She knew the number was exactly 36 because that's how many Bingo cards she has and she had just exactly enough! She also handed out lots of prizes to those who recited their memory verse. I taught the English class today but Nelson will have to come back from vacation a day early to teach Saturday as I will be going to the airport to pick up the team.
Junior didn't show up to translate today so Sonia took the English class and I went into the preschool with Helen while she told the story. I think she had 17 kids today. In any event she gave them a memory verse at the end of class, Luke 10:27, and as soon as she did they started reciting it from memory. As it turns out, that is a verse Myrna had given them some time back and every one of them knew it from memory. Interesting. It occurred to me last week to try to speak to Alfredo Orillana about our woodworking classes. We began working with Alfredo back in the year 2000. He is a good friend, a Christian, and an excellent woodworker. He is the one who made kneeling benches out of mahogany for Jennifer's wedding. Several years ago Alfredo went to the United States to try to earn a living for his family and has been there ever since. Tonight I spoke with him in North Carolina with regard to his future plans. He says he's planning to return early next year, as soon as he comes up with enough money for a plane ticket. However, the longer we talked, the more interested he got in possibly returning to work with us. He said he will call me back next Tuesday to discuss it further. With our plan to produce goods to be sold in the US market, he would be my first choice as one to help with that program. This might be something to put on your prayer list. I've spent a fair amount of time the last couple of days working through the issue of insurance for our building here. We have had coverage against earthquake, fire, and hurricane, which on the surface sounds pretty important. However, I did some research and found that as far as earthquake is concerned there have been no serious earthquakes in Honduras since they started keeping records back in the year 1530. There have been earthquakes in Central America, but they have been confined to Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. Of course we do have hurricanes, but in checking with some pretty well-informed local people, there is hardly ever much wind damage to buildings as a result. The damage is through heavy rains and flooding; but we are on high ground here so that doesn't seem to be a problem either. As for the thought of this building burning to the ground, it is made of concrete and rebar, that is not likely either. I had a conversation with Bill Hoff who has Bible Institute south of San Pedro and he is pretty much in agreement with what I am thinking. His thoughts were that our greatest exposure is with the contents of our building. We do have contents coverage through Clements International in Washington DC and my thinking right now is to use our money to increase that coverage and cancel the other. Over the weekend we received enough money to get the red van fixed. Therefore, we had a wrecker come out and pick it up today and take it to San Pedro. No word yet on what problems might be. When we were with Frank and Phoebe Harrison over the weekend, they offered to let certain of our employees attend their discipleship training seminar presenting a technique called"storying." I talked to Beto about it and he seems quite enthused. He and Joel would be the ones to participate . I also spoke with him and Nicholas about offering the diploma discipleship class first to our employees, just to get started. They both seemed quite enthused about that. They asked that we announce it at our next luncheon/staff meeting so it is clear that it is our idea and not theirs. We had further evidence today that Cheryl's foot is doing better. Joel walked into the office upstairs with a live, 6 foot long snake. When she saw it she did a dance that would challenge most anyone. Dr. Green and his team arrive on Saturday. Cheryl has spent a good bit of her time lately getting things ready for that.
Cheryl, Helen, and I all spent the night in San Pedro last night in order to give Nicholas a Sunday off. Helen stayed with Mark and Joy Hoff and participated in the youth group; Cheryl and I stayed at one of the local hotels. We didn't get a whole lot of sleep as there were several functions going on including a wedding. The wedding party and guests were just arriving at the hotel when we got there, at 10 PM. I have no idea what time the party ended. We spent the earlier part of our evening with Phoebe and Frank Harrison; it was great to get caught up with them. Today at church Helen was part of the music worship team, and then play a keyboard solo during the offertory. She did a good job. After church we were invited to the Gilen's house for a Russian dinner. Alec is from Siberia and Helen from Kazakhstan; she is a terrific cook and I ate so much that I am still full and it's 8:30 in the evening. Nelson is on vacation next week so tomorrow Helen and I will be teaching the English class and then the computer class. I'm sure I'll have more to say about that tomorrow.
Dr. Jose Rios held a dental clinic today and saw ten patients. We are privileged to have a local dentist drive all the way out here to donate his time. Helen Ruth Snipes, guest from the Claremore, OK, continues to work to
upgrade the Children's Program. There are no classes today, so today she cleaned out a cupboard and organized supplies. Yesterday Helen had twenty-five students. With God's blessing and the generosity of others we once again had enough to make the payroll.10/15/2010
Today Nicholas and I had a big day in San Pedro. Today being the 15th was pay day so our most important stop was the bank. With God's blessing and the generosity of others we once again had enough to make the payroll. I was also able to make our car insurance payment. Among several other things we also paid a visit to the auto repair shop. They are in a position to help us with selling the vans. We also talked about types of vehicles we might want to buy to replace the van. They are good Christian guys and will be of great help to us. Our other stops were the courier service, to doctors offices, the supermarket, and the clothing outlet. I forgot to mention yesterday that Joel was able to fix Cheryl's chairlift. He changed the batteries and made some other adjustments and it works fine. Joel is a natural at fixing anything from computers to chairlifts.
I wrote earlier this week that we had decided after last Friday that Beto would not be able to chauffer us around San Pedro. It was obvious that he does not have the driving experience necessary. Since then he has been pretty much down and dumps. Today I had a talk with him. He said he has been driving around the San Pedro Sula area since he was 17 and has never had a car accident. However, he acquiesced to the fact that he will no longer be driving. I mentioned to him that even though he won't be driving he is a gifted Bible teacher, and we can emphasize that area. Afterward he seemed to feel better. I met with Nelson today to arrange for his week of vacation next week. He gave me some topics that he would have been covering in the computer class and will give me the books he uses to teach English. The plan is that Helen Snipes and I will cover his classes. I forgot to mention yesterday that since we did not have a translator Helen handled the children's class all by herself. There were 22 kids plus moms and other teachers, none of whom speak any English at all, and she did a very fine job.
Norma Bonilla returned to Honduras April 24 after undergoing a successful knee replacement surgery in Brunswick, Maine. We were trying to locate a wheel chair for her use on arriving back in Seis de Mayo, but after our guard, Nikolas picked her up at the airport, he called very excited and said “she can walk”! Norma has been our sewing teacher for over seven years now, interning under our daughter Jennifer. Norma used to walk each day, crippled, and in the hot sun, to wait at the gate each day for a place in Jennifer’s sewing class. Norma not only got admitted into the class but she passed all three levels of the sewing curriculum and became an excellent sewing and Bible teacher to the women in the surrounding villages. Through a dear doctor, Dr. Rosquete, who comes to Honduras to provide orthopedic surgeries, arrangements were made for Norma to travel to the States for her knee replacement. Through this experience Norma has shown herself to be a very courageous person. She had rarely been out of her village, much less travel by plane to the United States. Understandably she was very anxious. Gary and I were concerned and asked for some help in getting her a contact person who would look after her during her hospital stay. Kelly Junk, missionary coordinator at First United Methodist Church, Tulsa, OK, put us in contact with a couple in a Methodist church in Maine near where Norma would be having surgery. Greg and Holly Lane were our hands and legs in caring, praying, and providing translation for Norma and keeping us updated about Norma’s condition. They took ownership of her care, just as we would have done. We are so grateful for the Body of Christ to care for their own, regardless of the distance, culture or language. Here is an excerpt from one of Greg’s letter to us: Norma "OK, think of a wagon wheel. Norma was the hub, the rim was God's providential plan, and the spokes were the individuals and groups involved. Very few of the spokes knew about the other spokes,evenwhen they got to the hub. The Lord 'recruited' believers and unbelievers. One spoke was Sherry (orig. Panama) and Maggie (orig. Mexico) who were informed of Norma's need by Mary Hermann, wife of former Maine Governor Angus King (they live locally). Sherry and Maggie provided translation when I showed up Wed. evening. " What a testimony to the effectiveness of the body of Christ.
The computer class offers an injured construction worker an opportunity to learn a new skill10/13/2010
On Tuesday when we went on our walk through the village some people came out and asked me to go into one of the houses and talk to Raul Ford. He's a young man we have known and who has been very helpful to us over the years. He was laying in bed and I was shocked when I saw how thin he was. I found out that about a month and a half ago he had an accident while working at the cement plant about halfway between here and San Pedro Sula. He was helping with construction of the metal building when a wall with steel beams fell on him. According to his account it's a miracle he's still alive. His back was opened up by the surgeon and six staples were put in. Obviously he will be unable to do heavy construction again. With that in mind I took Nelson over to see him and we arranged for him to begin computer and English classes in November. Russell has still not made contact with us about teaching the welding and carpentry classes. So, yesterday I went to talk with Alfredo's brother. Alfredo is Flor's husband, is an exceptional worker, and helped us a great deal in the beginning when we were back in the jungle. He's the one who made kneeling benches out of mahogany for Jenny's wedding. He's in the States now and I get the feeling from his brother he might come back if he had some assurance of a job. We will be getting his telephone number tomorrow and I plan to call him and see what his plans are.
Improvement in Cheryl's foot was evidenced today when she walked through almost the entire village of Seis de Mayo. We wanted to take Helen with us to meet some of the people that we have literally grown up with. As always it was a pleasure. We got word today that Cure International is going to do surgery on Levi, the little boy whose arm was broken and set so badly it looks like he has two elbows. This surgery is scheduled for November 14 in San Pedro. Nicholas went to the municipality this morning and learned that the assessor has come up with a tax figure to recommend to the mayor, though we don't not yet know what it is. I guess my preferred position would be that we be charged some tax but not very much. That way, the record will show that we have paid our taxes. I had him stop back this afternoon and deliver to the mayor's office a view book I put together of Gathering Hearts from the the time we began back in the year 2000. The book included newsletters from 2000 forward, the water treatment plan put together by the Oklahoma State University engineering students (Engineers Without Borders/EWB) as well as a photo and the map of Seis de Mayo which they made earlier this year. Speaking of OSU, today we received an e-mail from Dr. Paul Weckler, faculty advisor for OSU -- EWB that included the following paragraph:" A recent development has been the inclusion of the OSU -- EWB trip to Honduras as an official study abroad class in the College of Engineering. This allows the students to take advantage of travel stipends and scholarships offered by individual engineering departments, the College of Engineering, and the Provost's office to support international travel and study abroad. We are starting to plan for the trip over spring break 2011...."
This afternoon Helen (Snipes) and I made a trip to Marcos's house (our night guard) to deliver a gift for his recently born seventh child. The precious little girl's name is Keila. Marcos was very proud to show us his modest home, perched on the side of a hill in the valley near El Chile. We were also able to take coloring books and school supplies to the rest of his children thanks to the generosity of those who have brought supplies from the States and left them here in the past. Beto was very quiet and subdued today. Nicholas said he was discouraged because we decided after Friday that he would not be able to drive in San Pedro. After prayer, thought, and discussion, we have decided to sell both the Ford and Chevy 15 passenger vans, and replace them with something more economical. We are spending too much on repairs as well as gasoline since neither of them is very economical to drive. Furthermore, as we have been spending more time in the States, it's not good to leave them idle for several weeks or months at a time. We are thinking of something like a double cab Toyota pickup or perhaps something the size of our Tahoe that we have in Tulsa. For the time being I think that we will probably rent a small bus when we have teams from the States. I think we can fix up a Ford F-150 pickup sufficient for hauling building supplies, etc.
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