Heading Home

This morning Alina and I woke up very early to finalize packing.  What was 2 suitcases and over 100 pounds of items coming down to Honduras has turned into 1 suitcase weighing less than 50 pounds going home.  When we were finished packing, I grabbed Alina's Secret Keeper Girl book and we headed to the water fountain to do Date #3, which is all about having a quiet encounter with God.  Alina had been telling me most of this trip how she'd like to just sit around the water fountain in front of the church because it seemed so relaxing, so I figured this should be the most appropriate spot for us to do this mommy-daughter date.  The focus of this date was to show our daughter where the source of real beauty lies.  It's based off of the following Bible verses -

Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and clothes.  Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight. 

1 Peter 3:3-4

Alina holding her SKG Mommy-Daughter Date book after Date #3

We began the mommy-daughter date together, but then I gave her time to have her first quiet encounter (date) with God alone.  The book has a guide on how to do this and she had her journal to write the verse for the morning down along with writing a prayer.

When she finished, we headed to a few different houses to say our goodbyes (to those who we didn't get to last night) before grabbing our carry-ons and suitcase and walking in to town to the bus station.  We met up with Catherine (a volunteer from Denmark who I've known for the past few years) who was also heading to Tegucigalpa to complete some paperwork.  When we arrived in Teguc, we grabbed a taxi to the airport, had breakfast and checked in.  With our suitcase now in the hands of the airport, we grabbed our carry-ons and ventured across the street to the mall to just walk around for the next few hours while we were waiting to board our plane.  We left Tegucigalpa on time, arrived in Atlanta on time and were fortunate that there was a slight delay to our connecting plane to Green Bay, so that we had time to have supper.

Going home flight from Atlanta to Green Bay

Alina did get sick on the landing into Green Bay, but all-in-all, it was another great year!  Next summer can't come quick enough!

Our Last Day at Emmanuel

It rained all night last night and although it was a steady rain (and I don't really remember waking up much if at all through  the night), I woke up this morning feeling like I really hadn't slept.  I've avoided coffee since the team has left and for the most part it's been okay.  Perhaps this morning was a combination of the rain and getting a serious lack of sleep the night before.

When we headed to the Toddler House, I took just about all of my clothes there, the shirts should fit almost all of the girls...but I wanted to leave pants and capris for Zelenes since she's so much taller than the others.  I did let her know that if the 2 pairs of jeans I had brought down were too long on her, she should pass them on to Krista (who's a long-term volunteer in the Baby House).  Krista had let me know that she only had 1 pair of jeans down here, and she's even taller than me!

LoriAnn and her Latina Laurel (Saidy)

We did our normal morning chores: cutting veggies (haven't had pataste for 2 weeks, so sorry I couldn't get a photo for all of you back home), serving breakfast, washing dishes and taking the kiddos over to the pavilion.  While we were in the pavilion it rained a bit, so that cancelled our plans to either go to the park or out on a walk.  After serving lunch, doing dishes and getting the kiddos settled down for their naps, Alina and I headed back to our room to pack up some more.  We headed out to get a few more handprints on my Team T-Shirt (I'll most likely take a picture of it tomorrow when it's complete) and then headed to the school.  I gave Karen (elementary remedial Spanish teacher I've been working with) a Team T-Shirt and then felt prompted to ask her if she had an MP3.  She said, "No."  I asked if she would like to have one and she shook her head 'yes'...so I took mine out of my purse (along with the charging cord) and gave it to her, letting her know that there were 85 Christian songs already loaded on it.  I found out later that evening from Vero Castro that Karen was VERY excited to have received the MP3.  She told me that a few weeks ago, the two of them had had a conversation about what they "wanted" and the only thing Karen said she wished to have was something to listen to music that praised God.  Vero Castro told her not to ask anybody for one, and that most likely if God wanted her to have one, He would provide in His time.  Vero Castro told me that she believes God put me there at that time for her and thanked me so much!  :-)

Ant Hills...I zoomed in only because I didn't want to get too close and get eaten alive.

Alina and I stopped at the store to get some chicken tostadas and ice cream before heading to the Toddler House for the last time in 2014.  They were delicious...$4 for the entire meal!  At the Toddler House, we played and served supper, washed the dishes and got the kids showered.  I took a few pictures before saying my final goodbyes.

A bush of flowers that I've never seen before...perhaps Jim and Jeanne know what this is?

Church was cancelled this evening, so Alina and I headed back to our room once again to pack up.  We saw Invisible on the way, so I had a small bag of clothes for her.  I gave her a hug and we said our Goodbyes.  Back in our room, the time couldn't come quickly enough for us to do our first-ever Skype chat with Bob and the kids back home.  Noah had requested to see part of the orphanage "Live" before we left, so Bob put Skype on my laptop.  I prayed that it would work.  Right before we began, Doris walked in to our room which was AWESOME because she could see our smaller kids "Live" as well!  I gave Noah a small tour of the orphanage by showing him our room and then taking the laptop outside where we're staying to show him the church, the clinic, the Medium Girls House, the apartment we had stayed in last year, and just an overall panoramic view from where we are.  Bob explained to Noah that what he was seeing was just a SMALL portion of Emmanuel and that there was so much more!  Then Bob gave Doris a "Live" tour of our house.

When we finished with our Skype session (I was truly thankful that it worked and there was enough space on the modem to do it), Alina and I headed with Doris back to the Big Girls yard.  It was after 6pm and she needed to get back in her house for the evening.  I looked around for Michell to say Goodbye to her, but they said she had taken off for a little bit (to which I replied, "I hope she didn't head for our room because we're here."), so I headed back to Doris' house to chat with her a bit longer.  Sofia came out and gave me a hug and began crying (it gets more and more difficult to leave every year), so I held her for about 15-20 minutes as she cried.  While I was holding her, Michell came back to the yard and I found out she had been waiting up at our room all that time!  Her friend, Suyapa, told me that Michell left a note underneath my door.  I gave a hug to Michell and she too started crying.  I held her for a bit and then walked her back to her house, where Alina gave her a hug.  The two girls cried for about 10 minutes in each others arms before Michell went into her house.  Alina, who had been telling me for the past few days that she was ready to head back to the States, now cried and complained all the way to Wade's house (he was having dinner for all staff and volunteers) that she was ABSOLUTELY NOT READY to go home!

Wade and Lourdes' supper was awesome.  We had some huge hotdogs (which he made on his big grill) and soda.  There was more food, but because of how we were feeling about leaving at the moment, we couldn't eat much more than the hot dog.  We said our goodbyes to Vero Castro, David and Lydia, and Wade before walking back to our room with Laurie and her family.  When we approached their house, we said goodbye to them and then headed up to our room to gather Alina's clothes and the remaining food we had to give to Zue who is in charge of the Medium Girls.  Zue and I have not had the chance to chat this trip, so I will look forward to next year, but she is such a dear friend who has a heart for these kids!  She called around to find out when the bus would leave Guaimaca, and I got to talk to Juliet (via Zue's phone) and say goodbye as well.  We chatted a bit before saying Good Night, and I promised to go up to her house in the morning to say goodbye to her one last time and to her girls.  At that point, Alina and I decided to call it a night.  Alina fell asleep almost immediately, but it took me a bit before I fell asleep.

I have truly cherished my time here at Emmanuel and will only have one more post tomorrow with our morning goodbyes and the travel home.

 

LoriAnn and Zelenes (who was quick to remind me that she didn't like her photo taken)

God's Not Dead - Movie Night

This morning I woke up at 1am.  It had been raining almost all night and I had so much on my mind with the events of today (having only 2 full days left here at Emmanuel and much to do), that I just could not sleep.  I rested for about 2 hours, before finally deciding that I just had to get up and get work done.  I showered at 3am (which is 4am Wisconsin time, so not much different than when I wake up up there) and then threw a big load of laundry into the wash machine.  We'll be giving most of our clothing away before coming home, so I wanted it to be clean.  We'll also only be bringing 1 suitcase home, rather than the 1 suitcase each that we brought down.  In all, I can say that we came home with over 100 pounds of "things" and will be going home with quite a bit less than 50 pounds.

There were a couple of exciting things that we had happen today, so I'll start at the beginning.  When we were getting ready to leave our room, Alina had opened her backpack and then she left it open as we started to head out the door.  Remembering what Bob had said about airport security finding a tarantula in Travis' backpack, I reminded Alina that MAYBE she'd like to close her backpack, so she went back to close it.  I told her that she should've read the book "There's a Tarantula in My Purse" that I had bought for her last year from a garage sale.  Her reply was, "STOP!!!"  Well, it was interesting that we had that conversation just as we were leaving, because as we stopped by our kitchen to get water before heading to the Toddler House, this was the sight to the entrance of the kitchen...

Do you see the black spot almost as big as the doorknob off to the right of the picture?

Here's a close-up of that black spot

It was so exciting!  We had JUST been talking about tarantulas prior to leaving our room for the kitchen.  And Alina's reply was precious, "It's a good thing they don't jump," she said casually.  It's like after seeing 2 (although I've seen 3) live ones this year, she's used to them now.

Our morning at the Toddler House was the same routine in terms of cutting veggies, feeding the kiddos and breakfast.  When we got to the pavilion, Glinda checked Alina for lice and found about 20 knits, which means she recently had (most likely just 1) lice on her head.  We'll have Glinda check again tomorrow, just in case.  I was lice-free!  When Glinda was finished checking me, she put my hair up into a really nice french braid.

LoriAnn and Nikoll

I headed to the school during recess to get more handprints onto the team shirt that we had received when we came down here with the Maryland team.  I hope to get the shirt completely filled up by tomorrow, there's many more girls that still need to get their hands on it.

During our break between 12:00 and 2pm, we took items that we no longer needed to the Volunteer House, we took my bigger suitcase to Laurie since they had a suitcase whose wheel broke in transit here, gave out suckers and stickers to groups of children and out at school and folded the remaining laundry that we were going to give away.  We also got Alina's suitcase started.  Tomorrow we should have minimal work in terms of packing up.

I left the Toddler House a bit early after supper because I wanted to catch up with Trey.  On Sunday I had mentioned to Lydia that I was going to show the 'God's not Dead' movie to the teen moms in the Toddler House.  She quickly grabbed Wade and asked him if we could do a movie night at the church to show the movie, and he said we could do it Tuesday (today).  I've been doing a lot of worrying because with the teen moms I had just streamed the movie from Netflix, so we had to wait a few times for the movie to buffer.  Internet is so sketchy here that by night time, it barely if at all works.  Trey headed into town today for a few items and found the movie in town at the movie store.  I had given him money to purchase it.  The movie made a BIG impression on the kids...so much so that the Big Girls wanted me to walk them back to their houses so they could share which part(s) of the movie made the most impression on them.  After I got back to my room and changed into my pajamas, I heard my name being called from outside the door.  I opened the door and saw Vero Castro (asst. principal of the school) on her bike.  She was not able to attend the movie because she had to stay back with the smaller girls in her house...but she heard from the big girls in her house how good the movie was and she wanted to know if she could borrow it from me for the night since I'd be leaving on Thursday.  I told her that the movie would be staying down here with Trey, so she could get it from him any time.  I am so excited that the kids had this opportunity to watch the movie together and that they liked it so much that the word spread.

When I called home last night to chat with Bob about contacting him tomorrow (the night before I leave), I discovered he watched the movie too...that was the ultimate ending to an already great day!!!

Math in Spanish

This morning we followed the normal routine of heading to the Toddler House and cutting up veggies before breakfast, but this morning the only veggies to cut up were potatoes...and LOTS of them!  It was interesting that Mirna (the cook) didn't know you could eat the skin of the potatoes.  She thought the skin was a layer of dirt.  Even though I mentioned that it could be eaten to her and that we eat potato skins back in the States, Laurie and I still peeled all of the potatoes anyway while Alina, and Laurie's children (Rachel, Rebekah and Nathaniel) chopped up the potatoes.

After chopping the veggies we had breakfast and as usual, Rachel and I washed the dishes.  When I came out of the kitchen, I saw Carla with a plate of what looked like restaurant food.  She told me that sometimes the Tienda sells breakfast and that was where she got it.  On the plate were 2 tortillas, a fried egg, refried beans, bacon, butter, a slice of avocado, and 2 slices of fried plantains.  It looked AMAZING!  She asked if I would like her to call down to the Tienda and ask them to set a plate aside for me.  I didn't even have to think twice...it only cost $1.25 in American money.  When the plate came up to the Toddler House, I shared with Alina (since we both had eaten breakfast already).  It was delicious.

After eating that plate of food, I walked with the big girls to the school.  The elementary school did not have classes today due to a teacher inservice.  Suany, who graduated last year and is studying for her upcoming exam in September to go to the university (kind of like an ACT test), asked for some help on the 2 math sections of the practice exam.  I told her that I'd run back to our room for a notebook and some pencils and that I'd be right back after dropping the big girls off at school.  We spent the entire morning going over the 50 practice math problems.  My master's degree in bilingual education (being able to teach math in Spanish) has really paid off here, since the problems incorporated Algebra 1, Geometry, and Algebra 2.  We finished up right around lunch time.

After getting the kids settled for taking a nap, I headed out to the farm to take a picture of the cement job that the WI/AL teams did.  When our WI/MD crew was down here, they did the left side of the greenhouse (hydroponics) floor, and the week after the AL team came in and did the right side.  I've made a few mental notes about the work done...although the AL team's side seems more smooth on the surface, there were many more cracks on that side.  Also there was a large ripple where you could see they left off on the first day and began on the second day.  In the picture the left side may look rougher, but that is all loose stone/gravel that can be swept away.  GREAT JOB WI/MD!

Left Side: WI/WVA/MD Team and Right Side: AL Team

I walked around the boys area and found Emilio who I needed to chat with about technology.  After we chatted, I headed back to the Tienda and chatted with Doris' sister, Lourdes, for a little bit before heading back to the Toddler House to play with the kiddos for an hour, then go through the supper and night time routine.  After all the kiddos were showered and dishes were done, Alina and I headed back to our room.  We brought up a movie on Netflix, called Summer Eleven.  The movie is geared to Alina's age, with 4 girls as characters who spend the summer together after their 5th grade year and all having different backgrounds.  Alina really liked it.  Although the power went out during the movie, my laptop was fully charged, so we were able to continue watching it.  The power came back on before the movie was over.  We headed to bed shortly after.

Our Last Sunday

As the days wind down here in Honduras, Alina and I are trying to treasure each day.  Today was our last Sunday, meaning it would be the last Sunday church service that we would be attending for 2014.  We asked permission to take Michell to church with us today and were blessed to see that David was preaching.  When teams come in, generally the pastor from the team does the sermon, so it's getting more and more rare while I'm here (from late July to late August) to see David preach, as there are many teams that still go through during this time.

Michell sat next to Alina in her black and gold shirt and black skirt.  She had flat-ironed her hair the night before, which had given it the appearance of being a lot longer than when it's in her naturally curly state.  When church was over, we took Michell to the store and Alina treated her to pizza, a soda, and ice cream with some of the money she had received from her Honduran bracelet fundraiser before coming on this trip.

Towards the end of the time at the store, I headed back to our room to grab our internet modem stick and the computer.  I noticed last night that the 'God's Not Dead' movie is on Netflix and you can choose the dubbed over version in Spanish...so I wanted to show it to the teen moms over at the Toddler House.  Although we had to wait about 4-5 times during the first half-hour of the movie for it to "buffer", the rest of the movie went smoothly.  The girls absolutely were glued to the screen and didn't want to take their 10 minute shift watching the toddlers sleep during the movie.  They were very grateful in the end after seeing it.  If you have not yet seen the movie, check out the website and trailers here...since the movie is now out on DVD and for rental.

God's Not Dead Movie Website - to Preview

When I chatted with Lydia this morning in church, she thought we should find a way to show it to all of the teenagers in the church on Tuesday evening.  There's many obstacles we'll have to go through to get this done such as: Will the internet stick work when internet is so sketchy here?  What do we do if we lose power (no longer can project onto big screen with that many teens)?  Is there a better way to go about showing this movie...other alternatives like downloading a Spanish version to my computer so as not to have to run off of the internet or perhaps someone has an iPad or iPhone via Tigo (a better internet provider than the one I have) where we can download the Netflix app and run it from there?  So there will be lots of things to work out between now and Tuesday if this movie is to be shown.  All-in-all, it'll be in God's hands which I've noticed already.  When I asked for my husband, Bob's help back in the States, he looked the movie up on Netflix and it's not even available up there - so I already count this as a miracle and something that's His will to happen since it's available on Netflix down here.

After watching the movie with the girls, Alina and I headed to the Small Boys house to hand out the remaining Sheriff stickers (left over from the HoeDown) to them, then we headed up to the Power Toddlers house to hand out the barn animal cartoon character stickers (again, left over from the HoeDown) to them and then headed to the Small Girls house to also give them the barn animal stickers.  I think there may be some left yet for the toddlers tomorrow.  We chatted with people along the way, but for the most part the day was winding down so we headed back to our kitchen where we made soup and munched on a cucumber with salt and water.  We did lots of laundry today and folded it, putting it into piles for the people (houses) we were going to take it to.  Alina's suitcase fits inside of mine, so we're plan to give so much away that we really only need to have one visible suitcase going back.  I told Alina that we came down with over 100 pounds of "stuff", and we'll be going back with less than 50 pounds of "stuff"...most of it will get left down here with someone who can use it.