Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Meet the students at Luz y Verdad

By Katie

The fourth graders at Luz y Verdad made a series of videos to share a little bit about our school and who they are with you. They're practicing their English pronunciation and some were pretty nervous to be in front of the camera, so the words are below the videos in case you can't understand. Enjoy!

Hello!



1. Hello! We are students at Escuela Cristiana Luz y Verdad.
2. In English that means Light and Truth Christian School.
3. We are in fourth grade. These videos are a little bit about us and our school.

The Map



1. Here is Honduras on the map of Central America.
2. We live in Catacamas, Olancho.
3. Catacamas is a small town.
4. Here is Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras.

The Schedule



1. We start classes at 7am each day.
2. We finish our classes at 12 o'clock each day.
3. At 9am we have recess for 30 minutes.
4. During recess we eat at the cafeteria.
5. We eat baleadas, pancakes, chips, pop or candy for a snack.

Our Classes




1. In our classes we learn science, math, Spanish, Bible and social studies.
2. We also have English class and computer class.
3. My favorite class is English.
4. We hope you enjoyed our videos! Goodbye!

Thursday, May 20, 2010

In Mangulile with Jorge and Douglas

By Katie

A few weekends ago we traveled to a town in northern Olancho called Mangulile. Jorge and Douglas had invited us to be guest speakers at a training for the youth of the church there and to stay for a joint church service for young people that night.

Jorge and Douglas (in the picture below) are two members of the youth board from our classis, or regional grouping of churches. They are super motivated to share the gospel in a deep and thorough way to the young people in Honduras. They’re also inseparable. They both are in seminary, preach on a local Christian television show, and spend much of their time visiting other churches in order to preach or to motivate the youth to get organized to bring about actions that deepen their faith and reach out to non-believers.
They invited us to come along on this trip to visit some folks we’ve already met at last year’s youth retreat. Their youth board was falling apart so Jorge, as president of our youth board, wanted to address the situation openly to get things rolling again. Matt lead a time of reflection about the potential they have as planted seeds, watered by each other and their mentors, and pruned and cared for ultimately by God. My part was to present some different models of youth ministry to help them define how their programs might lead toward the desirable goals of growing deeper and reaching out. No visit to a community would be complete without a church service. A few hours before the service began, we heard a pickup truck with a loud speaker and a microphone announcing the event, saying, “Come to the united church service today at four o’clock. Our brother Mateo and our sister Kati are here visiting from Catacamas and want to see you there.” At the service, we sang a bunch of “happy songs”, Jorge’s specialty. To get the full effect, hook your computer up to huge speakers that you might use for blasting an action movie in a home theater and turn them up all the way. It was loud; incredibly loud. But everyone was having a great time praising the Lord!


There were some beautiful sights to see on the trip to and from Mangulile, about five hours from our home on a nasty dirt road. These photos make up for the bumps and uncomfortable drive! Opportunities like these are an exciting part of our job here in Honduras. What made this one even greater was the youth put everything together themselves and only invited us as guest speakers. They continually remind themselves that they are not the church of the future, they are the church now. Their faith and capabilities of organizing themselves for the sake of the gospel message are very impressive.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Cleaning Day

By Katie

Today the front porch gang collectively declared they were going to clean my front porch. A few of the girls had been cooking this up over the past few days and were determined to put it into action today. So, after I dismissed most of the kids, the five most regulars asked for a broom, soapy water, sponges and rags so they could clean the walls and window. Of course I complied. It's not every day that someone wants to clean for you! They wouldn't even stop to look at the camera when I got it out. When it was all done, I thanked them very sincerely. Zeydi (the girl with the broom) said, "Well, you teach us everyday, so..." Their actions mean a lot to me.

Sunday, May 16, 2010

A week in La Avispa

By Matt

This past month I was able to re-live an experience that was very important to me. It was "Campo week" for the International Development Studies semester students of Calvin College, and they came out to Olancho to spend a week in the community of La Avispa. Kurt and Joanne V.B. (the Calvin Profs who live here in Honduras) along with David and I set up the experience through the Ag and Environment program of Diaconia and invited the 19 Calvin students to spend a week experiencing the rural Honduran lifestyle. This was meaningful to me because I had done the same trip five years ago when I was studying here in Honduras with Calvin's development studies semester abroad program (although I had gone to a different part of the country).

On the first day the church did a big welcome service for the students. There is no electricity in La Avispa, but the church has a little solar panel, and the music was very loud (as usual here in Honduras). In the morning David and I held an assembly in the school where we taught the kids about the water cycle and why the forest is important. Here we are doing a group game that helps them understand how the water cycle works. Some of the kids represent trees, others clouds, others rivers, etc. I am about to cut down the forest with my chainsaw here, which cuts the signal of the water cycle (squeezing hands).



The people of La Avispa had set as a priority an environmental campaign to help get people thinking about not polluting the community and not burning down the forest (deforestation has led to a lot of problems in the community). During this week the whole community worked with us to put up signs around the community as reminders of how we all need to care for the creation so that we all have a healthy and productive place to live. Here a local youth is putting up one of the signs which says "Don't contaminate the environment" (the community chose which messages to display). Another sign says "Welcome to La Avispa, Land Blessed by God, Caring for our natural resources is the responsibility of everyone". Many of the local youth helped out with this little project and it was fun to get to know them. At the end of the week we ended up going with about 10 of them to a nearby church for a youth training of Diaconia with Roldan.



After a community meeting David went with a bunch of people to collect seeds from the cedar trees in the area. Another community priority is reforestation on the steep mountainsides to prevent landslides and erosion and to provide resources such as wood for the community. We also worked with a group in the community to establish a tree nursury which will produce timber trees as well as fruit trees for the community. Below you see how the seed collecting works: David threw a stick way up in the tree to knock open the little helicopter seeds and the youth with the tarps ran to where the cloud was falling. We collected a lot of this very valuable and expensive seed with very little effort. These seeds will help us do reforestation in other communities as well.



On Thursday morning David went and made a wood saving stove (a better design of the usual woodstove that burns 50% or less of the normal wood). This stove is to serve as an example to see if other people in the community would like to change to this design. The woman was very happy with the stove and could appreciate the results immedeatly because very little heat escapes into the kitchen. The strong cement tube chimney insures that there is zero smoke in the kitchen which is often a big problem in these communities. The idea is that if much of the community changes there design, they will cut down less trees in the area and have more time to spend working on other projects.



On one of the mornings we went up to the land of Oqueli, one of our community facilitators. You can see that on this plot he has not burned for several years. The land is steep around La Avispa and we are promoting the use of erosion barriers so that the people don't lose the fertility of their soil when it rains. We also work to change the common practice of burning to prepare the land because burning leaves the soil unprotected from many types of degradation especially on these steep slopes.



I wanted to get a better taste for what it is really like to work the land in La Avispa so I helped chop the weeds to prepare for planting. I also wanted to put my machete to the test. Do this for 6 or 7 hours and you get paid around $5 total here in Honduras.


On the last day in La Avispa we took some time in the afternoon to go look at a nearby cave with the Calvin students and members of the community. It was enjoyable, but full of bats which are not my favorite animals.



From what I can tell the community and the students really bonded well during their time. I know many of the students learned how to make tortillas and wash clothes by hand. I saw some out riding horse too. Some of the students helped out with the community activities such as the signs. On the last night the local Christian Reformed church put on a big farewell service which was very meaningful. Below is a video of the students singing a song to the church in spanish.


In this video the church is singing a song that says: "Goodbye brothers, goodbye. I carry you in my heart"



We did a ton of other things as well, and it was a great week. I wonder if any of those students will come back to visit La Avispa.

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Sticker Collection

By Katie

We are in the capital city of Tegucigalpa this week for meetings, so we've got a little break from country life and the opportunity to see what's going on in the city. It seems that World Cup mania is gripping Honduras tighter than ever. Now available in the cities are these World Cup sticker albums and packs of trading card styled stickers. There are 32 teams playing in the World Cup in South Africa starting June 11. Each team has a page for all their players and info. Lisa and I passed it off as a geography lesson and are building our collections, a pack or two at a time with every errand we run. It's fun, and informative of course.

I only have one player from Honduras. I had better work on that...