Rain for dancing

Rain is not a novelty in Honduras. Although it is "dry season" right now, we have caught more than a handful of rain drops. Mostly I wake up and hope for sun, but yesterday was the kind of rain that you want nothing more than to dance in it. All day it was a choking heat. I had P.E. outside, and all class it was, "Miss Jessi, it's to hot to run. Can't we go inside? " Unfortunately we don't have a gym, so there is a big limit as to what you can do for P.E. inside. So we had to face the heat. Shortly after school, I was sitting outside with Tammy, the nurse here and a good friend of mine, when the sky began to rumble. Tammy loves the thunder so we sat there enjoying it. When the sky opened up and began to rain. It was neither a soft rain nor a hard rain. It was a refreshing rain. One that you want nothing more then to stand out in an open field and feel the rain soak your skin. I graped Tammy's hand and we went to the soccer field. I took off my shoes and felt the mud between my toes. I stood there and felt what it felt like to be alive. We take our senses for granted at times, but in the rain I could not deny what I felt. I couldn't go on and forget that I am alive. That God breathed life into me, that I have a purpose. I danced around and it refreshed my soul. It was a day I will look back on with fond memories. Such peace and beauty shines through the rain.

Our Story

Hi, our names are Junior and Jennifer, and we would like to take you on a little tour of our school. Please come along with us for this little adventure. We're sure that you will love everything that we want to tell you about. Ready? Ok let's go! This is the front room of our school. It is called the E.C.D.C (early childhood development center.) In our hands you can see two of our favorite things, "Nelly" the lizard was our class pet for a couple of weeks and Junior is displaying one of us pre-scholar's all around favorite toys, a car. In the font room we have all kinds of adventures. We have a nice table that is just the perfect height for us. We have an art project everyday at the table along with the best part of the day..."Snack." We also get to do other fun stuff at the table like play with green shaving cream. Miss Jessi is the coolest for letting us get messy and putting green shaving cream all over the table. She thinks she is crazy to let us do it but we learned a lot play shaving cream. Miss Jessi put a couple of drops of green food coloring into the shaving cream and we got to see how the color spread into the creamy mess. In the other picture you can see our other class mates David, Enmanuel, and Kensy. We always have alot of fun playing together, well except when they snatch our toys or say something mean. Ok well, let's go to the next room. In this room we have our circle time. We sit on the floor and learn about our colors, numbers and letters. We also learn bible verses. Our favorite thing we do in this room is story time. We get to read all kinds of fun books. In this room besides sitting quietly we also get to play, dress up, blocks, animals and cars! We have tons of fun here. The next place we are going to take you might be our all time favorite place in the school. Here we are on the porch where we have a sand area and this really fun giant car. We love to play the porch. We could climb on the car or play in the sand all day. We're getting close to the end , our next stop is at the play ground. RUN! I think this is pretty self explanatory. Look how fun! Our last picture is from chapel. We go to chapel on Fridays. We sing and have a bible lesson. Everyone comes to chapel. Since we are noisy we get our very own spot during the week to play away from the other school. So Friday is the only day that we are with the rest of the kids. It's a lot of fun. We feel all grown up when we go to chapel with the big kids. We love going to school every day. Thanks for coming along with us for the day. We hope you coming again sometime. Bye Bye-

The thing about pictures

Do you ever have moments when a pre-existing reality comes to slap you in the face? It seems to happen to me from time to time. Just the other day I had one of those moments. It was a beautiful day outside. The kind that you just want to get lost in. The type of day where you wish you had no responsibilities, so that you could just sit around drinking in the perfection of it all. I had my camera with me walking up from one school to the other switching class, loving the way the sun was gently stroking my face. I stopped to take some pictures of our black berry bushes (called mora,) and the post surrounding them, thinking how artistic and beautiful they would look in a picture. After taking a few shots I continued walking up the path. I began to think how I couldn't wait to share this moment with everyone back in the states. The warmth of the sun was perfect, the crickets were enjoying themselves in conversation, the air held a certain mystery in it. Then it hit me..the crickets, they won't be able to hear the crickets. They wont to be able to smell the air. They can't taste the mora. They can't look into the sky, or feel the light breeze. It made me realize a new that pictures can't do Honduras justice. While I have to say that my pictures did turn out beautifully, it made me wish that pictures showed more than the sight, that it could touch all 5 senses to your very soul. So as you look at these pictures, try to think back to a perfect day, to the sounds you heard and the way you felt, and try just for a moment to come into the picture. Because the thing about pictures is they are just a tiny taste of all there is to say.

Mouse in the House

Last night me and my room-mate Kendra were enjoying ourselves sitting on my bed watching "A Walk to Remember." It was a perfectly delightful night until...dun dun... dun dun... dun dun, dun dun, dun. Out of the corner of her eye Kendra saw "something, a black something, ummm a rat or a spider." I thought that she was just imagining things. She is so scared of spiders and mice that I was sure she was making nothing into something...."AHHHHHHH, a rat, a rat, I saw it again." Kendra, was so sure of what she saw that she left my room, to go hide in her own room. I still had yet to see it, and was a little unconvinced. Then I saw that fluffy hair ball run across my room. I, at this point, stood up on my bed and started screaming. Kendra was glad to know that there really was a mouse, and that she was not seeing things. I was jumping around screaming "Call Ron (a fellow teacher) to come kill it." I mean how was I going to sleep with that thing in my bedroom? I closed my door so that that thing couldn't get out and we could kill it. Well, Ron was playing cards, and didn't want to come right then. So I said "call Edgar" (Edgar, is a teenage boy on the ranch, whom I've seen kill mice with shoes and other random objects) who also couldn't come. Kendra then suggested that I come call Ron because I'm better at convincing people. So I called and begged Ron to come and help me. He said they were almost done with cards and would be there in less than 20 minutes, and that I should bring Emmaline (my dog) in to kill it. So, Emmaline illegally came in "to help" she is a good dog, but was uninterested in the mouse that was running around my room. I knew it was up to me. So I started to walk around my room with a shoe in hand so that I could kill it. While I was looking for it the mouse ran over my foot. Well, naturally that started the screaming all over again. I did find the mouse a time or two, but made no success in even starting to kill it. Finally, Ron showed up, but then we couldn't find the mouse. We pulled my whole room apart before we found it. I was standing on my desk, when it ran back out. Screams screams, lots of screams. Ron cornered it and smash. Good bye you little trouble maker. I'm glad that we finally found it, because I was imagining that mouse crawling up into my bed with me in the middle of the night. It turn out to be quite an interesting night!

A wonderful moment

Jhoselyn, Obed, Audrey, and Emily made the choice to step out in their faith, and let everyone know that they serve the one true God on Saturday March 10th. The Ranch held a baptism service for them in Tegucigalpa, in a pool. Before they were baptized we had a time of prayer and worship. It is so exciting to see the kids make a decisions to serve God. Obed recently committed his life to the Lord. I can already see a change in his life. He is a neat person and I'm sure God is going to do great things with him. Jhoselyn accepted Christ a while back and was desiring to make a public statement of her faith. I have a close relationship with Jhoselyn and was thrilled to be there to see her baptized. She is a beautiful young lady and I see a lot of maturity in her. Audrey and Emily are missionary kids, it was really cool to see them step out in their faith in a different culture. It was also neat because their dad got to baptize them. In moments like that it makes you remember what life is all about. It so easy to loose sight of the important things. Or to feel like your not making a difference. You never really know what kind of seed you are planting in the lives of those around you. It also makes you realize that the battle is not won, but only just begun. I pray that Obed, Jhosely, Audrey, and Emily will grow strong in their faith and have the courage it takes to always stand up for Christ. I know they will and I'm so proud of them.

Scary Dinos!

Every month the school that I teach at has a theme for the month. In January we learned about dinosaurs. The kids had a lot of fun with it. We made dinosaur eggs for our spots on the floor, and painted pictures of dinosaurs. But one of my favorite things that we did was make dinosaur mask. The kids continued to play like they were dinosaurs for at least a week, walking around wearing their masks. I could only imagine that if I had been at their houses during dinner time, when they were napping, or bathing that they were probably still dinosaurs, because anytime I saw them they had their mask on. Kids get so excited about such simple things, I often wish I could be more like them.

The big birthday bash!

On February 15th Jennifer, one of the girls in my class, celebrated her 4th birthday. On the kids birthday I always try to have a little party to celebrate their big day and make them feel special. I made her a birthday cake topped with trick candles! It was so fun to watch her blow out her candles, blow out her candles, and continue to blow out her candles. The kids all started to get involved in blowing out the candles. I decided to pass on eating any cake at that point. Her house parents had given me a pinata and candy for her birthday so after eating cake we had some fun beating the pinata. I think that it was the biggest pinata I have ever seen. Really it was almost as big as my kids, and stronger than them too. They hit the pinata for a long time, and it would not break so finally I ripped it, then there was a lot of screaming, hitting, and pulling as the kids rushed forward in pursuit of what you would have thought was only one piece of candy. That had a lot of fun. The only problem is that almost everyday I get asked if we are going to go hit the pinata. They seem to think that it is an activity that should be added to their daily schedule!