A Little Summer Update

August finds me sending fundraising letters, preparing for this weekend's fundraiser yardsale and of course spending as much time with friends and family as possible during my time in the states! My plane ticket was just purchased a few hours ago and I will be returning to Honduras on August 20th. We start the year with two weeks of orientation for the teachers and classes begin the first week of September. I haven't yet written about one of my neatest Honduran experiences....planning and hosting my family's first visit! Their first week was spent helping out at the ministry in whatever way possible. The majority of their time was spent helping me clean my classrooms and pack materials. Thirty of my kindergarten students graduated during this week and my parents were able to represent all the sponsor/padrinos from the states during the ceremony. We were also excited to attend the Destino del Reino School's first ever sixth grade graduation!


Wendy's and baleadas at the Honduran airport.






Celisa, meet Sophie! At the children's home.




Kindergarten Graduation




Ready to go!

Thanks Dad! A new bookshelf for the 2nd graders....

...and some new books for them to enjoy!

Are you ready for some fútbol?

It's time for Sigua's annual soccer tournament. Here's a picture of the young boys team(aka the Mosquitoes) after winning their first game!

Cafe y Bananos

Their generosity, just one of the many thing that make my students so wonderful. I could go on and on about this. However, what it boils down to, is that most of my students come from families that have so little yet their so willing to share whenever they can. They lift my spirits. The coffee was grown, harvested, roasted, ground, etc. by Dilver(1st Grade) and his family.

Settling In

This past August I was looking forward to returning to Honduras and the familiar pattern of life in Sigua that I had come to love. During my second year I wouldn't need to adjust to a new and at times confusing culture, my Spanish was no longer as awkward, I had formed friendships with others living in Sigua. I was eager to get back to my students, weekly Bible study, revisit my old haunts in town, etc. Then I received an email telling me that our house in town was currently occupied by a young family and would not be available until September, or possibly October. We would have to live at the Destino Ministry for a bit. Reacting in the way Hondruas has taught me to, I replied "That's ok, I can wait to be in town." However, in Honduras time is a concept that's not as concrete as it is in the states. If your meeting is scheduled to start at 4:00 people will begin to arrive at that time, small-talk/coffee-drinking/socailizing will wrap up around 4:30ish and then your meeting will begin. And if your house is scheduled to be ready for you to move into in September then it won't be ready until November at the earliest, or in extreme circumstances until December 17th. This is exactly what happened. Thankfully we moved to town when we all(including Karlie the new roomie) returned in January. My time living at Destino was sweet. I enjoyed playing with the kids living at the casa hogar(children's home) everyday, hearing Rhonda's stories of when she first came to Honduras and lived in the poor mountain villages and the reliable hot water. However, that time has also made me truly appreciate the niceities of living in town. To be exact, the internet/easy communication with loved ones, social life, access to groceries, school supplies, whatever I could want and all I have to do is walk downtown, lecciones de espanol, Uno and soccer with Victor and Kelly(some neighbor boys who always come by wanting to play or do odd jobs for us), plus a million other little blessings. We've been here 6 months and finally, I feel like I've settled in.

Profe Emily(in the middle) with Karina 1st grade and Franclin 5th grade on the path home. Karina, Franclin and two other siblings came to live at the children's home this past fall. I will share their story in a future post.


Harlin Ariel y Alejandra Michelle. Two of my Preparatoria(students).


My home security system(Reese the puppy) and I.


Profe Karlie de Tejas(from Texas) on her first chicken bus experience. She joined us in January and teaches 4th grade Ingles and assists me in 1st and 2nd grades. A blessing.

El Verano/The Fall

This fall has flown by. Everything at the school is going well, I´m convinced my 2nd grade class is filled with geniuses! We´re still living outside of Sigua which has been difficult at times but I have enjoyed seeing the whole Destino del Reino ministry at work. In my last post I talked/ asked for prayer because of the crazy weather. During this time lightning struck the internet tower at Destino and we´ve only had access to internet on the weekends. Hopefully a new tower is installed soon. I´ll be heading to the states for a Christmas visit on December 19th and of course, I can´t wait! Currently I´m working on contacting my supporters and scheduling dates to speak about Destino and the work I´m doing there.

Teaching Preparatoria(kindergarten).


Cristobal, Dominic and Ana. 2nd graders.


With Alexander and Abi from the children´s home.


Kenny, the son of our principal and a Destino student.




With Maritza, 2nd grader at sunday school.

Hello to all my fabulous supporters. Sorry it's taken me so long to update. Internet has been sporadic at my current residence so I had to find another way to upload this post. Right now, I'm sitting at the Sigua Texaco enjoying the free Wi-Fi, and a Honduran breakfast burrito. Hope you enjoy the update on my past month in Honduras!

My first two weeks in Honduras were spent in meetings and preparing my classrooms. I'm teaching the preparatoria(kindergarten), primero(1st grade) and segundo(2nd grade) classes this year. My students are the same children I taught last year, I just moved up a grade with them! It made the first day of school much smoother since I didn't have to learn 80 new names like I did last year. I've also been pleasantly surprised by how much English my students remember!

Dia del Nino- One of the things I love about Honduran culture is how these people love to celebrate! There seems to be a holiday for everything. They celebrate mother's day and father's day but they also have Day of the Woman, Teacher's Day, and Day of the Pine Tree. There's a festival to celebrate corn and another to celebrate bread. Unfortunately, we don't get off school for each celebration(or we would never have class), but we observe several of these holidays at school. This past Friday was day of the Child(Dia del nino). Each class got to have a party including a pinata! Pictures will be added later.

Need for More Sponsors- I've written about the need for sponsors and how important they are to the functioning of the school before but I'll remind everyone. Each Destino student has a sponsor that donates per month. This money is used to purchase food, uniforms, vitamins, pay for fuel to run the bus, etc. In addition, the sponsors/padrinos are asked to pray for their student by name. Each year 30 new sponsors are needed for the incoming kinder(preschool) class. Right now approximately 25 new sponsors are needed and the new school year has already begun. Pray that God will lead the right people to become sponsors and help support our students.

Crazy Weather- Honduras's weather has been very temperamental lately. There are two main season here, the dry season and the rainy season. Normally, the dry season would be ending now and the rainy season would begin in a few weeks. I've been here for about a month and when I arrived, the rainy season had already begun. All the excess rain has been making life difficult for everyone. For us at Destino, the weather is simply unpleasant and our internet is unreliable. However, last week a small mudslide caused an accident on the highway about a mile from here. In other, more rural areas of the country, people's homes are being buried and in the capital flooding is a constant threat. Please pray for all the families affected by the excess rain and that it would stop.

The Home Stretch..

Well....I only have 5 more weeks left of this school year(hence The Home Stretch).




Primero-They are reading..and even better, I think they enjoy it! We've been working on this for a few months now and the students are catching on more quickly than I thought they would.

Myself, Andrea and Christofer after tutoring. Andrea(Primero) Grado




Prepa- They just began reading this past Monday. Week 1 has been tough but I think the kids are progressing(and I hope they don't forget everything they know over the weekend). A few have caught on right away, the majority are coming along fine and I have a few that are struggling.



Coloring Book Project Update- The 2nd grade received theirs this past Friday and were so excited! Some of the kids from the upper grades are beginning to ask me "Profe Amanda Maria, when are we getting ours?" Today I went to the Honduran version of the dollar store and bought hundreds of markers for the upper grades. When I was checking out, the couple that owns the store told me to come by sometime when the store's not busy because they have some stuff they want to give me for the kids. I'm going back tomorrow so we'll see what I get.

Soccer Tournaments!


Apparently, our kids from the campo(country) are amazing soccer players. This past week's school schedule has been crazy because of the soccer tournament for all the private schools in Siguatepeque. The tournament is for 3rd, 4th and 5th graders so I haven't gotten to go watch the games .....yet.


Missions Day- A sucess. After a few months of planning we pulled it off.


Bruin with one of her massive sheets of peanut brittle. Her country was India.



Marie Esther, my partner, during our Ethiopia Third Graders
presentation.


Karla, Profe Elsy(computer teacher, secretary, jack of all trades), Kelvin and Alexis. Profe is dressed in traditinal Pakistani clothing.


Prayer Requests

1. Some of my Prepa students aren't doing as well in my class as I would like them to. Pray that they can focus and their grades will improve because I really don't want anyone to fail Kindergarten(Preparatoria).


2. Patience.