highlight // meet caroline

In Honduras, whenever someone stays in your house they are often referred to as your "kids" -- especially if they are the same ages or younger than you and especially if they need to go home in your car with you. It doesn't really matter if it could have been physically possible for you to have a child their age... ;)

With that in mind, we'd like to introduce you to our "hija" (Spanish for "daughter".)

There are lots of things that someone could say about their kid that we would say about Caroline, our intern. She lives in our home, we feed her, and we are generally responsible for her well-being (though we hope we've taught her to make her own good decisions!). She constantly brightens our lives and makes us laugh, and we're really glad to finally have more than just two players when we play games. She is a better surprise than we even thought she would be! (See what I mean about that daughter thing?)

All joking aside, our intern is actually just a few years younger than us. She went to Virginia Tech and New Life Christian Fellowship (NLCF) just like we did. We are thrilled to have her here and we feel like she is the perfect person to be helping us with both of our social projects.

Meet Caroline Stephenson!

1) Tell us more about you.

I was born and raised in Fairfax Virginia. I graduated from Virginia Tech this past December with a BS in Biology. I have three older sisters, two step brothers and a step sister. I like reading, outdoor activities, cooking... EATING and traveling. I especially love everything science/biology related which includes animals and creepy crawlers.

2) Have you ever had any other international experiences? Can you tell us about them?

I studied abroad my sophomore year in Quito, Ecuador. I lived with a host family and attended La Universidad San Francisco de Quito. All of my classes were taught in Spanish and I was able to take Ecology, Ecuadorian culture, Spanish and Andean Archaeology. The greatest experiences I had abroad was when I was able to visit Machu Piccu and the Amazon. While in the Amazon I touched a wild anaconda and a tarantula!

3) What are you most excited about for your time in Danli, Honduras?

I have two things that tie for what I'm most excited about. First, I am excited at the opportunity to build up the kids at the CDI. I have been lucky in that my parents and teachers have always been incredibly supportive of my interests and education. I would love for the kids of the CDI to be so poured into by us teachers that they have confidence in their own abilities and that they believe in themselves.

Second, I am thrilled to be a part to the health promotion classes with the water project. I have long felt a pull toward international health work and this is an opportunity to gain experience in the field. I can't wait to see the water project progress in the Urrutia community and to be able to see God's blessing happen before my eyes.

Picking Caroline up from the airport (left); Introducing her to Honduran pupusas (right). 

4) Tell us about something cool that has already happened or that you have learned about.

This past week we had a visiting mission team from Virginia Tech. I went out evangelizing with them and spoke to an amazing woman named Leticia. Her daughter wasn't able to live with her because the child's father was dangerous and threatened to take the girl away. Leticia now lives with her new husband and fervently prays for a way that her daughter can return safely to live with them. Among all the trials in her life, Leticia's faith is strong and she seeks to give thanks to God every chance she gets. This kind of thanksgiving and faith was amazing to witness and such an encouragement to me. I have so much to learn about finding my joy in Christ amidst any circumstance.

5) What's your favorite thing about Jamey and Lesley?

My favorite thing about Jamey and Lesley is that they seek to make me feel welcome every chance they get. Whether that is inviting me to play card games, introducing me new Honduran places or checking to see how I'm feeling. I feel supported and cared for while living here because they go out of their way to make sure I'm doing well. Oh and they're hilarious...

6) How can we be praying for you personally?

I would love prayers for God's guidance in my life and that I am sensitive to hearing His voice. I am at a place now where big choices need to be made about my future career path. For that reason, I want to make sure that God is at the center of my decision and that I'm following His call.

Hear more from Caroline personally about her time here on her blog.

friday photo dump // november 7

Welcome to the Friday Photo Dump! 

As an October baby, all Lesley wanted for her birthday was pumpkin! Pumpkin bread, pumpkin pie, pumpkin candle, pumpkin anything. We searched and searched here, with no luck. But thanks to Lesley's dad and stepmom, she ended up getting all three! Now we're trying to convince our Honduran friends that it's a great idea to eat big orange gourds that they've seen sit on your front porch. 

We have been busy bees at the children's development center figuring out creative ways to bring construction paper and glue to life for our students. Recently, as you may have seen on the CDI's Facebook page that we and the students created a table-sized board game to review all of the English they've learned all year. The craziest part is, most of them have never played a board game before and some of our kids are 11 years old or older.

In addition to other things our students have never played before, we are reviewing English numbers with our homemade Bingo cards! 

While traveling to Northern Honduras, we had two Honduran friends with us that once again taught us the art of car travel here... you stop at the shakiest looking little fruit stand and buy a huge bag of your favorite fruit, especially if it's known for growing better in the part of the country you're in. Though Jamey still has a hard time opening them, we enjoyed eat licha! 
(Also known in other parts of the world as rambutan.)

The reason for our travel was to go to the October GCLA Leadership Conference in La Ceiba, Honduras. Though we didn't spend as much time outside as we would have liked, it was beautiful to get to see green mountains and the Atlantic Ocean right beside each other. 
Honduras, you're pretty. 

During the conference, we had the pleasure of getting to attend a special session where we heard one pastor's story of living and ministering in Eastern Europe and Western Asia, where it is incredibly dangerous to even identify yourself as a Christian. It was so amazing to hear his stories and wisdom, and once again praise God for all of the countries who have religious freedom, while so many are still fighting for it.  

One of the biggest parts of Lesley joining the trip to the conference was having the chance to visit another CDI in the GCLA network at the Iglesia Gran Comision church in La Ceiba. They currently have over 100+ children in their program, which was great to see and learn from. It definitely helped us gain more vision for the direction our CDI in Danli could go as we continue to grow. 
We would love to visit more CDIs if God permits!

As many of you probably already know, we have other missionary friends from the States that live in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. They were kind enough to make the trip out to see us and us their tools/talents to help us get some projects done around our home, which was an amazing help to us. 
In this picture: we were cutting back our "weeds".

Just to realize the size of our crazy weeds trees, use Jamey as a reference!  

We were out in Urrutia, the community where we are doing our pilot water project, recently conducting bacteriological tests to see if there is contamination in the well due to lack of sanitation. You can also see that most of the people out there don't understand proper water storage because their collector bin is sitting outside uncovered where rain, animals, trash, mosquitoes, and more can get into it. 

Speaking of the water project, our website for the Total Water ministry is in the works right now and will be making it's debut VERY SOON! Be excited. Seriously, excited. If you haven't yet go like our Total Water Facebook Page to get more updates on our ministry here.

We had a good response to our first installment of our "missionary cookbook" series of recipes, which began with Honduran empanadas. Comment to let us know which recipe you'd like to see next in the series: perfect banana muffins, lasagna made abroad (without ricotta cheese!), or one of our favorite meatless Monday meals, pasta primavera.