Happy Thursday from Honduras! Keeping up with a blog has been a little more difficult than I expected. Anna and Maddie are already on their flights back to the States and I’m halfway through my time here! Here are my best efforts to update you on the past couple weeks… They have flown!
Before I get started here’s a picture of my normal morning attire. My fashion sense has absolutely been thrown out the window- it’s all about survival mode with these mosquitoes and gnats.😅
Highlights
Anna and I, two weeks back, sat down with Allison and talked about homeschooling her four kiddos since school starts up again in February! It was fun to share insight and experiences we’ve had as El Ed majors with Allison and to hear her experiences with her kids as she has homeschooled over the years.
I got some pictures of the market, which we love going to! It’s also fun to stop at the coffee shop downtown for a latte and maybe some tres leches cake.😋
On Friday, the week of the 12th, we witnessed Larry butcher three of the Smoak’s rabbits so that we could have rabbit soup on Saturday night! I wondered why Larry and Allison wanted us to watch at least one of them killed… Don’t people do this all the time? Also I definitely wasn’t sure if my stomach could handle it… Obviously, the death of the rabbit had to happen in order for us to have food to eat for dinner the next night; so that we could keep living. But in the same way, Christ died so that we could have life and have it abundantly. Freedom in Christ! Larry and Allison wanted us to see firsthand the wages of sin: death. I think, as Larry spoke on this, there is something to say about the importance of seeing it happen in front of our own eyes. It should be hard to see. Christ’s death was gruesome and if we don’t expose ourselves to the raw reality that He faced for our sake and because of our doing, we might not be driven to worship Him fully. Thank you God for redeeming us from a death we deserved.
Last Monday we visited our friend Mainor at his home in La Colorada where he got to show us his home and father’s farm land! We got to try their sugar cane (which was delicious) and shoot a couple bullets at a plastic bottle out in the fields. The Smoak family, Anna, Maddie, Amy, Bayron, Mainor, his mom, and I enjoyed sharing stories over coffee, lunch and papaya for dessert. One of our favorite days here! I’m kind of bummed I don’t have pictures to share from that day!
Saturday, the 18th, we hosted the annual two mile race that the Smoak’s put on every year! It was a success and very fun to see so many people from the community (largely kids and young adults) come and have fun with us. We LOVE the kids in this community. Maddie, Anna, and I have spent a lot of time with them on Thursday and Saturday afternoons, and Sunday evenings. We love playing soccer, newcomb, singing, and jumping rope. Kids are the easiest people to connect with when there is a language barrier. And they keep us laughing all the time!
On Friday this past week, Anna, Maddie, Amy, and I went to Bayron’s house in El Naranjo where Bayron’s mom, Elsa, invited us over to make tortillas. She welcomed us in and we shared lots of laughs over each others’ tortillas. Good thing they all tasted the same 😅
On Saturday, Anna got baptized in the river!! Just before dinner we went down to the creek with the whole Smoak family with Bayron and Amy and got to witness her step into new life! Thank you Jesus for making a way for us. It was an honor to witness her expression of faith. We are so proud and so pumped for her!!
Sunday we hiked to a waterfall that is near Las Mangas! It was about an hour and a half hike one way so it was definitely a great workout and worth the view. Anna and Eva, the two oldest of the Smoak’s, tagged along with us and led the pack. We got to eat our snack right in the mist of the waterfall. Of course we had egg salad tortilla sandwiches with honey and cinnamon sugar tortillas and gummy worms.
This past Tuesday, Anna, Maddie, Larry, and I hiked to La Muralla, a small farming community up in the mountains that can only be accessed by foot. It took 50 minutes just to make it to La Muralla and once we got there we visited a friend of Larry’s, Geronimo, who is a 66 year old farmer.
From his home, we hiked up the mountain to his fields where he grows so many different fruits and vegetables. His “fields” were on the mountain side because there is no flat land to farm so his crops are wiped out a lot of the time because of erosion from hard rains and wind. The hike up to his farm land was about an hour long hike and once we got there it was a continuous hike everywhere we went because of how steep of a mountain side he was farming on… and Geronimo will sometimes make that hike up and down two to three times a day, 7 days a week, most of the time carrying 75-100 pounds of produce to sell in Las Mangas. It’s a tough life. And he has to feed all of the kids and grandkids that live with him in La Muralla. It was hard to fathom the work he has to put in just to keep food on the table. What are you supposed to say to someone like Geronimo if you want to share with him the Good News? How could I sit there and tell Geronimo about how wonderful life with Jesus is when I, first, don’t really know him, but, second, have such a nice life and he’s still having to farm his land at 66 years old with no help and no other option but to continue doing this until he physically can’t anymore. I would expect a response of something along the lines “easy for you to say” and who could blame someone like that? These were the questions I was wrestling with during the day. Larry shared that he struggled with those same questions too when he first moved here and decided to stay. Larry spent years researching and studying how farming here can be made more possible, how the soil can remain fertile from season to season up here in the mountains and not get completely washed out. Well, after we left La Muralla we stopped on the way home at some farm land of Larry’s on a mountain side that he farmed with the strategies he spent years researching and studying. He found a solution to keeping the soil fertile up here in the mountains so that farmers can maintain a consistent harvest each year, but as we sat on a couple of rocks eating our lunch, Larry shared how long and difficult of a process it was for him to learn about this kind of a system. It took him 10 years of research and study… He had to truly enter in to the lives of these farmers, the brokenness and hopelessness they were facing to discover a more efficient, better way. Through this solution he has been able to share the Good News. I can’t pretend to know Larry’s whole journey, but the things he has shared has taught me a lot about Kingdom living. We have to enter into the brokenness of peoples’ lives to share the Good News and be willing to share our own brokenness, too. Because it’s in our brokenness where we realize God is the only one who can make us whole. We are made whole by the Only One who can satisfy. Our good Shepherd. God, what brokenness do you want me to enter into? What battle do you want me to step into? These are also questions I have been asking myself especially since I don’t have a lot of plans when I come home. Below is a picture of where we hiked. This picture was taken after we had left La Muralla and the red arrow points to a teeny tiny palm tree where Geronimo has his fields!
Yesterday Anna, Maddie and I went with Amy to a home in El Naranjo to help a family build a cook stove in their kitchen out of clay! We had zero clue what we were doing, but we made it work and we did it together! To celebrate we roasted giant marshmallows over it 😋
Group Discussions
Our main topic after discussing the Kingdom has been fear. We have been focusing on the story of David and Goliath (1 Samuel 17) as we meet. I never knew how much could be learned from this story… What gave David the confidence to believe he could go up against Goliath and win? A small, unimportant, weak shepherd boy. As a shepherd boy, he spent a lot of time alone out in the pasture and it can be seen in the Psalms especially that he spent this time with the Lord.
The name Goliath means “exposer”. Goliath exposed Israel’s weakness and fear. “When Saul and all Israel heard these words of the Philistine, they were dismayed and greatly afraid” (17:11). All of Israel, along with Saul their king, were terrified of Goliath and ran and they were the armies of the Living God! “And David said to the men who stood by him, ‘What shall be done for the man who kills this Philistine and takes away the reproach from Israel? For who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?'” (17:26) David knew something the entire army of Saul didn’t…
When we are exposed, like David was, will we stand firm on the truth that God is so much bigger than any worldly fear or weakness we face, that God has already overcome, that in Him we have everything we need, and that with Him we don’t need to be afraid because He will come through, or are we going to run from our fears and let Goliath, who can be identified as all things worldly, win?
Larry has also been teaching on the slingshot David used. Obviously, it wasn’t the slingshot and a couple rocks alone that killed Goliath. David wasn’t just really, really good at the slingshot. The slingshot can be seen as the spiritual disciplines we practice as believers. Sometimes believers and the church can become so focused on becoming good at the slingshot. We’re doing all the things! But what good is it if we’re only super, super good at the slingshot and we lose track of where our strength truly comes from?
Anna and Maddie are gone. 😦
I said goodbye to Anna and Maddie this morning after we drove to the airport at 5:30am. 😦 This past month has been so, so fun with them. Although I am really sad about them leaving and anxious to come home at times, I am excited for this second month. Since school starts up again in February I get to see that all unfold which I am really looking forward to!!
It is now just Amy and I and the Smoak family on campus since Bayron left last week for an internship for the next couple months, too! I have no doubt this second month will go by just as fast as the first so I am trying to enjoy each day as it comes.
If you would like, I would love prayer for patience to sit in the uncomfortable. Also, prayer for safe travels for Anna and Maddie as they return super late tonight and for Amy as she prepares to teach English at the school in El Naranjo!
Thank you for your thoughts and prayers!! I love you all!
Emma
John 17:3 – “And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”
If you’re interested in what books we’ve been reading from while we’re here, I thought I’d list them off! (1) Radical by David Platt, (2) Compassion by Henri Nouwen, Donald McNeill & Douglas Morrison, (3) The Spirit of the Disciplines by Dallas Willard, (4) Toxic Charity by Robert Lupton, (5) Crazy Love by Francis Chan, (6) The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne, (7) Theirs is the Kingdom by Robert Lupton, (8) The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer, (9) With Justice For All by John Perkins (10) The Key to Everything by Norman Grubb
Honduras 2020 