Fiesta!

It's been a while since I have written!  It has been a very busy week here, but mostly with parties and celebrations!  On Wednesday we planned a surprise party for Erin, one of the members of the missionary family that served here for a month.  We had a pinata and everything-a very typical Honduran fiesta.  Here's some pictures from the party:

                                                                      Pinata!!

Then the next two days were full of celebration as well.  Thursday was the anniversary of El Sembrador-58 years of working with underprivileged kids in Honduras.  It has come a long way since 1954.  God is so faithful!  On Friday we celebrated the national holiday of Honduran Citizenship, which celebrates the rich cultural heritage of Honduras.

                  They brought in students from another school who performed traditional Honduran dances

 

Then we went over to look at the huts they had built (called "champas") the day before.  They looked amazing, and it only took them two days to construct them!  They were made mostly out of bamboo and palm leaves, and then the students brought in decorations.  Each champa represented a different territory of Honduras, and each described a little bit about the culture and lifestyle in that area.  Apparently Honduras has 7 indigenous groups that have their own language-who knew?

Besides the parties, I have been impacted by a few more serious things.  I could go on forever, but I will try to keep it short:

1. Spiritual Emphasis Week.  This week we have services every night with worship, a message, and an opportunity to come to the altar and spend time with God.  It touched my heart so much to see these young boys moving freely to the altar, not caring what their friends thought or what people would say, but just wanting to spend time with their Father.  It has been such an honor and a blessing to worship with everyone here.

2. Sponsorship.  If you didn't know, many of the students at El Sembrador are sponsored by people to come to this school.  One of my jobs has been to translate the letters the students wrote for their sponsors.  It finally sank in as to just how important a sponsor is in a child's life.  All of them thanked their sponsors again and again, and asked only for pictures of their families and for prayers.  Leslie told me that boys come in all the time and ask her if their sponsors have sent them a message yet.  I thought about my own sponsor child, and how much I have been slacking in sending her letters.  I am sending her one as soon as I get home, and I hope if you have a sponsor child somewhere that you will write to them as well.  I have seen first-hand just how much it matters to children.

3. Education.  Tonight we went to the students in the Bible Institute so we could get their letters to send to their sponsors.  The Bible Institute reminds me a lot of my own college.  It is small, so the classes are very close-knit, and a lot of the ministry classes are very similar to the ones I am taking.  I was completely blown away by these students' eagerness to learn, and also their spiritual maturity.  There are all very close to my age, and before they all wrote their letters, they stopped to pray together not only for their sponsors, but for me as well and the calling God has put in my life.  I see these students studying so hard every single day, and happily going to their practicums on the weekend.  How many times have I complained about an assignment in my ministry classes?  How many times have I blown off my work and only done the bare minimum to keep a good grade in the class?  Why haven't I realized that this is the time God wants to form me and shape me into the kind of missionary He wants me to be?  He has so much He wants to teach me, and I am giving up this precious time to sleep for an extra half hour or watch a movie I have already seen 10 times.  Thank you, God, for reminding me of how blessed I am to have this opportunity to study and prepare for my life of serving You, and please be with these amazing students as they learn and grow closer to You.

Time Is Flying

I can't believe that in exactly one month I will be leaving Honduras!  Time has definitely flown by, and I don't know how I will ever leave.  I have met so many beautiful people.
Like Dania:

Dania is sixteen and lives with Leslie and her family.  She goes to school in the morning, works in the afternoon with the other students, and then goes home and helps take care of the kids at night.  I have never heard one complaint from her, and it is so heart-warming to see the love and affection she has for the children; they are closer than family.

And Leslie and Osman:

Leslie and Osman both work at the school, in very stressful jobs.  But you can tell they love every minute of it, and they put their hearts and souls into this ministry and into the students at El Sembrador.  Leslie makes it a point to chat with all the students as she walks by them and learn all their names, which is no easy task.  Osman will come home exhausted after a long day of work and then go right back out to play soccer with some of the boys.  They are truly amazing servants of God.

But the kid who stole my heart today was Samir:

I wish I had a better picture of him, but this is the only one I had.  This is on his profile on the El Sembrador website.  Every student who is in need of a sponsor to pay for school has a picture and a little paragraph about them.  All of the kids are asked what they would like to do in the future.  Most kids say typical things like "I want to be a pilot," or "I'm going to be an architect."  This was Samir's answer: "In the future I would like to buy my mom a piece of land and build a house for her."  Of all the things he could be dreaming for himself, the first thing he wants to do is provide for his mother.  I pray that his dream will become a reality.

I have been learning a lot about prayer during my time here.  One of the big lessons I learned today was a reminder of how much God cares about everything in our lives, no matter how big or small.  This morning Leslie and I prayed for all the sponsors of the students here.  Later this afternoon the family visiting here signed the papers to sponsor two children to go to school (one of them, praise God, is Samir).  And then after work we were taking a walk by the river and Leslie's son Osman lost one of his shoes in the water and the current swept it away.  He was crying because it was his only pair of flip-flops, so I said a quick prayer that we would find it.  Not two minutes later I spotted the shoe floating right past me, and we were able to rescue it from going downstream.  It blows my mind that the God of this universe, the one who created the world and sent His only Son to die for us, would care so deeply for a lost flip-flop.  But He does.  What a beautiful God we serve!