Celebrating

We celebrated the 6 year anniversary of the church last Saturday, the 13th. It's neat to see how the church has grown since I arrived here. Upon my arrival they thought the church would close, but we just celebrated a wonderful 6 years. We celebrating by having a culto unido ( a united church service) where we invited other local churches to celebrate with us. We had 4 churches come to celebrate with us having a record of about 120 people inside the church with more people standing outside.

We also had 2 of the youth from the church graduate from a 3 week church leaders training program called the School of Christ. We brought about 15 from the church to support them in their graduation.

Gabriel-19

Raul-16

The whole group of graduates and leaders who helped teach.

Gabriel and Raul with family.

Busy 2 weeks

The last 2 weeks have been some of the busiest I have had here in Honduras. The team arrived on April 6th and I went to pick them up in San Pedro Sula. They were here for one week working on the nurses station addition and painting my lab cabinets. So...my lab got a new face lift and the nurses now have a breakroom addition with good fridges for meds and patient food, etc. It is still missing the flooring because the cement wasn't cured yet, but will post pictures when it is completely finished.  Many of the nurses felt very blessed by a team coming and providing this special space for them! :)

Enjoyed the week with the team of 8 (including my parents) helping them cook and clean, joining them for devotions and getting to know each one of them better. It was a great, but exhausting week!

Cooking dinner in the big staff housing kitchen.

Honduran team favorites were Tres Leches cake and Lizano sauce.

Making icing for the Tres leches cake to serve to the team.

Took the team to the beach.

Mom and dad stayed an extra week with me. We got to go up to the water tower and to a waterfall. We also went to several extra church services for special occasions. The counted 7 times we went to church in the 2 weeks they were here. I think they were a little overwhelmed.

Mom helped me work on making curtains for my living room out of an old sheet I had bought at a thrift store. We also made curtains for my bedroom...desperately needed...sure beats the towel I had tacked up with thumb tacks. Dad helped me do some things around the house like putting locks on my door and windows, hanging curtain rods and lifting one of my beds for totes to fit underneath. He also helped me hang up my hammock. :)

chillin on the front porch

nice to have curtains on my windows finally.

Nurses station-last week

It is the last week before the team comes and the nurses station addition is looking more and more complete every day. They say there maybe some things they have to do next week, but should be ready for the team on Monday. They were mixing cement for the countertops yesterday. They said next week the coutnertops will get tile.
Here is is with only 3 work days left until team arrives:

Sorry...didn't realize I got the workers rearside.

Happy Easter

Easter was a good day, but is not celebrated here like in the states. Most churches here do not celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus like we do. When the evangelical churches came to this area, they wanted to get away from everything Catholic, which meant, all the christian holidays and celebrations too.  However, our church, probably the only one, did celebrate with a sunrise service and baptisms because of the strong missionary influence.

About half of the semi-circle.

We had about 25 people show up for the 5:30am sunrise service. It was a joy to worship as a body as the sun was coming up.

Later that day as part of our normal church service, we had baptisms. Three people were ready to get baptized and what better day than Resurrection Sunday. What a neat picture of grace. God raises us with Christ when we come to Him. What a picture baptism is of dying to self and being raised with Christ to new life. Great day to celebrate baptisms.

The 3 about to be baptized.

Them with their families.

Herminio-the husband of the couple that was married last weekend

Dinora-the wife of the couple that was married last weekend.

Jennifer-2nd oldest daughter of a couple in the church, Doli and Jose

Rigo, Dinora, Herminio, Jennifer, and Anael after baptisms.