Safely made it to the show me state. Having lunch just outside st. Louis

On the road

It's 6:24 a.m. and we're getting ready to take off. Everything fit in the car so we're good to go!!! Today we hope to drive about 12 hours and make it to a campsite in Oklahoma. We appreciate your prayers for traveling mercies.

Last Global Cafe` of the semester!

Join us for our last Global Cafe` of the semester! Featuring Gabor and Meg ('00) Dul from Hungary! You'll enjoy it!

183 Pictures in 3 Minutes

Thanks for your prayers for the team. Tonight at Global Cafe, we shared what God did and is doing in Honduras. This slideshow was part of our presentation.

Enjoy the best of a week's worth of photos. They are set to the music written to celebrate Honduras making it to the 2010 World Cup. You can also view them one at a time after the slideshow.

You can see a larger version at http://www.asburywgm.org/slideshows/Honduras_2010b/

Last post from Honduras

Due to internet issues this was written in Honduras, but was posted after we returned.

Hey guys,
Sorry it has been so long since our last update, but the last few days we have been really tired, really excited and really busy. So here is our last update from Honduras itself.

Friday, we started painting the front of the conference center. It was really nice because we were able to interact with the boys as they passed by throughout the day. During our afternoon break, Heidi and I (Adrienne) had the opportunity to ride on the front of Omar’s four-wheeler. It was the first time I had ever ridden on one!! Then, one better, Heidi and I each got to drive the four-wheeler with Thad sitting on the front giving us directions, lol! It was great!
That night we had a very nice farewell dinner with a nice table setting and the staff served us. After that, our team headed over Jerry and Sherri Murphy’s house to hear their testimonies of how they came to know Christ and came to the mission field. Since I’m not sure they would like to have their story shared over the internet, basically neither of them came from Christian homes. Their story was very different from most missionaries and very inspiring. Omar showed up a little while later after we had finished and hung out for a while.

This Friday night was different from most Fridays because throughout the week the missionaries had been planning a pancake breakfast for the boys at 11pm that night. So the Bible Institute put on a worship night for the boys in order to keep them awake. After we finished at the Murphy’s, Heidi, Omar, Mark and I went to the service. We hung out and sang songs until Heidi and I had to leave at 10:20ish for our staff meeting at 10:30.
As we got up to leave, Omar came running over and asked Heidi if she was ready. Earlier at the Murphy’s, Heidi had told Omar that she had her testimony written in Spanish and wanted to share if there was time. So Omar left us and ran over to those in charge and came running back and told us that it would be better if both of us would share. Problem – the adults weren’t there so I had no translator. But we followed God’s leading and said yes. Heidi shared hers first in Spanish and then I stepped up to the podium. I shared some of mine in Spanish and anytime I switched to English, Heidi would do her best to translate. At points, the boys began to shout out and help us find the right verbs, conjugations, and grammar, lol. Overall, my testimony was very interactive, lol. But it was told and Jesus was able to use it to give them hope.

After we gave our testimonies, we rushed over to the conference center to get ready for the breakfast. Christian, the director of the school, opened and then Heidi and I did a skit about making and eating pancakes since the boys had never really eaten them before. A little while later, Mark and a girl from the Bible Institute on campus, Daniela, lip-synced to the new Honduran World Cup soccer song. I have never heard boys shout and cheer so much in my life! During the meal, Nathan went table to table doing magic tricks with a message which the boys really enjoyed. That night ended with saying our goodbyes and finishing with some really good conversations with some of the boys.

Saturday morning, we said our goodbyes and pulled out around 8am with heavy hearts, said to say goodbye. Around lunch time, we arrived at the Valle de Angeles, a big shopping area in Tegucigalpa, to spend the afternoon shopping with some of the missionaries. Then we went to the guest house in Teguc where Heidi’s host family from the summer came to visit. Mark and Heidi went with them to dinner and Jerry, Sherri, Nathan, Colleen and Terry Hawk, and I went to dinner at a typical restaurant called El Gordo. It had fantastic food! Last night ended with us dumping the rest of our pictures together and flipping through them. After some last minute packing, we went to bed.

This morning we had breakfast around 8am, and now we are waiting in the airport for our flight to Houston to get ready to leave. We have no wireless here so we are going to post this when we land in Houston. This is our last post written in Honduras. L We are getting on the plane with hearts of sorrow from leaving our new found family members behind but with an excitement and hope for the future, not only for the school but for the boys and even for our lives in missions in the future. Please keep us in your prayers as we travel through flights, customs, and immigration, and finally a drive back to school. And keep the school and missionaries here in your prayers as they work out some of the new visions that God has given them. Thank you for all of your prayers and support. We have a final round of pictures coming soon.

Dios les bendiga, (God bless you all)

Adrienne, on behalf of the team

A quick note about a full day

We just wanted to get a quick note out to let you know that we are packing as much as we can into these last days at the farm, so it may be Saturday evening before we get more pictures up.

Yesterday's work project saw us doing more digging and concrete work as we made cement drain pads for the downspouts. We spent the afternoon in Catacamas seeing what a typical Honduran town is like. We ate at a local restaurant with great smoothie-type drinks.

Today we will be painting because it is dry enough. Before and after pictures will hopefully accompany our next post.

Thanks for your continued prayers as we say our goodbyes this evening. We have made many friends and there will probably be some tears.

Nathan for the team

Proof we really have been working!

Today we nearly completed our main work project here at El Sembrador. While it will only take a few seconds to scroll through the pictures, we can all testify that it was three labor intensive days!

The courtyard that turns into a pond during rainy season. It becomes very slick when wet and even had some mold problems.

Our first task was to remove the 2 inch thick brick tiles without breaking any others around them. Mark ran the angle grinder for hours!

The dust made it hard to breathe and made a real mess, but the bandanna's were fun for pictures!

Then came removing the tiles. After this picture, we found that a mini sledge hammer and a chisel were the best way to go.

When I took this picture about half way through day one, I thought we had done the hard part. Little did we know that there was about 1.5 inches of mortar to cut through and about 4 inches of cement under that to cut and pound and chisel through and that was before using a pick to dig through rocks and clay. The majority of that process was on Tuesday, and it was so dusty that we didn't bring our cameras out much.

Heidi and Adrianne spent much of Monday and Tuesday making the replacement tiles. They had to fill the forms with concrete and tint the top 1/8 inch to match the current tiles as much as possible. The forms and dye were made by Thad Gouge, the missionary who is our project manager.

We did have some help from some Honduran friends. Mark was always able to make them smile.

Jumping ahead to this morning, we made sure the slope was perfect which required more digging, but it was fun to finally get the pipe in the ground.

While the color on the bricks does look a little different now, the color was matched to an original piece of brick, so with a little weathering, they should match great!

We still have a few tiles to put mortar around, but we are otherwise finished! It even rained tonight so we were able to get a real life test. The drain passed with flying colors!

Tomorrow we will be painting part of the front of the building. Thanks for continuing to follow us in your prayers!

Nathan for the team