I turn 50

Me, looking through the piñata.

Yup, the big 50. In the States we throw over-the-hill parties. Here they celebrate 50 as an accomplishment...it's a big deal. Really. Of course I knew something was up, all the whispering and running off on secret missions, it wasn't to difficult to guess there was a party being planned.

Gaby, who is like a daughter to us, was in charge of the party planning along with Ahnalies and Reyna. Barbe, having just returned from Seattle two days before had got the ball rolling from there and let them have at it...and it was done beautifully. The party took place on a magnificent piece of property outside of Sigautepeque. The patio was decorated with balloons and streamers. When we arrived, Doña Reyna was busy cooking strips of meat over a charcoal grill and making tortillas. The smell of food filled the pine fresh air. My knew friend, Julio, brought fireworks he had made in his shop behind his house just to help me celebrate.

Friends from around Sigaut trickled in and the place began to fill up. One special visitor, who I was very surprised and moved to see arrive, was Mercedes' mother who had traveled all the way from Cerro Azul by bus just to be celebrate with me. We have a bi-monthly Bible study in her home in Cerro Azul, which by car is an hour away, and it meant more than I can express to see her there.

Below is a photo that has become quite famous in certain circles. Somehow I was tricked into believing that it was customary for the birthday person to lean in and take a bite out of the cake. I am so used to just participating unquestioningly in some very strange (to us) cultural practices...and being the good sport that I am...I leaned in to take a bite. Big mistake....you'd think after 50 years I would have been a bit wiser!

Tim and Kathee...caught red handed. They called it teamwork.

I have assured Tim and Kathee that I don't get mad...I get even... and that revenge is sweet, even sweeter than a Honduran birthday cake. Which is saying a lot.

Left with cake on my face.

Of course I was asked to give a speech. What I shared came from the bottom of my heart and with tears in my eyes. It was a passage from Mark 10:29 and 30 which has been in my thoughts a lot lately as I look at our life here. Peter has asked Jesus what he and the other disciples' reward will be for having left all to follow Him. Jesus replies with this promise, "Truly I tell you, no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields..." (emphasis mine)

When we left Maine for Honduras we left all of those things Jesus listed. We left our parents and brothers and sisters,who we love and miss very much. We left a beautiful home on 55 acres...and we left all of these things to follow what we believed Jesus taught us to do in Scripture. We left not knowing what we were headed into. It seemed like we were for sure losing our life as we knew it. 

As I looked around the patio at all the people gathered there to help me celebrate a milestone in my life, I realized that God had, in less than eight months, fulfilled this promise in our lives. We have been given family and that in abundance. We have more children, especially the daughters we never had. We have a beautiful house to live in. I was celebrating my birthday on a most beautiful piece of land owned by some of our family. 

Here is something I am learning; there are some things that can only be learned by stepping out in faith and experiencing it first hand. You can read about something all your life, but until you do it you will never really know if' it's real or not. 

For some reason I believe, and have the hope that, this decade is going to be the most productive, the most joyful, the most fulfilling decade I have yet experienced. I'll let you know in another ten years if it is.

Some of my family.

PS. I know many of you have seen these pictures already on facebook, but they were such great photos I wanted to include them here. I also want to especially thank the Garcia Mendoza family for all the work they put into making the party a success.