Snippets

Just a few random stories from recent days, some funny, some sad, hopefully all interesting:

• Typical Honduran encounter:  Me, speaking to the ice cream man pushing his little cart past my house, "Do you have anything chocolate?  I really want something chocolate."  Ice cream man, opening his cart up, "Absolutely, we've got this caramel sunday." Me, a little confused about the lack of chocolate in the caramel sunday, "okay, do you have this one? (indicating the chocolate bar on the side of the cart) Ice cream man, "Definitely, here's this peach sunday." By this point I'm looking into the cart to see what he has vs. what he's saying he has and laughing.  He does have lots of chocolate options, he's just choosing not to show me I guess.  Me, "I'll just have this one." (indicating a chocolate covered vanilla ice cream."  Ice cream man looking at me like I'm crazy, "You want the filled one?"  This is definitely a typical interaction with a random honduran.  I'm still not sure what the confusion was. :)
• On the way to church the other day it was POURING down rain but right in front of us it was really sunshiney.  So I said, "Isn't it funny how hard it's raining with the sun shining so bright" Ariel's completely serious response, "It means deer are being born."  WHAT!?!?! So random.
• Last night as the girls were going to the bathroom before going to bed,  "Amber are we going to be scared in here?" Me: "What?" Girls, "Are there any bad spirits in here that are going to scare us?"  I'm very confused at this point and not sure if they are joking, "What? no there are no spirits in the bathroom." Girls, "Oh yes there are.  Spirits of dead people that want to scare us."  Me, "Um no, there are no spirits in the bathroom.  There's no such thing as spirits of dead people that want to scare you."  There was no convincing them. 
• Our Bible story last night was about Jesus feeding the 5000 with the loaves and fishes from the little boy.  The girls LOVED it.  Kimberly, the 7 year old, tried to say a couple of times, we know this story, there are leftovers at the end.  But everytime she tried to say that the older girls would tell her to be quiet because they liked the story or wanted to hear it.  It was really neat to see their reaction to the story.  I read it from a children's book geared towards a child's role in God's kingdom and it talked about using whatever we have, no matter how small it seems, for God.  It was a good message for this kids that have so little.
• One of the girls, Evelyn, talked a lot about her mom's drug abuse and how when she's angry she hits her a lot.  Hitting came up a lot last night.  They are so quick to react to things with violence or even be violent without any provocation.  We talked a lot about not hitting for any reason and about healthy conflict resolution.  It is so hard for me to know what to do in these situations which come up almost weekly.  There are no black and white answers to the issues of abuse in this country. 

There weren't going to be any pictures tonight but Darwin took this picture of Toby's favorite place to be tonight while I was typing this up.  He gets on my tummy then climbs up to my shoulder and sleeps there while I'm on the coach.  This might be a bit more difficult when't he's grown :).