Yuck!!

Today I was waiting around for church to start in front of one of my boys´homes when his mom came out and was standing in the doorway (a step up from the ground where I was standing). I had my hair pulled back in a ponytail and she looks at me, laughs, and says "Amber, you have lice." I laughed back and said "No I don´t". "Look" she says and pulls a nasty louse out of my hair. Gross, Gross, Gross. I had to laugh. I mean it really is no suprise. Last night I had 17 lice ridden children spend the night and I crashed on the floor with them. Unfortunately it seems that these lovely creatures took up residence in my head long before yesterday so who knows how long they´ve been hanging out. Having the kids over isn´t a rare occurance so it could have happened at anytime day or night. So now I¨m at the mall buying stuff to rid my house of lice. Let me tell you how exciting that is.
Sleep overs are always exciting. I don´t have keys to the interior doors of my home so, of course, this morning not long after I got out of the shower, one of the kids locks my bedroom door and closes it. Wonderful. I put one of the teens out the other bedroom window into my neighbors yard to try and crawl through my bedroom window and open the door (the quick witted of you out there are now realizing this wasn´t the first time this has happened). Unfortunately, the girls that had slept in my room last night locked the window making it imposible to open, despite a valiant effort by Darwin (Pato) and scaring my poor neighbor out of her mind. We finally give up on that form of opening the door and try to pick the lock. Whilst we are in the kitchen looking for new and exciting ways to pick my bedroom door lock, one of the kids locks the other bedroom door, officially locking us out of both bathrooms and all three bedrooms. So it´s Sunday morning, I´m supposed to meet a teen for lunch before church, I have 17 kids in my house, my hair is soaking wet and frizzing by the second, and none of us can use the bathroom. It was a very exciting morning. I ended up calling a lock smith who picked both locks (and actually fixed one of the door knobs I thought I was going to have to replace) for a grand total of $20. I was impressed.
Other than that, today has been fairly uneventful :). Church was wonderful. We had 16 adults and about 20 kids. The congregation is starting to stabilize and be the same people each week which I find exciting. It`s really neat to watch this new congregation grow.
I have to laugh at the crazy things that come my way. Otherwise I might go insane. I love you guys. You are the best. Let me know how life is going in your world. Oh by the way, Thanksgiving was wonderful. I spent it with the White´s at Baxter and really enjoyed myself. Jeanne is a wonderful cook. I hope each of you had a wonderful holiday weekend as well. Love ya!

A Wonderful Day!

Today was a wonderful day! It began playing around with the kids as always. After a while a group of about 15 showed up and we sang Bible school songs and talked abou the stories they are learning at preschool. I´m always amazed by how much they retain of the stories they are learning.
After a few of the kids left we walked down to the pulperia for some Sprite (I`m giving up Coke), where I was informed by the owner that I needed to hurry up and marry someone from El Mogote. I laughed and asked who exactly it was that I should be marrying (there aren´t exactly a lot of available 24 year olds in Mogote). The teenager sitting on the wall behind me (who the kids informed me is named Nedy) promptly volunteered for the job. What wonderful day is complete without a proposal :).
The best part of the day happened on teh way to pick up some school clothes with Ariel. Yesterday I gave the boys their Bible study and fully expected them to put it away until I prompted them to get it out so we could do it together. Once again I was humbled by their simple faith. As we were riding in the truck Ariel picked up my Bible and starting flipping through it, obviously looking for something. Soon he looked up and said that as he was studying last night he found a verse he really liked but that he couldn`t find it in my Bible. I handed him a copy of the study I had in the turck to see if he could find it there. Once again I underestimated him, expecting something simple and sweet about God´s love. The verse he found was II Corinthians 4:8-9 - "We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed." I asked Ariel what that verse meant to him and he went on to explain that when people make fun of him for being a Christian they can hurt him but could not take away his faith and that as long as he believed in God nothing could destroy him or his faith. This was coming from a 14 yr old who, 6 months ago, really wanted nothing to do with God or the church. I pray that we can all have faith so honest and deep.

I'm back!!!

Well after a very very long hiatus I guess it's time I start this puppy up again. Honestly I've missed writing on it, but you know how it goes. I get busy and then it's the first thing to go. I'm not going to try and update on everything I've done since last February because that would just be insane. I'm back in Honduras now and today I'm starting two new Bible studies. I'm excited and a little nervous about this but I am confident that God will bless the work. I'm going to be doing a Max Lucado study with the boys and a Beth Moore study with a group of women. My cousin Jeremiah just spent the last 2 weeks here and we had a blast. We went to La Esperanza (a little honduran village) to visit Laura (the best Honduran roommate in the world) with some of the boys and had a blast with that. We also spent a couple of days in Roatan and I even got to see Hope when she stopped by on her cruise. My trip home was amazing. It was so great to see so many of you. You truly are a blessing in my life. Thank you for all the love that you give me. I'm not going to ramble on here but I will try and keep the stories coming. I love you all so much!!! Have an amazing day.

Roatan

I was blessed by a wonderful trip to Roatan last week with my roommate and her boyfriend Beto. We had a wonderful time. Roatan truly is the closest thing to Paradise I have ever seen. Laura´s mother was visiting on a cruise ship and flew us out to see her. The first day we spent visiting with her and seeing the sites and the second day we spent snorkeling. The ocean is so beautiful and we came home exhausted but at the same time refreshed by the break. The pictures are of the place we stayed, the ocean (obviously) and a great italian restaraunt where we had lunch one day.

Purse Theft

Well I was going to blog this story but I´m out of time and it really isn´t that big of a deal. To make a long story short whilst driving by the national stadium with my passenger side window open (stupid rookie mistake) I slowed down to merge into traffic and a very charming young man took it upon himself to jump through said window and steal my purse, taking with him my drivers license, ATM card, cell phone, digital camera, and phase 10 cards. This has made for a difficult month financially, with a lot of borrowing from my wonderful roommate. But all is well in wonderland. Dudley comes in a couple of weeks and hopefully will be carrying with him my new ATM card. The drivers license will be replaced by a green piece of paper given to me by the police until I can return home and get another one. So on the whole, no harm no foul.

Birthday Party!!

Laura and I had a wonderful birthday party for a couple of kids celebrating
birthdays in El Mogote. Complete with Piñata, party hats, and cupcakes. We even had macaroni and hotdogs for lunch. Talk about a meal of champions. The kids had a blast and I love watching their little faces light up. I wish that each of you could come and share this time with me. It is such a blessing. Mom if you happen to be reading this, the little girl in the red dress is wearing Hailey's dress and it has become her special party outfit. She is so cute. The first picture is of the kids screaming at the monkey that lives across the street from the park by our house. They were really excited about seeing our friend "Poncho" the monkey. Sadly I have no pictures of him at this time.

Of Course I left some things out

For those of you that are reading this off of the link in the newsletter you will be shocked to learn that I forgot to put three major events into the letter that was already book length. Those events in sequential are a huge birthday party for Mogote kids, the theft of my purse, and a trip to Roatan. How you might ask, does a person forget such events. Well the answer is one doesn´t. One just gets one´s head crammed full of other stuff that things get lost. Welcome to the land that is my crazy brain. I will now proceed to blog about each of these events. If you are so inclined read the preceding blogs, that´s a little strange isn´t, but I haven´t been able to figure out how to change the order so here goes. Love you guys!

My Soccer Boys

In El Mogote we are blessed to have another missions team from a non-denominational church in Oklahoma City that works with the people, teaching them trades and providing medical care among other things. Ron and Shelly have been a real blessing to me. They´ve been in the area for about 7 years and are able to answer a lot of questions that I have about dealing with the people. They recently started a soccer program that spans 12 colonies (neighborhoods) and is a great outreach to the community. Two of my boys are participating in this and their first game was a week ago. They were precious in their uniforms. It was the first time they had ever played in uniform and they all had a blast. I loved watching them play. We were sooo excited when they won their game and it was Fernando that made the only goal. They are such great kids, I´m so glad they´ve been given this opportunity.

Catherine´s Birthday Party.

We just finished having a little birthday for Catherine, Xiomara’s little girl. She turns 7 tomorrow. Laura made a cake and we added my tealights as candles and had a grand old time. I love being able to do stuff like this for the kids here but it really is a blessing for the child´s family. Nine times out of ten they would love to have a party for their child but are unable to afford it. I think Laura and I had as much fun getting ready for the party and picking out little gifts as Catherine had receiving them.

Christmas Party

My Christmas Party with the boys was a smashing success. We had a tree and stockings and I even made a turkey dinner. We had so much fun. The boys’ presents to the both of us were precious. I received two teddy bears, a key holder, two glass mirrored trinket holding houses for the wall, a wooden house wall decoration, and an amazing letter from Fernando. I was amazed that the boys put so much thought and time into our presents. They have so little and yet they give so much. The boys spent the night and we spent the evening eating turkey, watching movies, and playing with their new Nintendo like games. Great times were had by all.

New House

I can’t express how excited I am about my new house. Laura and I are sharing this amazing blessing and can’t get enough of it. It is a three bedroom, two bathroom house with an outside maid’s quarters that also has it’s own bath. We have hot water, a garage, and cable. Best of all, there are NO RATS and Electricity!! We actually have furniture in this house and I even bought my own bed. I feel like I finally have a home here instead of just a place to stay. It was so much fun finding furnishing for the house. We ran around town visiting all the cheap furniture stores and finally found a navy blue couch and two chairs for around $250. That was the winner. Since then we’ve added a kitchen table and a couple of rugs. Our goal at the moment is furnishing the guest room which at the moment contains a map waiting to be hung on the wall.

I´m Back!!

Hello World! It’s time for the blog to jump start itself again. I’m hoping to keep on top of it a little better but no promises. I’m just going to take it from things that have happened since I arrived back in Honduras, otherwise I would never catch up. Things are fabulous here. I had a wonderful time at home and I’m so thankful to God and each of you that have blessed my life so richly. It was wonderful to see all of you while I was home. Here are a few pictures of my time at home. I’ll try and post at least twice a month from now on.