Amor y Frijoles. Love and Beans.

Honduras made it's very first movie, and it came out this week. It is about a girl who sells baleadas and it is called Amor y Frijoles. It is so Honduran. The plot is not that great... but it is about Honduras and made by Hondurans. We went to a sold out showing of it with 600 other people who were so excited to see it. The whistled and hollered when a part came on that showed Teguc. It was like watching old family videos I think because they have never seen "their own" on the big screen. Way to go Honduras.


Will and I were in Zamorano (just past Jovenes en Camino) yesterday and we happened to drive by this man... he is riding his bike and those are chickens tied upside down on the handle bars... you just never know what you might see driving down the road here in Honduras.

In other news... Will started teaching a young men's class at church on Wednesday nights. They are learning a little bit more of the bible and are practicing reading scripture and praying aloud. it is good practice for the boys to start getting involved in the church services. The boys love the class. They are so excited to have something geared towards them and I'm love attention from Will. It is a neat deal.

Tommorrow is another tamale day with the chuch ladies. I'm am excited. It a great time hanging out and getting to know them better. Amber came back today, we are happy to have her back in our midst and hopefully the stadium ministry will get started and possibly be even bigger now feeding more days during the week.

Sunday service...

I just wanted to let everyone know that sadly Jairo´s (our preacher at Mogote) mom passed away Thursday. He left yesterday to go to the part of Honduras that they are from for the burial and wake. Our prayers are with him and his family.

With Jairo gone that leaves Will in charge of the the church service tommorrow afternoon including preaching! He is spending the day getting ready and thinking in Spanish. Good luck Will!

Nagatamal!

Nagatamal is the Honduran word for what we know as Tamales! The church in Mogote wants to raise money for a sounds system. It would be easy for a North American church of person to just donate the money, but the church wants to take ownership of their own affairs which is great. So without any influence from North Americans the church took the initiative to raiseing money for the sounds system. They started by selling tamales.

On Saturday a bunch of the women from church got together at one ladies' house and started the process. Wow, it is alot of work, but the end result is so gooood. I couldn't even tell you all the process, they had most of it done when I got there but here is a brief outline: wash/boil banana leaves, strip peices of palm to tie around them, mash corn, cook it, cook chicken and pork in an awesome soup of flavors, cut up carrots, potatoes, and green beans, wash rice. Then roll all of that up together in a banana leaf, then tie it up like a package, and cook it for another hour.

This is an all day process but it was so fun to get to hang out with the women from church outside of church talking, laughing, and working together. I am still amazed at the way these women live. They cooked everything over an open fire as you can see in the picture. I wanted to help as much as possible but I realized that I didn't even know how to wash dishes like they do without a sink and running water, much less cook tamales in a fire. They are neat ladies and accepted me with my poor cooking skills and culture mistakes like forgetting to greet everyone with a kiss...

After yesterday we are even more excited as the kitchen progesses. The women mentioned too how much easier it will be to do projects once we have a "large" kitchen with all the amenities. Will and Hector finished making a gutter out of concrete on the top of the wall yesterday so day by day we are getting closer.

Happy Birthday Will! and Pictures from our visit to the States

Will's Birthday! The boys went to the store by themselves and bought Will a cake! They said they tried to find candles that said "27" but they didn't have any... so they bought candles that said "30"... haha, they thought it was so funny, and it was... good cake too.

From our visit to TN on our canoe ride up to the mouth of the river that feeds the lake.

Rachel's brother's kids at the lake.

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Home in Honduras!

Hello to all! We arrived safely to a normal Honduras yesterday. Darwin and Arnold were there to pick us up. We all jumped in a taxi, bargained about the price and headed to our house to drop off our stuff and then go to one of our favortie restaurants with the boys, Palacio Real, and it all felt so normal. We are at the mall today, a stop on the way to pick up our truck from Baxter and things are totally tranquil.

We are still feeling things out for a while before we jump back into our old routine. We plan on heading up to Mogote today to check on the progress of the kitchen and say hello to our friends and church members we left without saying goodbye. I am very excited to see them all.

It was great to visit family and friends in the states and came at a really good time for us to be able to relax a bit in the middle of a crazy busy summer. But we are happy to be back here at home and back to work.