10 things we learned from the Arevalos

1. How to take showers with salt water
2. Prayer should be an integral part of our lives and not just a formality before meals and bedtime
3. Who needs air conditioning, anyway?
4. A granita (frozen coffee drink) a day keeps the grumpies away
5. Humility and servanthood
6. How to get along in a 1,000 sq ft home with 4 children under 2 1/2 and 4 parents 
7. To ask for forgiveness and to reconcile often
8. Learned some great new childrens songs that Rebekah now loves to sing.  Thank you Abner and Kelley!
9. How to make papaya/banana shakes...uhhmmm!  Thank you Kelley!
10. How to love each other more in spite of our shortcomings

Abner, Kelley, Susana and Abner Daniel, thank you for sharing your home and lives with us for five weeks.  We are so very grateful for the times we had.  We are better people because of you and how you live your lives for Him.  We love you all deeply.  Let's do this again in the near future...at our house ;) We hope you can get the stains off your couch...yeah...sorry about those potty training accidents!

What we've been up to...

This past week was one crazy week.  We were traveling through different places as we were making our way to Tegucigalpa.  Kelley and Abner dropped us off at Peña Blanca where we were spending a few days with my aunt and uncle.  It was a really neat time.  The area where they live is up in the mountains and really nice and cool, so we were so grateful to be out of the heat of La Ceiba.  We got to rest for a couple of days there.  We also traveled to San Pedro Sula with them for a day visit to see my cousin and her family.  We were then picked up by my other uncle and he took us to Siguatepeque where we spent another couple of days with him and his family.  After a couple of days here, my parents picked us up from Siguatepeque and we are finally home at my parents house in Tegucigalpa.  It's nice being back "home" and enjoying my immediate family!

  

We enjoyed all of our stays so much and yet everywhere we went we also got to see so many needs and family hurting some way or another.  It was bitter-sweet, but we were grateful for the opportunities we had to share His Truth and hope with them.  We love getting to know our family and being able to share the hope that we have in Him.  We had many opportunities to pray with them, encourage them in the Lord, share from His Word and minister to those who needed to be comforted.  

We are now at my parents' house and there are also many opportunities to share with them.  I told Matty how sad I have felt seeing so much hurt in others and how foreign God seemed to them...how our lives were so different and how only the Lord could truly save them.  It has been sad seeing my dad.  He seems to be less and less joyful and much more in need of Christ. The problem is that so far he has not shown any interest at all in the Lord.  It has been somewhat chaotic, and our hope can remain in Him alone.  

Matty and I continue to pray for boldness, courage, and for the Lord to give us the right words at the right time.  We continue to live our lives for Him and serve them and love them as they are.  God is all powerful and oh so good.  Please do pray for us as we continue to shine His light in a very dark place.   Our lives are changing so much as we see so many needs and so much work to be done here in Honduras with our family.  We are not sure what our lives will be when we get back, but that is up to the Lord.  We do know that we want to be more purposeful in truly having a more eternal perspective.  We love the Lord so much and we have always desired to live for Him alone, but I think we realize how short we have fallen of living for Him and Him alone.  I think many times in the "comfortableness" that we live in in the United States that we become so very self-centered and numb to needs of others.  We have seen so much these past weeks and months that we have been here.

We thank the Lord for saving us, for loving us and for guiding us as we seek Him.  He is so very faithful and a solid rock in times of uncertainty and turmoil.  Thank you Lord for who you are and for the hope that we have in You.  Lead us on as YOU desire.  

Imagine a life with no yankees...

Today in Honduras, they are having a ceremony to join Honduras with a latino-american pact called the "Alba".  Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela, is the leader of this movement and is currently on TV insisting that Honduras needs to declare their freedom from the U.S. and that the "yankees", as Chavez refers to the U.S., are oppressing all of latino-america.  Also present at the ceremony are the vice president of Cuba, president of Nicaragua, and president of Bolivia. For the last two hours, these presidents have been ranting and raving about the oppression of capitalism and the oppression by the 'yankees'.  Somehow Chavez pins all problems in all of latino-america on the 'yankees'.  Sounds like the rant of a certain psychopathic leader of a certain German country of a certain World War all over again to me.  It is a sad thing to see Honduras getting involved with such socialistic/communistic ideas and governments.

It is true that Honduras has its economic problems, but it is not the fault of the U.S.  Actually, the socialized programs here in Honduras seem to be the ones with the problems.  The social medicine system is free, but terrible (and Obama paints such a pretty picture of socializing medicine in the U.S.... There is not a successful model of socialized medicine on earth today. Probably because it doesn't work.) Government-run water is not potable.  Government-run electricity continually fails.  It doesn't seem to me like a system we want to expand...  

Chavez insists that a grand government-run group of unified countries is the way to prosperity and equality for all.  Too bad that he doesn't tell the people that equality means that they will all have to work just as hard, but now the government will dictate every aspect of their lives. Instead of getting their pay (meager as it may be) and then deciding how to use it, they will stand in line for a bar of soap and a pound of beans.  Their ears will be ringing from the communist propaganda screaming, "patriotism, patriotism, patriotism", and all they will be thinking is, "I wish I choose my soap."  

Chavez wants to control all schools, all publications, all media, all businesses, all hospitals, etc. He is a communist to the core and it is scary that so many people are listening and following his lead.  Communism has never been about anything but power for the ruling class and oppression of the masses.  Once they gain control, they rule with a military grip, killing those who would threaten their hold.  Already today, Chavez was shouting that anyone opposed to the Alba is an ignorant fool and an anti-patriot.  They brainwash the masses by controlling media and censoring every method of communication, using fear to even control what people are allowed to think. It is looking like 1984 in latino-america in 2008.  

There is hope for social and economic prosperity in Honduras but communism is not the answer.  Sadly, if Honduras aligns with these politics, the country will be pulled into the pit of economic and social degeneration from which it has been trying so hard in recent years to escape.

Four months old!

Esther is four months old today!!! Time is going by so fast! She is doing great. She is smiling so much these days and she is starting to giggle too...it is super cute! She has also started to imitate us by doing bubbles with her lips. It is amazing how much they can grasp and do and learn at such young age.

Here are just a few pictures of our little Essie...enjoy them!

Gotta love a two year old :)

Here are some great and fun pictures of our big girl Kita! She is doing so great. We are so blessed by her life. God is good!

There are some things you just have to laugh about...Enjoy!

Five Years!

Last Saturday we celebrated five years of marriage. What amazing wonderful five years we have had. The Lord has truly blessed us with a wonderful relationship and wonderful experiences. We now have two beautiful and fun little girls and a house full of adventures.

Matty made the day so very special for me. I was so blessed by the way he showed me how much he loves me and cares for me. But while we were there talking and thinking about five years ago, it brought us back to the Source of life...we wanted to thank the Lord for our salvation. Because He saved us we can have a wonderful relationship and have been able to enjoy so much joy and peace over these past five years and since we came to know Him. His Word says, "taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is he who puts his hope in him." We are so very grateful for His Salvation and as we celebrate five wonderful years of marriage, we also celebrate His goodness toward us. Where would we be without him?? I am not sure of this, but I know that it would not be the full and blessed life that we live now.

Here are some details of our celebration:

• Matt took me to a hotel restaurant where we were taken to a private corner balcony on about the 4th floor where he had arranged to have a very nice table for us.



• Matt had bought roses earlier and taken them to the hotel for them to set at the table too!


• Champagne


• A very nice dinner: we ate fresh seafood with the ocean waves crashing on the beach below our balcony


• They even made a heart-shaped cake for us



• And the nicest thing of all that I look forward to almost every year is that Matty writes me a love letter and they just fill up my love tank!


• We had planned to go dancing after dinner but when we went to the disco, we were not too excited about dancing there, so when we got home, Matt put on some Ella Fitzgerald (slow jazz) and we had a couple of dances at home :)

We had a wonderful time celebrating--talking and sharing and just enjoying in the goodness of the Lord.

Well Lidia, that was a great summary, but you left out a bunch... We have been blessed to be in a beautiful location for both our 1st and 5th anniversaries. The 1st was on the Bay Islands of Honduras, and now the 5th was here on the north coast. I have been blessed to have such an amazing wife with whom to share these anniversaries. Sometimes when she is talking to me, I have trouble listening, because I start to think, "how in the world am I so blessed to have this beautiful woman as my wife?" and then I have to pull myself back and remember that I need to be able to respond to her when she finishes and asks me, "So what do you think about what I just said?" :) Lidia is an amazing wife; amazing woman; amazing mom; amazing helpmate; amazing friend. I could not do this life without her and the Lord has used her to get me going on all these adventures! I am absolutely blessed to have a woman who loves the Lord deeply and is continously loving Him more. This makes her love for me possible. She is truly selfless and ever-growing in her love for me and for the girls. The Lord has lavishly blessed me with my Lidia and I am deeply thankful each day that our lives are forever woven together. I love you my poema.

I feel like a 3rd grader

Learning a language is a very humbling process. The last 6 weeks have been intense and tiring: hours of one-on-one study with my 'maestro' (teacher), more hours of homework early in the morning or late at night, hundreds of mis-spoken sentences, thousands of mispronounced words.

The other day I was studying at Espresso Americano (the local version of Starbucks) and I was reading my Catrachito book... It is a reader for 3rd graders here in honduras and is perfect for where I am at. The stories in the book contain a mixture of all the verb tenses used in a straight-forward way. I usually read the stories, circle all the verbs, and write the tense of each verb so I understand how all the words are being used. The funny thing is, I don't think I could do this in English. I know more Spanish grammar now than I know English. I know the present indicative, the imperfect indicative, the preterite, the future, the pluscuamperfect (a completed action in the past), potential, simple subjunctive, etc. I guess I have learned more about english since I now know what all these tenses mean in english as well. It has been really great.

I am now done with all the main grammar. I have two weeks of school left, which will be mostly practicing all the tenses together. My homework now is mostly writing and telling stories so that I learn to use all that I have learned. One thought that always gets me exctited though is that I am over the hump! The hard part is over and it will continue to get easier from here on out. The important thing now is to have the discipline to speak my new language often and to read and write as much as possible. Lidia and my plan is to speak Spanish at the house when we go back to Tulsa. How exciting it will be to finally be able to say that I am 'fluent'!!!