When I looked at the calendar today I realized it has been almost a month since our last update and for that I apologize. Time moves a lot differently down here than it does in the states it seems. We will work to be more intentional on our communication. This should be a lot easier once we get WiFi in our house which should hopefully be in the next week.
What has God been doing in Honduras? Have you ever found yourself saying “yes, I can do that” to things you have no idea how to do? That has been happening repeatedly here. We get asked to do something and we say yes even when our minds want to say no. God has been putting a lot of opportunities in our path that are taking us out of our comfort zone and making us more reliant on Him. Megan has been working with the Psychologist and Principal of the school to work on behavioral plans for not just the younger kids like we had thought, but for the entire orphanage and school. This is something that Megan has done a lot of with younger kids but never something on this scale. It is something she can do but it is way outside of her comfort zone because she is not as accustomed to working with older kids’ behaviors and she is not one who likes being in front of people talking. This is something that Dustin can help her with because he has worked almost exclusively with older kids and has a history of working with their behavior issues from his time working at the therapeutic home. He also loves to be in front of people so he can sometimes help her in meetings with some of her presentations.
Dustin has taken on more of a teacher’s role here. We talked to the Principal of the school about the possibility of doing choir or something with the kids in the school. This question turned into a much bigger role than we had anticipated. The way they do music here is it is part of art class. Art is broken up into four (though technically only three) segments. There is art, which is painting and drawing and the like, there is music, which is where the choir part comes in, and there is Theatre/Drama. For us to do choir, we have ended up collaborating with the school to do all three. So far the plan is to have the regular teacher work on the first half of the segment where they will teach the students the theory behind the form and then we will come in and do the application portion of the segment. Dustin will mainly be doing the choir part, Megan will mainly do the art portion and we will teach the drama portion together most likely. This is all subject to change as time goes on and our Spanish improves. This time allows their teachers a chance to do some lesson planning or grade papers while we are teaching so it is a huge help to them to have us in the class room.
During the week we have 16 classes from grades 1-9. Every grade has class at least 2 times during the week but some grades are combined just because of low numbers. It is such an experience walking into a class and not knowing anyone and not knowing the language. It has been so fun to see the students open up more and more to us in the past two weeks that we have had classes. It turns out everyone loves Lion King or Dustin singing in falsetto because every time we walk through the hallways we hear kids either singing “la, la, la, la, la” or the opening lines from Lion King. Dustin is also teaching music lessons one on one with the kids from the orphanage Monday through Friday evening as well as helping the Missions Director with the different groups that come when needed. We will also soon start teaching English classes once a week to any adult that is wanting to learn English. We will probably open this up to the community as well in the future for a small fee to earn some additional income. Along with this we will be taking Spanish classes once a week as well to help us pick up the language.
How can you pray for us? We always can use prayer for health. We have mostly stayed healthy so far in our time here thus far. We have had a couple days of feeling a bit under the weather but that is to be expected as our bodies adapt to the changes here in both food and environment. We could use prayer that we will absorb the language faster as this is currently our biggest barrier. We also ask for prayer for wisdom in prioritizing the different areas that we are working and to be able to say “no” when needed to not burn ourselves out. We also need to be able to figure out our schedule better to make sure family time is not suffering. The kids can use prayer as they adjust to school. It is hard to be placed in the middle of a class when you don’t know the language and are trying to learn the language and the subject being taught. Thankfully the kids are not being graded this year as they are learning but it still stresses them out sometimes, especially DJ. We would ask for prayer for protection from insects as well. We have killed 3 baby scorpions in our house so far and Dustin had a scorpion crawling on his neck and arms just the other morning. Finally we would ask that you pray for our finances. With this kind of work there are always expenses and our biggest is still the cost of travelling, as we have to leave the country every 90 days and travel at least two countries away. For a family of 5 that is not cheap. If you are considering supporting us or have been planning on doing it we ask that you go ahead and do that now. You can even future date it from the site.
We love you all and are so amazed that you partner with us in this journey. We will work on being a little more regular in our communication as time allows. Yesterday was the first day we had off since we got started working here so it isn’t just all play. However the pool is calling our name right now so we must go. God bless you all.