Home Sweet Home

Hello Everybody
We have made it home all safe and sound. Our trip was awesome. We finished all the work that we went there to do and we all learned a lot while we were down there. We are proud to say that we are the most tanned team here! Thank you all for following us on our adventure. God Bless.
Team Honduras

One last blog.

Well, this is almost it. We have one more day down here and then we are on our way home! Mixed emotions there for everybody. We all miss all our friends and families but there are so many exciting things going on here!

Saturday it rained. ALL day long. so we attempted to do a VBS day dealeo but because of the rain we had to do it inside. and the room we moved into in the school has a tin roof. So the rain was so loud that everyone was yelling and the kids were all yelling and screaming. We got through some crafts and the story of Jonah (our translator started to tell the story of Noah...haha with the looks of the yard a boat maybe woulda been a good idea?) but when we started playing games the kids went crazy so we sent them all home with a balloon and a candy. After cleaning up and such we had nothing to do but have long naps and play cards. I'm not much of a card player, but these guys can be pretty entertaining! We also got to watch a movie with Jeff before bed so that was fun.

Sunday Will and I got up and made the team toast and eggs and leftover sausages for breakfast. SO good! then we wandered out into the water-filled streets and went to a resort on the other side of La Ceiba to pick up another girl (we also had a doctor and her husband join us on Saturday) and look around. it is a very nice place! When we got back we went for a nice long walk along the Caribbean. We like it a lot. That night we went to church and we are all blown away at how cute all the babies are! once again there was lots of singing and lots of clapping and lots of talking that we did not understand. But it was fun.

Today it was really hot again! We went and helped with the house we are building again this morning. Dee and I got to shovel lots of gravel and carry some cement blocks so we worked on our muscles lots. Then we just stood around and watched everyone work. I really enjoy being around there. The guy that we are building a house for kept Dee and I quite entertained with his crazy acting. I never really got anything out of it...but it made us laugh! Then us girls cleaned out a couple rooms in the school while the boys finished up the last picnic table they wanted us to build. Yay! Then we went and cooled off in the ocean for a little bit :) Tonight I think these guys just hung out here but I went with Jeff and the doctors to see some broken people. I loved it! This one guy cut his hand with a saw. It wasn't as bad as it sounds but it looked pretty cool. When we got back there was a soccer game going on so Jeff and I wandered over there and watched for a while. They are so good! It goes so fast its almost hard to watch!

But now it is time for me to go and get some sleep. Big last day tomorrow and then we leave the San Pedro airport at 9:25am on Wednesday. That is, if our plane leaves on time. Apparently they aren't so reliable here But hopefully we will make it back to Camrose that night. Have a good night everybody!

Janelle

She shure is hot here!

Hello all you people on the cold side of the planed! Sorry we took so long with thes next blot, we just have been so busy! Well then, what have we been up to... Since our last blog entry we did our last bit of our favorite job ever (painting)... okay maybe it not our favorite but it feels pretty good to have done so much. For the past couple of days or so we have been building picnic tables. They are pretty nice and sturdy tables, but they are so heavy! Atleast no one will be able to just carry one off to easy. After work on a couple of days we went down to the river. It is the best swimming experience I have every had. The water was so clean, clear and deep! We could jump off at one point of the bank, its about a six foot drop, so ya its a pretty good time! And if you would swim down a bit more the water would get kinda calm so you could just swim around in it without really having to worry about the current taking us away. We also started work on a house here, the guyes there work really hard, but there joking around with each other the whole time. We helped pour the foundation of the house yesterday, and today we helped put up the walls. It is so hot here, we are drinking lots of water and finding shade as much as we can. Life is good here and I think I can speak for the whole group in saying we will be sad to leave but we are also pretty exited for home. Oh by the way the sun got to all of us and we are looking pretty pink as of late, so ya I have had enough sun for a bit. Thanks for your prayers!
-Kyle

Hola! Well, after about a weeks worth of rain it's finally stopped, although on the other side of La Ceiba around 2000 people got evacuated because of the rain. The sun finally came out today! We are all very happy to see the sun again. For the last couple of days the boys have made 12 tables in all after breaking a lot of drill bits and screws... they look good though! Janelle and I have been busy with school supplies and painting. There are a couple of banana trees in the back and one of them was dead. Jeff whipped out a couple machetes and Will hacked it down. Janelle also had fun with the machete (don't worry though, she only went for the banana tree) The inside was like an onion and full of water. Jeff also showed us a bunch of bananas that was just beginning to grow and it looks pretty crazy. Yesterday for supper a local girl named Caraline cooked supper for us. She made us rice, Greek salad and two kinds of shrimp: deep fried of garlic. It was super good! And for dessert Janelle and I made Wacky cake. Coco and Eva's mom made us homemade donuts too. As it turns out, Jeff knows this pretty good card trick and both Janelle and Kyle ended up betting him $10 each that he couldn't guess which card was theirs. Let's just say they both owe him $10! Today we visited Abuela (Grandma) and Monica checked on her foot which had been very inflamed. It's looking a lot better now. Then we headed out to El Pino where we stopped at a church that was involved in a food program for the local children. We hung out with the kids for a while and they really enjoyed getting their picture taken and taking pictures with Janelle's and Will's cameras. By the time we left both Janelle and I had at least 2 kids by our sides and Kyle and Will had at least 3 hanging off their arms and jumping on their backs. They were pretty sweet kids. Well, we're looking forward to a good week of sunshine! Talk to you all later!

 --Deanne

The Excitement NEVER ends!

Hello everybody! Janelle here. I hope that everything is well with all of you. All of us here are having a great time trying to avoid drowning in the rain. It has been pouring since yesterday and when it pours here it POURS! Yesterday we were just painting away and cablamo! We are soaking wet and we are watching our paint wash off the wall. It was quite disappointing but it gave us the rest of the afternoon off. Which is good because it gave me time to sleep and try to get over this horrible cold I have. I sneeze every 10 minutes and its driving me crazy! Today Deanne and I put together pencil cases/organizing school supplies for the 200 students that will be coming to the school in February. The boys managed to put one table together after many complications (Good job boys :) ).
After we eat every meal we have a schedule of people who are on doing dishes for everybody. Today it was Deanne and Eva's (a Honduran girl who lives with Jeff and Monica) turn to do dishes. They walked over to the sink and there was all sorts of screaming! At first I expected a spider (that's regularly Deanne's response to the presence of a spider) but we all ran over and there on the kitchen counter was a scorpion!!! SO COOL!!!! or at least I thought so. not everyone agrees. The poor guys life ended with death by fork and knife and he went to animal heaven where he will be met by our poisonous snake (death by mache), tarantula (death by board), and all the other creepers and crawlers that have been stepped on, squished, or captured for our comfort or enjoyment (the geko lost its tail! haha). Don't worry we are all safe and sound and I am quite enjoying all the adventures and even though we have been living together and working together and playing cards together and doing pretty much EVERYTHING together our team is still getting along super great and are quite enjoying eachother :)
Thanks everybody for your thoughts and prayers!
Janelle

Crazy-ness Wearing Down

Right, well as you may not know Sunday was a very high energy "crazy" kind of day, with one great activity going on after the other. Since it was our day off Jeff drove us team members and three local guys up to Pico Bonito, a mountain that is about a fifteen minute drive from or village. We hiked up this skinny winding trail through the jungle, all the way up to a massively high waterfall. So after swimming all around the pools at its base and having a nice snack, we hiked all the way back down to the smaller waterfall at the base and swam there too! The jungle is amazing, there are so many different plants; trees, ferns, vines, flowers, and these weird little palm trees with big freaking spikes along the stem and seeds, like a thorn apple tree but scarier. Unfortunately though, we did not see any monkeys! There was one toucan that the girls saw, but other than that the wildlife was pretty sparce, which doubles as a blessing seeing as we didn't run into any snakes either. Once we were finished our hike we drove back out through the pineapple feilds and stopped off at a "road-side food making place" as janelle puts it, a little eatery that consisted of an open grill with three different meats and a cooler of soft drinks to choose from. It was very awesome, we sat at the ruff-cut tables under the gazebo style tin rooves and they brought us each a dish with the meat of our choice, three small corn quesadillas, cheese, veggies and refried beans. It was all so typical, but really unlike anything I've tasted, and the best thing was that we knew it was the same stuff that a typical honduranian would eat on any given day. So ya, a bit of culture there, sitting right by the highway as the big trucks roll by with loads of fruit, the smell of open coals burning and vehical exuast, definitley another authentic Honduras experience! The day just went on from there; we got back to the mission house to rest, but some little local guys who are on holidays now came over to play (ages ranging from six to nine), teaching me a bit of spanish and goofing around. This, as a result of me being terrible at spanish, turned into a time of swinging kids around by their arms and having little sprinting matches, and just general wrestling around. It was definitely the most fun I've had in a while, and I didn't even need to know spanish, I just needed to care. So the entire day of Sunday was pretty much a "high", and the last two days have been recovering from it! We were able to get a bunch more painted on the school building and completely repainted the little bathroom building as well, everything is looking way brighter with all the yellow paint. All the the same though, we are generally tired and are in need of recovery for health and productivity, Janelle has been suffering from a sore throat and Barry is just now recovered from some virus or somthing, so please pray that our strength will pick up and we'll all stay healthy (especially Janelle). Regardless of this though, our spirits are still high and we're loving every minute of it! Praise God for his love and mercy, it just keeps on flowing!
signed: Will

We is here!

So we have arrived safe and sound in this very beautiful country. The flight went well and everything went as planned. After getting out of the airport we got in a blue van where a very nice man drove us to where we needed to go. Along the way we saw fields of candy canes or sugar canes or something like that... um yes we also saw lots of palm oil trees, and banana trees as well pineapple fields. The people here are so very nice and Jeff would explain what things are here which I found to be so useful. On the way we picked us some watermelons as well as mango fruits and these small fuzzy fruits called leeches. After a two and a half hour drive we made it to our destination safe and excited. I really wish you could all see this place, when we first pulled in I thought it was some kind of resort. There is a tennis court next door and a soccer field just down the street, and the Sea is only a hop skip and half a jump away! We got to swim in it today the water was warm but boy oh boy was it salty! Today we hand mixed and poured cemento as well as visiting the locals and seeing their homes. I saw the biggest tree I have seen in my entire life, the base of the trunk was more than ten feet across! Jeff and Monica are great, they give us time to spend time in prayer, and to journal or just to hang out. They have a gazebo here made with cement pillars and the roof is made out of palm leaves and bamboo rafters. There is a sweet old lady that lives close to here, they call her Grandma. When she first saw us she had us sit beside her, then she would pray a blessing over us. I think I can speak for the whole group and say that we would like to go visit her again. We also have bananas here, Jeff bought 200 of them for five dollars American so ya the fruit here is so good and I love to munch on it!
Well it has come to the end of my briefing, so this is me Kyle signing out... off, whatever.
This is Janelle. I would just like to say that Kyle is the first of us to be sporting a nice sunburn on his face. Looks good friend :)