¡Feliz Navidad!

It's been a little over 3 weeks that I've been here. It's amazing what can happen in that amount of time! On one hand, it feels like time had flown by, but on the other time I still have so much time left.

Honduras is a beautiful place, surrounded by mountains. Technically Tegucigalpa is in a valley, but just think of it as a huge mountain that had it's top blown off and now is just a series of of smaller mountains and larger hills. If your car can't do hills, you probably shouldn't live in Teguz(Tegucigalpa), or Honduras :P

As for life here, well, my family is amazing, and extremely helpful with my Spanish. My host parents are Angelica and Miguel. They are amazing people with a great sense of humor. I enjoy playing with their 3-year-old grandson, Daniel, and holding little Jose Miguel, who is just 6-months. We call him Gordito(little chubby). I live in Colonia Kennedy, which is a series of houses very close together which you can't get to by car, but with a sidewalks and walking streets connecting all the houses. Everyone has to park outside of the "barrio" in a parking-lot that had to be built. We get to thank JFK for that. When he had Colonia Kennedy built, he had it made that way because "people of the lower classes don't have cars." He wasn't putting much hope for their future, it seems. Now almost everyone had a car, especially beause the housing is relatively inexpensive.

My Spanish is getting better every day. I'm able to communicate probably 30-40% better than I was before I came. I have to remind myself of that when I am frustrated about my inability to put across exactly what I want to say.

The past weeks we've gotten to do some fun things, like see the giant Jesus statue famous in Honduras, go to El Obrero Parque with our families, where Carey and I rode horses. Just this past Saturday we went to la Tigra. Some family members came along, from Carey and Melanie's families. la Tigra is up on the mountain, almost at the top. We went to a waterfall, and it was absolutely gorgeous. My knee hurts a lot from it now, unfortunately.

But what is God doing? Where is God in the capital city, where 1 million people live, in one of the poorest country's in the world.
Let me answer that by telling you a little bit about the Micah Project. The Micah Project is a place that takes in street boys, usually around the age of 11 or 12. But they don't just take in any street boy-they look for specific boys-glue users. Glue is the drug of choice for children here--they get it from shoe vendors who sell it and then put it in bottles and stick the bottles in their shirts, sniffing it and getting high all day. The kids are easily spotted, with glazed eyes and bottles in their shirts. Almost all of them won't recieve hight than a 6th grade education, and most only get up to 3rd or 4th grade, and some don't recieve any at all and cannot read or write.
Like most Central American countries, Honduras is ripe with drug trafficking. The Micah Project is located in a barrio in one of the most dangerous parts of the city, and their line of work makes them rather unfavored by all the local dealers. Probably the most infuriating thing about all this is the amount of drug trafficking that is specifically targeting children. For instance, there is a cocaine dealer who offers crack to kids 12 and under for free, just to get them addicted. How sick is that?? And what is God doing? We got to visit the Micah Project the first Tuesday in Honduras--we will actually be working with them during the months of February to May. We talked with the head of the industrial stuff at Micah Project. He directs the wood shop, welding shop, and is hoping to start an auto-shop soon, giving the boys a skill they don't have to go to college for if college isn't something that will work for them. Here, if you have high-school education that's a big thing. He is also a mentor at The Timothy House, where they house their older boys, usually ages 16 and up. The Timothy House is where they do a lot of discipleship. He shared with us what they had been doing in their bible study, and with tears in his eyes, told us about how he and the boys had been reading and discussing the passage in John chapter 1, starting in verse 43:

43The next day Jesus decided to leave for galilee. Finding Philip, he
said to him, "Follow me." 44Philip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town
of Bethsaida. 45Philip found Nathanael and told him, "We have found the one
Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote--Jesus
of Nazareth, the son of Joseph."
46"Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?" Nathanael asked.
"Come and see," said Philip.


"Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?" The guys in Timothy House were asking the same question, only using a different name:
"El barrio! Can anything good come from there?"
Can it? A place with so much suffering, where children die from overdose or not paying for their drugs? Where boys are forced out of their homes very early by a stepfather who doesn't want to take care of them, and girls can't go out along for fear of rape.
Can anything good come from there?
Did Jesus Christ die on the cross for all man's suffering, sin, and depravation? more importantly, did he overcome death, scorning it's shame, and giving us freedom?
Let me illustrate the answer to all those questions with a story about Martin.
Martin was the inspiration for Micah Project. Michael Miller, founder of the Micah Project, met Martin in 1994 when he came to Tegucigalpa for a study program with Wheaton College for their International Relations program. Martin was one of the first boys the taken into the Micah Project. We had the honor of seeing photos of Martin's graduation from college in Illinois, Michael's home state.

So yes, something good can come, and will come, and has come from this broken place. Because Jesus makes beauty from pain. I take confidence in these verses, Psalm 27:13-14

13I am still confidant of this:
I will see the goodness of Lord
in the land of the living.
14Wait for the Lord;
be strong and take heart
and wait for the Lord.

So I am waiting, actively waiting.
Doing my part, looking for the opportunities, and waiting on the Holy Spirit.

¡Feliz Navidad! God is with us!

Amor siempre en Cristo,
Evi

¡Hola, Tegucigalpa!

Hola, mi amigos :)

So, I'm in Tegucigalpa, Honduras! I know, super awesome! It's actually a little strange being here. As we were flying over Honduras, and I was admiring the many, many mountains--that's all Honduras is, mountains!--I realized that i had absolutely NO expectations. I hadn't once thought "Hmm, I wonder what Honduras will be like...", so i was going in not knowing what to expect at all, and hardly wondering either. I think I'm still in shock that I'm here, I think, and just taking everything as it goes.

Our flights went well, and I think I probably got a total of an hour and a half between the two flights, which is pretty good I think. On the flight from Miami to Tegucigalpa none of us were sitting by eachother, and we were probably the only non-spanish speakers on the plane :) But, I got a window seat and got to talk to the guy sitting next to me, named Angel, a native of Honduras. So we chatted about what I would be doing and so on. It was pretty neat.

I was most afraid about going through immigration and customs, but they were very kind and wonderful(better then in New York!).

So I'm here! We are staying at Barry and Kimberly's house until Saturday afternoon, and then we'll be dropped at our host families--a little scary, I know! Until then we just have some orientation, and just getting accustomed to being here!

Needless to say, I am SO excited to be here, and just writing about it makes me more so! Keep me in your prayers, and praise God for keeping us safe thus far..."Here I raise my Ebenezer..."

Amor siempre en Cristo :)