First Month

Our first month here in Honduras has been a very busy month. From preparing and moving into the volunteer house to getting to know the community and the girls living with us to overcoming challenges of being away from modern day commodities. The first week was mostly getting our home ready. Here are some pictures of the volunteer home:

Front door and porch

View from porch

First wood door in the property

As seen in some of the pictures, we have been decorating the house with Christmas decorations. This has been a great activity to get to know the Honduran girls living with us. These girls have never had a Christmas tree before. so they were very excited to decorate it... they were so excited they made snow flakes for over two days!Their names are Ruby-18, Roxana-16, Areli-15, Jenny-13, Grisel-11 and Aby 7. Yes we are helping raise four teenagers which has some challenges but many joys at the same time.

Aby and Jenny

Grisel & Kelvin

Areli and Kelly

Some other new things we've experienced this month have been butchering a cow and three sheep, as well as processing the meat and made butter from the milk of a neighbors cow. We got a few egg laying chickens, planted a few fruit trees and been involved with developing the kids' church and participating in library time. Also, Kelvin has been involved in the agriculture part of the ministry; he has vaccinated some cows and sheep and he's gone "chopeando"-- cutting grass/jungle underbrush with a machete. A little note about machetes: In Honduras the machete is the tool of choice. Locals use it to do anything from gutting a sheep, to cutting an orange for eating; they use it as a shovel, as a hammer, and even to mow the grass.

Butter

grounding meat

Butchering a lamb

"Choppeando"

Cooked sheep "huevos"-- testicles

Kids' church

A few challenges we've experienced are cold showers, constant rain and dealing with some good size insects

All in all, its been pretty eventful, but this is just the beginning as we are planning to get about five pigs before the end of the year, and we might be receiving four new children who will be permanently placed in the childrens' home with the Honduran house parents.