Jonny Life

I'm very sorry

2008-06-04T05:56:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-13T14:01:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-11T11:42:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-30T14:45:00.001-07:00

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!

2008-03-12T06:06:00.000-07:00

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!!

2008-02-27T12:28:00.000-08:00

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

2008-02-15T18:39:00.001-08:00

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.

More Opportunities

2008-02-01T08:17:00.000-08:00

Well, last Friday was continental night at school, every grade represented a different country from 3 o’clock to 10 o’clock. All the countries that were represented were in North America and Central American, except for the obvious China and Italy, which are easy countries to get food from. So every grade was making and selling food from these countries in order to raise money for their class. There was also a little representation of each country on a stage. And in between those times, there were blaring music, it was so loud almost the whole time, that I had to shout in order to be heard.

I was helping out 11th grade (the seniors) who had the country of Honduras. They also have this country because it always raises the most money. And we all know how much seniors need money. It was pretty fun, I actually didn’t have to help that much because parents were so involved, it was more helping with the setup.

Saturday I went back to a little village called San Buena Ventura to continue building a church there. We are making a little stage now and trying to fill about a 3 by 10 foot gap with dirt. We are also flattened the ground in a lot of area of the church. My back was killing me the next day, actually for the next few days.

This week we got back to normal school, which was very nice because I’m teaching basic hermeneutics to all my classes. Which means I only have to prepare one lecture for all my Bible classes. Also this week I started helping coach the 8th and 9th grade soccer team. Right now we are just conditioning, so, every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. We actually go to this place called the Olympic Village, it’s where the countries best track runners are, as well as other athletes. There is a soccer field, in which there is a really nice rubber track circling around.

We run about 2 miles every practices (coaches included). There is so so much complaining!! When I played soccer in 10th grade, we ran 2 miles just to warm-up!! And there is a pretty good amount of bad attitudes as well. Our best player may end up getting cut because he is so disrespectful, we will see what happens next week. But I’m pretty excited about helping coach.

Right now, as I’m writing this blog, it is report card day and so that means no school for the students, but for me I have to talk to parent for 4 hours.

Oh, and the mission trip that my brother (Tim) in leading is going to be really really cool. It will be on March 1st – the 7th. There are going to have so much to do that it might be better for them to stay 2 or 3 more weeks! If only that were possible. I’m really excited about it though, and I’m trying to get a few days off of school in order to hang out with them. We will see how that goes.

El Salvador!!

2008-01-25T06:27:00.000-08:00

We’ll this weekend was quite the adventure, we were only gone for the weekend, but it felt like we were gone for a week.

We left on Friday from Tegucigalpa, and took about 7 hours to San Salvador. It was the biggest bus I had ever seen, a double decker. It was awesome, and I could lean my seat as far back as I wanted. When we got there it was about 9 at night, and we took a taxi to a hostel. Some dude named Rodrigo was there and he said that he would take us to a place to eat Pupusas. Pupusas are like a pancake, except made with rice flour, and cheese/pork in them. In El Savador they put beans in them too, they taste amazing.

So we hung out with Rodrigo there for a while and then we went back to the hostel with him. Apparently he just hangs out there a lot, he’s 28, single, and has a computer web site designer job. And he showed us the new I-phone which it was my first time seeing it, since I really haven’t been back in the states.

We woke up and changed hostels to another one down the street and met a bunch of Americans who were from the peace core. They were there in El Salvador for a 2 year commitment. Then we took a taxi to a bus stop (most taxi’s were about 4 to 5 dollars). And we took an hour bus ride down to the beach (66 cents). We went to La Libertad and saw the black sandy beaches, it was my first time seeing a black sanded beach. We saw a few eels washed up on the shore and then we started to see all these fish filets just sitting out drying on the beach, and then more fish filets sitting on tons of boats up on the land.

(The beach by the way had trash pretty much all over it, there was a lot of trash even in the water, so there were virtually no tourists there at all, not a place I would probably spend a week at, but it was definitely fun)

There was 6 of us and my friends Tristan and Sarah each rented a surf-board with me and we went out to catch some waves. I was the only one who had been taught how and I had only been once, so I was trying to teach everyone else, which was a bit scary. The waves were very big at times and they were all breaking at the same time all across the wave. I caught probably about 10 waves and rode one really nice one in about 4 hours of surfing. However the majority of the time………I got pummeled.

We at lunch and I got some more pupusas at around 2 o’clock, I got 4 pupusas for 30 cents each and a soda for 40 cents, and I was stuffed!!! We changed our long-boards in for shorter ones after that to try to cut a little bit better on the waves. Sarah handed her board off to another one of my friends, Vanessa. When she went out the waves started to get rougher, and they were already big. If you were in the wrong place, you could get pummeled by 5 sets of waves in a row every time you put your head back up above water.

She caught one of the really big waves and wiped and, as did I, as did Tristan. When I got up I heard one of the kids from El Salvador on the beach whistle at me. I looked at him and then he pointed to Vanessa. I turned around and I saw Tristan holding Vanessa and so I ran over there as fast as I could. When I got closer I saw some blood on the back of her leg…..very bad sign. Then I saw a lot of blood on her left cheek, on the side of her face.

It was one of the nastiest cut I had ever seen from the fin of the surf-board. It was really deep too. So I took her board and she went with Tristan and his wife Elizabeth to the closest medical practice that was open. Vanessa is getting married this summer so, she did not want a scar at all, she was very concerned about it, as she should be.

The doctor she saw at first knew that he himself, wasn’t an expert and since the cut was so long and wide, she might have a bad scar if he sewed it up. So they put a large patch on her cheek and we all took a taxi (truck with an extended cab) back to San Salvador as soon as possible. To get a plastic surgeon at a private hospital to work on it.

Tristan and I got to sit in the back of the truck and there was a van with a huge music speaker on top of it that was playing songs for us and we kept telling them to raise or lower the volume for us. They finally played a song in English (Linkin Park) and then they turned it off after the first 10 seconds. We wouldn’t let that happen though and signaled them to turn it back on, which they promptly did, it was sweet.

We went to one of the best private hospitals in San Salvador, where Vanessa has to get an IV, x-rays, and see a plastic surgeon to get her cut sewn back up. Meanwhile I was talking in Spanish to an insurance information dude who ended up being a Christian. We talked for a while about what we were doing in Honduras, it was pretty cool. We never did get that insurance info in time though, so we had to pay up front.

So we went out that night, ate some ice cream, and Wendy’s and went to bed.

The next day we were going to climb a volcano, but instead we decided to take a bus for a quarter to downtown. So we went to the market and it was like 20 times as crowded and as big as the market in Tegucigalpa. There was so so many people there and the stores went on forever!! The other interesting thing about El Salvador was that they use U.S. Currency, so I was using quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies. I had pretty much used up all of my money by that point so I didn’t buy anything. (I used most of it on surfing).

We caught a bus to the bus station and took another 7 hour ride back to Tegucigalpa. It seemed like we had done so much in just a short weekend.

Yesterday I went to a viewing, one of my friends here, they behavior counselor, his father passed away. So I went with a bunch of other teachers there yesterday and we hung around for like 2 hours, I’m not sure if that’ normal or not, but nobody else seemed to be leaving either.

I had chapel today and I was soooooooo busy trying to prepare for it this week. I made a 10 minute video about cheating with my students and decided to focus my message on that since it has been such a huge problem at school here. And it was kind of funny, I caught one of my students cheating on a test, a period before I preached in chapel. It went really well though, much better than I expected, and ever better than the first time. And I felt like the kids really began to understand at least a little bit of what I said. Maybe not, but they seemed interested. Thanks for your prayer and continued support!!

Quick Post

2008-01-22T12:43:00.000-08:00

I'm sending this quick post just to let you know that I had an amazing time in El Salvador this weekend, and I'm definitely going to write a detailed blog about it on thursday night if I can, but for now, grades were due yesterday, all my students are frantically turning assignments in and trying to make up tests, and I have a chapel to prepare for on thursday on the topic of responsibility. Please pray for me, I'm really behind on it, and I hope it goes ok. Thanks again and I'll get another blog out this week about El Salvador and some pics of the beach there.

First Week back

2008-01-15T12:47:00.000-08:00

Hello, everyone,

My first week back was a little crazy, (as expected) but I’m finally getting back into a routine, and that’s definitely a good thing. Last week, I spent the majority of all of my free time writing exams and study guides. I had to make 7 different final exams and this week all the kids are taking them.

I didn’t do a whole lot over the weekend, soccer doesn’t pick back up for another week or so. Friday I went to the market and got some mini-bananas, and a bunch of other fruits and vegetables. Watched a movie that night, and then Saturday I walked to the mall and to this pretty big wal-mart type store to try to find some clothes. The school just changed the dress code rules for teachers, so I have to wear a shirt and tie every single day now. So I’m gonna have to go out and buy some now. Sunday I did a bunch of grading and watched the football games, and I was very pleased to see that the Cowboys lost.

I’m started reading Desiring God as well, I’ve had the book forever, talked about it forever, read the abridged version, and finally I’m starting to read it. And I thought I might be a little bored with it, but it is surprisingly pretty good, and I’m needing to hear a lot of the stuff in there again.

Anyways, things are a little more quiet this week, which is nice, with all the exams, and this weekend I’m going to El Salvador, and for spring break, in February, I’ll be going to Roatan, one of the islands in the Carribean, so I’m really excited about that. I always appreciate all of your prayers. Thanks so much.

Back in Honduras

2008-01-08T15:04:00.000-08:00

So, I'm back in Honduras, I flew back Sunday, and it was a very smooth flight, unfortunately I had to wake up at 3 AM in order to catch it. Things are getting back in the swing of things, and classes are still pretty hectic, I definitely continue to covet all of your prayers for me, because I really need them. The end of the quarter is right at the door, which means I have to make up final exams for all 6 of my classes, which also means that I have to make study guides for every class and grade over 250 exams. So it's going to be a very busy next couple of weeks. That's really it for now, I'm definitely lacking in motivation right now, not necessarily in the classroom but my motivation to continue to build relationships outside the classroom for some reason. I think I really want friendships like I have back in the states, but that's a really hard thing to build here for many reasons. Thanks again for your prayers.

Feliz Navidad!!

2007-12-19T05:48:00.000-08:00

We'll it's Christmas time here in Honduras, I think I'm finally beginning to feel like it's Christmas time around here. However, it's definitely a slow process because it's always so warm here, it's still about 60 to 70 degrees here everyday. This past weekend all of the classes have been rehearsing for a Christmas pageant that was put on yesterday for an hour.

Each class had about 5 minutes of choriography to a Christmas song that they did. It was very frustrating though, because I basically have not been able to teach for the last two weeks, and I still have a pretty decent amount of material to cover before the semester is over. But the performance went well I guess, I never got to see it though, because I was supervising all the kids in the back before they went on stage, and my video camera ran out of tape after like the 2nd performance. But oh well, God is still good, and I'm going back to the States tommorrow, which is very exciting.

All the North American teachers here, including me, hosted a big Christmas Cookie party since Hondurans don't make Christmas cookies, we had to enlighten them. So we invited almost all of the Honduran teachers over, all the bus drivers, the maids, alot of different people. And we baked alot of cookies, probably about half to 3/4 of the people we invited showed up. So it was a pretty good turnout. I baked peanut-butter chocolate chip cookies, which turned out really well, and then I baked these frosted flake cookies (tiger cookies) I made a few minor modifications to them, added a little more chocolate, anyway to make a long story short, they turned out looking like a bunch of black pancakes. And whenever I asked someone to guess which cookies I made, they would always say the tiger cookies, immediately. The principal said that the cookies fit my personality, I'm not really sure what that means, but I took it as a compliment.

Anyway I had alot of good talks with teachers there, and it was a really good time overall. So now I'm packing up and getting ready to leave tommorrow, school ends today at 12:00 and then I'm gonna go to the grocery store and pick up some last minute things to take home. I gave a 5 minute devotion today which I felt like went pretty well, it was cut 10 minutes short because the doors were locked to the chapel, but the Lord was definitely with me and He helped me to summarize things on the fly pretty well.

Thank you so much to everyone who has been praying for me, I am very very thankful for them.

Camping Trip

2007-12-10T17:28:00.000-08:00

Wow, it's almost time to go home, it's crazy how fast time has gone by here, and already I'm beginning to think and pray about if I should come back next year. I would really appreciate any prayers to this regard as well. As I'm pretty confused about it right now.

So school is going pretty well, the high school kids are going to put on a 2 hour Christmas program, so they are all using class time to rehearse, so that's pretty frustrating, and this quarter is shortened anyway, so it's pretty hard to get alot of grades in and cover alot of material. Last week they had a class period every single day, for every class in which a few police women talked and warned about the gangs in the city. Apparently there are alot of gangs here, about 125,000 in the country, and most in Tegucigalpa I think. The biggest gang, "dieziocho" was named after a street in L.A. So that was more class missed, but the Lord is definitely in control, and he continues to work despite what I want to do, or have the opportunity to do.

This weekend I met to go camping at the church at around 5:30, but being on Honduran time, we eventually left at around 7:30, so Tristan and I played to volleyball/basketball for a while with some of our students who were there. We started driving up the mountain at around 8 and got to this spot up on top of a mountain to our camping spot. We had to park at someone's house and then walk up a ways to our camping spot, because the road was too steep. It was of course dark out by then, and one of leaders who was with us "Joel" warned us that there were some guys up ahead who were smoking marijuana and could have weapons and guns. So I was a little on edge, and only a few people had flashlights out of everyone. I was one of the first people in front and then all of the sudden I heard about 5-10 people run into our crowd, everyone was shouting and Joel went into the crowd, he was yelling it's spanish at them. And there didn't seem to be any lights shining on the people at that time. Then someone shined their light and the intruders and they ended up being people from another car who were camping with us, and the whole thing was a practical joke to scare the gringos. And I have to admit, they definitely got me.

Then we set up camp and had some fried rice and talked for a while to other people. Then some of the leaders got up and shared for a while, little sermons, words of encouragement or their testimonies. It was a pretty charismatic night, a bunch of people got slain in the spirit. While I had alot of time to pray for people there as well as other people who I normally pray for outside of Honduras. Finally after all the talks and charismatic experiences for others, we ended at around 3 AM, and I had a long day at school, and all of it was in Spanish, so I was having a really hard time understanding and concentrating. After that we hadn't even roasted marshmallows yet. So we did that and went to bed.

We woke up at around 7:30-8:00 and I woke up to everybody laughing. Hondurans really know how to have a good time. They were just sitting their telling jokes for about an hours. Everyone was constantly cracking up. Then we had a pinata for one of the leader's birthday's (Raul). And then we hiked up about 10 minutes up the mountain to play on a really ghetto field. It was really fun though, because the field was so bad that everyone was on a more equal skill level, because no one had control of the ball. After about 15 minutes on of our guys was talking to some people nearby, (there was houses along the field) and apparently someone had died in one of the houses or was dead inside, something like that and we were making too much noise. So we left and hiked with half of our group for about a half hour down the mountain, actually it was partially through a creek and partially through some woods.

One part of the trail involved ducking under this huge bee nest. I was just walking and then the guy in front of me yelled, "abajo" and I knew I had to duck, but I didn't know why? Then I saw it about a foot in front of my face, bees all over the nest, swarming. So I quickly backed up and warned the guy behind me. Then I waited to time my run when the bees weren't flying around and I ran under and made it safely. Unfortunately, when I ran all the bees started flying around and stung the guy behind me, but he was ok, he just had a really swollen finger. We finally got to the water hole with a two level little waterfall, and we went in, most kids didn't even have their swimming trunks so they just swam in their underwear. The water was soooooooooooo cold. Reminded me of a polar bear swim I once had in Lake Michigan.

We hiked back another way, and walked through a huge farm with banana trees all up and down the mountain, it was absolutely beautiful. We had lunch and cooked a bunch of meat. And then headed back down the mountain and back to church.

Today I woke up sick, so I'm hoping to get over it quickly, we will see. And this week we have 2 half days, thurs. and fri. next week we have 2 half days tues. and weds. And I'm gonna be leading a devotional on wednesday for all of the teachers, so that should be fun.

Busy Weekend!!

2007-12-03T19:22:00.000-08:00

Some of the guys I worked with building the church

I’m really busy this week so this might be a little shorter blog, but last week was the first of 3 consecutive full weeks and then a half week before Christmas break and I get to go home!!!

So last week was a long week to say the least, I think I handed out 10 detetentions. Today I already wrote 6 or 7 afterschool detentions. So the discipline continues to be an issue, I’m just getting much better at handing out punishments.

Friday my buddy Tristan and I played soccer for the last time in the month of December with a bunch of the guys from church. It was a good time, and I ended up scoring 2 goals, which was pretty cool, (my career high in the Honduran professional church outreach league). Then Saturday we went to work and build more of a church in a village about 40 minutes away, the same one we worked on 2 weeks ago. This time we put some rebar in the cinder blocks and carried a lot of dirt up a pretty big hill. I’m learning how to carry really heavy things on my back, which is good, these bags were probably 60 to 70 lbs. depending on how nice the guy who was filling them was. We were fed 4 times though by the people in the village in only about 5 hours of working. So as you can imagine, I was definitely ok with that.

Then my friend Joel, one of the Honduran teachers, invited me and my North American friends Tristan, and Beth to his son’s 2 year old birth-day party. It was so fun!!! Joel and his wife were the most amazing hosts, there was probably 25 little kids and 25 adults all packed in this little room and outside. There was soooo much food, and there was a Pinata, which somehow I ended up busting a huge chunk of it open, and not the younger kids. Then there was pin the bow-tie on the hippo, and finally their was an amazing informal dance contest between 3 of the kids that was probably the highlight of the night. I have never seen a 4th grader shake like that in my life, it was absolutely hilarious.

On Sunday I woke up and all the North Americans went to Valle de Angeles, which is the biggest tourist town in Tegucigalpa. I bought a few things there and then headed back home so I could get ready for the big soccer game!!! It’s playoff time in Honduran Soccer and Olimpia the 4 seed was playing Marathon the 1 seed, Joel and I went and Olimpia won the game 1-0!! It was so fun and it was awesome to see them finally win one, since the other 2 games they tied and lost, that I went to.

So my kids have a lot of tests and quizzes this week, so I’m gonna be really busy, but this weekend, I’m going on a retreat to the mountains with a bunch of the guys I play soccer with. It should be really fun. I’m really looking forward to it. I continue to ask and covet your prayers as I need them so much. Thanks so much for all of the support of those who read this.

Costa Rica!!

2007-11-27T07:50:00.000-08:00

So 6 out of the 9 North Americans were planning on going to El Salvador this past weekend, we had bought our bus tickets and just as we were about to leave school on Wednesday afternoon, (which was our last day of school for the week) we found out that our 90 day visas had expired and we had to leave the country, but not just any country, we had to go outside of all the bordering countries. That means 1 of 2 options, either Mexico or Costa Rica or Panama, we chose Costa Rica and all of us had to go.

So we delayed our bus tickets for El Salvador for 90 days, and started to try to find a place to go in Costa Rica, we had about 4 to 5 hours to plan for the trip. We chose Tamarindo, which is a city right on the Pacific Coast and a very high Tourist population. In fact 80% of the population there is from somewhere other than Costa Rica. The School paid a driver to take us in a 12-15 passenger van and off we went at 5:30 in the morning.

We had to drive through the entire country of Nicaragua which took a long time and everytime we entered a new country we had to get out, get our passports stamped, pay a fee to enter and leave the country. It usually took about 20 to 30 minutes every time we had to do this. It was some of the most beautiful country-side I have ever seen though. In Nicaragua, we past by a huge lake with a volcano right on it, I think there were actually 2 volcano’s near it. The drive there took about 14 total hours, with a few more stops for random police checkpoints.

We finally got there and stayed at the cheapest hotel we could find, which turned out to be a little room for 100 bucks a night, but 4 of us split that. The next 2 nights we moved to a Hostel, which was much less expensive. They had a lot of Italian food there and seafood, the first night we ate Italian pasta, and the second we went to this restaurant called Joes, and the name of the dinner plate I order that night was called, “Nachos as big as your ass,” no joke, I’ve got a great picture of it too. It took me a while but I finished the whole plate, and felt very very uncomfortable afterwards.

Also on Friday, we went on a zipline ropes course about 40-50 feet up in the air across a jungle-like area of forest. That was pretty fun, we saw an iguana there, and I got some good pictures of that too. We spent a little time on the beach and after my nacho dinner we went out to the beach again to swim at night.

All of the souvenier shops there were so incredibly expensive, so I just bought a beach towel, because my other one got soaked on the beach. I have never seen the tide move so far out and so far in this quickly in my life. It was so crazy.

The next day I was at the beach almost the whole morning and in the afternoon I decided to take some surf lessons, because Tamarindo is pretty famous for surfing I guess too. They had surf lesson shops everywhere you walked. It was a 2 hour lesson and I had a huge long board that was much taller than I was, it was so fun though. I think I’m gonna have to move to the coast and go into surfing ministry now. I think I’m definitely hooked.

That night we had typical Costa Rican food, which consisted of rice, beans, eggs, salad, and some kind of meat, pork, steak, fish, and rice pudding for dessert. It was all very good. So after that we went to the grocery store and got some items that we needed, including some Costa Rican coffee, and some A&W Root Beer, (they don’t have root beer in Honduras at all).

And then a 12 hour drive back, we are legal citizens again, and shouldn’t have to do this again. But it was really fun. I listened to a couple of really good missionary biographies along the way too, by John Piper, the lives of George Mueller, and William Wilberforce, very very edifying and good. And I even listened to a sermon by Robert Hahn, I’m officially on the Chesapeake Church podcast list now.

Building time

2007-11-19T18:34:00.000-08:00

last week was a pleasant shortened week thanks to a sewage problem on monday, led to the closing of school. But after that we had a normal rest of the week.

Just to let everyone know, everyone seems to keep asking me if teaching is getting any easier and to tell you the truth, it's not, but I feel a bit more confident now, and I continue to develop better relationships with more of my students everyday. Right now when I supervise at recess I have a good enough relationship with 3 10th graders, that I usually talk with them for the whole 20 minutes everyday, and we usually have a pretty good time talking. (Pablo, Erick, and Jose).

On Friday My buddy and made our normal arena soccer routine on Friday night, and then got a few hours of sleep. We woke up the next morning and joined alot of the same soccer players from our church to help build another church over in a pretty big village about 45 minutes away. We all went on a big church bus, and I made some really cool new friends with 2 guys named Luis and (well I forgot the other one's name, but we worked with them all day), carrying cement, shoveling dirt, pretty much the whole day. This might sound like torture to some of you, but it felt really good for me, because the only work I've been doing so far has been lifting markers to write on the dry erase board. We were laying down cinder blocks with cement and smoothing out the floor and tamping it down the whole day. One of our friends was digging one time and he accidentally crack right through a pvc pipe that ran to give everyone their water. It spring like 2 to 3 feet at first right out of the ground, but some of the natives came over really quickly, turned the water off and taught us how to replace that part of the pvc pipe, it was pretty cool.

We went to church that night, and started to prepare for our big American thanksgiving feast we were going to have, since Hondurans don't usually celebrate thanksgiving. We invited about 25 total people and we all ate on top of the roof of one of the North American's apartments. Alot of our closest Honduran teacher-friends were invited to the dinner, and they really enjoyed it. Alejandro, my little 4 year old buddy was there, and we had a really good time, I always love playing with him, we went to the fair together 2 weeks ago. Everyone loved it though, we had a really good time saying in English and in Spanish what we were thankful for. And I definitley said how thankful I was of all the Hondurans who have welcomed us so warmly. As well as for God who has plans that I would have never expected or never imagined, being here would be a great example of that.

After that we went to the English speaking church and I had been talking to the pastor about following him to a meeting where he trains different pastors. However I just found out that it got bumped back a week!!! The same weekend as our retreat with the soccer guys on top of a mountain with a sweet waterfall. I think I'm gonna go on the retreat because I'm alot more committed to those guys, and I'm pretty sure I'm gonna have alot more opportunies to go along with Pastor John, training other pastors.

And I just bought a bus ticket, 60 bucks round trip to San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador. 6 of the North Americans are going on this thursday morning, we leave at 6 AM, and we'll leave at 2 PM to go back on Sunday. Were gonna hit up the beach, hopefully some volcanoes and other cool places, hopefully get some cool souveniers in the process too.

So that's it, that's the update so far. It's really cool that God's giving all these opportunites for me, every weekend is full with all kinds of different opportunities.

My Crazy, Insane Adventure

2007-11-12T09:54:00.000-08:00

So Saturday was by far the craziest adventure I’ve had yet. I went with a few of the girls from the States to this village that was destroyed by an earthquake about a month ago. Apparently it was only an hour away, so driving was not going to be that big of a deal.

Unfortunately we got a late start because we were getting a cell phone hooked up in order to call if we got lost. And it’s a really good thing that we did. There was 2 cars that went, the first car had our friend Aben and two other people who worked for an embassy, they went first and were about 2 hours in front of us. We left later.

About and hour down the road we were wondering if we were coming up on our turn and so I called Aben, and he told me to look for the sign to “Porvenir” unfortunately there were no signs for this turn-off, so we drove 30 km past it. We turned around and headed back, it was another 45 minutes to get to Porvenir, then after that we were to ask for directions from people on the street to a little town called Morale.

So I did all the talking since my Spanish is a bit better than the others, and we asked like 4 or 5 people who seemed to be giving us conflicting directions. They eventually pointed us down the right road, and for any future forks in the road, there were enough people hanging outside, that we just asked them. So we started the ascent up to Morale, I didn’t know at first that Marale was a small dirt road headed up a mountain but that’s exactly what it was.

We drove for probably about 45 minutes up this mountain until we finally came to Morale. Morale was like our base-point to go even further up the mountain, because the people who had gotten wiped out by the earthquake were an hour further up the mountain from there. The people up the mountain were also in bad shape because the roads were really really muddy, only four wheel drive vehicles could continue up the mountain. And of course it is also very cold in the mountains and they didn’t have very many clothes.

The other team had gone up the mountain 40 minutes before we had even gotten there, so Aben told me to find a man name Said Lainez, and he would direct us from there. So we went into town and I asked a guy if he knew Said, he said he lived over to the right, so we went a few blocks down and I walked into Said’s house, his son and daughter were there. They said Said was in the Caldia, a little further up in the village.

Since I didn’t know where the Caldia was and what it was for that matter, we drove up to the second level of the village where I continued to ask people where the Caldia was, we finally found it and I got out and talked to Said, who was a very nice and friendly guy. Since we didn’t have a four wheel drive car, they arranged for a man to drive us up the mountain.

So we started driving up, (much steeper roads this time) and the driver was picking people up in the back of his truck every 5 or 10 minutes to take them to their village that they lived in. Then the muddy roads began and all of the sudden it turned from a normal truck ride, to more like a carnival ride, sliding and bouncing everywhere. This went on for about 30 minutes, I’ve never been fishtailing more in my life, and these roads were dangerous too, because one wrong move and your rolling down the mountain. We finally caught up with the other truck with Aben in it. They had already been to the camp which was 20 minutes further down the road, so we decided to turn around and follow them to a different village that needed supplies. As soon as we turned around the truck finally got stuck in the mud, probably in a good 2 feet, the tires were spinning and the truck was sinking. So we got out, and the people from the other truck came down to watch, there was even 2 soldiers with M16’s there and everyone was just watching. So I decided to help push and we eventually got the truck out.

We continued up the mountain, and stopped at a few more villages, but by then most of the supplies were already handed out. We stopped at another village, that seemed pretty well off, and handed some supplies out to a dad, who had 5 or 6 kids there it looked like. None of them had any shoes and of course they looked very cute. There was also the most breath-taking views that I had ever seen on top of the mountain, we only had time to stop and take pictures one time, but it was absolutely beautiful.

We descended back down the mountain, we also had to cross probably about a 3 to 4 foot creek as well in the truck, that was really fun. We came back to the village and the girls started to play with all the kids in Marale, there was like 25 or 35 kids just hanging out in the town just waiting to be played with.

I was talking with Said and he was telling me that barely any gringos every come up to their village. He thanked us for coming and wouldn’t let me pay for the gas that our escort used to drive us around. I asked if we could come back some time and play with the kids, and he said whenever you want! We headed back down the mountain and all the way back home, but we definitely want to go back again, definitely the coolest adventure I’ve had yet.

I think I’m going on December 1st to go with a pastor who trains other pastors, it’s gonna be about a 5 to 6 hour journey.

The Week

2007-11-09T18:17:00.001-08:00

So this week was very short. Wednesday morning there was a taxi strike, I'm not sure all the details or even how it worked. All I know is that they got their issues resolved and we did not have school because of it. I guess this is our version of snow days, since I think its only ever snowed here one time in the last 100 years or something.

I was having severe respect issues with one specific student this week, he was arguing with me alot and didn't seem to understand why I punish him more than everyone else. Simply because he disrespects me more than everyone else. So I'm gonna have to suspend him on Monday. Other than that the week went pretty well.

Today was report card day, that means that the students have a day off of school and the parents come in to get their children's grades. First of all they have to make sure that their payments are up to date for the private school, then their children's grades are given, and finally they talk to any teacher that they need to talk to about their children. So I was sitting in a room with other parents whose children were doing poorly or failing for the most part, from 8 AM until 2 PM in the same seat. Most of the parents were understanding, I had one parent who told me that her son said that my class needs to be more fun and dynamic, putting the blame on me for his bad grade, but that was really the only parent out of about 40 or 50 that didn't seem to cooperate as much.

Tonight, I'm back to soccer, but I'm not sure how much longer I'm going to be able to play because I'm having some tendonitis in my knee flare up again because its starting to get pretty cold. Last night I went to play volleyball up at Acedmia los Pinares on top of a mountain, it's always much colder up there, and my knee hurt so much I could barely walk, but today has been much better.

Please continue to pray that I would be relying on God more and more everyday for His strength, power, and grace, to work through me and be clearly communicated to my students.

There was an earthquake here about a month and a half ago, and I felt it just a little bit, but apparently it wrecked a whole town, so tommorrow I'm going to a village to help give them clothes and supplies, so that should be really cool. And only 2 more weeks until thanksgiving, time is really flying.

Thanks so much for your prayers

New Exciting Opportunities

2007-11-03T19:17:00.000-07:00

So last weekend I went to the picnic at CCI, a second church that I've been going to that has the english speaking service. We were there for about 2 and a half to 3 hours, and had to go back early because one of our buddies had to go back early for tutoring english. But during that time I got to talk to a couple of cool guys, one guy I was talking to was telling me about how he grew up in Panama and played semi-pro soccer there. They won the national title while he was playing on the team one year. I also got to talk to one of the Pastor's there named Pastor John who is actually from Pittsburgh, PA!!. I told him about Summer's Best Two Weeks, but unfortunately he had never heard of it.

So I was talking to Pastor John and I found out that he actually trains pastors in the mountains every weekend, in remote parts of Honduras. He goes almost every single weekend, so I told him that that was definitely a big interest of mine and that I would love to tag along with him one weekend. He said that would be great, and he actually looks for people to go with him every weekend for accoutability and protection. So I'm think within like 2 to 3 more weeks I'll have an opportunity to go.

This week was pretty crazy in school. The final grades were due this week and the kids in my 7th and 8th grade classes simply do not study at all. So as a result I have some classes in which amost half of them are failing. I think this quarter what I may end up doing is just teaching them how to study. And to take notes.

Let's see, it was about an average week for detentions I handed out about 4 to 5 this week. Disicipline still continues to be an issue, but I'm getting used to dealing with my students though, which I guess is a good thing.

Wednesday I went to another game at the national stadium, Olympia played Victoria, I went with 2 other Honduran teachers, Victoria is the 1st place team, Olimpia is 2nd. They tied 0-0. Mal partido, porque no estuvo gols.

Friday, my American buddy Tristan and I went to play soccer at our normal place where I scored my first goal!!!!! And then afterwards we went to this big gas station type place with alot of the guys from soccer where we hung out for about 2 hours with them. I had a couple really good talks with guys there, so my Spanish is definitely improving slowly but surely.

Tonight was the beginning of our church's missions conference in which they have once every 6 months. I also went to teen challenge and a new orphanage which has just been built. Teen challenge is a place for recovering drug addicts and ex-gang members, in which they enroll themselves for a year. After that they graduate and move on usually, although some come back to the facility and work there. In fact, there are over 100 participants in the program now and about 20 staff. All the staff except for the director are former participants in the program. I'll try to post some pics of it later.

The weekend

2007-10-26T19:11:00.000-07:00

The week of testing is over thank goodness!!! I'm definitely ready to stop grading tests, it took so long, especially on the last day of grading them. Today was a half day, so things in school were pretty chill, and the students were allowed to dress in normal clothes if they paid 5 lempiras (25 cents), so everyone dressed in their normal clothes of course. I got to chat with a couple of my students today, whcih was pretty cool, made a little visit with the doctor for some minor difficulties I've been having, and then played some chess with one of my students the last 20 minutes of class. Oh, and I bribed a class into giving me some pizza, even though they bought it themselves, it was pretty cool.

We went down McDonalds for the first time and I sunk my teeth into a nice Big Mac, just like home. Then we went to Centro, downtown after that, I did a little bit of exploring into different stores, had a little pastry, and then we went to the enourmous outdoor food market, the biggest by far that I've ever seen, it's in the parking lot of the national stadium. And the whole parking lot is entirely filled with tons and tons of vendors mostly selling fruits/vegetables/cheeses,eggs, and any other non-canned food you can think of. I got some food, and some of the biggest and best grapefruits you've ever seen and then we went home, and watched the sound of music.

I'm going to post a picture of the only picture I have of downtown, I'm hoping to get more in the future.

Last weekend

2007-10-24T20:36:00.000-07:00

Sorry for not updating more, I’ve been getting a little lazy in blog-world. Last weekend I went downtown and picked up a few caribeeners for my new hammock that’s made out of mesh (very comfortable), we have it hanging on our balcony right now. We also went to the national stadium, in the morning on the weekends there is a huge market there and tons of people are selling every single fruit/vegetable grown in Honduras. On Sunday I went to Valle de Angeles, which is a huge tourist place, they sell a lot of souveniers and hand made stuff. A lot of it is pretty high in price though because so many tourists go there. I bought just a few little things there. We also ate there, they were having their annual fair, a couple musicians were there and a ton of different vendors. We at some amazing pupusas, pastelitos and tamales. I’ll explain those later if you want to really know. And we went to an English church service for the first time here. I’ve gone 2 weeks in a row now, the first time was interesting, the people were so friendly there but the preaching was a bit less than I had hoped for. However I came back the next weekend and it was much better, a missionary from Haiti preached on Hebrews 12, God’s Discipline, and a couple of my friends and I signed up to go to a picnic up on the school property of Academia los Pinares, which is the big-time, amazing teacher school. That’s this Saturday so I’m looking forward to meeting new people up there. We also got invited to go play volleyball every Thursday night by a Honduran name Aben. He seemed like a pretty cool guy, so I’m looking forward to getting to know him more.

This week was final exams of the quarter, the students have a whole week at the end of the quarter in which they have a cumulative test of what they have learned throughout the quarter. Mon-Thursday this week that’s all we’ve been doing and since I teach 14 different class, I have to grade 14 different sets of exams, which makes for a busy week for myself. But I do have a break from teaching for a little while, which is nice.

I Think we might be going down south for thanksgiving, which should be pretty fun, down to Choluteca, apparently the beaches down there have black sand.

The Carribean and San Pedro Sula

2007-10-11T15:43:00.000-07:00

Wow, I've got so many pics I want to post, maybe I'll have to put them on facebook. Anyways, this past weekend I went to the Carribean, about a 4 to 5 hour drive. We went with a teacher who grew up in Puerto Cortez which is right on the coast as well. We spent the night in San Pedro Sula on Friday night and then went to Omoa which is right on the coast. It was really nice, we stayed at Ms. Sabillon's friend's house right on the beach!! And there were hamicks all over her yard which was really nice.

On Saturday we went to the largest fortress in Central America, I got alot of pictures of that although I forgot it's name. Then we toured all around Puerto Cortez where Ms. Sabillon grew up, and we saw the most amazing marching band rehearsing in the street that I had ever seen. They were dancing all over the place and were throwing down some amazing rhythms. It was awesome. During this whole time Ms. Sabillon had a 4 year old boy named Alejandro that I played with the whole time, he was so fun. He liked to tap me on the back and when I turned around to see who it was he would shake his finger and say, "Yo no fui" (it wasn't me) it was really funny.

The water was really clear but it was cloudy the whole weekend, so the water didn't look as blue as I've seen in other pictures. We had some amazing food on the trip too, real fish caught in the Carribean, really good tortillas, coconut bread, and some of the best pancakes with homeade strawberry syrup that I've ever had. There was also homemade orange juice and pear juice which was really good too.

Ms. Sabillon's dad enjoyed telling us how old fashioned Honduran men feel about gender roles. His dad always told him, "A man who doesn't know how to control his women isn't a man at all." Women should always be in the kitchen or in the household while the men go out and provide for the family. It was pretty interesting....

The soccer game on thursday was unbelievable!! I loved it, Motagua beat Olimpia 2-1 but it was an amazing game and the Olimpia fans were jumping up and down probably 3/4 of the game and they had many many different chants and cheers. While the Motagua fans burned an Olimpia flag and everyone was shooting fireworks off in the crowd. I was in the calmer section where there are seats, but most of the stadium was standing room only. There was also riot police everywhere, after the game was over they were beating uncooperative fans and chasing them down, it was amazing to see like 100 people darting away from a few police officers. I'm going to a national team game on Sunday, so that should be really fun, Honduras is playing Panama.

Oh yeah, it's my birthday today and everybody make huge deals about birthdays here, so all of my classes tried to sing happy birthday to me, so that was a bit awkward and tiresome but it's my birthday so I need to get into the spirit I guess.

This also marks the 2 month point since my arrival, it's gone by so fast, I can't believe how fast it's gone by. And teaching is still very very hard, and very very tiring, but some of my relationships with my kids are starting to progress, which is pretty cool. Please continue to pray though.

Day of the Bible

2007-09-30T17:18:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-30T14:34:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-23T10:55:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-21T16:24:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-20T16:13:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-15T09:43:00.001-07:00

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

2007-09-11T15:37:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-07T19:05:00.000-07:00

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....

Done with the first week

2007-08-31T15:56:00.000-07:00

So that's it!!! The first week is over and I'm kinda feeling like a normal teacher all of the sudden. I know that I have a ton to work on still, but I'm starting to really enjoy teaching. Especially to those classes that will actually listen to me, which is most of them at this point. I've had a few discipline problems, but nothing too serious, Carlos is no longer a problem, in fact we are getting along pretty well, after I gave him 2 demerits (3 = a detention) and gave him a punishment assignment.

It was interesting, the first few days, everytime I walked into the 11th and 10th grade classrooms, I immediately felt threatened and I put on my discipline/no messing around face and tried not to give in. Everytime I walked in, I felt like most kids were trying to get away with anything they could by messing with me, especially since I don't even know all the rules yet! I'm not going into defensive mode anymore when I enter the classroom.

My first lecture on the Bible introduced the importance and the power of the Bible. It was very good for the kids and I think very eye opening as well, I know it was a great reminder for myself. I was caught in a jam today in philosophy when I realized that I didn't know how to explain a hypothetical argument for explaining how logic works. Fortunately I took good notes that I had with me, and saved some notes from Moody on it. After about 5-10 minutes of scrambling and trying to find a good example of how to explain the concept, I finally just throughly read my notes again for about a minute and then the Lord opened my mind somehow and I explained 2 different examples.

I've been so challenged this week to not let how my students treat me or act towards me control my actions or my attitude in general and towards them. My value must not be in how they treat me, or if they respect me, but it must be in Jesus Christ, who he is, how he thinks of me, and what he had done for me. This is what should control my behavior. Anyways, I can tell that that will be a struggle for the rest of the year, but I look forward to the challenge.

Oh, and Drew Hunter would appreciate this... I listened to a Scott Hafemann sermon the other night on the armor of God in Ephesians 6 and it was absolutely amazing, I have to get some more of his sermons. After I listen to that sermon one more time cause it was so good.

Anyways, I don't think I'm doing the waterfall thing this weekend, but I might be going downtown which will be nice, I really don't go outside of my apartment and school that much. Right now I feel like what I'm doing is primarily a teaching position that just so happens to be in Honduras, heavy emphasis on the teaching part, (I never knew teachers could have so much homework, I thought I was done with that!) Haven't seen too many sites yet, but when we get days off of school, we will probably go to some sweet places. Thanks again for your prayers. Oh, and I think I'm going to help coach the soccer team which will be really cool, practices start in October and they are only on Saturdays, so that's not that big of a committment. Anyone who wants to get on skype so we can catch up would be awesome, my name is "millerjon."

First Real day of Class

2007-08-28T19:47:00.000-07:00

Well, today was my first real day of class, friday was just an orientation and monday was a big protest that blocked roads and kept people from driving in the city. I never saw any though, just some guy coming down the street trying to sell brooms and mops. Today was a drastic improvement from Friday! Which was a huge relief for me, I was well prepared for all of my classes and was really enjoying teaching for the most part. I didn't get to any teaching in my Bible classes, but I got to introduce Sociology and Philosophy to the kids, which was fun.

Last summer when I was doing my internship at my church in Maryland, it was drawn to my attention...immediately.... that I move alot when I speak in front of people. After a whole summer of working on it, and threats from the pastoral staff to nail my feet to the ground (just kidding), I finally felt like I got it under control. But today I busted loose and moved around the whole day in every class. Which I think is very beneficial for a middle and high school teacher, because it keeps them on their tows.

Thanks so much for all of your prayers again. I know that this year is going to challenge me far more than I've ever been challenged before, but it is very encouraging to be able to rely on God's sovereignty and faithfulness.

I'm going to introduce all of my Bible classes with a lecture concerning the absolute authority, power, and sufficiency of Scripture. I'm very excited about it. I just wish that each class had more periods to teach Bible for each grade.

I'm actually teaching the most students out of any teacher in the whole school. Because Bible is only 2 days a week and not 3 or 5 days a week, I'm teaching Bible for 5 different grades, which makes things challenging as well, coming up with lesson plans for that many different class, plus adding Sociology and Philosophy into the mix, which are 3 day classes.
I'm going to try to write a few more posts to tell about about my normal life and events that go on here.

This weekend we might be going to a waterfall about 3 hours outside of the capital, I'm really excited about that, I'll definitely take some pictures, in the meantime, I'll show a few pictures of my classroom and some decorations I had to put up, (I'm not a good decorater at all). It was very time consuming and very hard!!

On a side note, Psalm 100:3 was a great reminder to me today, to know the the Lord is God, and that He is the one who made me, I did not make myself, as much as I want to think that, and as much as I forget God, and I'm His possession for his use, because of his free choice and for his glory, I have the privilege of living in relationship with Jesus, and he will watch over me just like a shepherd does his flock.

The First Day of Class!!!

2007-08-26T12:29:00.001-07:00

Wow.....what a first day, today was truly a roller coaster ride in every sense of the term. Before I explain what went on today, it would be appropriate to talk about the dynamic of the day. Today was just a half day, students came in from 8-12 and they were suppose to be in classes from 9 until 12 with a short break for recess (which high schoolers get here). The other thing I should mention is that all of these kids have been in the same grade and in the same classes since at least 5th grade, if not going back all the way to kindergarten. There are two classes in each grade and most stay together year after year, so they are extremely comfortable with each other. I was supposed to have 20 minutes to cover basic rules, materials they need for class, and anything else that I felt was necessary. Usually I would have 40 minutes. And I would only teach 4 classes, usually I would teach 6 to 7.

Now...the day started at 8 and Ms. Godoy, the principal went 20 minutes over the chapel time with introductory rules and cut into 20 minutes of our 1st period time. Since we only had a 30 min. class 1st period that left me with 10 minutes to introduce philosophy, Bible, and all the rules that they need to know in the school. The 11th grade A class was pretty good, the principal told me to be really firm all week, so I that's what I really tried to do, the other thing I heard all week was people apologizing to me for how bad the kids were going to be, but the first class was not too bad, just really talkative, I had to repeatedly tell them to stop talking.

Next class was 10th B, was my beloved friend Carlos, yes, I know his name already because he was the worst kid by far. He made it a point to make sure that I knew his name because he was such a problem. Everytime I or someone else said something, he would try to divert all the attention to himself, he would get up out of his seat. He was also talking in spanish to his friends, I thought he might be talking about me, and since they are only allowed to talk in English (bilingual school) he translated what he said, "I'm a Pimp." I will probably not ask him to translate any more. The whole class was reacting to him big time, and I felt like I was laying into them pretty hard too. That was by far the hardest class. I had 10A next, they were pretty talkative as well, I had them all say their names, age, favorite subject, and favorite superhero, they enjoyed that. And they were quiet enough to hear everyone's answers too, which was nice. Finally I went into 11B, where they were a semi-decent class, there was one wise crack in the back of the class who kept mumbling things in Spanish and talking, so I just held what I was saying until he finished, I only had to do that 2 to 3 times before he realized that I was serious and would not talk until he stopped talking, but that class was extremely talkative as well. I felt like my voice was almost shot already after only 4 classes of 20 minutes each!!!

My unrealistic expectations for teaching was completely shattered. I'm used to teaching in an environment where people generally want to learn. But this is certainly not the feel in any of my classes. Not only am I going to have to plan a curriculum for almost everything I teach, but I have to do it in a very creative way, so the students are more interested and really are interested. I'm so excited about doing that in Bible, but it will certainly be a tougher challenge with Philosophy and Sociology. But most importantly I need to be spending alot more time in prayer about this tremendous responsibility and challenge. Please keep praying for me, I need your prayers so much!!!

However the day was not over, we actually had open house that night with the parents of the children, I talked to 5 classrooms of parents and everything went really well and really smooth. I must have explained things pretty well, because nobody had any questions really after any of my announcements about myself and the class. I had a good conversation with one of the parents about missions, he definitely had heard of Moody, which was cool, and he knew of Moody Press as well. I was talking to him about possibly one day going to seminary and becoming a pastor and then going overseas to train other pastors in 3rd world countries, and how that seems to be such a huge need in the world.

Wow, what a day, and if that wasn't enough (sorry for this long post) the first real and full day of school is on Monday, which interestingly enough will probably not happen at all. There is a planned countrywide protest in Honduras, teachers and supporters of public school teachers are coming to Tegucigalpa and marching on the main roads to block all traffic. Apparently the gov't in not paying what they promised the teachers, and some are not even getting paid. In the past there have been a few violent incidents, and when people really want to be heard, they usually invoke some kind of force. They might be protesting against our private school too, so we are supposed to stay off the main roads and stay inside for the most part, be we also symbolize everything that the Honduran protesters don't have and could take it out on us. The protest was being broadcast on the radio and is supposed to occur on monday and tuesday, possibly running into wednesday, so we'll see what happens. Thanks for reading and please know that I really appreciate your prayers. Grace and Peace

Planning for classes

2007-08-20T20:15:00.000-07:00

Well this upcoming week marks the laborious process of planning what I'm going to do for the next year, and the next two weeks. It's one of those things where I don't even know where to start? So I'm just chipping away at my classes little by little. Today I planned out what I'm going to say for open house to the parents. It shouldn't be too hard, I just have to talk for about 5 minutes to each class of parents about my expectations of the students in the class. I need to be thinking about special projects and papers that would be useful in my classes as well, not exactly sure what I'm gonna do there either. It's tough with Bible as well because I only teach the same class 2 days a week in Bible. And my Philosophy and Sociology classes are 3 days a week.

I'm thinking about doing what Dr. Zuber did in some classes (my favorite theology teacher at Moody), coming in one day and preaching to them and then adding that material in with the rest of the material covered in class that would possibly be on a big test or exam. It will certainly take alot of preparation and work, but with the Lord's help, and a continous desire to be hungry for learning and teaching His Word, I am excited about preaching. I also get a chance to preach 3 different times during the year in chapel. Chapel is once a week, and they assign me topics for the first 2. I'm preaching on courage, and responsibility and the 3rd one is free, I get to choose.

The church that the school is affiliated with (Assemblies of God) is not as charasmatic as I thought they were going to be. Nobody has even been speaking in tongues in the service, which kind of surprised me. Although worship is always very lively, and passionate, Hondurans at this church definitely know how to groove, and worship. One of the pastors at the church said that they were in the middle of a revival. 5000 people go to the church now and it's only 10 years old. The pastor said that they have to find a way to baptize 800 people at their next service for baptisms, which is amazing! They also had the countrywide missions conference for Honduras last weekend. Apparently not many showed up, I wasn't there but I guess the rest of the country either couldn't afford to come, didn't hear about it, or it wasn't a priority to them. Regardless I was looking through the books at the Book sale and I thought it was definitely funny and sad to see John MaCarther's book on leadership being sold, with a couple other books by Charles Stanley, and the Holy Spirit by Charles Ryrie? Next to those books was Benny Hinn's book "Good Morning Holy Spirit" an interesting selection.

I hoping to really get alot done these next 3 days and to be really well prepared for class to start. Thanks for reading and praying for me.

Clouds

2007-08-18T18:32:00.001-07:00

The clouds here are so amazing, every single day they are in the most amazing shapes I've ever seen. There are alot of them here as well considering that it is rainy season here.

It's hard to believe that I've been here for a week already, time flies when your preparing to be a school teacher. Last night we all went out to eat at one of the most famous restaurantes in all of Honduras, "El Patio" We had the most amazing orderves I have ever had, and the steak was amazing too. If anyone comes to visit on a mission trip, I definitely know where to take them on the first night!! They even had a mariachi band of 5 guys that walked around playing for anyone who would pay 100 lempiras for a song, (5 bucks). Today we went to a country club that one of the pastor's of the church is a member of. We all got to go in for free and played tennis, they had a pool, soccer, and basketball courts. It was nice to get a little tennis and physical activity in, it's very hard to do any physical activity in the city. Which is why my worst nightmare has come true, I might have to take up running! To have some kind of physical activity every week.

I'm beginning to see alot more of the poverty as we got out of the city a little bit today. And I know one of the public school teachers who was telling me about the really harsh conditions of the public schools, as well as the students. I think we are going to take some trips and do service projects with the school to help the poor. That will be really nice, I was hoping to do alot more of that when I came down here, we will see though. It's very difficult to do anything by ourselves here, since alot of muggings and robberies happen in the city, some of the teachers were robbed once last year. But in general we live in a pretty safe part of the city (so don't worry mom, I'll get a gun) just kidding. North American Teachers are very valuable teachers apparently since we know english so well. Everyone here wants there kids to speak English, so when a private school has a school with American teachers, it automatically becomes one of the premier schools, since we can speak in english without a latin accent. That's all I have time for tonight, I have church in the morning. Please pray for me as I have a very busy week ahead of me, with planning all of my lessons for the next two weeks, and school starts on Friday, along with open house for all the parents. Thank you so much for your prayers.

And anyone who is reading this, if you want to talk to me at anytime, download skype on skype.com, my screen name is "millerjon" and we can talk if you have a microphone on your computer, and if we are both online at the same time.

Classes

2007-08-16T15:39:00.000-07:00

Well, I apologize, it’s been a little while since I’ve written last, I’m teaching Bible from 7th through 11th grades, sociology for 10th grade, and philosophy for 11th grade. I just got all my curriculum for the year, the librarian just handed me a sociology book that looks like its about 20 to 30 years old and then a smaller philosophy book written by Norman Geisler and Paul Feinburg. The Philosophy book looks like a decent book, but I have to plan everything on my own and write my own tests and stuff, which is not going to be easy (not that I expected it to be). I just got my curriculum for Bible today. For 7th and 8th grade I have a really basic curriculum that talks about basic Christianity, but she said I could pick and choose whatever I wanted to teach out of there. And for 9th and 10th grade I’m gonna be teaching on the book of Proverbs, which should be very cool, and for some reason the only commentary I brought was on the book of Proverbs by Derek Kidner (recommended by Tim Keller). For 11th grade, I’m teaching a class called “Understanding the Times” a basic apologetics and worldviews class. There is also other issues in there though from a Christian point of view (pornography, and homosexuality), everything in there is meant to develop Christian leaders, but there is no Biblical exposition at all which is a bit frustrating, there's a lot of prooftexting.

Anyways, I’m getting to meet a lot of the Honduran teachers, which is pretty cool. I talked to one guy today who went to a seminary in Honduras and was talking about how he was reading Berkhof and Francis Schaffer, he was talking to me about how he wanted to go to dallas theological seminary, and I was talking to him about Moody as well. We had a really good talk. Learning to cook has been a fun but challenging experience as well. And I’m gonna try to help with coaching the soccer team, so pray for me, that God would prepare me well for becoming a teaching that makes much of Him!

1st Day of Orientation

2007-08-13T20:50:00.000-07:00

Not much time, but today was the 1st day of orientation, there was about 40 or 50 native Honduran teachers and about 9 American teachers at this bilingual Christian school. It was pretty crazy, I wasn't expecting to see that many teachers. It was pretty long with basic general rules as well as an hour and a half discussion about how we should do detentions for the kids who misbehave. After that we went grocery shopping, and me and my 2 roomates cooked spaghetti, and garlic bread. It took us a little while and we gave up on the salad, because we found out that we had to bleach all the vegetables first. Also the school cannot find my Philosophy of Sociology curriculum or textbooks, which is not good at all, but I know God will provide for me. And I found out that I get to preach 3 different times this year in chapel, which we have once a week, they assign themes for the first 2 and the last chapel I can choose whatever I want to preach on. Please keep praying for me, school start next friday, and we have our first open house for the parents then too.

A few pics

2007-08-12T20:44:00.000-07:00

the picture below is the view from my balcony

The picture up top is the picture out my front window

I'm here!!

2007-08-12T14:24:00.000-07:00

Well, nothing calms your nerves like being able to laugh at yourself and lets just say that I really get to do that alot today. And my spanish obviously needs some drastic improvement. Let me tell the full story, knowing that there is much more to come. I showed up a little late to the airport, but got checked in at about 1:20, the lady said I needed to be at the gate by 1:45, so I was waiting in line to put my bags through the x-ray machine which ran up to about 1:40. Then I waited in what I thought was the airport security line for the next 10 minutes and then I realized that it was just another bag x-ray line. So I rushed upstairs, to the airport security line, got through in about 15 minutes, it was not 2:05 and my flight left at 2:45. I ran to the gate and there was alot of people but no activity on the airline workers part. They didn't even board for another 30 minutes. God was in control the whole time even though it was easy to forget that. I got on the plane and I was kinda confused with the time zone change, and from what I understood on my ticket, I was to be on a one way flight to Tegucigalpa. However, this was not the case. I thought the flight seemed very short, but I was asleep some of the time and when I got up, we were landing already. So I got up like most other people, went through immigration, and started to get my bags, and I realized that this wasn't the Tegucigalpa airport, it was actually the San Pedro Sula aiport, but as soon as I walked in the airport, some guy said something in spanish about Tegucigalpa, so I figured he was wecoming me. So, I ended up missing my first flight to Tegucigalpa, but they were able to book me another one 2 hours later, so that where I am, writing this blog right now. In the San Pedro Sula airport. It makes for a long day but a very interesting story. The other good thing is that my ride, the woman (principal of the school) that was supposed to pick me up. I was able to get her cell phone number just before I left Florida, and I was able to call her and tell her about what happened. All that to say that God still provides, and I'm having a pretty chill time checking my mail on the internet. He provides good stories too, maybe I'll tell my kids about this one day, (or maybe not).

However, I am here now and my apartment is amazing, with a great view on a balcony of the whole city of Teguicigalpa. I was not expecting everything to be so modernized here, it's so crazy. My first night we ate at Pizza Hut, and we ate at Church's chicken today after church. I'll have to blog about my team of teachers and the church service this morning later, with some pictures of course.