I cannot believe this is real...

It is weird to think that a year ago I was preparing to go to Thanksgiving dinner at the base which was much anticipated. i was sitting in my room shared with Heidi in our small little house complete with a cement wall and metal bars.... Seems like it was just five minute ago.
I have to say that i'm closing this blog...finally... on a sad note.
I want to send out my love and my empathy to the Wolcott family who lost Kirsten. I cannot believe it.... I think back on all the times that I did things by myself and all the while having this feeling that I was sort of invincible really. I cannot believe this is real and I cannot express how much I wish I could change it.
To all of you at Southern I hope you know that everyone in the entire Adventist Church is praying for all of you.
I wish there was something more I could do.
Honduras was an amazing experience for me and I miss it more than I could express to you at this moment.

Thank you to all of you who kept up on reading my blog and made me feel like I wasn't forgotten while I was away. I know how busy school gets and it's hard to get back into life.

For all of you SM's currently out... stay strong. Satan puts obstacles in our way to make us quit. God is still good, and he is still present, even in the midst of great great loss.

Goodbye.

Videos!

So close, yet so far.....

Well, I'll be honest, I am pretty exhausted and I find myself thinking about home more and more. I skyped a lot of people who were at my house and it was awesome to see them, but for some reason I left with a sadness. I can't really identify what's going on, maybe I actually have "homesickness" could it be? I'm not sure. This week was rather difficult, even though it was only four days long, it was still hard. The kids were just coming back from a break and it was clear that they didn't want to be back, which I do understand. Seventh grade was particularly bad and they WOULD not stop talking. NOTHING I said made a difference. It was frustrating to say the least. Today we had a little talk.... but only time will tell if it made a differences. The race goes on though. I am coming home in less than two months now. It seems like it should be close. But I feel like I'm climbing a mountain and each ledge I get to only makes the peak seem farther away. Did I make a difference this year? What will I leave them with? How will they remember me? The questions flood my mind....I'm tired. I'm exhausted. But my love for these kids hasn't decreased. One thing I have really discovered recently is that God always gives me strength. ALWAYS. I don't feel like he has let me down once. There were times this week when I felt like I would get on the next flight out. But I would never do that, I would never leave my job unfinished, I'm not done loving my kids yet. I hope they see my love, more importantly, I hope they see God's love.
The time will fly and I will wish It hadn't. I know this. Here are some videos I took after God and i decided that today was going to be a good day.
My kids are adorable, you'll love them too, I PROMISE. =)

A collage of pictures of my kids. When I leave, in two short months, my heart will be cut in half... half will come home to Walla Walla, half will stay here.

"Go therefore and make disciples...."

Last week was such a blast! Jared arrived, then my mom and Kris. Prepared and ready to preach, sing, play guitar and show these kids love from The United States!



My kids welcomed them with a nice sign complete with glitter and pictures they asked me for. They were so cute! We showed my brother the local cathedral and had our fair share of native Honduras food. "Con frijoles." =)

Kris did Week of Prayer for the high school kids, then he did evangelistic meetings at night. He was pretty tired by the end, but I can tell you he blessed so many people, including the the missionaries!
Jared did worship for the staff a few time in the EARLY morning as well as did music for the week of prayer, helped with song service at night and did beautiful special musics for the meetings at night.
My kids absolutely LOVED having my family and Jared there. Jared came to class with me almost every class and they loved having him help them with their math problems and such.
My mom brought my kids pipe cleaners, doesn't seem too cool, but you'd be surprised!!!!
The first night of the meetings Jared and I sang a special music together and then the other nights he did them by himself. We didn't have a mic stand so I got to be the human stand! I stood on the step so that I could reach him! HAHAHA!
Jared, my mom and I went to the girls orphanage one day and got to help the girls make pastries. I was SUPER BAD AT IT! But It was really fun!
Kris did really well speaking. What an amazing TREAT it was to hear sermons in English. It's like Christmas! They brought bus fulls of people every night and the people seemed very touched. At the end we had quite a handful of people baptized, a lot of them children. It was really cool to see the changes take place in people. I'm so excited because last year i went on a mission trip to Guatemala, and when you go on short term mission trips, you are certainly blessed by what you see, but then you leave, and don't get to see the people afterwords, if they continue to come to church, to feel loved, or if it just fades a little bit once you leave.
But this time, I am still here for almost 3 more months, I am still here able to see the growth these people will have in their new found love and trust in Jesus. PRAISE GOD!
So that was last week in a nutshell! =) I sit here, thanking God for his impact, his love, his ability to see us through, my brothers gift of preaching, Jared's gift of music, and for giving us love that we can share with others!
This week my mom, my brother, and I are going to be relaxing, enjoying the beach and the sun! Stay tuned! =)

BITTEN!

Well, here we have it. This is the centipede that made my lip it's home last night.
I was sleeping soundly and all of t he sudden I felt something bite me! I JUMPED out of bed and ran into the bathroom and I still felt WHATEVER it was crawling on me so I like did this little dance to get it off then proceeded to scream "HEIDI KILLLL ITTTT!!!!!!!!!!! IT"S RIIIIIIIIIIIGHHHTT THERE!!!!!!!!!" She frantically smashed it with her shoe and then came to find me saying that it bit me and pointing at my lip. It didn't take long for my lip to swell up to the size of Texas, as you can tell. This is probably the most flattering picture of me you'll ever see. I almost didn't let Heidii take a picture, but then I decided, oh well, "BLOG IT" as Sasha would say. SO here I am, at home, waiting for Loyda to come pick me up to take me to the doctor. It hurts really bad stil and last night I was quite sure I was going to die. My throat was closing up and I was just crying, thinking how lame it would be to die a death by centipede.
Heidi looked online last night and saw that "it can only kill small children." Oh good. How comforting! =) At least I'm not a small child! I can still talk, with a little lisp, but I didn't go teach because my kids wouldn't pay attention to me anyway! I WONDER WHY!
Anyway, hope your day goes better than mine has so far! =) But God is indeed STILL good!

I'm getting worse and worse at this! =)

Well, now it has been almost a month. Not much has happened actually, I started getting tutored for spanish so I have three hours a week. Sasha turned 20 so we had like 3 birthday parties for her. haha! it was super fun! Things are going well, my kids are totally giving in to my new V.I.K. system. I give one kid a week a present and then the next week they get to help me be 9in chrage. They have their own book tha they write down the kids that are talking and such. It works like a charm! =) Then on Friday I announce the NEW V.I.K. and give the old one a Jesus book. Jared brought me a whole stack of books like "jesus friend of children" and the kids LOVe them! So that appears to be working nicely!
It's Sabbath and I can't believe it's almost march!
I'm doing well! =)

It's been too long... Lo siento!

Hey Readers!
Almost a month has gone by since I last wrote about what is going on down here. It's been so busy.... We had partial tests, and now I'm doing recuperation tests. Which might I add, i think is a rather ridiculous system. But hey, amongst all the grading, and husseling kids to turn in their math books, We had a birthday party! Esdras Ricardo, one of my favorite kids from 2A. As you can see, it got a little crazy in the classroom! I was tempted to be like "SIT DOWN PLEASE!" But I remembered that his parents were there! haha! Then we traveled outside to have a pinata! of course! What is a party without a pinata!
I had a quite a few kids not pass this partial, but less than last partial, so that's good. One of my kids, Daniel, never turned in his math book tome, not ONCE all partial. So his accumulative is "0" I reminded him every day and he wouldn't bring it. So now he brought it today and wanted me to grade the whole math book. I don't think so! =) I feel bad for him, but he's never going to learn if i just let him do everything on his own time. The thing that is sad is that he would've passed NO PROBLEM if he would have just handed in his math book. That's where I'm having to practice tough love, which doesn't come easy!
I made Kayla a birthday cake and we had at the agape feast we had the
other night. It was made with chocolate cake mix, chocolate chips (thanks to whoever sent me that =) ) M&Ms to write "K F" and then crumbled oreos all over the top. Complete with two mini American flags (a package once again...) I CANNOT TELL YOU ENOUGH HOW THANKFUL I AM FOR ALL THE PACKAGES I RECEIVED OVER CHRISTMAS! I AM IN SHOCK! Those were a definite moral booster and I am still reaping the benefits! I got so much stuff, everything from m & ms to coloring books, to play-do to little american flags to muffin mixes, pencils, crayons, stickers, I CANNOT TELL YOU ENOUGH! so thank you, THank you so much =). It's hard not to be home, and January is pretty tough. I would have to say that it has been the toughest month so far. It feels like it has gone by so slow and I find myself thinking about home more and more. I am still growing and still learning things for sure. All the time I have to switch my discipline strategie because after a while, the kids just don't care anymore! On Sabbath I had a thought that I should pick up some trash around our street. We are tired of looking at it, and trash doesn't pick up itself. I headed outside with my black trash bag and a blue rubber glove. What a sight. I got a lot of stares, and I hope that i didn't offend anyone. But i felt like doing something productive on Sabbath. Something not for myself. So the street was a little cleaner for a day and I'm praying that I made an impression on the neighborss as they stood outside and watched the white girl pick up trash. I had weird thoughts as I was doing it. Something inside my head kept saying "you are too good for this, what are you doing?" What gave me this idea? Jesus washed peoples feet. HE WASHED THEIR FEET! I am not really a fan of feet, and Jesus, my Lord, my Savior, washed his disciples feet. Why is it that we somehow have this innate thought that we are "too good" for something? It was so humbly, and I think God wanted me to do it on purpose. To teach me something, to show me that I NEED to humble myself more often. Anyway, take this story and think to yourself "what is something I can do TODAY to make me humble myself before God and the people around me?"
Have a good day! =)