, because I'll walk into a Bible class and I'll want to start out the class in prayer but I'll see that I need to get control of the class first and I forget about praying. The times I have remembered specifically helps me to remember to rely on him and my identity in Him in class, especially when I feel like going into disciplinary mode, which results from anger sometimes. Anyways, it has been such an incredible reminder to me this week, that I really am like nothing before God, (Isaiah 40), and that all the nations combined are like a drop in the bucket to Him. And the necessity of relying on Him for the smallest speck of life change is a necessity. And it is certainly encouraging to know that a God of that magnitude is with me, and will never forsake me.

It's really mind-boggling to me to think about how much I thought I could teach these kids and change them on my own. Even though I kinda knew I couldn't in my head, I was not acting like it in class at all, but to have God drive that home to me has been a blessing and I have a feeling He will continue to do that for the rest of my life, for the purpose of not boasting in anything at all, accept for Christ and what he has done, is doing, and will do. (1st Cor. 1)

Please continue to pray for the kids I'm teaching.

On a side note, I also went into downtown Tegucigalpa last week, took a taxicab in there and did a little shopping where they had a surprising amount of thrift stores with American shirts everywhere, I couldn't even find one shirt with Spanish letters on it!! But there were so many little stores there it was mind boggling, in every little crevice and window in the street. I didn't even buy anything which was kinda weird, I guess one too many thrift stores for me in the States. I'm gonna post my mailing address on the next blog so stay tuned....