Clogged Toilets and Great Faith and Great Memories

Greetings,

Well we had Chris Briles here for a while and he and his team were wonderful and help us with everything from plumbing problems to picking coffee.  They were a great group of young people and God really moved on some of the students and on some of my girls.  It was a super great week. 

When Chris left Friday to officiate over a wedding in La Entrada, our girls bathroom in my house started having problems.  Instead of letting me know one of our 12 year old girls thought the solution was to just flush the clogged toilet with a bucket of water.  She had seen that done before.  However, it just flowed all over the floor. My response was as pleasant as what was on the floor.  As I was wiping up the mess, some sloshed in my eye.  I was miserable.  I had to repent to her and tell her that was sorry after I got it cleaned up.  

We have the most used toilet on the planet.  We have 15 girls who live with me and a host of girls just coming through to borrow the toilet, teams, and visitors.  Chris Briles had the misfortune of all the valves and hoses going beserk the days he was here.  He was working the whole time fixing the plumbing here on the farm and up at the clinic.  

So I was surprised when the toilet starting acting up.  It was draining slow.  Logically I got to thinking about it and really the water hose had nothing to do with the water evacuating slowly.  The girls kept getting me to flush the toilet.  It seemed like every other minute I was flushing a commode.  It was a strange weekend.  But on Sunday night, we had a huge problem.  It wouldn't drain at all.  Not with a plunger or a snake or anything. I was going to have to call a plumber in the morning, but we had to many girls and they would use the toilet whether it worked or not.  I know this from experience. 

The girls and I went outside and took the cement square of the line to the toilet.  It was just trickling.  We used a plumbers snake that was broken and put up incorrectly, and coathangers.  Nothing was working and nothing was happening.  I was into this project about an hour in the dark.  The older girls said they would continue plunging and so I went outside to help and had my hands that no hands should have to go. I came back in and tried the same process, and nothing.  I went back outside, and finally in desperation with our new weekend watchman, I declared in a loud voice, " I just pray whatever is closed will be opened in the Name of Jesus, and all the soiled water just gushed out immediately".  We have been studying the book of Mark at our Chapel service every morning and we have been studying the word "immediately".  We cheered and praised God and our watchman was looking at us like we had lost it, which made it funnier.  We know he will share about his experience.  It will be a crazy way to evangelize others in the community, it will work and people will be talking about what Jesus can do. 

I love these girls.  They are really the best, especially in a crisis.    We all came in and washed up with Clorox, and mopped up the floor and washed with clorox again.  Our girls work hard and study hard and I couldn't do what I do here without these girls.  They are really amazing.   I am thankful to be here in Honduras with them.  Crazy as it sounds we have made a lot of special memories tonight around a toilet.   

Blessings, from the toilet plunging, bleach wielding Honduran MOM. 

New and Knew.

Things are clearly new here in Yamaranguila.  It is a new year and there is a lot of new things going on here.  Our girls who are from the first grade up to 3rd grade are going to a New school.  Abundant Life Ministries out of Honduras, has set up a new Rural School.  This is school # 7 that has been created here in the country.  They have been highly successful and they continue to grow.  The mission of these schools is to go into a very rural area and open a school for the community.  Many of the students are there on scholarships as their parents, have little to no revenue to be able to send them to a Christian Bi-lingual School.  They study Spanish Courses, but also study ABEKA curriculm out of Pensacola FL.  If the student maintains a high grade point average, sponsors from all over the globe, will help sponsor these kids to go to college , here in Honduras, the United States and overseas.  Jake and his new bride, Rachael, are the Directors of this mission school.  Please pray for them and our 15 girls to excel in this new Christian learning center.

WE have a new grandbaby at PTC.  Angela and Kansas Serritt have a whopping baby boy, that is 22 inches and weighed almost 10 lbs. !!  I went to the United States to be a help to Angela.  Her baby was due on the 4th, but I just KNEW that they would let her go over due because of the size of the baby.  Well the doctor did end up having to induce the baby, at 42 weeks.  WE are thankful Kyler Audrick is here. He arrived at 7:30 a.m. and I left on the same day at about 12:30 p.m.  I was thankful to hold this NEW baby.  I had a wonderful time waiting with Angie and her family.  My daughter, who is Angie's best friend, came and I got to spend some time with her also, which was great.  She  is a nurse and when I do get to come home our schedules often collide.  This time though, we got to spend so much time with each other.  It was great!  Also I discovered, waiting makes you rest.  It is a spiritual principle.  Waiting on The Lord and resting in The Lord, was very life giving to me.  Usually I am busy doing stuff.  But after I finished doing small things for Angela, there was nothing to do but rest and that was kind of a new experience for me.

WE have new girls from the community in our David Wilson School for girls.  They are not new girls to our community.  These are young girls who have graduated the 6th grade, and they can't go any further mainly because of economic reasons.  They are caught in the middle.

Because of a new law, we have girls who are required to get nine grades of school.  This new law was passed in 2014.  However, the Government has made these requirements, but have yet to get the materials prepared for these girls, who have recently graduated the 6th grade to be able to obey this mandate.  The parents are too poor to send them to private school, and so they have no options.  

We have some of our girls from our mission at our school, and our younger girls at a bi-lingual Christian private school in Yamaranguila, that is sponsored by Abundant Life Church in Honduras.   Our girls are doing fine and they are being sponsored.  They are at school from 8 to 3:00.  However, we have more girls from the community going to our David Wilson School for Girls than last year.  Last year we had 3 older girls and 5 kindergartners.  Now we are about 5x's that amount.  WE are thankful for everyone who has help us get them this far.  But the girls, who are our neighbors need help.  

We just had a reunion with the parents and we told them we understood about their financial situation, but if they wanted to pay their girl's school shirts, they could pay in corn, or eggs. The moms are going to take one day a month and send refreshments for the school.  They were excited about that possibility of being able to invest in their children. The children eat lunch with our girls and so really they are investing literally in their girls.  

Please pray for these girls from our community.  Pray for me to have wisdom to know what to do next. Our goal is to get them full of the Word, and then get them sufficiently along in their studies that they can be part of a government program called, Maestra en CASA.  With that degree the can get into college or the military or police academy.  

Outreach to the community has always been the vision of our ministry.  Our girls here, who live at our project, are very open to help these girls, just like they have been helped by others.  Please pray for these girls and pray for me to know how to minister to them, while they are here at our school. 

The Bible tells us that there is nothing new under the sun.  Jesus says the poor you will have with you always.  So do we just tell ourselves  that is the way it is, or do we, through scripture really know what to do.  WE can't say, we never knew this.  We know to love our neighbors as ourselves is the second greatest commandment. There is a quote that I read in a book of the Cost of Discipleship, and it said "The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing" Please pray about what you can do to help these precious girls.  In Deuteronomy and Zechariah it is talk how God protects us.  It says that we are the "Apple of God's Eye".  That doesn't translate in Spanish.  If you try that little idiom on anyone here they will just look at you like, "what in the world does that mean. Why would
God have an apple in His eye"?  However, in the Spanish language the Bible says that "you are the little girl of His eye".  These are His girls, and I know that we can help them.  Please pray or write to us and we will send you suggestions of how you can help.

I tried to get photos of the girls on their first day at their new school, and the new grandbaby, but my blogger page wouldn't cooperate.  So I am sending this letter out anyway.  I want to thank all of you that have prayed, come, given, visited, worked, cried, laughed, played, and blessed our girls here at Project Talitha Cumi.  Please continue to pray for direction and focus to where God is leading this ministry.  He really does make things new every morning.  Life with Christ is an adventure.  Blessing the Honduran MOM in her New Year.