personal // hogar dulce hogar (we moved!)

On our moving day, this past Wednesday, we moved Honduran style! We had four layers of furniture, appliances, boxes, and suitcases on the back of a single pickup truck with lots of rope. We even had a local friend say to us, “I’ve never even done this. I think you’re more Honduran than I am right now!” 

Everyone thought that Jamey's rope from the hardware store was super funny, but it's what they had! Someone even said "Are you ready to go boating now, Jamey?"

Our sweet friends that came to get us got an early start in the morning, by leaving Danli at 4AM to get to Choluteca by 8:30AM, so that by the time we arrive back with our things in Danli later that day, we would still have some daylight left to unload everything into our house.

Outside of our apartment in Choluteca, all packed up!

With such an early start, and not wanting to stop too many times along the way with so many open things on the back of the truck, we actually ended up getting a super early lunch (though none of us had had breakfast, so it was actually brunch) at 10AM at KFC. Random, yes, but it was the closest thing (literally, we lived next door to it in Choluteca) and open at the time. Little did we know, our friend Miguel didn’t know a lot about fried chicken and biscuits. He had a lot of questions about biscuits, and asked why people from the U.S. like it so much because it’s just bread. Haha! We immediately responded by telling him that where we are from, biscuits are VERY important. They are like tortillas for him! He also had to watch us bite into our fried chicken first before he knew what to do with it, because obviously we weren’t using utensils. He first proceeded exactly like we did, and then decided that he liked it much better when he just ripped the skin off of it, rubbed a layer of ketchup on the whole thing, and then chowed down. It was a fun “lunch” to say the least.

Our totally non-discrete moving, during a stop in Teguc.

The trip from Choluteca, through Tegucigalpa, to Danli ended up taking us a little over five hours with a few stops. We were definitely driving at lower speeds with our big load of cargo! Once we arrived in Danli, we pulled up straight to our new home. Lesley yelled “Hogar!!!” and Miguel completed her sentence with “dulce hogar”. (Which means “Home sweet home” in Spanish.)

Our great friends Belkis and Luis, who live very close to us, came over the second we arrived and immediately went to work. Luis helped everyone unload, and Belkis asked us if we wanted to go ahead and spend the night there or with them. And since we picked staying the first night in our new place, Belkis was determined that we were going to get some things cleaned before we stayed the night. While we were setting up everything, she was so generously busy cleaning off our walls, cleaning the floors, and cleaning our bathroom for us to use. We were so incredibly thankful for all of the help we received that day!

The outside and gate of our new house in Danli! We even have a little garden area.

Since then, we’ve been busy with errands, getting settled, church and church events. We’ve actually hosted people over a couple of times already, and been invited to dinner with three different families. We are feeling very loved and waited for.

Also, just a day after being here, we were able to finally meet some friends of ours in person that have only just been pen-pals of ours so far! Their names are Sean & Whitney, and they are missionaries from the U.S. in Danli as well, serving with a different church here, who moved to Honduras around the very same time that we did. They had actually found this blog online and reached out to us from there. What a blessing it has already been to know them and share together, and we are so excited to now continue our friendship in person, in the same city, and living just a few blocks from one another!

Thank you to everyone who prayed so much for us about this move and about us finding a new home to live in for the next several years. We are so grateful for how well our move went, and absolutely thrilled with our home that our church staff here picked out for us since we could not be in Danli to house hunt ourselves. We can’t wait to show y’all our house in one of our next blog posts, which will be a new video tour!! Those who enjoyed the first one so much have been begging for another one!

Blessings!

J&L