Melisa in the hammocks at Montana de Luz. May each person blessed by her life never forget the time they spent with her.

Tristeza

Yesterday, we had the memorial service for 10 year-old Melisa. It was such a sad thing, burrying a young girl only a decade old. She had AIDS but more so had severe depression and tuberculosis. She had been vommiting up her medicine for too long and her body became starved. On Saturday, we had visited her just 30 minutes after she died. It was sad seeing the minuscule resources they had. Her grandmother was the only relative who was there at her time of death. She had a messy history and the social workers did not even want her in the room with Melisa. It was quite the sad situation watching the grandma walk away from the hospital alone that day.
Death is so common for these kids. The kids drew her all kinds of pictures and wrote letters. I couldn't help thinking how we all tried to give her the world, spoiling her with candy and cute clothes, and in the end we even laid her to rest in a beautify gown. Death always seems to make people feel like they should have done more in life. I have heard so many comments from people about how they should have spent more quality time with her. It kinda puts it all in perspective.
For me, I think I was shocked and didn't really understand the sadness of this until I saw her in her coffin. The size of the coffin itself seemed to describe the life that was robbed from her. Many of the kids were just silent and so many more of them didn't understand. I have been praying since for her grandma and other surviving relatives as they put her body to rest today. Please also pray for her family as they seek to understand this death.

Also I am struggling with my coworkers here. They are just a frusterating group to be around and do not share many of my values. This fact makes me end up feeling exhausted because of negative jokes and uncomfortable comments. It is hard here because I don't really have any one else in my "social circle" except my host family, whom are amazing. I've really enjoyed the quality time I've spent with them. They seem to be a very close family with a light-hearted attitude. Please pray for my relationships with people here because that seems to be a struggle for me right now. I'm searching for some spiritual and emotional support here and coming up empty much of the time. I guess this is what it means to truly rely on God....

fotos

right to left: (me, Anuar and Marlon at the kids' Catholic baptism, my host family's house, my friend Gaby with MdL girls, Rachel, me, and Gaby in Gracias hiking, Michael and I in Gracias)

Hi everyone! I just wanted to post some pictures. Here are a couple from my visit to Gracias with Rachel and Gaby. I have finally moved into my host family's house. Teresa is the single mom with two boys, Carlos and Daniel, and Diana who is a 6th grader. They are fun to play cards with and its is an amazing change to be in a house. I'm holding up, though there have been many challenges here. I'm working to spend a bit of each day just asking God what he has for me. Some days it is certainly challenging. I pray that you all are well and are finding God in all the challenges you also are facing in health, in work, and in finding your purpose.

One of the other people I met in training in Akron was named Passionate from Africa. He wrote me an email posing me a question I pose to you. How is God pulling you through?

Bendiciones

Buenos Dias! Today is a bright and hot morning, as the past few weeks have been here in Montana de Luz. Life has been busy here recently as we have a group from Ohio visiting and doing some service work. My directors Amanda and Andrew just visited yesterday to check up on my life here and my host family. Finally, my host mom said that she will be ready for me to move in this week, and I'm trying to believe her yet not get my hopes up too high. Anyways, I have been enjoying her family, playing card games and soccer with her children. We also baked banana bread together on Sunday, which was an interesting experience because we didn't know the conversion from fahrenheit to celsius. We ended up overbaking the bread but my family loved it. We made jokes about it being a dark cafe on the outside and light on the inside, which my host mom informed me (in a joking manner) was like the contrast in our two skin colors. It was a great bonding experience and produced much laughter.

I also wanted to share a crazy traveling experience that I had. Two weekends ago I was traveling with my Honduran friend and Rachel, the other SALTER in my area. We were going by bus to visit Michael in Gracias, which is about an 8 hour bus ride. When we got on the bus, we realized that we didn't have enough money combined for the three of us to get the whole way. We could make it about half way but then we needed to withdraw money. Here the atm machines aren't as reliable and easy to come by. I was pretty worried that we wouldn't find one and my card had not been working in Tegucigalpa, therefore I doubted it would work in a small town we would stop at along the way. After three hours we got into La Esperanza, which is about half way to Gracias. We finally found an atm machine and the bank had just closed because it was 1 am on a Saturday. Rachel tried her card and wasn't able to get money. Then I tried my card and the machine ate it. We were only missing 20 limperas (about a dollar) to pay for our bus ride but didn't have it. Frusterated, I took a walk up to this church that overlooked the city. I wasn't sure how we were going to get to Gracias because we were short on money and not sure how we could stay the night because our cards had failed. What were we going to do?

Rachel called me, as I was on my walk, to say that my Honduran friend had sold some of her phone minutes. Ingenious! Now, we now had enough money to get a bus ticket but were hungry and hadn't eaten all day. We went into the local markets and I decided to sell my shirt. My Honduran friend walked up to a vender and asked how much she wanted for it. She was a friendly elderly woman and decided to buy this shirt for her daughter. As she was making this purchase I think she could tell that we were in need. She asked us if we had eaten and we were shy, but said that we had not. She gifted us with three heaping plates (very generous by Honduran plate sizes) of fried chicken, rice, beans, and tortillas. It was marvelous. She also gave us orange juice to drink. A sign up in her makeshift restaurant said "the owner of this restaurante is blessed and all those who eat from her are also." This was so true for what we had experienced.

We ended up needing to go quickly to catch our bus that we now had money for. I was so awed by this experience of receiving food when I was in real need. We prayed sincerely on the bus as we ate and were able to share with an elderly woman who looked hungry on the bus also. This had been a crazy day.
Finally, we were on the road to Gracias, just 4 more hours and one more bus ride after this one! We were maybe 30 minutes into our route when the bus sputtered to a stop. The engine was billowing and smoke was everywhere. The driver of 20-something years had not taken care of the engine and it was having major problems. I was feeling very frusterated at this point because there was only one more connection bus to Gracias, and that left in an hour. We were now stopped on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, with the minutes ticking away. Some of our fellow travelers talked about walking, even though many of them were women in high heels! (People dress up all the time!). This walk would take 2 hours. However, it was pretty cold out because the colder season had hit and I was wearing three long sleeve shirts. I started thinking that leaving the group may not be the best idea. So I just started praying.

It turns out there was a mechanic on the bus. He started working with the bus driver and within 30 minutes helped get the bus moving again. I was still doubting that we would make it to our connecting bus on time and night was falling. Finally, though the bus driver drove crazy, we made it into the outskirts of town when someone yelled for people who were going to Gracias to get off the bus. We thought this was strange but grabbed out stuff and got off. The driver shoved us into the back of the truck which took off through the mud. The mud was thick and spattered in all directions because the rainy season had seriously affected the roads. I thought we were going to ride like this all the way to Gracias (about 1 and 1/2 hours more) and braced myself to hold on in this truck. After a 10 minute drive, I saw what we were after. We caught up to the bus going to Gracias just as it started becoming really dark. We hopped on the bus and though the tires were slidding everywhere in the mud, and said a prayer for the amazing connections and people that had reached out to us. Finally, we made it into Gracias at about 6:30pm with 6 lempiras left to spare. It was quite the adventure.

I learned how amazing generosity is in a time of need as well as the fact that we worked together as a great team that day. When our second bus broke down, the three of us were laughing just waiting for even more to happen. My prayers that day were very genuine and I really experienced provision in my time of need. This experience has taught me to be more generous and really trust that God has an idea where my next bus ride is coming from.

Anyways, that's all for now. Just keepin on in the heat today. We are starting to plant a garden, planting pepers, onion, carrots, and other vegetables. I'm excited to teach the kids about this. Hope you all are doing well, getting into the winter season. For all you who are experiencing cold, just remember I'm still sweating for you!