Giving thanks in all circumstances

Our school has been going through rough times. A high school student was recently kidnapped for a ransom. Thankfully, he was returned to his family unharmed after five days but is still recovering emotionally. Two Mondays ago, one of our English teachers didn't show up to school. The U.S. embassy is on the case, but we still don't know where he is. There have been other things happening as well, but I won't go into the details. Just keep our community in prayer. Our school has been turning to God in the midst of all these trials. The day our student was kidnapped, we had a prayer chain so that prayer was continually being lifted up by one grade or another for an hour. We had a prayer meeting one night for all who wanted to attend, and I was comforted by the trust everyone put in our God to work everything out for good. There was another prayer meeting to give thanks to God after the student was returned.

Many of the school staff are also experiencing serious problems in their families. Profe Edith's husband, Profe Sandra's husband, Doña Ketty's husband, and Profe Sonia's dad are all having major health trouble. Profe Allison's husband has been without work for a while. Please keep them in prayer.

I really have been having a difficult time, and I was so distressed one night this week that I decided I needed to change something. The only thing I could change was my attitude, so I sat down and made a list of all the things I am thankful for. I felt much better, and the next day was the best school day I have had yet this school year.

David, one of my 6th graders, is leaving with his family for Spain as missionaries at the end of this week. He is a very pleasant kid and a natural leader, and we will miss him. Please keep him and his family in prayer. He is the boy standing next to me in the picture below (they are a crazy class):

Last year, I had a bit of an issue with flirting going on between two 5th graders. Now that they're 6th graders, the flame has died down, but I have a new problem. Two other students developed a crush, and recently a love triangle seems to have formed. Oh boy. That's all for now. Please see the new pictures in my online photo album - they tell about the events I didn't write about here.

"Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." ~1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

Prayers needed

This is how running water works in Honduras: Every house has a tank that gets filled, usually every other day, by a pipe bringing city water. The water from the tank supplies our faucets. Every house also has a reservoir for the times when the tank runs out. The city water isn't potable, so most people buy filtered water in huge bottles - one bottle costs about a dollar and lasts my household of three a couple of days. We use it for drinking, brushing teeth, and food prep. Those of you who have been following my blog from the beginning know that we were constantly praying for water in my first house in Honduras, and in each of the three (now four) houses I've lived in, I've run out of water completely at least once. It happened again. Our tank ran out of water on Saturday, and water hasn't come from the city since then. We've been using water from the reservoir to wash dishes and hands and flush the toilet. We've been taking showers at coworkers' houses all week. The reservoir has gotten really low, so we've started using our filtered water to wash hands and the necessary dishes - the rest are building up in the sink and attracting ants. I was informed that there is a problem with the tank that supplies water for our neighborhood, but that it should be fixed by the middle of the week. The middle of the week has come and gone, and we're now on day seven without water. I just pray that it will be fixed soooooooon. The weekend is the hardest time to be without water because we're actually home.


I'm enjoying my 6th graders. They're so smart and fun. They greet me joyfully in the morning, and I know that they like having me as their teacher. One student wrote on her homework, when she had to use the word "happiest": "When Miss Emily teach us I am the happiest person in the world."

My 5th graders are a different story. They don't pay attention, understand little, and are a serious discipline issue. I don't feel like I'm getting through to them at all and am at a loss for what to do. I don't understand how any of my 5th graders could enjoy my class, but I've been told differently. One of my studious 5th graders is the daughter of the school administrator, Karla. Esther, the English program coordinator, tells me that last year, Karla would often come crying to her because of how unhappy her daughter was in school, no doubt because of her classmates. This year, though, Karla goes to Esther about three times a week crying because of how happy her daughter is with her English class this year.

I have been so stressed this school year because of busyness, frustration, and the difficulties of living in Honduras that I literally tried to quit. I had it all planned out - going home after the first quarter ended, living with my parents, getting a job at home. But my boss and my conscience talked me out of it. I really, truly want to go home, but I know I'm having a positive impact and feel I have so much yet to accomplish here and that it would be unfair to my students to leave them. I'm just going to need an incredible amount of prayers, support, and encouragement. Thanks for taking the time to read, pray, and respond.

"He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us, as you help us by your prayers. Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favor granted us in answer to the prayers of many." ~2 Corinthians 1:10-11

Oh, Honduras

Situations that remind me I'm in Honduras...

*I was walking down the street and saw nine people get out of a taxi - one woman and eight children. They were going to church.
*Walking down my street, I saw three people on a bike - a boy about 10 years old, with a little brother sitting on the bar in front and another little brother standing on the spokes in back.
*The cows I pass on the street every day and often hear mooing outside my window.

...and some more sobering ones...

*A few weeks ago, a couple of blocks from my house, two Hondurans were robbed at gunpoint. Two separate occasions, both around 7:00 pm.
*I was walking to my friend Heather's apartment when I saw a boy about ten years old picking up a bag of empty plastic bottles, and I wondered what he could possibly be doing. I couldn't see his face. I walked on and saw a woman doing the same, then heard her say, "Hurry up, Franklin!" I recognized the name as one of my former students at Destino, and I spotted his younger sister nearby, whom I also recognized as Heather's former student. Heather says she's seen them digging through the trash outside her apartment.

This weekend, I went to a place that didn't feel like Honduras at all. It's a house a half hour away built by a retired couple from the U.S. who want to continue helping in a town they used to visit on mission trips. A Honduran coworker is house-sitting for them and invited us over. These are their kitchen and living room:

The mattresses and pillows are memory foam. They have a huge balcony with this view:

It was certainly a nice getaway and a time to de-stress. Another couple of reasons I've been able to breathe easier are that I have a temporary assistant a few afternoons a week - a Canadian volunteer named Sara who will be here for a month of so. Also, starting this week, I will have at least one prep period each day. It used to be that I was on my feet all day every Thursday with breaks only for lunch and recess, which I usually spent running around. I never stop being busy, though, and life in Honduras isn't easy, so I need prayer for contentment and peace. Thanks :-)

"We know, dear brothers and sisters, that God loves you and has chosen you to be his own people." ~1 Thessalonians 1:4 (my students' memory verse last week)

Joys and struggles of the first week of school

Well, my brain is too fried to do work, and my body is too tired to do anything active, so I'll take this opportunity to process the first week and a half of school...

This being my second year at the same school, I feel a lot more confident in my teaching and have a lot less to figure out as far as what to expect from the school and students. I'm also already familiar with the content and the resources available to me, and I can reuse teaching ideas from last year. Still, it's been stressful. Teaching is always a busy job, even when you're not the one writing the school's first curriculum, and I've had so many hours and hours...and hours... of meetings that have taken my time away from preparing for my classes. Also, this first full week, I've had gate duty, which means I have to be at the gate for the half hour before school starts and the half hour after it gets out to supervise the students coming/going and their parents dropping them off/picking them up (very few students use public transportation to get to this school). I've been working non-stop, getting to school by 7:00 am and leaving no earlier than 5:00 most days, then continuing to work from home. Another difficulty is that most preparing has to be done in my classroom, but I can't stay there much past 7:00 because it's not safe to walk home that late. Also, my classroom roof is porous, and this is rainy season. So it rains most afternoons/evenings, and it's hard to find a big enough dry area in which to work. I've been asking for the roof to be patched since the beginning of last school year, and I keep being told it will be fixed, but it never happens because there are so many projects to be done. I've also been informed that the roof is made of asbestos, so what really needs to happen is for the whole thing to be replaced one day when the school has enough money. On the positive side, the ceiling fans were replaced, so now I have five working ones instead of a single one like I did last year. My health has also been good since my last update.

As stressful as it's been, it has also been rewarding. I really enjoy my 6th graders. They are so smart and enthusiastic and always make me smile, and they've been behaving really well so far. Every Monday, I give my students a new list of spelling words, and their homework is to write each word in a sentence. These are some of my favorites from 6th grade this week:
success: "Success! Your download is complete!"
success: "Success is part of a company's policy."
satisfy: "I am very satisfy with Miss Emily, I feel happy, secure and funny."

One of my 6th graders was out of school already three days this week with pneumonia, but he has recovered. Another 6th grader returned to school for the first time today. Kristian missed the first seven school days because he was sick with dengue, a disease like a severe flu transmitted by mosquitoes. Today, I signed out the Science textbooks and was allowing the students to flip through them to get a feel for the information that was available. One of my 6th graders found an enlarged picture of a mosquito, held it up, and said, "Kristian, do you remember him?" I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, but I'm laughing now. They're so witty.

In my 5th grade class, I have a couple of students who are very enthusiastic about learning, but with most of them, I feel I'm making no connection, and it's hard to tell if they're taking in anything I'm saying. Many of them are very chatty, and I keep catching them speaking Spanish, which is prohibited in English class. There's one student who is constantly out of his seat and never follows instructions. I feel I'm kind of, a little bit, starting to get a handle on the class, but I need prayer about reaching them.

I am often reminded of the conveniences I left back in the States. In Honduras, I've lived in four different houses, and at each of them, I ran out of water at some point. In the first house, it was all the time, and we had to flush toilets and wash our dishes and hands with water drawn by buckets from the reservoir that every house has. We even had to collect rainwater sometimes when the reservoir ran out. That was definitely the worst house of the four. This week, though, we were out of running water for three days and had to take showers at coworkers' houses and wash dishes with water from the reservoir. Ironically, an abundance of rain causes a shortage of water - something about clogged pipes. But thankfully, we have running water again, and our electric shower head has been fixed so we can take hot showers.

A prayer request for Central America: "The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicts an 'active to extremely active' hurricane season in the Atlantic Basin this year, with a 70 percent probability of 14-23 named storms and 8-14 hurricanes, of which 3-7 could be major hurricanes." Honduras was devastated by Hurricane Mitch in 1998, and flooding is a continual problem.

"The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD turn his face toward you and give you peace." ~Numbers 6:24-26

Beginning a new year

It's good to be back in Honduras...I feel like I never left. I'm living in a really cute house a couple of blocks from the school with two Canadian housemates, Rachel and Robin. They're great. We're very different, but we share a lot in common as far as living together goes. The picture at the top right of my blog is now linked to my new photo album, where you can see pictures of my house and housemates. I really do miss the conveniences of the U.S., and I've had some stomach problems and headaches/migraines in these first weeks back in Honduras. Nothing serious, but definitely uncomfortable, so please keep me in prayer.

So far, we've had orientation for the English teachers, then orientation for the entire staff, and now we're preparing for classes, which start on Wednesday. Orientation included Bible studies given by a couple of local pastors, and I was the designated translator for my fellow gringos most of the time. I really enjoyed translating. One pastor in particular, Pastor Carlos, the father of a former student of mine, always had a moving, practical message, and it was an honor to translate for him. I've seen a couple of students either downtown or when they've come to school for a meeting or to get supplies. When one of my incoming 6th graders, who was my 5th grader last year, saw me the other day, his face lit up, and he said, "Yay!" Carlos, the son of Pastor Carlos, stopped into my classroom today to say hi, hang out, help me hang up posters, and talk about his summer and his nervousness about starting high school this year. It's so great to come in this year knowing people.

I have several prayer requests...
I've been reading notes left behind by last year's 4th-grade teacher about the incoming 5th graders. It seems many of them come from very difficult situations - a few live in a children's home, one has a background of abuse, another recently grieved the death of her brother, several have parents who live in the U.S. or in another place far away, and a couple of others have parents who have recently gone through serious illnesses. I need prayer for the ability, grace, and love to be to these children what they need me to be. Last year's teacher had a very hard time with this group but was able to gain a lot of ground with them.
My incoming 6th graders were my 5th graders last year, which gives me an advantage starting out this school year. They are a wonderful, exuberant group. I love that I can get them excited about learning. Last year, I had a lot of trouble with classroom management. I got them to behave like angels after a few months, but I lost that ground over Christmas and never got it back. I need prayer for grace, favor, and wisdom with them.
This is the rainy season in Honduras, and there has been a lot of flooding, destruction, and death in places like Tegucigalpa. Please pray. Thank you so much for your support.

"Who is like you - majestic in holiness, awesome in glory, working wonders?" ~Exodus 15:11

End-of-year slideshows

5th grade
6th grade

Joy and a mud bath

I've struggled a lot with sadness and discontentment the past few months, but the past few days, God has been renewing my joy, increasing my love for my students, and giving me excitement about what I'm doing right now and what's to come next school year.

Last Friday, I went with my students to an overnight camp in town but up on a hill among grass and trees. It was relaxing for me, as I only had to sit back and watch the camp leaders entertain my students, though I did participate in many activities. One activity I chose not to participate in were the water and mud games. I was sitting back, watching my students roll around in the mud, thinking how glad I was to be freshly showered. I looked down at something I was reading, and the next thing I knew, I heard shouts and looked up to see a mob running at me. Each of my limbs was grabbed by a camp leader, and I was carried over to the mud hole, dumped in, rolled around, swung/dragged over it, and this was the result:
It was pretty hilarious. My students thought so, too. There are more pictures in my online album.

On Sunday, a group from the States came to our church to share with us. It was refreshing how full of the Holy Spirit they were. Later that afternoon (unfortunately I wasn't present), they and my pastor's family prayed for many sick people in another village. Everyone who came for prayer was healed. That night, they prayed for our pastor, who had broken his leg when he was 13; it didn't heal correctly, and since then, he's never been able to walk straight because one leg was an inch shorter than the other. When they prayed for him, he felt and saw his leg grow, and he now has two legs that are the same exact length. Before the group came, another miracle happened in the life of Yesi, the pastor's wife. Her sister was 8 months pregnant with all sorts of complications, including trombosis and diabetes. When the last ultrasound revealed that the umbilical cord was wrapped around the baby's neck, they decided to do a C-Section, but it was very risky, and they didn't know if either the mother or the baby would live. Everything went perfectly well, and mother and baby are healthy.

A couple of weeks ago, I went to the doctor's for my last follow-up visit about my nose bleeds. It's been a long time since I had one of those. The first blood test revealed some marginal issues with hemoglobin, platelet, and white blood cell levels, but the doctor looked at my latest blood test and told me he is no longer concerned and I don't need to go back. What he was concerned about this time were the flu-like symptoms I had the day of my appointment. He thought it was mild dengue, which is spread through mosquitoes. He wrote me a note so I could stay home from school for two days. I took advantage of the note the second day and got some much-needed rest.

The school year is coming to a close. Tomorrow is the beginning of review week, the next week is exams, and the following week, Honduran law requires us to give reinforcement and recuperations to students who have failed. Then we have a week to finish organizing the curriculums we wrote as we went, doing inventories, and packing before I head home. Pray for our focus and for students' attitudes.

Many followed [Jesus], and he healed all their sick.
~Matthew 12:15
"And these signs will accompany those who beleive: In my name they will...place their hands on sick people, and they will get well."
~Mark 16:17-18