Fishing again...

I went out for about an hour on Friday just before a storm. The fishing was incredible! I spent most of my time fighting with the fish. I had a nice one on at first, but it got so tangled up in the lilypads that it finally got off. Then I caught this one, an 8 lb catfish. I was in my rubber dinghy, and went on a nice ride for both of them.

(Sorry, the pictures aren't that great.)

For bait, I tried something new... cheese & raisins! I plan on trying to make some kind of a mesh around the cheese in the future to keep it on. Usually, it would fall off on the first strike.

Another cat...

Dad caught this one tonight... 5.3 lbs.

Catfish Season

Catfish season is just starting in Jordan Harbour, as the weather is finally starting to warm up. I went fishing for a bit today with Derek and Elliot (two neighbour guys from Trinity). I didn't catch any big ones (the two biggest are shown here), but Derek caught a five-pound one before I got there.



I think this one was about a pound or so.


And one last picture of a beautiful sunrise I saw a couple of days ago from out of my bedroom window!

And Some Pics....

Here's a couple of pictures... maybe you've seen some of them already, and maybe you haven't.

Tepic in the early morning.


Jim Vannette vs. Paco.... can you guess who won?


Paco, Carlos, Marcos, and myself.


Angie at the beach.


On top of Cera de la Cruz.


Sophia, Edmundo & Elouisa's little girl. :)

Mexico!!!

As some of you (whoever is reading this, which I doubt is many :) ) may know, I just got back from the ELM mission trip. A team of about 10 of us (3 from Ontario, 7 from Holland, MI) went down to Tepic, Mexico for the annual mission trip. We kept a blog of the trip on the ELM website (go to Team Blog 2008 on the site). It was an excellent trip! Highlights from the trip for me were:

1. The devotions. The theme was how we can, how we should be, and how we are already equipped to be doing missions right here in Canada. Of course, there is a difference between ordained mission work and our own 'mission' work. But the emphasis for us (which is challenging in our Dutch Reformed mindsets) is that we need to be to be actively looking, thinking, and praying about ways we can reach out to those around us who we know and who we don't know. Going on a mission trip is a great opportunity, but really, as individuals and as a church, we can be doing much the same things here!


2. The church there. It was a blessing to see how the church has been growing in Tepic. Not so much numerically (though that too), but spiritually, as God works in their lives slowly but surely.

3. Practicing my Spanish! This was a lot of fun.

There are a good number of pictures on the Team Blog, as well as on Richard & Angela's blog. I hope to put a couple up here too.

Snow !!!

This morning we woke up to a beautiful surprise... the snow had stopped, the trees were covered in ice, and the sun was shining! What a storm that was!

I took these pictures at mid-day, when it wasn't quite as pretty as in the morning unfortunately.

Honduras Pictures!

Honduras is a beautiful country, filled with lots of foothills and ridges. This picture was taken soon before we landed in the capital of Honduras. We didn't go into regions quite this rugged, but it does give you a little bit of a sense of what the driving is like.

This was taken just outside of Comayagua (where the Langendoen's live). I think it had just rained not long before. At one time, Honduras was covered by jungle and forests. However, large parts have been deforested, due to fires and tree-cutting.


The two Langendoen girls, Davina (left) and Eva (right).


Here you can see the three of us (me, Jonathan, and Melanie). This was the first VBS program we had, at the church.


The following three pictures were taken in the South where we had two programs in two different communities (Nueva Reunion and Ojo de Agua). Both communities were very poor but had LOTS of kids. :)


Nueva Reunion church.


Ojo de Agua (Eye of Water) church.


We played a lot of soccer in the south. Here, however, we were teaching the kids a Canadian (British?) game... British Bulldog. It worked quite well and was a lot of fun to see all the kids running.


Cockroaches. Mrs. Langendoen brought us out one night to LISTEN to them in the back compost heap. You could hear them loudly munching and crunching away all over the pile!


And ants. This was actually a lot of fun. I killed about 7 big red ants and stuck them close to a ant hole. I took this picture about a minute later. I counted 144 ants!


The Langendoen's had a nice palm tree in their front yard. I wanted to climb it, but Jonathan Langendoen had almost got badly hurt before trying to climb it, so that was out. However, while studying one morning, I decided to try to rig something up. So I took two dust mops and strapped them together. Using this as a long pole, I lifted up a lasso knot while Eva twisted the rope to work it around the coconuts. It worked very well! It was a lot of fun, though my study break was a lot longer than it probably should have been. :)



Taken from the balcony at the Langendoen's house. The tree in the foreground actually lost all its leaves while we were there and grew completely new ones. I never thought we would be raking leaves in the Honduras in February, but we were!

Mom said this was a Bogenvillia (spelling?) plant. It grew on top of the wall around the Langendoen's house.


The tarantula. This was a medium size. We saw another one later that was quite a bit bigger.

And finally, a fish picture. We went fishing in some (stocked) ponds just outside of Comayagua. This size was typical. (Sorry, I don't remember the name of the fish.)