SUMMARY Week 3

 Sunday (June 17) we planned to have pancakes and bananagrams – however, the power was out, so we didn't have very many pancakes, but we played a LOT of bananagrams :-) Ate lunch at KFC, did the grocery shopping, skyped with the family, attended youth group at the church, had dinner at the church afterwards. The youth group was fun – they did a combined event (usually, they have 4ish different groups) – there were about 100 of us there! It was cool because several of them had just been baptized that morning. It's so cool to see how strong the youth group is there! They definitely have a presence at church – so encouraging, for sure!

Monday, we didn't have internet at all (I had thought it was because the electricity was out, but apparently there was something wrong with the router). At Casa Hogar Vida, we had our exercise class (it was rainy, but only Erica and her kids came – a little discouraging), English class at 11, lunch in the office, planning at the orphanage for the next few days' classes. Around 3, an invasion of gringos! The week-long mission team was taking the tour of Limon and Casa – it was definitely interesting to see it from the other side. While we drove back after it was over, we had an interesting conversation of the benefits of long term and short term missions trips. Ask me about it sometime! I may do a post about it, I don't know... After dinner (“Chop suey” aka anything remotely Chinese), we had our bible study on Joshua. Good stuff!

Tuesday: Still no internet. Exercise class (more people came! There were clouds! Nice...). We attempted to have Bible class for the kids at 11, but the week-ers came around then, and the kids were too distracted. We chatted with the week-ers, and got to see Criz again! He was translating for the week-ers, then he'll be working with us after :-) The week-ers got the office, so we took over the store next door – just a small vending place with some tables under a roof. I should take a picture sometime... We had bible class later with the kids and the other gringos, and it went a lot better :-) After playing with the kids and chatting with the tia, we had dinner and band practice.

Quick thing about band practice: it's one of the few places that I have to remind myself that we're in Honduras, a different country, with a different culture. In America, band practice is straight to the point – we sing our songs, we fix anything that needs fixed, we try new things if necessary, we're done. Here, there's hanging out before, oh I guess we'll play a song, talk about the song, practice harmonies (granted, there are a lot more singers here), play the same song again, chat some more, maybe even play the same song a third time... after 2 hours, we've practiced two songs. It's teaching me a lot about patience and Honduran culture :-)

Wednesday: Usual day at casa – we had women's bible study for our class today, had lunch outside again because the week-ers had the office :-), nothing new... dinner was crispy (fried?) tortilla with shredded chicken... we had milkshakes (yay!!) and I posted a blog post while sitting right outside the office, because I finally heard that the office had internet.

Thursday: The weekers were at the Casa Hogar hotel all day – we didn't see them except right when we got there, which was weird... English class was on the schedule, but no kids came in the morning. We tried again after lunch, and there were a lot more kids. Lunch was fun, because David joined us – he works at Casa and is related to about half the people at the church (not really). He's super cool – he knows a bit of English, and a lot of us know enough Spanish that it all worked out nicely. So many laughs! Taylor got the brunt of the teasing though, since he's the only guy of us 6 working at Casa :-) (Taylor, Sarah, Rachel, Xan, April and me) We left Casa early in order to get Xan, Taylor and I to band practice. It was a long band practice. First, it was just Jose Carlos (electric guitar and I think one of the worship leaders) and us three, so we could learn chords/words, etc so that when “real” practice happened, we could actually practice. Sounds like a good plan, except that that meant we were practicing for over 5 hours. Ahhhh!!

Friday: Finally! Internet! So exciting! At Casa, Sarah and I went to manualidades real quick to discuss a new bracelet idea Sarah had – however, it involved jicaro, and the woman working with jicaro wasn't in that day, so we chatted then left. Eli (the boss, I suppose... no one here really has titles) was showing Taylor how to roast the coffee beans when we got back, and Sarah was super excited :-P We got to try some coffee and it was so goooood.... I'm craving some right now :-) As Eli was pouring the coffee into the sample glasses (that were pretty small), he said, “I feel like I'm playing with my daughter right now.” We all laughed. After a few glasses, I was getting hyper :-P It was fun! Then a lot of the staff came into the office and we had a birthday celebration for Pastor Giovani (spelling? It's different every sermon haha) and Eli! It was a lot of fun. I think the cake was pineapple or something like that. Good stuffs. After all the celebrations were over, we went evangelizing a bit – there were a lot of empty houses, but we managed to talk to a few people. There was one family that may not know Christ, so be praying for them. There was another family that loves God, but only a few can read, so it makes it harder to read the bible. They were a lot of fun to talk to!! Pray for them too, there's a lot of issues with their kids' health.

Had another laundry scavenger hunt when we got back, had pizza hut for dinner (turning into a tradition!) and went to an HLT session with a Nicaraguan speaker. It was fun, because he spoke pretty clearly, so with the translator and him, I caught a lot of Spanish and made me happy haha... Xan, Taylor and I played with the band which was super fun as well. After it was over and all the different small groups were getting together to talk, all of a sudden, wedding music started playing and one of the men proposed! It was so cool! I'm pretty sure it's the first proposal I've seen in real life :-) It was so great to witness the church celebrate for the new couple!

And there's week 3. *whew* Don't worry, week 4 is coming, but I'll leave you with this for now. :-)