Hello from Honduras!

Hello dear friends and family. This is my first blog post after moving to Honduras. It is now Tuesday Oct 21st and that means that we’ve been “in country” for two weeks now.
These first two weeks have been a strange mixture of new and very unique experiences mixed in with a lot of “routine” type things. Let me explain: In our first two trips down here, we put our lives largely on hold back in the states and came down here 100% invested in the experience of being down here. We had no kids with us – we lived moment to moment, experiencing God in ways that have been well chronicled in the pages of this blog. We prayed with a sick and dying lady. I helped to race one very sick child to the hospital in San Pedro Sula. We drank through a funnel of God’s goodness and calling on those visits – but they were short term trips – designed to seek out God’s calling and everything was magnified because of their short duration. We had “STS” – short term syndrome. Those first two trips set the expectation that life would be like that every day down here. Now we have been here two weeks and it is very clear that living here will be full of adventure, excitement, and well….ordinary. Ordinary, you say? Yes, ordinary. You see we brought something with us when we moved down here this time that we hadn’t brought before – our lives. We brought our children, we brought eight big suitcases and four small suitcases full of our stuff, we brought Dave’s business down here: in short, we brought our lives down here. Now we live in an apartment here and the toilet leaks and the neighbors are loud and we need milk and bread, and toilet paper!
Don’t misunderstand me – we aren’t sad that we came, we have experienced God in new and unique ways and we are more certain than ever that this is exactly where we are supposed to be. But we are going through a difficult transition of getting our lives set up down here. Hmmmm, somehow – we didn’t fully expect or understand that transition. We are moving from short-term missionaries to long-term missionaries.
More on this transition as my thoughts on it develop over the next few days – and much more to come on every day life here in Honduras. In short it is a beautiful country that is more humid than I ever thought possible. We arrived just at the beginning of the rainy season and they don’t call it that for nothing. The rain is immense, frequent, and warm. Each day seems to have a sunny period – but each evening and most nights seem to be just pure rain. The people are poor, friendly and have warm, beautiful smiles. Life here is different enough that it feels like we live in another country and yet there are many “American-type” places to eat and to shop and yes, even a local version of Starbucks here called “Café-Americano” (thank you for that one Lord).
One reason that I haven’t posted on the blog (besides the obvious busyness of getting settled in and getting started with language school) is that I’ve been waiting for something really profound to happen. I realize now that profound will come in a different package now that we are here for the long haul. Small profound things have happened – but nothing REALLY big – just the simple, difficult tasks of moving into a new apartment and getting setup with life here. We’ve also gone to a missionary conference and we’ve started language school and home school and I’ve started working 3-4 hours each day. As you can see – we’ve more than enough to do to keep us “off the streets” and “out of trouble”.
Lastly, in the midst of all of this talk about things being ordinary- I want you to know that we are very comfortable – very happy – and most of all very thankful to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for giving us the opportunity to come here and serve. When I think of what many missionaries have had to go through in their “new land”, frankly I’m embarrassed at how easy we have it here. Life is good and we are well! Thank the Lord!

In the next few days, I’ll post a few short quick stories on things that have happened that were definitely not ordinary:
In the last two weeks we’ve waded in water 2’ deep in order to open the gate to get up into our apartment, seen a very young boy hunt and kill a rat without any type of weapon, heard music played louder than I ever thought possible, seen sheets of paper wilt like a wet napkin in the humidity, attended to a Honduran Pentecostal church service and walked through an open air meat market the likes of which you would never see in the USA. We continue to seek the Lord in the midst of all of these new experiences and in the midst of a very big transition. God’s blessings to each of you!