Life is FULL

Greetings,

Life is full.  It doesn't matter if you are full of joy, or full of problems, life is full.  Right now we are full of joy.  Joy is not dependent on your circumstances. It is something deep within that know that God is on your side, and that He is in you and working through you, and for you. Even when things don't work out like you planned, or when you planned, He is still working on your behalf.  I used to say if things didn't work out like I planned, it must have been my idea and that if it worked out that it was God's idea.  Now I think that God is not on anybody's timetable and maybe my timetable is not on His clock.  He is the owner of space and time anyway. He can give us a vision of what He wants us to work toward but it doesn't guarantee that we will get to see the end of it.  One plants, one waters, but God brings the increase. 

I was reading in the Bible, where King David was getting everything ready to build the temple of God and God put the brakes on him.  He told David that the temple was going to be built , but  he wasn't the one to build it.  We have been doing a lot of praying, planning, and meeting together with different organizations about a specific thing God laid on my heart.  I thought we would start on the first of October,  but it didn't happen on my time frame.  Our team has peace about the whole project.  God knows what is in my heart and I pray that we will be able to see it come to pass.    

 The girls are in school learning so much.  They love their school and we are thankful.  The new teachers have been a great blessing for the girls and even though they miss the teachers from last year, we still have Kelsey still from last year!  The girls are enjoying all the new teachers that have come to Abundant Life School.  We all appreciate the leadership of Jake and Rachael Compaan.  When you ask your child, "What did you learn in school today" and they tell you in detail, you know it is going to be a good year. 

We are in harvest time right now.  Our beans and corn have done excellently!  We have a great crop and will put corn in our silo for the first time in years.  The girls have been helping getting all the crops picked and shelled.  WE have had a great time just sitting around and talking, while we are shelling a lot of beans.  Harvest time is such a blessing anywhere you are, but this year it is very special because last year we had a hard year for the lack of the annual rainfall.  This year there is a sense of rejoicing in our whole community.  Everybody has a good crop, and so we are all feeling pretty blessed.  

Wesley and Suzanne are back!.  They are trying to get everything ready to move into the Boy's Home called, Casa Nain.  Wesley is soldering gates and doors and Suzanne is painting like crazy.  We hope to have the Casa de Nain ready to go in January.  Again my family and I thought we would have the boy's home up and running in 2005, but it just didn't come together.  I thought perhaps we hadn't heard from the Lord, but I am thankful that God is going to show us what He has in store for these boys and that I will get to see it.   

House of Nain is getting a face lift and a makeover.  A water well was installed this past summer.  Wesley and Suzanne are working like Trojans trying to finish up the boy's home before they leave in November.  The main gate posts are up and they are making cement posts.  Wesley also, has installed the electric switch boxes and outlets.  They have some of their appliances, but won't move them over until they return at the first of the year.  Suzanne also is helping with the kindergarten at Abundant Life School along with her painting duties.

WE already have three boys here at PTC that have families.  One is Rosa and Francis's boy, then we have the nephew of Lina and Rosa, who is with us most days, he is two.  Then we have a little boy we will call Harry.  He is 6 years old and he weighs about 13 pounds.  He is a special needs boy and has convulsions from time to time.  He is has light colored eyes that are enormous, and hair that his mama keeps a butch hair-do with occasionally putting gel in it to make it stand straight up.  He is a sweetie. He smiles at everyone and he just jets joy to all. We love this little boy.  He is a big blessing to all who get to know him and his mom.  The mom has another child, who is living here with us. She has had a very hard life, but she is here to help her daughter and she is helping us.  She laughs a lot and laughs loudly.  I personally like loud laughers, and so I enjoy her being around. She makes me smile.  A huge perk is that she is also an amazing cook.  WE are thankful that she is here, and that God is giving us joy and grace for each other.  

On a personal note, I was trying to get tickets to go home in December.  I come back to Honduras on the 20th or 21st to make Christmas for the girls at PTC.  No tickets were to be found that weren't "off the chart" expensive.  People were looking for me and it was expensive with 12 to 22 hours layover, or an extra trip to Bogata.  Although I would love to see Bogata, I didn't want to just see it from the air and turn around and go back to Miami just to kill 24 hours.  So, then I prayed if I was supposed to stay in Honduras and not go home for the holidays, it was okay.  Next morning at the doctors office with one of our teachers, and I was using my cell phone and found tickets with 2 hour layovers, and they were only $480.00.  I was so excited and was so joyful, that I know that God heard me. 

Also, we have a girl here that has been dealing with depression for weeks.  Some of our girls have been through so much, it is incredible they have any sense of joy whatsoever,  She rejected any encouragement or counsel.  She is very smart and I felt that she would excel in school, which she has.  But this week, she just said "I quit" school, friends, life.  I thought about just telling her to get on the bus and that be the end of it,  She has the most amazing smile. After not having any alternatives, I finally prayed and asked God to give her joy back. She came in the next morning, all helpful, smiling and got on the bus for school.  It made me so happy I purely skipped to the house.  Then I asked myself, why does it take so long to do what is obvious.  I am talking to her and encouraging her, scolding her when she is being mean to the other girls, or getting in my face with her rebellious issues, hugging her when she cried and tells me she misses her mom.  All the while, God is ready and able to fix this situation. The embarrassing thing is that these two things happened in 24 hours of each other.  I know I will get better at prayer one day.  

Meanwhile, back at the ranch we have 26 people getting on bus every morning to get to the Abundant Life bi-lingual school.  I decided to hire a bus to pick up the girls because we have been having problems with our buses and finding parts.  The two busses are both still with problems. I was worried that the kids we were picking up from the community might not have a ride if the service was too expensive. . I found a wonderful lady who has a new bus service, and she included the kids of the community in her quote.  So in order to do this we needed to finish breakfast and clean up by 6:00 a.m. and do our circlo devotions and get to the main road by 6:30.  The girls were having to struggle to get up earlier and earlier and the food at breakfast was getting less and less tasty.  So since I wasn't getting my devotions done anyway, because of all the questions and back and forth what was for breakfast and the tattling about who wasn't coming to help and lateness of the girls doing the bus marathon to the road, I decided to start cooking for the masses in the morning at 4:00 a.m..  I have each house help me on their day to cook and they come at 4:30 a.m.  It gives them time to do their chores and get dressed before coming to help with breakfast.  It seems to have worked out.  I am not shouting into the wind for the girls to hurry and get their sweaters, bookbags, snacks, water bottles. It is almost humane every morning.  We sit down, instead of eating on the run.  My girls get a good breakfast and not have to guess about what they are eating and they walk to the bus.   WE talk to each other and we have our devotions and it has been a blessing for all of us.    

I always thought my morning time was for me.  It still is in a different way.  I am still blessed and have time after they walk up the hill to get my decaf and my Bible.  Life is full.  Blessings from the filled up Honduran MOM

.  

A Thankfully Full Honduran Heart

Greetings,

Today, I have been thinking about how much God has blessed my life and the life of this girls in Project Talitha Cumi here in the mountains of Honduras.

WE have received a new Toyota van, from a lady I don't know and have never met.  Yet we have a brand new van that the girls and I are rejoicing over.  WE used to put girls in the back of the truck, but that was a little problematic in rainy season.  So we would go in the Patrol, and everybody had to sit on top of everybody else.  They were always good sports about it.  I would tell them what my Daddy used to tell his 8 children in a Studebaker (spelling)? which was the first of the SUV's years ago.  He would say  "It is going to be a little uncomfortable"  But yesterday with 17 passengers in our 15 passenger van, the girls said, "Wow, we can get a lot more people in here".  They have vision to enlarge the ministry.   I have great girls and I am thankful.

Next we have our boys home project called House of Nain starting up in January with a new couple, Suzanne and Wesly Jarrard.  WE needed a well, because the house was already built and there was no potable water available in the community of Las Harenas..  Mr. Chris Knippa from Texas, happened  to have a conversation with a Honduran man randomly at the airport, during one of his travels, who knew people who dug wells in Honduras.  I recently found out that Chris and his church have been sponsoring water well drilling projects all over the world.  Chris wrote to me, but I didn't know he was coming until about a week and a half before they came.  I thought their team was coming in August with another team from Texas from the same denomination. They were not listed to come on our schedule in June.   I have had teams every week for a while this year, and when I found out they were coming, I was amazed that their dates were right in the middle of  two other teams.  One was leaving the day the Texas team arrived and the other was arriving the day the Texas team left.  God worked everything  out.  We got the well and the water.  We also got to work with so many dedicated Christians who worked like slaves, in the rain, late at night, to get this water project going.  The rest of the group, who had a lot of wonderful activities for the girls, met with schools and passed out food and school supplies.  It was a huge blessing, and one that will continue to bless for a long time.



We have water

 

Our corn is up and our beans are planted.  The girls worked so hard helping to hoe our farm. If you don't get the grass out with all these rains, your crop is history.  One of the girls said that she thought she could not possibly do all that work, but later she said, "I did it!!". She was just beaming with the sense of accomplishment.   The girls are out on break for school, but we work on the farm in the mornings, before the rains and then we have school in the barn in the afternoon. As I was driving out one morning, I noticed what a super job the girls did on our corn and I drove down the lane to go to La Esperanza on errands and notice our neighbor lady's corn.  Her husband died recently.  I noticed her corn crop was going to be lost if she didn't so something soon.  Then I felt like the Lord said, So..hmmm.?  So I asked the girls that night if they felt up to helping the widow up the lane and explained to them about how God feels about widows.  They were all in.  They did it all in one day, which was amazing because her corn was wrapped up in grass.  They were sunburned and tired and full of muscle aches, but again, "they did it".  I was ready to quit and I only worked a little while in the afternoon.  I had been getting materials for the other farm together and hauling things back and forth in the truck before I could stop to help them.  The girls informed me politely that was not an option because the fertilizer was already down on the ground. So we continued to work.  Finally, after a burst of energy on the last row, we finished and prayed with the widow and prayed for rain. Last night while I was dispensing Motrin, BioFreeze, and rubbing Aloe Vera gel on the girl's sunburns, it started raining.  God again heard our prayers and as tired as we all were, when we heard it starting to rain, we all smiled.   

 

We also have a project that waltzed onto our boy's farm at the House of Nain (HON) .  It is an irrigation system.  It is the Honduran government project  that is being funded by the Japan and Germany.  They are building a drip irrigation system next week on our farm.  The system includes a large cement tank, and all the pipes and hose needed to have the system in working order.  All we have to provide is the sand and gravel and one extra man to help the engineer build the tank.  God has things coming at us that we weren't even aware were on the way. 

 

Our girls needed a new original birth certificate that are issued by the Honduran Government.  They needed the documents to matriculate them into school, and Mary needed one of the documents to leave the country to go back to school in St. Louis.  The problem was that the paper that they process the birth certificates with had run out.  There were no official papers for these documents in the whole country.   Then with the help of Jake Compaan and some connections, we have the birth certificates. Again another huge blessing and an answer to prayer. 

 

We needed tickets to get Mary and myself to the States.  The internet wasn't working and the rains sometimes affected the internet when it was working.  Then the electricity would shut down right in the middle of me trying to get tickets. It was getting closer to the time we had to leave and the prices were going up.    I don't like shopping for tickets.  I am always nervous that I will make a mistake on the dates or short connections, or that I didn't get the best price etc.  Then a man from one of our recent teams used to be a pilot, and he wanted to help.  He is getting the tickets and is setting all that up for us. So this is another blessing that has overtaken us. (The internet is also fixed)  

 

I can't begin to say how blessed we all feel.  We are so thankful for all of His great works to His children when we call out to Him.  He hears us and He knows our name.  WE are full in everyway and it is because He takes care of all of our needs.  We had dirty clothes, but we have a soap and a place and water to wash them.  We have dirty dishes, but food was on those plates and we have a place to get them clean and we are full. I am tired of all the driving I have done this week, but I am thankful that I have transportation.   I want to always be thankful for the things that I sometimes take for granted.

 

I want to thank everyone who have made it possible for us to be here through your prayers and gifts and your kindness towards us.  We are blessed.

 

Blessings from the Fully Thankful Honduran MOM