I love this line - "There are three things aplenty here; rain, time, and bananas". I wrote it in a letter yesterday, and it rings through my head and gets truer by the minute.
The school season is over for us, and my standard introduction changes from "No hablo Espanol" to "No hablo mucho Espanol."
Next week weīve been invited to travel through South Honduras to see and visit with some of the believers there. Pray that we would learn much, be humble, kind, and loving.
Continue also to pray for our time after these couple of weeks. We donīt know the path that the Lord has for us here, and we continue to seek His will in our work and in our lives.
Somewhere in the depths of my mind is this idea that missionaries bring "the Christian life" to those who have never heard of Jesus, the Bible, Moses, Jonah, or Ehud.
The problem is, these folks live "the Christian life" way better than I do. Even as Iīm writing this, thereīs a prayer meeting going on next door. Everyone at the church is participating in a 40 day fast, and they get together each day at 1 and at 7 to worship and pray.
And these Christians know their Bible backwards and forwards. They know the law, their responsibilities to God and their neighbor, and they work at living "the Christian life."
I think that they think I'm a bad Christian. I don't go to church as much as they do, and my hair is touching my ears.
It is a different sort of feeling for me. Back in the U.S., everybody thought I was pretty good. Working in the inner-city, helping widows, going to be a missionary overseas - everybody thought that that was pretty special.
But over here, missionaries are a dime a dozen. I read that in a nearby city here in Honduras, there is one missionary for every 90 people. There is no excitement over a couple more, just a polite smile and then back to the prayer meeting.
And who can blame them? What can I say that will add to their knowledge of the Christian life when they're already spending every waking hour in church?
I don't always know. I'm learning more and more that my worth is in Jesus, and not in how I rank on the Christian-life-o-meter. It's not in praying the correct amount each day, or in fasting or going to church enough.
Pray for us. We want to love our neighbors by pointing to the salvation and security that we have in Jesus. Pray for our neighbors, and rejoice in their knowledge of Christ. Pray that they too would see more and more their freedom from the law, and their salvation in Christ. Pray that this gift would overflow in all of our lives and fill us with love so that we long to worship our awesome God both day and night.
Today, when we were out looking for bikes to rent, a man whom we had never seen before suddenly came up to us, smiled, and said "did you find your bikes yet? Go to the hotel Telamar for the bikes". Then he took another sniff from his bag of glue.
So we went to the hotel Telamar, and sure enough, there were the bikes. Very weird.
Iglesia
Young, thin girls twirling madly, calling out, being slain.
After they pick themselves up off the ground, motherly hugs descend around their shoulders.
One girl--12 or 13, with arms and legs like twigs, with large and hungry eyes--is especially dramatic. What do they mean, the eyes of the girls?
Do they find Jesus in the slaying?
Or perhaps in the motherly hug?
"Though my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will receive me."
At the island church, I watched two geckos dancing across one of the high windows.
"Arise my soul, Arise."
I think of the man and his megaphone on a corner in crowded city center,
yelling in Espaņol angry, angry words.
I hear "Palabra" repeated again and again--the Word.
Is he John the Baptist?
Does he love the souls at which he screams?
How does the Word speak?
"Shake off thy guilty fears. The bleeding sacrifice on my behalf appears."
The children perch on kneelers at the front of Zion Methodist,
circled around the towering figure of their preacher.
They wiggle and squirm.
His large brown hands rest upon each head in turn,
and words of blessing quiet each wiggler for a moment.
The street kid darted through the open sanctuary doors just before the benediction.
I caught a glimpse--thin, dirty, tattered, matted.
His shrill phrase in Spanish hung in the air--a curse? A demand for help?
"With confidence I now draw nigh,
and Abba, Father, Abba cry."
She has a voice like an angel.
Not a sweet, pink cherub voice, but the piercing, resonant voice of a bronzed being.
The voice echoes up to the high ceiling and spills out the churchīs 20 open windows,
tumbling to the street, to the ocean, to the reef.
She sings with the richness of love in her voice.
The fish must be dancing.
The people in the street hear her voice.
Does the Word make their hearts dance like fish?
"I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living."
My english teacher tells me that it costs between 300 and 600 bucks to have a baby here. Everything included. I guess a lot of Nortamericanos come down here at about 9 months and pay a little more (700-800 dollars) and get the full treatment - private room, private nurse, 5 day stay, etc. They have the baby, then fly back up.
What say you, my baby-considering friends up there in the US? Want to come and visit?
For all those who are not thinking of babies, consider these things - a dentist visit and cleaning for under $10, fillings for $20, full surgery for under $100 . Laser eye surgery for $75.
Now you canīt serve God and mammon, but Iīm dutch! I was born to be cheap!
After five days, I'm becoming ok with the fact that I have no idea what is going on around me. This wasn't always the case.
Riding into San Pedro Sula was a bit of a shock. Couldn't talk to the customs guys, the taxi driver, the hotel lady... The background noise was foreign (ha ha) to my ears.
I found an English newspaper in the hotel room, and found that the city was having transportation wars between bus companies. This isn't a euphemism. Last weekend 14 civilians were killed in 3 separate attacks on busses in the city. (Incidentally, the contract for these killings totalled around $480 USD). I began to count the hours until our bus trip in the morning...
But God is near. It seems easier to trust Jesus' promises when I feel safe, but faith and trust are grown when there is nothing to trust but him. Very cliche statement, but that doesn't make it less real or true.
So we got to La Ceiba by bus very safely and moved into our house. We're living with Don Chon and his family. There are about six other people living here, but so many people come in and out to visit that it seems like more.
The first few days were interesting, as Rachel and I don't speak a lick o' Spanish and they speak no English at all. For a while, they would talk to us at length and we would stand there open-mouthed, not understanding a thing. After they realized that we hadn't understand anything they'd said for two days, they began talking about simple things... Every time I see Don Chon we both comment on whether the rain will come. (It comes regularly every afternoon, so it's not much of a conversation.) But he knows that my limited vocabulary includes "lluvia" and "agua", so it's a place to start.
Our family is Protestant, but a very different sort of Protestant than I am used to. The first night we got there, we were told that church was @ 7. Since it was a Saturday, we were surprised. "But maybe it's a cultural thing?"
But 3 hours or church Saturday night, 5 hours Sunday morning (a city-wide march for the national day of the bible), another couple on Sunday night, Monday night, and Wednesday night, and a bible study thrown in on Tuesday?!
Our first visit to the church was interesting. The Mission de Resurreciones is an open air church that seats about 600 or 700, I suppose. Quite different than I am used to. Dancing, spinning, swaying, shouting, crying...
We stood up when the visitors were supposed to stand up, and they shook our hands. Innocent enough... but it came back to bite us.
When the altar call came, a few folks went up to teh front, and we got ready to go. But suddenly, a vice-like grip on my shoulder began to pull me up!
NO HABLA ESPANOL! NO COMPRENDO!! I cry!
"Let's Go," She barks.
Up to the front we go, to get saved. I was lost, but in a completely different way than she was thinking.
I think she was praying with us and trying to knock me down like the others, but it didn't seem to be working.
So here we are, in Honduras, in front of 700 rejoicing Christians, getting saved.
It was awful.
After awhile, a guy who spoke a little English came over. It turns out that when we stood up as visitors, we somehow conjeyed that we had never been in any church before. I guess they wanted to get us while they had the chance.
It's difficult to digest all these new situations, and I find my head either feeling like a waterfall - information pouring through unchecked - or like a desert - peaceful, but empty.
Ironic that we came here to think, to pray, and to talk. I find myself mostly listening.
But of course, that's when God speaks.