Refiner's Fire...

It's been a rough week.  At home, as most of you know, I'm busy.  I'm always busy.  Part of it is there are many things I care about - Campus life, church, school, family (including dealing with my grandpa's house), etc.  And part of it is if I stay busy, I don't have time to think.  It's an automatic "what do I have to do next" response.  Here, I have a lot of time to think, and God has a lot of time to bring up areas where I need to let Him work.  A large one that's been bugging me lately is in the area of self-esteem.

When it comes to many areas, I'm very confident.  Teaching chemistry, I'm sure I can do that well...relationships with students, ditto.  Remembering random, insignificant details...so much that it's scary at times.  But once you get out of the realm of intelligence and into the areas of personal worth and value, I let past experiences and negative comments override what I know intellectually to be true. I heard somewhere that it takes at least 7 positive statements/compliments to negate 1 critical statement.  If that's the case, I don't think I have any hope (said tongue in cheek...mostly).  And going back to that scarily accurate memory...I remember them all...both the negative and the positive.  For some reason, it is easier to remember the negative ones.  Most of those statements were said by people who probably don't remember them now...who hopefully have grown up a bit.  And thinking about it, the vast majority of comments that have been made to me in the last 10 years have been positive...but it's still so easy to dwell on the negative.  I've been haunted a bit this week.  It's led into some good conversations, and I think I'm starting to work through it...but it's not a fun process.  Necessary, yes, if I want to be able to move on with my life, it is necessary.  Enjoyable...not at all.  I'm finding that many of those comments said to me a lifetime ago have stuck, and become something of an internal, silent mantra...one that I need to get rid of.  And only God can do that.

In talking with one of my friends about this, she passed on a comment that someone had made to her about me a number of years ago.  It was something along the lines of I have an exterior of stone and a heart of liquid gold.  The problem is in breaking down that exterior...I'm pretty sure only God can do that.

Prayer would be appreciated.  There is more involved here than I'm comfortable sharing on a public forum like this, but that's the gist of it.  I'm talking with a few people about this right now and it's helping.  I'm spending time praying about it, and it's helping.  It's not going to be a quick process, but any progress is good, right? 

Fastest 4-day Weekend on Record...

Maybe not...but it sure didn't seem like 4 days off.  Friday we didn't end up going out to Valle, because we couldn't find a driver.  So I spent the day reading books, talking on facebook, etc...at least until the power went out early in the afternoon.  I still spent some time reading, but a physical book rather than an electronic book.  Friday night some of the graduates ended up coming in from the city to go to the party for Brayan and Yefrey the next day, so there was a bit of work to come up with places for them to sleep (or rather mattresses...fortunately someone was in the city and not coming back until Sunday, and another was covering a house, so it worked out in the end).  Saturday started with a soccer game (well, the game went from 10 to 12).  I played goalie almost the whole time (didn't take them long to put me in that position on a semi-permanent basis).  We won...which makes it a good day, right.  After we all cleaned up, we went to the bodega for the party.  It was fun, I got to get to know a few people I hadn't had much chance to speak with before.  They kept the generators running just long enough to show the slide show of pictures of the guys on the projector, then they cut the generators, but it was light enough outside (and not raining) that the lack of electricity wasn't a problem.  The generators kicked in around 5 again, so I spent a little more time online talking with people...and then real power came on some time before the generators normally cut out (I think it was restored some time around 7:30 or so...at least that's when all the power flickered, which usually is the sign that the "real" power is back on).

Sunday (which was yesterday, difficult as that is for me to believe) was something of an adventure.  My church down here was celebrating Day of the Child, so we met in a park in the city, had a service outside, and brought in food afterwards (pupusas...they're really good!).  The park we went to was the same one where I had gone when I was down here in 2006 and 2008 on brigades...so it was a little emotional for me as I was walking around and remembering conversations with people from those trips.  I spent the first 10 minutes there just wandering around and mostly shutting people out...but I got over it in time.  I called home (5 bars of signal in the park...and no real issues with mosquitoes).  After church I also got a chance to call Robin, which was nice, because one of the stronger memories I had was when we were both there in 2006 and we found a tree that kind of looked like a pineapple (the trunk was stubby and scaly, with giant fronds coming out the top).  The tree is still there...it's grown a bit, but it still somewhat resembled the pineapple...so I knew it was the right one. 

After church we went shopping (typical), and then we spent a bit of time over at visitation.  Visitation happens once a month, and it's a chance where family members of the kids living at the Ranch can come and see them.  It's at a church in the city.  I've never been there before.  Some kids had people there, many kids were just running around playing with each other.  By this point I think all the kids know my name...I know most of them.  They all said hi to me, it was really cute.  We stayed there for about 10 minutes, then swung by Brayan and Steve's apartment (and I got a chance to see it, it's pretty nice), and started driving back to the Ranch.  I say started, because as we were nearing the turn off to the potholed road (off of the main road out of Teguc) the hose on the radiator loosened or burst or something...we lost all the fluid, regardless.  Those of us in the back noticed the fact that we had lost a lot of fluid...so we relayed that information to the driver.  He pulled over and he and Melody's father (her parents and best friend are here visiting for a week) tried to see if they could fix it.  Scott tried calling people to let them know and ask for help.  He didn't get a hold of anyone initially, but Carlos saw us as he was on his way back.  He pulled over, and 6 of us jumped into his busito (and we brought the groceries too).  I guess Jim brought some more passengers back (maybe all of them, I don't know, I was in Carlos' van).  The busito we were in is still in the city, I believe.  Oh, the adventures of driving in Honduras.  For some reason, as we were coming back to the Ranch we started singing songs again...hymns, Sunday School songs, other praise and worship stuff.  It was a lot of fun...I just hope we weren't too annoying.  Basically it was Melody, her parents, her friend Sarah, Scott and me...Marielos joined in when she knew them.  Overall, I guess looking back it was a full weekend...even though it seemed to fly by way too quickly.  [It probably flew by because it was a full weekend, granted.] 

It was interesting to see how God worked things out really well yesterday with the busito...because if we had stuck around too much longer at visitation, we probably would have been behind most of the ranch people returning from the city because we took that side trip to Brayan and Steve's apartment. 

Today was back to school as usual.  It's been gray and rainy all day.  The power has held out so far, which is good, because it's our turn to host family night tonight...Melody's parents are helping with it.  It should be fun!

Feliz Dia de Independencia (de Honduras)!

It is indeed the Honduran Independence Day.  Which means I have today and tomorrow off of school (Day of the Teacher is Saturday...kind of fitting).  Yay for a 4-day weekend.  For those of you back home who are a little jealous...just remember that I didn't get Labor Day off last week...so it does even out eventually...mostly. 

Yesterday the kids had a parade, complete with a percussion section (all the high schoolers/junior highers).  We marched from the school up to the campo (it's basically one long hill...starting off as a gradual incline and then getting much steeper!), over the campo, down the road past all the houses and ended in the bodega, where there were cultural presentations by each grade level and then food and more presentations about the different districts in Honduras by each of the houses.  There was a brigade that showed up, so after that, we had the required soccer game.  We won.  The team this week (at least some of them) are from Freeport...so some of them at least knew where Cary was.

What to do on my days off...well...today I'm doing laundry.  That's kind of necessary...especially since I usually change clothes 2 to 3 times a day (teaching, change for playing soccer or just hanging out outside, then wash all the bug spray and dirt off and find clean clothes).  I'm also planning on spending some time today figuring out what's going on in the clinic.  Andrew and Simi are leaving for a time, and Simi was in charge of the clinic here.  She handed that off to me...I still don't quite know how that worked, but now I'm in charge of it.  So I need to go up there and figure out what exactly is going on, what this entails, and get a better feel for it.  Once I'm past that point, it doesn't sound like it's really going to be a big deal...but there will be a learning curve, kind of like everything else around here. 

Tomorrow I might be going out to Valle (de los Angeles).  [It's the touristy area about an hour and a half away.]  Melody's parents and best friend are visiting from home, so she's trying to get a group together to go out there.  It would be fun, it would be something to do to get me off the Ranch...and it's never too early to think of Christmas presents, right?

Saturday there's a party for Brayan and Yefrey who are both 18 and moving back to Tegucigalpa.  At some point in time Melody and I are making dessert for that (cupcakes)...everyone on the Ranch is invited to it...so we're probably going to be making a lot of cupcakes.  Sunday at church we're celebrating Day of the Child (which was actually almost two weeks ago), so we're having the services in a park I believe, and it's going to be more of a celebration thing.  Basically the month of September is a series of festivals, parades and celebrations.  It's been an interesting month so far with that. 

Baby Steps...

Today I had campo duty (well, I wasn't scheduled for it, but someone asked me to switch, so I did).  It ended up being a lot of fun...and a good learning experience.  When I got up there, a few kids were playing.  I went and sat down at the picnic table, where I believe Jesus was on duty before me (he's one of the house dads) and the father of one of my students was keeping him company.  I sat down, and within 2 minutes my student's father turned to me and asked (in Spanish) what I thought of the ranch.  I responded (in Spanish) that I liked it, and it was very different from home...so they asked where home was, and the conversation went from there...in almost complete Spanish.  Julio (one of my students) came over at one point, and I think he was a little surprised to hear me conversing with them in Spanish, because he said to Jesus (in Spanish) "She told me if you speak too quickly she doesn't understand you."  And then he proceded to throw out rapid-fire Spanish sentences and see if I could understand...I got all of some of them, and bits and pieces of others.  Jesus was laughing at Julio, especially when I understood what he was saying, and called him crazy a few times.  The three of us (well, four if you count Julio) continued talking for half an hour, at which point Jesus, Julio, and most of the kids left.  My students' father kept talking with me for probably another 20 minutes until all the kids were gone and I could leave.  It was good to practice Spanish...I understood the vast majority of what was being said to me (granted, I'm sure they were speaking slowly), and I think they understood what I was trying to say...at least the conversation seemed to make sense with the responses I got to what I said.  All in all it was a really fun afternoon.  By the end my brain was a little drained, I think I'm going to try to avoid any strenuous thinking for the rest of the night, but I enjoyed it, and I got to know people a little bit more (and they got to know me).  And I was encouraged because one of them told me that with what I understand and how I currently speak, I should be able to learn Spanish well fairly quickly.  Encouragement is always good.

Wednesdays

The school schedule here is interesting.  We don't get started until 8:20 or 8:30, there are no bell schedules, each child or grade level has their own schedule.  Sometimes I get breaks between classes, other times they literally start one right after the other.  The high school side of things has chapel on Friday mornings from 8:30 until 9:50 and the classes we miss, we don't make up.  School is out at 3:45 on most days, but every Wednesday is a half day (which means we have morning classes, and we get out at lunch).

The half days are for two reasons: first of all, since we're so far from the city, if we need to get anything done during normal business hours, we're out of luck.  Business hours in the city end anywhere between 4 and 6, and most businesses are only open on weekdays.  It takes us a good hour to get to the city.  Do the math.  Having half days on Wednesday means that if there are things we need to get accomplished, we can go in after lunch on Wednesday and we'll have a few hours to get stuff done - like going to the bank or next week when I'm (finally) going in to apply for residency.  Stores and shops are open on the weekends, but any official business won't happen then.  The other reason for the half days on Wednesday are the brigades that come through.  Each time a medical brigade is in the city, they have Wednesday "off"...and they come out here and tour the ranch, meet the kids, etc.  Part of that is a soccer game between the brigade members and the ranch.  So on days when there's a brigade, the students get out of school at 11:30 so they can put their books away and be ready for the game which usually happens at noon.  While they're getting ready, the brigade tours the school.  It's a pretty good schedule.  And I do appreciate having a half day on Wednesday...though often the afternoon flies by, because there is a lot to get caught up on.

There's a brigade staying here this week...which has caused a bit of excitement.  They spent Monday putting in a tetherball pole and a flag pole in front of the school.  While they were digging, they hit a water pipe, which means that we didn't have any water pressure for some hours on Monday...and when we got it back, it was really dirty.  It's basically cleared out now.  It's nice to have drinking water again.  The things we definitely take for granted...  [I think because the house I'm in was the closest to the break, our water took the longest to clear out...some of the other houses just lost pressure for a while, but their water was clean pretty quickly...so Melody walked over to one yesterday morning and filled up a few pitchers.]  Last night there was a bonfire and smores.  I spent some time over there and talked with people before going back home and finishing up the book I was reading.  Today is the soccer game (which I promised my 7th graders I'd at least play in - Kevin wants me to be goalie).  And my next class just came in, so I should get back to teaching. :-)

The Pond

I made it back up to the pond today, and spent a peaceful hour or so there...and I brought my camera along.  Unfortunately the pictures doesn't necessarily do the trek justice...it took me about 12-15 minutes to walk down from the pond, my guess is about double to get there (then again I was stopping along the way to take pictures....).

 



That's where I'm heading...the trees on the top of that
ridge





The higher you go, the better the view of the surrounding
mountains.







Starting out...the first hill to walk up.

This is also the first hill I walk up

when I'm looking for phone service.



This is part of the path up...note it's hard to

fully show how vertical it is on camera (I also

climb this one when I'm looking for phone service).



A part of the path (near the top).  A tree fell down
at some point in time during a storm and hasn't
been cleared out yet.  In the picture, I'm looking back,
I've already climbed over the tree.



I've made it to the pond, finally.  Here's what that looks like.



 

The return trip home, I'm on the top of the first hill looking down

towards home.  The campo would be to my left.

Hopefully that gives a bit of visual to my world.  Note, it took me about 45 minutes to upload the pictures, so they won't happen often...and I even purposely picked a time when most people aren't online.  So that was relatively fast.  But for now, I need to get to bed, because I leave for church in about 8 hours.  Have a wonderful Labor Day Weekend!





The Next Best Thing

I haven't gotten back up to the pond yet...but I did purchase a couple of books on my iPad and that helped me regain a good perspective.  They're books I own already...but ones that aren't down here.  I was trying to think through what I could do to improve my mood, and in talking with my roommates my cat came up...and my mind went from my cat (Loiosh) to where I had gotten her name from (because of course they asked)...and I realized that if I started reading some Steven Brust, it would probably help.  And it did...a lot.  I finished Dragon this morning, and I'm over halfway through Issola...I also got Dzur.  I can read and re-read those books many times before I get tired of them.  And maybe at Christmas I'll bring down the earlier books that aren't in electronic form.  Regardless, yesterday evening and today were good times.

After school today I did go up and join in the soccer game, which was fun.  And then I sat in "marching band practice".  Basically, the entire month of September is a Honduran national pride/history month.  Their independence day is in September, and there are a lot of festivities and programs that revolve around that...one of which involves a parade of sorts, so the older kids wanted to practice the drum cadences...except the drums are in the bodega, and they can't go there without supervision...so they asked Scott and me to supervise (they needed a male and female teacher because it was a mixed group of kids).  So we suffered through about a half hour of drum cadences.  They're not bad.  If they practiced as much as marching bands practice back home they'd probably be excellent.  Afterwards we talked with one of the families on the ranch for a few minutes and went home.  I ended up playing cards with Lucas and Hannah for a while (which is why I'm not yet done with Issola).  And that was pretty much my day.  All in all, it was good times.  [Well, except for the giant bug creature I just saw run across my floor...black, many legged bug on a white tile floor kind of sticks out...I hunted it down and killed it with my shoe.]

Unfortunately I'm not tired yet...maybe I should be, but I'm not.  So I may get a chance to finish Issola after all.  Or I'll find people online to talk with, or whatever...and regret it in the morning when my alarm goes off.  Such is life. :-)