A Day Late and a Dollar Short

I'm not 100% sure what that saying means, and I'm definitely more than a day late in updating my blog, but it is what it is. I'll make this as short and sweet as possible.

Summer ended up being pretty uneventful. The summer camp that we had planned and prepared for didn't happen since no kids signed up. So, I spent most of my summer writing articles and planning for my classes.

School started, and we managed to get just barely enough teachers just in the nick of time, because God is awesome like that. We'll also be gaining another North American in January, a friend of mine from Michigan who is graduating as an education major in December. I'm SUPER excited about that.

I joined the Honduran Fellowship of Ministries and Missionaries, who are helping me get my Honduran residency so I don't have to leave the country every 90 days. The other goals of the group are to build up and support missionaries, which involves them having conferences and events.

I went to a one-day conference with HFMM in October. Since they're located in the capital city which is a 4-hour bus ride from SPS, I hopped on a bus and got to stay with a family there. I also just went down for the yearly meeting which included a Thanksgiving potluck meal, and a TON of fellowship.

While at the meeting, I met 2 other single women missionaries from SPS who are trying to start a Bible study in the area, and I offered to join them. They're pretty awesome, so I'm really hoping to get to spend some more time with them.

I was pretty sick last weekend, running a temperature of 102.4 for most of Saturday morning. I believe it was part of my sinus infection that is still running its course. Last Tuesday I was halfway to school before I realized I had NO voice. Literally. By Friday I could talk mostly normally.

In exactly 1 month I will be flying to Michigan to see my family for Christmas. I'm super excited.

Well, I think that about does it for now. Everyone can now sit back and be surprised that I actually managed to post a short and sweet update on my life... Especially since most of my posts end up being significantly longer than planned.

I will say that one of the main reasons I haven't been updating as often is that I've been communicating a lot with my mom (via Facebook), so once I've told her everything that's going on in my life, it feels redundant to repeat it in blog form for the general masses. However, I will be trying to update this at least slightly more often.

Summer Plans

Last Friday marked the last day of school... Mostly. Today and tomorrow are re-tests for those kids who didn't do super well on their exams, and word on the street is my Prepa kids will be coming to practice a song/dance they'll perform at their graduation. But, other than that, things are pretty much done here for the summer... Or are they?

I feel like there were a lot of contradictions in that paragraph... Oh, well. Onward!

So, obviously I have to do SOMETHING with my summer, for the simple fact that I will go crazy just sitting around doing nothing for too long. There were a lot of options and a lot of things I considered for the months leading up to summer, but many of them fell through, didn't work out, or turned out to be bad ideas upon further thought.

About a month ago, the director of the school came to me about doing a summer camp at the school, so that's what I'm doing for the summer! Seeing as I have about 9 years of summer camp experience (over 3 of those year-round and assisting in planning for the summer), I readily accepted the position. The planning process was slow and disorganized, but it all came together eventually. We're running it more/less like school, with English review classes alongside art and cooking classes, but it's only running from 8am to noon and I think Fridays are going to be fun days, so it should be a lot of fun.

There's just one problem.... Last I heard nobody had signed up for summer camp. Now, this isn't too big of a cause of concern for me as many times, parents don't register their kids to start school until a few days before (or after) school starts in the fall. But, it still worries me some that summer camp won't be that big, simply because I then have to make sure I'm supporting myself financially some other way...

But this isn't a problem, either. I did the math, and if I had to pay my own rent, I need to make about $5/day. And if I want to eat and occasionally leave the house, I have to make a little more than that. There are a few websites that I've been using to work online because it's always good to have a little extra income (plane tickets are expensive, people!) and because they're writing jobs that let me stretch creatively.

For the last week or so, I've been making at least $4/day on one of the sites, and that's doing pretty much the bare minimum of work, and not even trying with the other sites. So, I know it won't be a problem, and I can usually do that $4 in less than an hour. So, it's quite possible that I will easily be able to make $10 or more per day over a couple hours in the morning, which then gives me plenty of time in the afternoons for.... MINISTRY!!!! And even if I don't need to work online to cover expenses this summer, I'll still only be at school until noon every day.

Now... to find a ministry or two to work with during the summer... Fortunately I know a few missionaries. ;)

Family

I'm long overdue in writing a blog, and have been mulling this one around in my mind for the last couple of weeks, but one of those weeks I was without my computer, so I'm just now getting around to writing this. Before I get into my thoughts on family, an update on my housing situation.

When I arrived here in January, I had no idea who I would be staying with or where I'd be living. After spending the first weekend I was here with Pastor's family, I arrived at my new home. It was a mansion. Literally. The houses here are surrounded by walls, and this place had two houses on the property, two driveways, a nice-sized lawn (for a house in a crowded city), and a big covered outdoor area with hammocks. The smaller house is where the missionary couple and their adopted twin babies (two of the CUTEST things you have ever seen) lived. The bigger house is where teams stayed who came to help them with ministry. It comfortably holds 20-some people, and one of the rooms downstairs will soon be converted into another bedroom to hold over 30 people. The kitchen was huge, it had a dining room, it had HOT WATER, and I had full access to the house and the outdoor areas. I felt like I was living good, and definitely not what would come to your mind if I said "I'm a missionary in Honduras."

Because the mission house's primary purpose is, well, housing mission teams, I had to move out on Wednesday due to the arrival of summer interns, summer staff, and due to the upcoming arrival of large teams every week throughout the summer. Because of some lack of communication between the couple, Pastor, and myself, I and the Pastor were not fully aware that I had to be out of the house by Wednesday... So when one of the missionaries came to check on the progress of my packing that evening, she found me hanging out in my room like always and calmly informed me that they had expected me to be staying somewhere else that night. They graciously allowed me to stay that night, and after a power outage stalled my packing progress, I got up super early the next morning and managed to get everything packed before going to school.

After school, I was taken to my new home. Now, I'm in the rented room of one of the church families. I work with a couple of them at the school and had one girl in my class a couple of years ago. Now, when you rent a room here in Honduras, you usually get just that: a room. And that's what I have. It's roughly the same size as the bedroom I grew up in with an attached bathroom, but I'm expected to have my whole life here, including cooking and such. The single faucet and PVC pipe coming through the cinder-block in the shower told me I had one temperature: cold. There's no door to the bathroom, which is quite common in these rented rooms. There's one outlet. And the only furniture I started with was a bed that's on loan from Pastor's in-laws and a beat up plastic table Hermana V (the matron of the house) found for me. I won't mention the yellow walls that are a few shades too dark to be called sunny, the blue baseboards, and the burnt red and green checkered floor tiles...

I love it.

I can't explain it, but it instantly felt comfortable, and I loved it from the moment I stepped in. Is it ugly? Yes. Is it small? Yes. Is it luxurious? No. But it's mine. I don't know if anyone else is like this, but in order for me to feel at home somewhere, I need to be surrounded by my things. My mom would call it "clutter," but I like having things around the living room and bedroom that are mine, whether or not they are serving any type of purpose. It makes me feel comfortable and at home. In such a small space like this, my stuff has already filled the space, so it feels instantly like I'm surrounded by my familiar things. Granted, half my stuff is still in boxes, but it's slowly coming together.

Today CR took me to the downtown market area where everything is way cheaper and we found a shelf that my kitchen stuff and food now inhabits, a fan so I don't melt, silverware so I don't have to form more spoons out of tin foil like I did this morning for breakfast, a power strip so I can plug in more than 2 things at once, and a garbage can so I don't have to just throw things in a bag propped up against the wall. The fridge that I bought when I first moved here two years ago is in the possession of Pastor and his family, and I'm supposed to be getting that back soon. They also might have an electric burner for me. If not, I have the rice maker my parents got me for Christmas that does WAY more than just rice. I have a plan to make a thing with pockets out of material to hang on my bathroom wall to store my bathroom things, and am thinking about my options for getting a dresser of some sort for my clothes.

So... I'm now living more/less what people tend to think, and I'm loving it. For as often as I throw parties, I don't foresee the small space being a problem. Plus, most of the family here only speaks Spanish, so it's going to force me to work on my Spanish more, which I need.

Now... a word on family.

A couple of weeks ago, I got to attend a leadership seminar that the church put on. It was all-day on Saturday, broken up into 4 segments focused on different areas of leadership and spiritual development. It was all in Spanish, so by the end of it I was sort of fried from trying to concentrate and get something out of it when I didn't understand everything that was said, but the last thing they talked about was the way the church should be interacting with each other, and the way we need to be open about our offenses with each other and ready to forgive.

Everyone was called to the front, and asked to stand in groups with their families, and to confess to each other sins and to seek forgiveness and to take the first steps toward making changes in marriages and families that would then be a benefit to the entire church as a whole and the Kingdom of God. I stood awkwardly by myself for the confession part, which was fine, but then the pastor called everyone to pray earnestly for each other within their families, and then I started feeling left out, especially in a church filled with families and VERY few individuals (read: one individual: me). But there were a few other people there that day who had come without their spouses, so the pastor grouped us together and I wrapped my arm around an older woman who I've known for a while and love and the father of one of my kids from before that I've never actually spoken to before.

I prayed softly under my breath as everyone else prayed out loud. One of my favorite sounds in the world is a chorus of praying voices, and one of my primary love languages is physical touch. Not only was I being touched by the two people I was surrounded by, but one of the other men in the group that I've known for a little while reached around to put a comforting hand on my shoulder. I couldn't help but to cry, first because I felt so loved and so surrounded by my family here, and then because I was missing my Michigan family.

Family doesn't really mean blood, and it has little to do with relatives. It's about the people who love you and accept you even when you don't speak the same language. It's about the people who have seen you at your best and your worst and still say "You're beautiful on the inside and the outside." It's about the people who clearly see where you are in life and either tell you you're doing what you're supposed to be doing, or who push you to do more. It's about the people who you worship God with. It's about the people who manage to stammer out "You are important" in English because they want you to hear it in your native tongue. It's about the people who take time in the middle of their busy day to help you move. It's about the people that God has put in your life for a reason.

Please be praying:
- that I get the rest of my new little home settled and functional
- that everything works out well with the family I'm living with now
- that my Spanish continues to increase and my fear of speaking it continues to decrease
- that my students will do well on their final exams and that there will be no more drama with study guides with them
- that we get a lot of kids for summer camp/school (it's possible I should write an informative blog about how I'm going to be helping run a summer camp/school at the school for the summer...)
- that I keep growing closer to God as I keep learning how to love Him as He keeps showing me how much He loves me

24 Hours

As I write this, it's about 24 hours until I'll be in Michigan (aka "the frozen north") for a week-long visit with friends and family members, and I have mixed feelings about leaving.

Last time I was here, the 3 month mark of my stay here ended shortly before Christmas, and my favorite cousin flew me home as a surprise to my parents, brothers, and some other friends. At that point in my stay here, I was depressed and homesick, and I welcomed the visit with wide open arms. I was blessed to have 2 weeks with my family before I had to fly back. But I had found out that I was going to face a week alone upon my return to Honduras because of a miscommunication as to when classes started up again. But, God was good and my flight was cancelled due to snow, so I asked for a flight later in the week and got 5 extra days.

This time, I'm again at the 3 month mark and it feels like I've been here forever and I don't want to leave. Not only have I recently met a guy that I spend a lot of time with (not dating anyone til at least May.... long story maybe for another day), but I also have friends here, and a life here. At school, we're giving exams this week, and I don't like that I'm not going to be here to give them to them. I've made them up, printed them out, and wrote instructions on how to give them, but feel like I should be here for them. I have a tennis lesson on Saturday, church on Sunday, and Bible study on Monday that I'm missing.

I'm so glad I feel this way, because I know that my heart is finally in the right place. I'm not just existing here because God told me to, so I'm going to be here and pretend like I'm living out His plan for my life. I'm actually living here and building up a community of people around me, living here because this is where God wants me, so I'm going to go out and do what He has me doing here. I know I'm not all the way yet, but I'm working on it, and constantly taking steps toward Him.

One of the things I've always struggled with in life is growing in my relationship with God, especially in the areas of reading the Word and being in prayer. Although I still have a lot to work on in regards to prayer, I am daily in the Word and eating it up like it's life, and it has become life to me. I can feel it strengthening me each and every day, and I feel myself growing closer to God and having peace in the midst of storms and I'm gaining knowledge that I can then use in the day-to-day moments, and that I can share with others. It's been amazing.

In the past, I've never been so focused on God, and always found other things to fill those spaces with. At camp, I filled them with other people (good people, but still) and working, serving, and playing hard. When I was here in Honduras before, I tried filling them with myself and that just led to depression. But now, I'm putting God first and seeking Him first, and finding that (as Scripture promises) everything else is coming to me. I have good friends and I feel good about myself. I have a lot of opportunities to serve in love, I work hard with awesome kids, and have plenty of time left over every day for fun.

Recently, I faced a situation where I realized that if I pursued what I wanted (sin), I would be back to the way I was before and would be away from God once again. The very idea that I would be apart from God was so painful to me I cried, and I fled from that sin. The temptation still pounds at my door, but I won't open that door because I will NOT lose this relationship that I have with God right now. I will NOT allow sin to come between me and my God. I will NOT go back to the way I was.

So, in about 24 hours I'll be back in Michigan for a short visit, and I have mixed feelings, but they're the best mixed feelings I've ever had, and clear evidence that I'm right where I need to be doing what I need to do.


Please be praying for me as I travel to and from Michigan. I'm fighting some sort of cough/sinus infection right now, so please pray for healing as I down cups of tea, water, and Emergen-C like it's all going out of style. Praise God it's not bad right now so flying shouldn't bother me too much more than usual (God knows I HATE flying because I don't fly well....). Please pray that I continue to resist temptation as I grow more and more in my relationship with God and with my relationships with others. Please continue praying that I grow in understanding of the language so I can better serve these beautiful people in Honduras. And please be praying for my relationship with the guy that I met, that I seek God first and make wise decisions.

And if there's anything I can pray for you for specifically, please let me know!!!

Emotional Lesson

I've been asked by a particular person (who may or may not have carried me in her womb at some point) to post a blog because "people" were asking her about it... So here it is:

Although I have had my share of emotional ups and downs throughout my teaching days (sometimes all in one class), what I'm actually sharing about today is one class where my prepa kids (Kindergarten) learned some different words for emotions. What spurred this is my need to share the pictures they drew that were their versions of what I drew on the board, and it was then solidified by the pictures I took of them displaying said emotions when I made the mistake of pulling out my iPod to take a picture of the board... Any time I take out a photo-taking device, they lose all self-control and crowd in front of me, demanding I take their pictures. As much as I love it, it makes it hard to get them focused back on the learning they're supposed to be doing.

So, here are the 6 emotions I decided to teach them on: happy, sad, mad, scared, tired, and excited. After I drew them on the board, I read them to them a few times, adding a lot of motions and emotions into my miming of the different emotions. They of course also got into this, which made every one hilarious, primarily because one of the girls makes the BEST facial expressions EVER. She's so incredibly expressive in every face she makes that I often laugh in class at her confused face that shows up every time she's not sure what I said, which happens a lot at this point.

Here's my drawing on the board, in all of its artistic glory:

Here are the ones done by the girls:

All of which I loved, but then I got to Leo's, the lone boy in the class, and got this wonderful nugget:

Most of it is standard for him: big, sort of messy writing with quickly drawn pictures just in pencil because if he can get away with spending time doing anything involving crayons he will, but the face for "excited" just got me because you can't get much more excited than that, even though it looks more like a monster being set free.... Love it, at any rate. :D

So, then I pulled out my iPod to get pictures of their drawings and mine, and they started dancing and darting wildly while they grabbed one another and asked for me to take pictures of various combinations of all of them. I am infinitely thankful that they are all friends and don't ever exclude anyone. It's beautiful. So, here are the pictures I snapped of them:

Analia

This is the biggest little tomboy I've ever met (favorite color blue, hates pink, loves soccer, hates ballet, loves My Little Pony) and always has to pose for her individual shots. I've been asked twice if she's my daughter... I wish it were so.

Camila

She is the youngest in my class, having just turned 5 in December, and also has a bad habit of falling asleep in class... But she's a sweet girl and absolutely loves being the baby in her family, and in class.

Debora

The oldest and tallest by a head, she's 6 and has a pretty good handle on this whole "English thing." She's quick to speak up and take wild guesses, which I love, but she's also quick to cry when she's upset, which can be hard to appropriately respond to when she's crying because she forgot to do her homework and I really don't care that she didn't do it that day, so long as she eventually gets it done. :)

Nerea/Nicole

She responds to Nerea but always writes Nicole on her papers, so who knows with this one. She's my super expressive girl who constantly makes me laugh with the faces she manages to make. She's goofy, but her pronunciation is probably the best in the class, when I can get her to focus enough to answer.

Leo

This was the best picture I had of him, and it might be the best picture I have, period. He has the super-awkward-while-trying-to-look-slick look down. Although he's usually quiet, when he does speak, he knows the right answer, or is so close he gets a high-five anyway.

So, those are the characters in my class. They are quite the crew... So after I managed to snap a few individual photos, they gathered together for a class picture and I had them show me the different emotions they had just learned. They were of course having too much fun with it, so some of them are laughing on the non-happy emotions, but that's ok. We all had fun, and it hopefully solidified the lesson for them at least a little more. Here they are:

Happy

Sad

Mad

Scared

Tired

Excited

So, that was one adventure I had. There are a lot more where that came from, but most of them are not so well documented. I am recording interviews with my first graders every week, so once I get a few more of those I can edit them together and post them. I'll probably wait til the end of the school year to show how much they've improved, but might post a few highlights along the way.

Thank you muchos to everyone who continues to pray for me and support me as I journey on the path that God has for me here in Honduras. I will certainly try to update this more often, but won't make any promises... ;) God is getting ready to do some big things here in Honduras, and I'm excited to be a part of it.

The Next Step

About a week ago, I was talking with J about the orphanage he and AR are planning out. They bought 5 acres of land in a mountainous region and want to grow vegetables and produce eggs and milk for the orphanage with enough left over to sell to people outside the orphanage. He started talking about chickens and I immediately mentioned my experience with chickens and how much I love them. Then the subject of sheep came up, where I immediately objected because I hate sheep and also suggested goats, because goats are awesome. The next question from J was whether or not I knew anything about making cheese. Well, let me tell you about the number of times I made goat cheese in my kitchen... :D

They’re making plans to build a number of houses there. Not big dorm rooms where the kids would be divided by age and gender and then came together for meals in a huge cafeteria. J and A believe that no child should grow up in a dorm room eating in a cafeteria, so they’re building houses to house the kids. Each house would have 4 to 5 kids under the care of one “house mom.”

My heart leapt. How many times had I joked about needing to find a “Honduran camp”? A place that combined my love and skills with animals with my passion for orphans and all located in Honduras. I had joked about it many times, but on the inside, I longed for it desperately. I kept it to myself because I didn’t think it was something that could ever become a reality. I didn’t know how I would even begin to build something like that, and I surely didn’t think a place like that existed.

At the time, the only help I offered was in giving advice and picking out chickens, because I didn’t want to jump into a commitment without knowing that it was something God wanted me to do. I decided to proceed prayerfully and as I prayed my initial “ok, God, I’m going to pray about this for a while” prayer, He told me 5 days. I was leaning toward praying for a week like I did when I made my decision to move here, but He clearly told me just 5 days, so I eagerly agreed to it and set about to waiting upon the Lord.

Fast forward four days, and I was invited out to eat by S, one of the teachers at the school who speaks English. She had brought along a friend of hers, An, who is from Pennsylvania and is working here as a missionary at an orphanage. S also volunteers her time at that orphanage, nicknamed Hogar. S works with the teenage girls, taking just a few out every week for dinner or a movie or a walk around the mall, mentoring them and helping them figure out life. After An, S, S’s kids and I had our own fun outing, I got a tour of Hogar when we were dropping An off.

It was a huge orphanage, comfortably housing about 90 kids. They had dorms spread out around the large property, separated by a big grassy field where the kids were running around and playing. There, the kids all eat in a big cafeteria setting and live in dorms separated by age and gender. They have to clean their room and other areas every night, including the stacks of dishes in the kitchen.

I had barely been there a minute when one of S’s girls gave me a big hug in greeting. I felt her brokenness like a punch in the gut and knew God was about to awaken a part of me that I had forgotten about, pushed to the side, and made to be silent. In the under 3 nursery area, a boy around 1 reached up to me so I held him as the other kids gathered around to watch me as well. He just wanted to be held. Little ones rarely have more demands than to be fed, dry, and held.

As I waited for S outside while she dealt with a “bathroom issue” with her son, I got summoned by a group of 6 or so pre-teen boys who were gathered around a table. They had laid out on the table a multitude of earrings that they were trying to sell to raise money for some type of activity. They were quite the salesmen, with many exclamations of how beautiful the various pairs were, and how the one pair came with a bracelet, and how cheap they were... Sadly for them I didn’t have many small bills on me and I strongly suspected they wouldn’t have change for what I had. I am hoping to go back soon with smaller bills and buy some... They were pretty earrings.

We then got to the younger kids’ housing area, for ages 4 to 9. One girl there ran up to me with open arms and I eagerly accepted her, lifting her up to me. She smiled at me after I gave her a kiss on the cheek and only then bothered with an “Hola!” She proceeded to ask me how I was and point things out to participate as some of the other kids were showing S around their living areas. I carried her over to the boys’ side of the young kids’ dorm where they had a GIANT stuffed bear that had been donated by Coca Cola which the boys apparently like to sleep on. Laid out, the bear was probably over half the size of a twin mattress, so that was neither surprising or unreasonable.

It was time to head back to the car, and I regrettably put down my new friend, giving her several more kisses and a tight hug. I was mostly quiet on the way back, asking S questions so she would talk and not ask me what I had thought of the orphanage. My emotions were swirling and I needed some time to process everything I was feeling. It felt like my heart had been broken and stolen in the most wonderful way, but also in a way that meant I had to do something about it.

So there was my answer. Orphans. I was always meant to help orphans. I have always had a heart for the broken, and I have always wanted to help the lost children find their way into God’s Kingdom. I don’t know what the next step will be. I am hoping to go with J and some others on Saturday to see the property that God’s given him for their orphanage. Maybe God will give me more direction then. Maybe I am supposed to help them.

All I know right now is that working at the school and being here in San Pedro was the first step. When God and I were talking the other day, I felt like He was about to entrust me with something huge because I had been faithful with something small, and I was quick to make excuses. He said He was going to do something big with me, and I said I’m just one person. Then He reminded me of the passage I had read just that morning in Hebrews. Chapter 11 gives a whole list of “heroes of the faith” including Abraham, Abel, Rahab, Moses, Jacob, and so many others. Then Chapter 12 starts off with this verse:

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:1-2)

God reminded me by name of a couple of the people on that list, as well as Paul, whose letters I’ve been reading through, and that each one of them was just one person. It’s not up to me to question what the Lord has for me to do. It’s not up to me to question who the Lord made me to be. It’s not up to me to decide what I can and cannot do. God is God, and if He says He’s going to do great things through me, then it’s all the more a miracle because I know He’ll be able to do things through me that I can’t do myself. Nobody in the Bible who is considered a great hero of faith did so on their own. All they had was the sense to step aside and let God work through them, and so He did.

I am continuing to pray daily for God to increase my faith and guide my steps. He has already blessed me with a number of friends here as well as awesome students at school (I will hopefully get together a list of fun school stories very soon). He has also blessed me with a true hunger for reading His word, which I do daily not out of a sense of duty, but out of an excitement to be able to get into His word every morning.

Please continue to pray for me as I pray for all of you. Pray that God will keep bringing people into my path that I can connect with. Pray that God continues to break down my walls and pride when it comes to communication. Pray that I don’t take another step without Him and that everything would be made clear in His perfect timing.

My prayer for all of you:

I pray that you will see God in everything, no matter where you are.

I pray that you will have the same or even a greater hunger than I have for reading His word.

I pray that you will take time to reflect and see what areas in your life are from God and where you’ve allowed the enemy to work.

I pray that you will see the bigger picture that God has for your life and that you will not be discouraged to follow through with the plans He gave you.

I pray that you will continue to seek His faith and grow into a deeper and deeper understanding of His love for you.

Amen.

P.S. If any of those prayers really stood out to you, please let me know so I can pray more with you, and please don't ignore the nudge you may have felt. That nudge was from Him, so ask Him what your next step should be.

Exodus

exodus - noun - a mass departure of people, esp. immigrants; withdrawal; evacuation; leaving

I was reading in Joshua yesterday and read about the Israelites packing up to enter into the promised land. Joshua was told to give the people three days to pack up all their belongings and be ready to go. It’s the little details like that which I would normally skim over, not really pay attention to, or not take the time to think about. But considering I just moved to a different country in the span of about 3 weeks, I noticed it this time.

A month ago, I couldn’t imagine having only weeks or days to consolidate your entire life into a couple suitcases and starting life all over again in a foreign country. But when I had reached my lowest point and was finally ready to listen to God, He basically told me to do just that. There were 40 days from the day that God told me to go until the day I arrived here in Honduras, and 32 days from the day I bought my ticket.

For me, it wasn’t as simple as packing a couple bags and going. I had over 3 truckloads of stuff that I had to move from camp to my parents’ house after sorting through which of it I wanted to take with me, what I should just sell, what I wanted to be stored, and what should just be tossed. It was a painful process not only because of the sheer volume of stuff to be gone through, but also because I really hate sorting and organizing and packing and all that nonsense. Don’t get me wrong, I like things to be organized. I just don’t like going through the process of organizing to get there.

So, here’s my personal exodus story.

Thursday night I finished packing somewhere around midnight. It took me about 7 hours including breaks and not including the sorting of clothes and other things I had done a few days earlier. We had to leave around 3am to get to the airport by 4am to make my 6am flight, so I got a couple hours of sleep and was as ready to leave as I was going to get, ignoring the small list of things I hadn’t done before leaving that I had planned on doing. Oh, well.

However, God had other plans, and too much snow in New Jersey (why that was where my layover was, I’ll never know since it takes me in the opposite direction of Honduras...) meant my flights were cancelled. I long time on hold with the booking company and I was able to go online to check my new flights, which left early Saturday morning and took me through Houston instead (thereby lessening the chance of flights being delayed or cancelled due to inclement weather).

So, I got an extra day in which I was able to buy a few more school supplies (I now have enough stickers and red pens to last a lifetime... hopefully), get more cash from the bank (and find out why the ATM hated me the night before), and see some camp staff at the reunion I was going to miss (as well as my BFF/cousin who I would have seen had I been packed sooner than 4 hours before leaving for the airport). Then, I had to repack a little to add my new purchases, and to put in my tripod which I had forgotten before.

My Saturday morning flight was a few minutes earlier and I stayed up a few hours later, so I got a nice hour and a half nap before my parents took me to the airport. After paying an outrageous amount in overweight baggage fees (next time, I will seriously consider just buying an extra ticket... it might have been cheaper that way), I got to my gate and had to wait just over an hour, which was marvelous. At some point, an employee came over and tagged my guitar and said it might have to go below if there was no room on the plane and I smiled politely but thought he was hilarious if he thought he was going to take my guitar from me.

At some point when I was in Honduras before, my computer became my security blanket. In the States, my phone usually serves that purpose. Somehow it seems that whenever I’m nervous or uncertain, everything is better if I have that object with me. On this trip, it had become my guitar, and they were not going to put it below where it could be easily broken. I had seen how baggage people handled luggage, and was not going to risk my guitar falling into their hands.

So, I carried my guitar on with me, somehow escaping the notice of the flight attendants as it sat comfortably between my knees, until it was too late. The door was closed and they were doing their final cabin checks before take-off when they noticed I had the guitar with me. Since they weren’t able to take it below at that point, they ended up taking the backpacks of myself and the guy next to me, finding space for them in the overhead compartments, and I wrestled my guitar under the seats in front of us. They made me put it all the way to the wall which meant the guy next to me had to straddle it with his feet (thank God for him; he was extremely tolerant of me and my guitar), and that was that.

My layover in Houston was only an hour, so by the time I got off the plane and to the other side of the airport, I had barely sat down before they started boarding. Once again, they tagged my guitar to go below and once again I thought they were silly. When I got to the plane, another guitar and a small pile of carry-on’s sat beside the plane to go below. Exhausted and suddenly growing increasingly aware of the fact that I was leaving the country, I held tight to my guitar and walked onto the plane with it.

This time, I was immediately noticed by one of the flight attendants, who told me I had to leave it outside to go below. I told him I was taking it with me with as much confidence as I could muster, but he told me again to leave it outside. I asked him if it was going to get broken and he assured me there was a special compartment and that I would be able to get it back as soon as we landed. I walked back off the plane to leave it with the other guitar and started crying. They had taken my guitar from me.

I cried all the way to my seat in the very back of the plane, row 38, sniffling and texting my laments to several friends as I went, ignoring the comments of a woman in first class about how “people these days are constantly connected on their phones and don’t ever look up to see the real world.” She didn’t know that I was trying desperately in my last moments on US soil to be connected with people I would see for months or longer and to avoid weeping openly on the plane because they took my guitar and because I felt tired and alone and scared and broken.

I slipped into the bathroom as soon as I shoved my backpack under the seat in front of me and cleaned myself up as best I could before returning to my seat. Fortunately for me and everyone around me, my tears had dried up by then and I avoided a complete emotional meltdown. I honestly can’t imagine many things worse than having a complete emotional meltdown on a plane surrounded by strangers. At that point, the only thing I knew for sure I was crying about was the fact that they had taken my guitar, and would not have seemed a thing worth crying over.

Once I had suffered through take-off (plane flights are great fun for someone who had a lot of ear infections as a child and whose ears therefore do not pop easily or painlessly), I pulled out my journal and began writing. As I wrote, I was then able to figure out that I was more upset about the fact that I was leaving everything I had built in the States at camp, that I was exhausted (which always frays my emotions), and that I was scared about starting life over or that I would doubt my decision to return to Honduras. When I had in writing what was going on inside me, it was easy to deal with. I accepted that those were the things that I was feeling, and I told myself that it was ok if I was sad for a little while. As my “sister” once told me “Leaving is always hard.” It doesn’t matter if leaving is the right decision or if you have total peace about it or if it’s what God has for you. It’s still hard, and it still sucks.

So, I gave myself permission to be sad for a little while, but I did NOT give myself permission to dwell in that sorrow or to let that sorrow become depression. I can’t always look behind me at what I lost. I have to look forward to the promise that God has given me and I have to look around me at what God has given me now.

The Israelites built a life for themselves out there in the desert. Yes, they were expert packers after 40 years of wandering in the desert so 3 days probably sounded like a fair amount of time to get everything together, but that was their life. And God asked them to pack it all up and go on to something else: the promised land. Even though the promised land was better than what they had, I imagine that it was still hard for many of them to leave the life that they had simply because that was the life they knew. Change is hard.

I spent a year and a half at camp, wandering around in the desert, building a life for myself to prove that I could do life my way without God. When that didn’t work out for me and I finally stopped to listen to what God had for me, He told me to pack up and leave. The Israelites crossed the Jordan to go to the promised land, and I crossed both land and sea to get to my promised land, but I’m here now. And now, I can build a life for myself here, even though I’m a foreigner here. Even though I don’t yet speak the language. Even though I don’t have a lot of friends here. Even though I’m afraid.

Although one of my fears was that I would doubt, I haven’t. When I was greeted by la directora de la escuela, her 3 kids, and her mother who I had lived with before, I almost wept again, but that weeping was not one of sorrow or of loss. It was the sweet relief of knowing that I had arrived mixed with the bitter taste of regret for having ever left. But because I couldn’t explain myself fully and because I’m still not very good at showing my emotions (especially in big public places like airports), I held back my tears and put on my brave face, telling myself I could cry by myself if necessary.

I soon found out that I will be living with a missionary couple from the States, so I will be able to freely speak English with them. That alone is a huge relief. At church this morning, I was reunited with a number of people I had loved before, and even though I wasn’t able to talk much with them, I was greeted with open arms and many blessings. I met a couple there who speak English, and the woman is a teacher at the school. We had lunch with them after church and we got to talk quite a bit. She understands my feelings of being alone here and not able to easily make friends, and wants to introduce me to one of her girlfriends who works at an orphanage and is also from the States. I’m so excited about and thankful for all the people God has already placed in my path.

This weekend, I stayed with Pastor’s family, and tomorrow I will get to go to school and afterward, to J and A’s house, where I will be living. As I’m writing this, it’s Sunday night, almost midnight, but I’ll have to wait til school tomorrow to post this. We’re leaving early tomorrow morning, but my afternoon nap stretched for almost 4 hours, so we’ll see how long I end up staying up.