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.