Friends

Here is one of the few fairly large friends you make while your here whether you like it or not. (He was just relaxing on my neighbors front door) / (Yep thats my hand on the about 1" away)

This one (below) was a bit smaller and we found right outside out tent in the morning on the mountain.

You also often find cockroaches (almost every day) but they aren't as interesting as tarantulas. When you come across a fear or something new you need to find a way to get past it. Things like taratulas don't bother me anymore. They won't kill you but I am still not going to go pick one up because they are venomous.

This list could go on forever but so far during my time here I have come across a few verses in the Bible that have helped. They go along with different parts of my journey and in no way do they fully explain it. This is something I was roughly putting together for myself. I hope you find it interesting.
This is how it started. Psalms 90:12 TLB --> “Teach us to number our days and recognize how few they are; Help us spend them as we should.” Along with this goes a quote from Rick Warren, author of The Purpose-Driven Life. “The greatest tragedy is not death, but life without purpose.”
Actions speak louder than words, they are also a universal language. The best way to communicate God’s love then, is through actions. 1 John 3:18 --> “Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with action and in truth.” The first year I went on a missions trip we built a house for a woman who had been widowed. The next year when we returned we discovered that because of our willingness to serve and love others she was able to see God’s love through us. She had become a Christian for this reason and her entire family had been attending church.
I encourage you to read all verses 19-23 but for me verse 22 pretty much sums it up. 1 Corinthians 19-23 --> “…I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some.” I don’t claim to have done this but it is something I am trying to do.
1 Timothy 4:12 --> “Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith, and in purity.” Young people are often looked down upon because they are young. This verse is encouraging and humbling. It really speaks for itself.
1 Corinthians 10:31-33 --> “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. Do not cause anyone to stumble, whether Jews, Greeks or the Church of God—even as I try to please everybody in every way. For I am not seeking my own good but the good of many, so that they may be saved.”
Psalms 37:4-6 --> “Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this. He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun.”
Acts 26:22 --> “I have God’s help to this very day…” Philippians 4:13 --> “I can do everything through Him who gives me strength.”

God Bless

September 2, 2009.
When everything changes in you life for 5 months you have a lot of “first times”. This was a first time but I hope it will not be a last. I got to go visit my sponsor child. We went and met him and his mom at the “project.” He still has normal school and everything but he receives a significant amount of extra help from Compassion. When I met him I was introduced as Jordan, his “padrino” which translates to godfather as well as sponsor or patron. He is adorable and it is just amazing to have a person and personality to put to a picture. I was toured around the Project and learned where everything went on and a bit about what Edgardo, my sponsor child, does there. After this we had a short visit at his home where I met his sisters as well. We chatted for a while about what they do and they asked me a few questions at well. It is a fairly typical rural Honduran family who live in a house made of mud bricks. The father works in a field, the mother takes care of the house and sells a type of bread, and the family has been through a number of hard times. We had planned to take Edgardo and his mother to a mall where we could have lunch and play for a while, but I did not want to leave out his two sisters so I took them as well. I think it was a much better experience because the whole family was there, except for the father because he was working. We went to the newest mall in Tegucigalpa, the capital, where we went to KFC for lunch. We picked KFC because Edgardo’s favourite food is chicken. I found out after lunch that one of the mother’s dreams was to be able to take her family out for a meal like that. It is so difficult to explain the feeling of having helped someone accomplish a dream that they likely never would have accomplished. After lunch the kids and I went on a train that drives around the mall and a carousel because Edgardo also likes horses. This mall is absolutely gigantic which is difficult to picture in such a poor country but the capital is quite developed. They even had bumper boats which the youngest two went on. The last place we went was an arcade. The kids had so much fun and this is something they will probably remember for the rest of their lives. I know that I will never forget it. It was an amazing experience for both me and their family. The last thing I have to say is that God is great and I am so thankful to him that he would bless me with these amazing experiences. Gloria a Dios.

Well after spending a week and a half away from home, (well my home here) I was exhausted. Due to my exhaustion and probably something I ate, I was also ill. Being sick here is sucks, but at the same time it’s not so bad because it doesn’t usually last more than a day or 2 for me. Anyways that’s not what is important. Here is the more important stuff.
I will recap my adventures but try to keep them short. First I went to four different communities in a place called Yocon. We went with a partner organization called the Gideon Project to do trainings in schools on the topics of hygiene and sexual abuse. We visited three different schools and did one presentation with the adults of an entire community as well. We stayed with the pastor of one of the churches in one of the communities. He help me with my Spanish a lot simple because he was willing to take interest and ask me questions. He did this both for his knowledge and to help me with my Spanish as well, I found out. This I really appreciated.

After four days in other communities away from my bed, one of which I was ill, it was very nice to sleep in my own bed…for a short period of time. The next morning I woke up, packed my bag again, and started on a three day hike up a mountain. Nope its not always work here, but most people here think we are crazy for climbing a mountain such as this one. When I say we I am referring mostly to the six white people. We are all volunteers or work here. We all have this in common and so we are all friends. One of the youth from one of the churches here also came and of course our guide. This was an absolutely incredible experience. The first day was kind of typical hiking a few trees here and there going up this mountain along with some fields. Then we started going through coffee farms and finally got to the edge of the jungle which is a conserved area. Here there was a small hut that the coffee farmers use in the harvest time. There is a typical concrete, wood-burning stove, a hammock, and not much more. After about five hours of hiking we set up our tents and stayed here the first night.
In the morning we woke up to Holler Monkeys hootin’ and hollerin’ in the jungle. Unfortunately I did not get to see any this time, but I have seen them in the past. Once we had all our stuff ready, and got rid of whatever wasn’t absolutely necessary for the second day, we headed of into the jungle. This part was a lot steeper than the first day and by this I mean there are parts that are literally straight up where you have to climb a wall of dirt and tree roots. All the plants are so alive and abundant that it seems as if you could see them grow. You also watch some of them die when the guide has to hack through parts with his machete. After about another five hours of hiking on this day, we made it to one of the peaks where we set up our tents. Unfortunately when we got here we were nearly out of water and all very thirsty. We knew ahead of time that there was a source of water but we were hoping not to have to use it because we didn’t know how good it was. There is no path to this source so only our guide and three of us went, including me. We were gone about forty-five minutes and came back with water that was clean but was also extremely yellow. This is the water we had to drink but we had drops to purify it to hopefully ensure we wouldn’t get sick. At the peak where we set up camp, and at the tallest peak about an hour away where we also went, there are dwarfed forests. Hard to imagine right? Well, there are all kinds of unique plants and trees, along with not so unique plants such as pine trees. All of these plants are no more than three or four feet high.

After a very cold night we were fortunate to get up when we did. When we got out of the tent we looked down the mountain onto the cloud cover. A full cloud cover of fluffy clouds with the sun just starting to rise above them. After enjoying this amazing sight we packed everything up and headed back down. It took about 8 hours to get down including stopping for lunch. This experience gave me a new understanding of God’s amazing intricate creations in nature. It was a very tiring but extremely well worth it.

(See a path? Neither did I until I hiked it.) (Miniature pine trees and other plants)

(Dont fall it's straight down!)

(And it is straight up climbing roots)