En el Pais de las Honduras

En el pais de las Honduras
(I wrote this up yesterday (Tuesday), but didn't get a chance to post it.)
Hello to everyone at home! I hope you are all well! It has been two weeks already here in the Honduras. Sorry for not posting earlier, but we have been quite busy. Jonathan and Melanie left last Friday, so now I have a lot more time. I am using my spare time for my Greek and also am putting chords to the songs in the Langendoen's hymnbook. We three (Jonathan Reistma, Melanie Smit, and I) arrived here almost two weeks ago on a Wednesday after a LONG trip (8 hour stop-over in Washinton). We were quite tired when we got here, so we rested in the morning, then went through the neighbourhood around the church inviting kids to a two day vacation Bible school. That was held on Thursday and Friday morning, and went quite well. Mrs. Langendoen did most of the teaching, though I did help out a little in my stilted Spanish. One big mistake I kept on making was saying hombro (shoulder) instead of hombre (man). I'm sure the result was somewhat amusing at times (e.g. the Good Samaritan helped the poor 'shoulder' onto his donkey :) ), but hopefully people understood what I meant. We had twenty-eight kids in total. Saturday was a free day which we used to do a lot of shopping. (If anyone wants any vanilla, just ask me. I have two 500 mL bottles for Mom which cost just 15 lempiras (about 75 cents) each!) On Monday, we left for Choluteca in the South. Pastor Langendoen used to pastor there, so we went to visit his previous church there. It was very hot (30-35 degres). The people in the South are very poor. (I'll have to put some pictures up once I get back to Canada.) We had a small program at two different villages there on Tuesday. At Nuevo Reunion, we had 60 kids, and it went very well. At Ojo de Agua, we had over 80 kids. This was a little frenetic (proper word?) at times. The kids at the first place knew the story of the Good Samaritan already, but the kids at the second did not. On Wednesday, we travelled back to Comayagua. On Thursday, we had another free day in which we did a lot of shopping. Jonathan and Melanie bought 7 or 8 machetes between the two of them. (Would anyone like a machete? They are around $10 each.) On Friday, Melanie and Jonathan left. Saturday we cleaned up around the house. Peter (L.) and I were digging the back garden, and we saw EIGHT different tarantulas of varying sizes! Crazy, eh? On Sunday, we had church in the morning (1 sermon by Pastor Orlando, followed by a Catechism study by Pastor Langendoen). In the afternoon, the young people came over, which was a lot of fun. Yesterday (Monday), Pastor Langendoen, Pastor Orlando and I went to a bookstore in Siguetepeca and to visit there. It was the most beautiful stretch of road I've seen yet in the Honduras, but I forgot my camera!! Honduras is quite a beautiful country. There are many small razorbacks everywhere and not many flat sections. (Our airplane landing into Tegucigalpa was quite interesting. The runway there is very short, and to get to it we had to go through a curving valley!) This post is starting to resemble one of those long Jonathan epistles. :) I had better stop soon. I'll wrap up by saying that I am enjoying myself a lot, and am well and healthy. (Praise God that none of us got sick while we were here! It is not uncommon.) I do miss you all at home, and I am looking forward to seeing you in a week. Please continue to pray for me and the Langendoen's and for the work especially. Bye for now!