~A Bird's Eye View From Holly's World~

It is the middle of our second week here and I am loving it! My average day consists of waking up to (thank the Lord) a nice hot shower along with devotions and wonderful breakfast from my host mom, Adely. Adely is really awesome, she is semi quiet but as sweet as pie. Everyone morning I look forward to waking up to having just "me and her" time. Although we can't communicate well, we almost can always exchange our feelings and ideas. The reason I say I wake up to just "me and her" time is because all hours of the day the kids in the house are running around and of course, being kids! Haha, Diego, Sohpia, and Elias are my little sweeties. Diego is 10, Sohpia is 4, and Elias is 2. Diego and Sophia are like my mini tutors, they are sooo excited to help me learn spanish and I am sooo excited to have them help me. After breakfast we head off to spanish classes in the old BIC church. It is a nice building with 4 floors, we study on the 2nd floor with our tutors, Ana Maria and Carla. Ana Maria works with Jesse and I and Carla works with Janelle and Yolanda. The funny thing is, me and Jesse probably know the least spanish (thats why we study together) and we have the tutor who doesnt speak any english hahaha. But I must say, speaking for both Jesse and I, that Ana Maria is one of the best teachers we could ask for. She gets a kick out of us often...and the funny thing is she is an older lady who is very reserved and meek, and she has Jesse and I for students, hahah. It feels good to be able to make her laugh.

We are in class for 4 hours total, 8 am - 12 pm. We have a 20 min break at 10 so that is nice, we usually go to one of the cute little out-of-the home stores that the Hondurans have in our community. Already we are getting to know the community we live in, it feels nice to be able to smile at familiar faces.

3 x a week we have a language route, it is where we go to the open market and talk to the people who work there. It is fun! But sometimes it's intimidating not being able to speak the language. Every night we usually study and do homework for about 2 hours. When I first got here and heard that we would have homework that would take that long I thought that was ludacris, but in all honesty, there is nothing else to do when you don't know the language. I really enjoy our studying times, it's when our team really bonds and is able to help each other. God has been so merciful with us and is blessing us left and right. You will find that sooo many people have religous knowledge backrounds here. Hahah, my favorite thing is seeing so many cars here with the play boy bunny sticker on one side of the window and having a picture of jesus or a cross of the other side of the window! It cracks me up, but at the same time makes me wonder. It's as though they view God and Jesus as a good luck charm. On almost every taxi/bus there is something about God and how he loves us on the window. If only the people truely could experience the deep true love of Christ! When you think of missionary, you think of going into a foreign land teaching and preaching the good news...but I find more so that here, they don't need the teaching and preaching, because they are quite educated on Jesus and God. More so they just need to be shown true genuine love. It is hard also because they are suchhh a loving culture! What more could us gringos bring to their culture?? (gringos are white people/americans)

Thank you guys so much for praying for the team! We have our days of tiredness of the body and even more, the brain. But it's awesome being here and experiencing God in a whole new way!

 

 

Our First Week! ~Holly~

So STEP Honduras 2011/2012 team has officially been in Tegucigalpa, Honduras for a little over a week. We are pretty well settled into our family's, and adjusting to the schedule. Each of us seem to really enjoy our host families! Yolanda lives with an older couple that are very sweet and hospitable, and she gets to play with all of the grandchildren (and there are alot!) Diagonally across from Yolanda is Janelle and her host family. Janelle lives with an older couple as well, and the host mom most very is spunky! haha! In her house there is always family coming over and hanging out. She hasn't quite figured out who is related to who and the names of all the grand children but I'm sure as time goes on she will learn them. She has a parrot that sits right outside of her door who gets all the food from meals that Janelle doesn't eat hahah so the bird, I am sure, is appreciating Janelle's presence at the house.
   I (Holly) live around the corner with a young couple who have 3 children who are 10, 4, and 2. I must say they are sooo adorable! I have come to really love my host family already. My host mom is just the sweetest lady and she makes me feel at home. She often talks about Emily who was in the STEP program last year and lived with her, I enjoy hearing about her experience here. I love to play with the kids...and they seem to be accustomed to me already :) My host family is actually related to Janelle's host family, so me and Janelle are pretty familiar with each others families.
      Jesse lives right beside me with an awesome God-Loving family. He lives with an older lady who's husband recently passed, she has quite the personality! She loves praying with us as a team, and I believe she enjoys praying with Jesse at meal times. She loves reading her bible as well! Jesse also lives with her children who are all in their twenties. Jesse has developed already a close friendship with her only son, he is really cool! We went to the movies with Jesse's host brother and his fiancee the other day. His fiancee and him both speak English so it was such a nice outlet from having to comprehend Spanish and or speaking it for a few hours.
     Spanish classes have started and the classroom learning has begun! Haha, I will be honest, I have learned more Spanish in the past week then I ever did in my 2 years of Spanish in the States. We are all working together to learn the language and encourage each other. Keep us all in prayer for language studies. We have such a passion to reach out to the people here including our families that we live with so we are trying our very hardest to learn as much Spanish as we can.
   So far, we are really enjoying Honduras and it's people! We hope to continue to express our experiences with all of our friends and families. It is truly an amazing experience! Thank You for the prayers and support!

Insights from Janelle

Our first week in Honduras has gone really well! We have gotten used to the food. It was a little rough for some of us though. But we are all doing really well. Our host families are all really great and soo nice! They take care of us and wait on us hand and foot! It is really crazy. haha They are all soo sweet! Funny story with my family. The mom made me dippy eggs every morning and I can't eat eggs that aren't cooked. So I would cut out the yok and leave it on my plate, hoping she would get the idea that I didn't like it. After a week of doing that she finally scrambled my eggs last night! :)