Doing Life Different: A Busy Summer Comes to a Close.

We have been busy! Although plenty has happened to write about, I have not had the time or the energy to keep up on my blogging.

So here is a brief overview of some of the things we did.

On June 6th, the Spanish Institute of Honduras, passed into our hands. I will devote a blog post to that soon, but for now I will just say that the Institute is growing and keeping both Barbe and myself busy doing one of the things we love most here in Honduras; managing the school and loving our teachers and the students who study here. During the World Cup it was hard to keep any of them focused on studies. Below is some of our students hard at work watching one of the games...in Spanish of course.

Take a moment to admire the focus our students show in their studies!

New Generation Fellowship, our home church in Jacksonville, FL came over for a week, their second visit in two years to help with one of our water purification projects in public schools. Pastor Steve once again won the funniest Spanish/English exchange contest. Standing in the park one evening, one of the local drunks came and placed his hand politely on Steve's arm and in Spanish asked him for money. Steve just as politely responded in Spanish, "No gracias" which of course means "no thank you". The man steps back slightly confused but mostly bemused at Steve's answer. I turn to Steve and say, "You know he asked you for money." Steve, somewhat indignantly replies, "I know, I told him no gracias."

Team NGF at Pulhapanzak

Our little Isuzu pickup once again rose to the challenge of carrying truckloads of teenagers and adults alike. Riding in the back of a pickup remains one of the things our teams like best. That and dodging the oncoming traffic.

Our boys were very busy helping out with short-term missions teams that came through this summer, both ours and other missionaries'. Ben and Thomas helped out as translators and, well...anything else that needed done.

Ben being a good sport.

Mark was van driver and go-fer, making several runs to the airport, Camp Calle, La Ceiba and the hardware stores as well as helping with projects and activities.

Mark with a team doing basket ball camp.

Kevyn, our summer intern, became a true older brother to our boys and Luis. He was also a huge help with all the teams we worked with this summer. Kevyn and I go way back having traveled together on a stm trip to Venezuela in 1994. He was two years old at the time.