right now // november 2014

READJUSTING to elevation changes. Traveling between Colorado Springs (around 6,000) ft) to Houston (about 75 ft) to Honduras (2,600 ft) in the span of one day was enough to make our bodies go crazy! Thankfully we are starting to feel back to normal, but if the elevation change wasn't enough, the weather was quite a shock as well! It was about ONE degree Fahrenheit when we landed to attend the EMI Conference. Very different than what we are used too! But nevertheless, thankful for the time of learning and fellowship.

RESTING from lots of computer screen time. The Total Water website is finally launched and Lesley is enjoying looking at the computer screen LESS this week. Once you stare at the same thing for too long, your mind starts to play tricks on you. Go check out her hard work at www.totalwater.org and don't forget to share about Total Water for Giving Tuesday (Dec. 2nd)!

CONSIDERING putting the Christmas tree up early... like before Thanksgiving early. Normally, we are very respectful toward the order of the holidays and decorate for Christmas starting the day after Thanksgiving!! But we're considering it because we won't be here to enjoy the tree on Christmas day (which is okay, because we'll be with our families instead this year!) and because we just want to feel like the holidays in always-summer Honduras. Speaking of the holidays, we are...

SEARCHING for easy peasy Thanksgiving recipes. Pray for us as we Lesley will be cooking a Thanksgiving meal by herself with one mini-sized oven, that only has one shelf (gasp!), and that runs on gas (so we'll need to conserve baking times). Last year we played it low key, but this year we have some curious Honduran friends that are being introduced to Thanksgiving food for the first time. We want to do it justice! First item on the list, bake the pumpkin pie the day before.

GETTING creative with crafts that only use paper + glue, because that's what we have the largest quantities of. Most recently, we tried braiding paper at the CDI! Check out these awesome bracelets (or ties, or bookmarks, or belts, or whatever the kids want). These kids are rockstars, and get a kick out of the simplest things!




WONDERING where the time has gone. This month we celebrated ONE YEAR in our host country! Somehow the time seems to go by faster here? Or maybe it's just because we aren't always aware of exactly of what day it is like we were back in the States, and work always spills over to the next day and the next with all that needs to be done, so the day called "Friday" sneaks up on us a bit! Sending a big Thank You to everyone who has supported us and prayed for us this year! Seriously, this ministry wouldn't be possible with each one of you!

INDULGING in anything chai flavored. Chai Tea of course, but we've also gotten into putting chai spices in other things, like cookies. Can you make chai cinnamon rolls? We don't know, but we might figure it out soon!

PRAYING for the two local civil engineers that Jamey is currently discipling. Praying that he is an example to them, and they that would begin to take interest in being open to the Gospel. Praying that they will continue to strive towards integrity-driven professional work, and that they would want to learn more about what has changed our hearts towards wanting to do good for all people.

PLAYING just a little bit more as we are wrapping up the Honduran public school year. The kids studied hard for their exams (well, and crammed a bit too) and they will be receiving their final grades in about a week. Then the government gave them surprise extra school days after their exams were over, with just a days notice, because that's just the kind of thing that happens here and no one really understands! Now they are receiving some well deserved extra play time at the CDI, which many of them don't get very often... time to play with other kids their age, in a safe area, without worrying about anything else. We have plans for a very creative cardboard Christmas tree before we break for the holidays!

right now // just one of those (stretching) days

Lots of our normal expat life changes, we have gotten used to: not drinking tap water, not flushing the toilet paper, and not always understanding conversations with too many people speaking our second language all at the same time. But what we've still had a hard time adjusting to are tasks that used to be so simple for us to do, being very difficult and overly complicated because of language barriers and cultural differences.

We learned a saying at our missionary training, and that was "it's not bad, just different."  My wife and I have definitely had to repeat this to ourselves multiple times during our first 9 months here. 

One of the biggest "simple" tasks that has caused me the biggest frustration and stress since being here happened just the other week with our car. We realized that we had an oil leak and the car needed to go into the car shop. Thankfully it wasn't a very big leak! In the U.S. this wouldn't have been a big deal, I would have taken the car into a shop that I trusted, asked them to fix it, waited for it, paid and been on my way. This wasn't exactly the case here.

Thankfully we have a very good friend who owns a tire business here who I called to take me to a trusted mechanic. When we showed up, it was very much a hole in the wall little place, parts laying everywhere, old broken down cars, no roof, dirt floor. It was not really a garage, basically a piece of land filled with junk to the side of the owners home where they use regular ol' car jacks to jack up the cars whenever the need to get underneath for anything! I was a little nervous at first and I know that sometimes the "hole in the wall" places turn out to be the best places. I just trusted my friend! 

They looked at my car and discovered it pretty quickly that it was a washer that had broken that was causing the oil leak.  He told me it wouldn't take very long to fix, but my "frictiones" were worn down and needed replaced. I could NOT figure out what he meant by this and every time I asked my friend and the mechanic what it was, they would say it again but only faster, which was not helpful to me.  I even texted Lesley and asked her to translate the word for me I was so anxious about it.  It's a really difficult place to be in mentally when someone is looking at something as big as your car, wanting to do something to the functionality of it, and you cannot understand at all what is going on. I have not learned a lot of words for car parts just yet!

Once I finally figured out what "frictiones" meant (which is break pads), I agreed to have them replace those too.  I knew that it was getting close to time for replacement, but in the commotion of everything that morning, I had forgotten to ask them to take a look at those. And honestly, if I had taken a second to really think about it "frictiones" sounds like friction which then would have made me think break pads! But, I didn't take the time to think about it before freaking out in my head. Definitely a moment where I felt like God was trying to teach me a lot in this area! After figuring all of this out, I thought it was going to be no time before I was out of there, fix the washer and replace the break pads, but again I thought wrong.  God had more learning experiences planned for me.  The next few steps of the day consisted of:

• walking 5 blocks to the bank because the car "shop" doesn't accept debit cards
• having the ATM go out of service when I get there 
• convincing the teller at the window to allow me to withdraw with only my debit card and ID
• continuing to not understand everything in the car conversation or be told everything
• the mechanic going to every parts store in Danli to find the washer but not succeeding
• paying the mechanic to go around to all of the parts stores to look for the part
• multiple phone calls to parts stores in the capital city of Honduras for the washer

Four hours later it was determined that we would wait on the parts store from the capital city to bring the part later that afternoon around 2PM and I would come back to pick up the car before closing. So I then go home and wait for a phone call that didn't come until about 4:30PM saying that my car was ready. I walked to get the car and everything was fixed and good to go! Gracias a Dios! I was even able to have a conversation with some of the workers about what brought us to Honduras, our ministry, Jesus, our church and where it's located, and I invited them to church.  It was definitely an opportunity given to me in God's perfect timing.  Because if the opportunity for this conversation had presented itself during the morning, I probably wouldn't have seen the opportunity because I was so wrapped up in what was going on.  

This reminded me of two verses, one is 2 Timothy 4:2 which says "Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction."  The other is from Colossians 4:5 which says, "Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity."  These both reminding me to seize every opportunity that God puts in front of me to be a witness and and example for Him.  It was amazing to see the difference between the morning and the afternoon. 

God taught me a lot through this day and experience including:

• Patience being the most important - Colossians 3:12
• To open my eyes and be aware of the opportunities He puts in front of me, and take them
• Trust Him in all circumstances even with the most simplest of things (this one is hard for me!)
• "It's not bad, it's just different" and God created each person and culture
• My challenges in the field are experiences that God is using to make me a better follower of Him

right now // june 2014

Right now we are...

ENJOYING the rainy season in the mountains more than we thought we would! We weren't sure how "intense" the rainy season would be, but so far at least the downpours have been happening towards the end of the day and it makes the evening air feel and smell so good. Don't get us wrong, the rain comes down really hard when it's actually happening, but it's also fun to listen to.


LEARNING more places in town where we can buy things as locally as possible. We want to support the local economy, but more importantly we want to get to know this city like the back of our hand so that we can know even more of the people in it and form even more relationships. Thankfully, we have sweet friends who are sending us to their "best people" to buy things from. We're trying to learn the Honduran way of buying certain things at the "special" place to them. We know a few, but we still only shop about three different places. Our friends have told us that we still haven't found all of the best ones yet!


LOVING how much the CDI children are loving our new technique for our English classes. It's our own take on language learning that we were taught at our training at Mission Training International (for adults!), but we realized that kids can pay so much more attention to the funny words that you're saying (read: English words) when they have pictures and cards that they can hold and work with. Last week we made a sentence forming game out of the cards and the kids said "I can speak real English!".


FORGETTING to cut Jamey's hair. Somehow, we remember when he's out in public and looks a bit shaggy, but we always forget when we're at home trying to get other things done. Poor Jamey. Doesn't help that Lesley is nervous every time she thinks about cutting it (again). That might be helping her forget.


LOOKING forward to our trip to the States at the end of this month. It'll be jammed-packed busy, with a mix of work, fun, and personal errands, but we know anything will be a great time when we can speak 100% in our native language. (Well, we could have secret conversations in Spanish but our family might not understand us.) We're already contemplating ways to fit as much as possible in our suitcases again when we're on the way back!


HELPING to plan an event in Jamey's hometown to share about how people can become more involved with the children's development center that we work with here at our local church in Danli. We're so excited to be able to help out with this vision for gathering local churches in the Covington area to work together for this cause. Be on the lookout for more information about this event (happening in the first week of July). We'll be there speaking!


TRYING these new reusable paper towels to try to be more green + save money while living in Honduras. Sounds funny, I know, but they're made by the Clorox brand (so they must be legit, right?) and they can be used, rinsed, and reused up to twenty times. We're hoping for big things with these cool towels. There little to no recycling programs in most of Honduras except for 1) people burning their trash on the side of the road (burning plastic...ouch, my lungs!) or 2) people, mostly children, who "work" certain communities each day on that neighborhood's trash day to go through the bags of trash that were put out for plastic bottles before the city trash workers pick them up. They'll then go make a few cents for every bottle by selling them to a recycling company.

right now // a week of firsts

In Honduras, church service happens on Saturday nights for most churches, including ours. It's still something to get used to, especially since it's dark out when we leave from church -- still feels a little funny! But it's interesting, because it's really put us on a new weekly schedule. Saturday night has really become the official "end" of the week for us. It is well known here that Sundays are dedicated for rest and time with family. Your new week starts from a place of rest, of Sabbath. It's the idea of starting work from a place of rest, not resting from all of the work you've already done all week. (Our Mission Training International friends will certainly understand what we mean about that!) 

So, with this being the end of our week, we took a moment to just think about what we'd accomplished and we realized that we've had quite a few "firsts" this week! It's really been a big week!

1 // We took a public transportation bus around the city out to work at the CDI (the children's nutrition clinic) in Limon for the first time. We had already toured the CDI before, and we have actually taken a long-trip by bus between cities before, but this was our first time actually going out to work there and taking a around the city bus that if you don't hop on it and grab the handle bar above your head as quickly as possible you will either miss the bus or fall down. The buses around the city have the same design as a U.S. school bus, but the seats are closer together to fit more of them. They practically keep rolling instead of stopping for passengers to get on. Thank goodness we had our friends with us who led the way and remembered to turn around long enough to shout "Hang on!!!".

The kids having their morning meeting at the nutrition clinic to start their day! This is also where they had to prove they could remember our names instead of just yelling out "Gringo! Gringo!". (Gringo = white person in Spanish.) 

We had a great time working at the Limon CDI -- they were having more of a relaxed morning, so after Jamey was done helping the older kids with their cleaning projects and after Lesley was done helping feed the younger, malnourished children breakfast, they each got to spend the rest of the morning just playing with the kids and getting to know them all! They all just want any love and attention they can get and to ask us as many questions as possible. It's also always fun when you're a kid to have someone new to explain everything you know about! It also gave us some more practice with our Spanish because kids are always willing to repeat and talk slower because they want you to understand what they are saying.  We can't wait to tell you all more about the nutrition clinic and all that they are doing! 

2 // We were very blessed to be able to see a movie in the theaters in Honduras for the first time, and that we were able to see a specific showing where the movie was in English with Spanish subtitles! We were so grateful for this luxury, because there is no other way that we would have understood an entire movie in Spanish that we'd never seen just yet! It was really nice to go with friends and to be in air conditioning for a few hours too. :) Also, the sound in the theater was much louder than we were used to! We have a new saying that we love to say: "Everything is louder in Honduras."

Lesley obviously overly excited to see the second Hunger Games movie. 

3 // Cooking in Honduras has certainly been an interesting feat for Lesley; everything is different! One huge difference is not having any of the shortcut conveniences for cooking that we had in the U.S., like canned foods (that allow us to always have access to certain foods no matter the availability of fresh, and allow for a lot of work to have already been done... like with canned tomatoes!). So here, you have to make almost everything from scratch. Thankfully, Lesley already had a lot of experience with cooking, experimenting in the kitchen, and learning to make from scratch before now, but there are still a number of things that she never needed to know how to make or prepare on her own. So it's been a week of "firsts" in the kitchen this week, too! It was the first time Lesley made homemade peanut butter, finally perfected a homemade salsa recipe to be just right, and made homemade applesauce! Just a few small steps in the right direction of learning to become a fully from-scratch home cook. But, we have definitely realized that we did not bring enough mason jars for all of this scratch-made cooking!! Also, Lesley already had a lot of practice at making homemade coffee creamer, to which Jamey is VERY thankful. It's not available in the supermarkets here, except for the imported (read: very expensive) version.

First ever homemade peanut butter & applesauce, and a finally perfected homemade salsa. 

4 // We actually had another "first" adventure this week -- it was also our first official time going out to work at the church's living community, Casa Hogar Vida, as well and Jamey's first time driving more than two miles down the road in the city. He did a great job driving on the crazy Honduran roads all the way out of the city limits! If you've ever heard us talk about roads and driving here, it's a real experience. Let's just say there are a lot less road rules than we are accustomed to!  Be on the lookout for more information about Casa Hogar Vida soon!

Lesley outside of one of the new orphanage "family homes" at Casa Hogar Vida.

5 // This week was also Jamey's first haircut in Honduras, which was MUCH overdue with how quickly his thick curly hair grows. However, the end result is much better described as "Jamey's first Latin American 'Do!". We, with our friends included, all found it very humorous! He came out with Latin American vertical hair "stacking", Latin American sideburns, and a definitely Latin American mustache (with no more beard). The mustache, especially, wasn't his intention. Lesley couldn't even believe it! He looked Honduran! :) With a couple of fixes from Lesley and a good clean shave, the old "Jamey" look is back now.

6 // On Friday, we had our first Christmas party in Honduras!! We went to our small group's annual Christmas dinner with the other same-aged small group from the church. It was very fun, but the games were quite an experience! Before the food came out, they had everyone pull their chairs away from the table in a large circle and basically played "Hot Potato" with balloons that had sparklers affixed to them. In order to pass it to the next person, you had to say a word that started with the letter chosen for that round. If the balloon popped on your turn or you got scared and dropped it on the ground, you were out! We both elected to stand aside to watch and take pictures. Hondurans absolutely LOVE anything with firecrackers!

Our small group's annual Christmas dinner, with our friends Frank & Emily (top right),
and silly games with firecrackers (bottom). 

Bonus: 7 // Tonight at church was our first time hearing "Amazing Grace" performed in Spanish. We have already heard many songs we know performed in Spanish, but there was something very comforting and peaceful about hearing the melody of that particular song. It's a melody that you know, recognize, and feel no matter what language it is.         

right now // make this place your home.

On this, the day that we are finally getting on that plane to literally change our home and place of residence, we are taking a lot of refuge in the calming, gentle, wonderful sounds of music. And there is a song we'd love to share with you today. 

Ever have those songs that touch you in a way that, to you, they mean whatever you need them to mean? Well this one has been that for us. It's called "Home" by Philip Phillips. Technically, we don't know the meaning of why this song was written or what the words were chosen for. And yes, it was debuted on the (secular) pop music charts. But in just listening to the melody and the lyrics, to us, it feels like it is from the point of view of the Lord, just talking to us. Ever since this song came out (in May 2012, have you!), it has felt like a "chin up, my darling child" sentiment from God, that He is saying,

"we'll get there, we'll get to Honduras, together, and I'll work it all out for you. It will even start to feel like home before I'm done. I'll do everything needed to make it feel that way for you." 

So we'd like to invite you to sit back, read these lyrics, and maybe even listen to this incredible instrumental version (that is enough to make anyone feel loved and provided for by God -- oh, beautiful music.).

"Hold on, to me as we go

As we roll down this unfamiliar road

And although this wave is stringing us along

Just know you're not alone

Cause I'm gonna make this place your home

Settle down, it'll all be clear

Don't pay no mind to the demons

They fill you with fear

The trouble it might drag you down

If you get lost, you can always be found

Just know you're not alone

Cause I'm gonna make this place your home"

We are so thankful for the gift of music that God has given us on this earth, and that it truly is art that can truly be interpreted by the beholder, the one listening and relishing in it. Do you have a "secular" song that means something very spiritual to you? If so, please share it with us in the comment section below!

Thank you all so much for all of your prayers, support, and love that has gotten us to this point. Thank you for believing in God's call for our lives no matter what. We'll let you know as soon as we can that we've made it safe & sound. 

If you'd like to hear the original signing of these lyrics, please click here.  

For other songs that are bringing us comfort & peace today,  here's a few more so you can listen with us:

"Oceans" by: Hillsong United

"What a Friend (We Have in Jesus)" by Chelsea Moon 

"Not For A Moment" by Meredith Andrews