TEN years?!?!

This month marks our anniversary of when we left the US to live in Central America for “three years.” The days turned into years and those years somehow turned into TEN YEARS. Can you believe it? When we left the US we were a family of four, serving alone and have now grown to a family of 5 and a team of 10. If you had asked the younger me if I would still be living in Honduras, I would have laughed. Of course not. I would miss my family, Dr. Pepper and convenience. God lovingly chose to tell me what he knew I could handle. I couldn’t understand the bigger picture and my Father knew that. And so he walked me through the day to day things until I could accept the larger plan He had in mind. He held me as I grieved not living close to my family and gave me friends to comfort me. He provided Dr Pepper through supermarket owners and fabulous students who tried (and may have succeeded) in bribing me. And I am pretty sure FaceTime is a miracle, created just to make family seem a little closer. While I would never have dreamed I would still be here, I couldn’t have hoped for a better place to call home. 

For you guys who agreed (ten years ago) to support us for three years, we are so very thankful for your friendship and your prayers. We would not have been able to stay here without you. We would not have made it through the hard times without your constant prayers. We would have no one to share our joys with (or read our blogs) without your friendship. Thank you. 

As I was reflecting, I looked back over some of my first blogs. I might have cried a little as I remembered just how much God has done for us. I for sure laughed a lot and thought I would share some of things that made me giggle in our first months overseas: 

A couple of weeks ago Emma was not happy about school and made plans to “buy a guitar, start a band and move back to Teague.

Last week we watched a movie in my class. When the kids complained that it was in English I explained that our school is an English speaking school and therefore our movie had to be in English. Josep, one of my newer kids, responded, “The school is not in English, only the Mrs. is.”

Emma just informed us she was going to the porch to “show off”.  We found her later sitting outside, “waiting for peoples to walk by so I can show them gymnastics tricks.”

Tyler has learned to scale the 8 foot wall separating our house and our neighbors. A useful skill I am sure!

Tyler was most excited at the end of the school day to show me a lemon tree he had found.  I however, just wanted to continue the half mile walk home. God is teaching me to slow down and smell the roses (or lemon trees in our case) and to see the little things as a gift from Him. 

I was about to buy “fresh fruit” at the ferria this week but then noticed the apple in my hand was imported from the USA.

After mispronouncing a word in English Tyler said, “Well, I guess that a start.  I have to start speaking bad English to learn Spanish.”

I was explaining to one of the kids in my class that she needed to speak English more. Her response, “Oh, since you speak bad Spanish, you need me to speak English.”

When asked by her teacher what the acronym for United States of America would be, Emma responded, “Texas.”