I officially survived my first week and 2 days in Honduras and I have to say, it hasn’t been exactly what I thought it would be, but it has been good. It has been filled with lots of adventures, tarantulas, and so many tortilla and egg dinners. I’m getting ahead of myself though, so let me rewind. I started last week with the intention of being a teacher in the village school and then was surprised to find out that my team and I were no longer allowed in the school. It was a big shock and honestly I'm not even gonna pretend like I wasn't upset because I was. I still am but I mean, what am I gonna do? The only thing I can do that's worth anything is pray. So for the last few days I have been praying and just asking God to tell me what his plan is out of all this chaos. Fortunately there are plenty of other service opportunities available for us so we have been able to make ourselves useful. For example, last Thursday we started working at a place called Comedor Infantil Brazos Solidarios a food kitchen of sorts that provides lunch for kids in La Lima that otherwise wouldn’t have access to food during the school day. The ministry is unique in the fact that they also are a children's Bible school on Saturdays. While there, we made and served lunch, packed bags of food, and sorted clothes that had been donated. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I could understand and communicate with the adults running the lunch ministry. I think, in reality, my spanish isn't as bad as I think it is. I just severely lack the confidence to speak in a foreign language. I would greatly appreciate if you could keep that in your prayers. My goal is to build confidence in my ability to communicate and increase the amount of Spanish I do know. Anyways, the rest of the week has been spent officially moving into the house(s). I have officially unpacked all 9 months worth of clothes and have cleaned the corners of cobwebs and lizard feces. Unfortunately, there is still plenty of live spiders, lizards, and all types of creepy crawlers. In the 9ish days that we’ve been here we’ve come across a tarantula, a scorpion ,countless lizards, several disc sized jumping spiders, and enough mosquitoes to fill several pools. (Speaking of bugs, let me go down a rabbit trail real quick to tell you guys the story of the “protein pancakes”. So about 3 days ago two of my teammates were hungry and decided to go to the main house to make a midnight snack. I was too lazy to get up,thankfully, and stayed back in my room in the other house while they made pancakes. The next day they told us all about how they made pancakes and they weren't very good, but they ate 2 of them anyway. They told this story a couple time to several people throughout the day and eventually we wound up in the kitchen as they recounted the story to our leader Michael. Now this is the good part, as Michelle retold the story she went to grab the bag of pancake mix and smell the mix, and to her surprise she found that it was full of tiny bugs hence them being called protein pancakes.) Although all the craziness, I can't say that I’m unhappy at all. I’ve gotten used to the hot days and the dull knifes. The small kitchen has become home to me so now I'm excited to cook. So far I've made shepards pie, breakfast casserole, and have plans to make a spaghetti dinner for the teachers of the village school. Everyday is a constant reminder that I have to surrender my anxieties to God because, despite my new found comfortability here, I am, firstly, not naive to the fact that I am in the honeymoon phase of culture shock and secondly, no matter how good I think I am at the moment, He’s really the only way I’m gonna survive these 9 months. I’m not sure exactly what's going to happen with my 9 months here, maybe it’s God's plan for me to be a teacher this year or maybe it is. He’s using this to grow me in whatever God's plan is, but I’m sure it will be good no matter what.
