Here Comes the Bride and Here Comes the Others

Wow what a week!!!  

We have been cooking, sewing, repairing, buying, inviting, running, crying, picking people up and driving people to and fro and in general, celebrating here at PTC.  I can truly say that apart from God we could have done none of this.  God has been our helper through all this craziness.  

WE took three different teams of girls to La Esperanza to buy everyone a pair of tennis shoes, school shoes, to get everyone ready for the festivities of the upcoming week.  WE went grocery shopping, did banking, bought a stove for the central kitchen so that we could cook for the 90 people who showed up.  Our ovens had become a little on the explosive side.  Just when I thought my nerves couldn't take the explosions, anymore they both quit working.   I am getting a technician to come to get one good stove made of both stoves that are non functioning.  Meanwhile, I needed a stove that was operational to cook for everybody.  We had been using my oven at the house, until the oven door broke while I was in the States.  Mr. Nobody is alive and living rent free at my house.  Of course the technician finally came and said he didn't have the parts, but if I would just push it a certain way it would stay closed to cook something.  The problems was getting something out after it cooked.  I burned my knuckles so many times during this cooking marathon I look like I have working out on a punching bag

Mom and Bride

Laughing it up

New Crop

The girls have been so excited, not just with the fact that they got new clothes or because my girls were coming to visit.  It was because some of them were stepping out of there girlhood, into the life of being "one of the Big Girls of the Farm".  Below is a picture of the younger girls of farm.

The younger girls with the bridal party

The Older girls of PTC 

This good looking group is our older girls.  Some are still at the farm

and some have left and are doing other things.  As I looked around the 

room I was so amazed at how the goodness of God towards us is huge.  

His plans for the lives of these girls are being accomplished. 

Here is Angela and Brenda.  They came to Project Talitha Cumi at

about the same time frame.  Angela is the Bride and Brenda is the 

Maid of Honor.  Hanging around these girls this week, I know they 

are not sister by genetics, but they act so much like sisters, it is 

hysterical.   

Brenda and Angela

Roxana Cinthia Evelyn Doris

These are our girls who were celebrating their Quincenera.  They all turned 15 this year.  In about 4 months we are going to be doing this with 3 more girls.  They had about 90 people in attendance.  They invited about 30 people and they invited their family members and we had a huge crowd.  We served baked chicken, Chinese green beans, rolls, beets, and chicken and dressing.  These were the girls favorite foods.  Well maybe not the beets, but they needed to be cooked. :)

Roxana and Cinthia's updo's

Roxana had a big day!  Her aunts came to see her and brought her this bright orange dress, and a large orange hair bow to match.  She had other gifts too. She had cake for the girls at 11:00 a.m.  They were really wound up with all the cakes all over the place.  I told her she could wear her orange dress but she wanted to stay with the original selection.  My mom and I shopped for dresses while I was in the States.  We couldn't find anything until finally at JC Penneys we found only 4 white dresses.  I had to alter two of them the night before the Quincenera, but the other two dresses fit perfectly.  God covered us on that one for sure. 

After the girls party, I left with Brenda and David Aguilar, a long time family friend.  He was going to drive my Patrol to pick up Charity and Charisa, my biological daughters, who had come in on a red-eye special to be here for the luncheon.  I had carried the car in to get serviced and checked a few days before they arrived to make sure it was okay.  I told the mechanic that a belt was skipping on the A/C and it was making a strange noise.  Usually Rigo, the owner, does the work but this time a young apprentice worked on the car.  We got to David's house and picked him up. We went through La Esperanza and almost to Jesus de Otoro in the valley when the car started jumping and then it started back firing, lights were dimming then going off.  David asked what did I want to do.  I said turn around.  We were trying to get through before the fog got bad, but it was too late.  WE were going back up in the fog with little to no lights. I was in the back praying that we would make it back to the mechanics house in La Esperanza.  I prayed we wouldn't careen off a cliff and that sort of " emergency parachute prayers", and that I wouldn't lose my testimony when I talked to him.  The car started acting worse because it was going uphill.  I tried to call the mechanic to come get us, but we didn't have any signal on that side of the mountain.  We arrived in front of the mechanics house and before David could cut it off the car died not to be cranked again that night. God did exactly what I asked Him to do!  I was so excited about that I forgot that I was ticked at the mechanic apprentice.
 WE borrowed the mechanics car and rode all the way back to Yamaraguila.  I told David we could go to the farm and get our Nissan truck and he said, "I would prefer to get my Dad's truck".  He said it with a tone of "that is what we were going to do", mixed with "I don't want to deal with anymore of your vehicles",  or maybe I was being sensitive.  I was in total agreement though, and so we got his Dad's Toyota Very NICE Truck, and took off again.  We got to the airport with time to spare.  Then we had to get home.  WE arrived at 6:00 in the morning.  David had to go to work and so did I.  He has a dairy and I have 24 girls getting ready for a luncheon.  Brenda, Charity, and Charisa went back to the mission house with Angela, and they slept until about 10:30 a.m.  and got ready for the Bridal Luncheon.
I went in and got some things organized and then slept for 2 hours and got up and got the girls getting ready.  I had to find a cartridge that Jean Brown, a resource person that everyone should know, had given me years ago to play my video tapes.  Charity had brought two and I had one.  I was going to play these on the television while we were eating lunch.  If you knew how many VHS tapes we have, you would know I was looking for a needle in a haystack, but I found it after praying my "what was lost, may be found" prayer

WE got all the girls in the bus and went to crank the bus and it was dead.  So everybody was dressed up and we did the drill of finding the jumper cables.  Tim and Ana Carey brought us some to keep in the bus.  Perfect timing.  Tim connected the cables regaling all of us girls with tales of how he saw a man's finger blown off by connecting the wrong cables. You just got to love guys and their timing.  I remember RED is positive for the blood of Jesus and Black is Negative for sin.  It works.  I will probably think of blown off fingers, though.   Anyway, we got it connected and off we went.

Girls started to arrive at the restaurant that I hadn't seen in a while, and one that had recently left.  I just got overwhelmed when they were trying to figure out who was who.  One older girl came up to me and I hugged her and I said "You know who this is right?"  She said "No, I don't know her." They had lived in the same house for years, but hadn't seen each other in about 5 years.  The other girl, said "You don't know me?".  She said, in a perturbed kind of way, "I am sorry but I don't know you and the girl's sister said increduously, "Mera"?,  and Dunia's  face hit the recognition button  and they both fell on each others necks and hugged one another.  I just stood there and cried.

The VHS tapes were a huge hit.  I turned it on for the girls who wanted to watch could see the movies that I had taken years ago.  They used to groan everytime I took out the video camera.  But they were leaving their plates and crowding around the little portable tv screen to recapture a look at the years that had slipped by so quickly.    Many of our girls were here at our farm from anywhere from 9 to 15 years.
There had been major changes in the lives of all the girls. Everyone spoke a blessing over the Bride to be and in turn, she blessed everyone back.  It was an end and a beginning of a very special afternoon.

I think the reunion of the girls is what it will be like when we get to heaven.  A fabulous guessing game of "Who is Who", and then just grabbing each other around the neck and blessing one another when we finally figure out what" loved one" is there to greet us.  We will all walk together full and blessed.  I am hoping that this year is just the beginning of the time of reunions with the girls from PTC.

 As I looked around the room I realized that the vision was being fullfilled that God gave my family years ago.  We wanted the girls that had fractured families or no families, to have a safe place they could call home, with a family they could call their own.  In Pslams it says "He puts the solitary in families".  WE had 43 girls there, not counting the babies that had been born the last few years.  After we got home and counted the ones who had lived here, that weren't there.  We came up with 63 girls who were placed in this huge family by God that carries the name of Project Talitha Cumi.    God has a wonderful plan for us all to be united into the family of God.  He knows the plans He has for us, plans to prosper and not to harm us, plans to give us hope and a future.  Girls from different walks of life learned and are learning to walk towards a Savior who laid His life down so that we could have a permanent family.  God is Faithful to fulfill His plans in our lives and in the lives of those around us.  As we come into holiday season of Thanksgiving, I want to be thankful for everyone of you who have prayed for us, sent us socks, underwear, toys, cards, shampoo, combs, tee-shirts, and sent your your families to be with us for a week, to build a building whose foundation has been from God.  We have not labored in vain.  I want to be thankful for the ones who helped us get the girls grown so that could be at Bridal Luncheon.  I thank all of you who are praying for them to be at the Real Wedding Feast.  We are all just practicing right now.

Be praying for us as we travel to Angela's wedding.  Fifteen girls are going on a bus with Natalie and Tim and Anna Carey.  I will pick them up a day before the wedding in the capital of Tegucigalpa....TO BE CONTINUED