Returning for round 2 of teaching in Honduras!

I am preparing for another school year and adventure in Honduras for which I leave in 5 days! Summer has been extremely short with only 6 weeks to fit in everything and then mentally and spiritually prepare to return for a whole new year!
Thank you so much for those of you who sat down and had conversations with me this summer about all the struggles and some highlights of the past year, they wer so helpful in processing through what the Lord has and will do through this whole experience.
Thank you for your love and prayers for me as I journey, I have just felt so filled and loved by each and every one of you. I don't understand why I am so blessed with the friends and family I have, but man, God is good in demonstrating His love for me specifically through all of you, and especially in this short summer time.

The Lord spoke some specific things to me through His word in helping to restore my heart and mind and prepare me for my return. I want to share this with you if I have not already, though it may have come out in bits and pieces.

When I came home this summer part of me felt like a complete failure as a teacher. Some things that happened at the end of the year led me to be very down and depressed about the whole past year. Sometimes a bad ending and closure tints everything. The Lord kindly and directly led me to this passage in Matthew 26:6-13 --
The Precious Ointment
6 Now when Jesus was in Bethany, at the home of Simon the leper, 7 a woman came to Him with an alabaster vial of very costly perfume, and she poured it on His head as He reclined at the table. 8 But the disciples were indignant when they saw this, and said, “Why this waste? 9 For this perfume might have been sold for a high price and the money given to the poor.” 10 But Jesus, aware of this, said to them, “Why do you bother the woman? For she has done a good deed to Me. 11 For you always have the poor with you; but you do not always have Me. 12 For when she poured this perfume on My body, she did it to prepare Me for burial. 13 Truly I say to you, wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will also be spoken of in memory of her.”

Through this passage the Lord showed me that I had been leaning on the indignation of the disciples in regards to the service and work I had just poured out to the Lord in the past year. I felt like it was wasted in some sense, that nothing was accomplished, and that it would have been better to serve the poor with my gifts and talents, not the rich kids the Lord has called me to love and serve humbly. I was believing the lies and it took the Lord looking me straight in the eyes and saying, "You have done a good deed UNTO ME." I was so broken over my sin and failure to see that it didn't matter if I saw results, if I made a difference, if I was a good teacher, if others approved of what I do......I was simply pleasing and serving and pouring out my life unto the Lord, who is beyond worthy of every sacrifice and painful offering He asks me to give. As I turned to worship, instead of complaining I saw my Father do amazing things in my heart and mind as He renewed me in Him to return, to continue giving and serving, no matter the cost....no matter the fruit. I leave that all up to Him and I just anoint my Lord with what He has asked me to give.

Thus, I have new vision and passion in returning to Honduras in this upcoming week. BUT, I need your prayers and continued support to run the race marked out for me in this next season.

Here are some prayer requests:
- 2 new roommates I get the opportunity to live with and impact
- 21 new students (who appear to be quite a roudy bunch :)
- 2 new partner teachers to lead and train
- a small group to lead and to challenge as we live in community together
- a church to grow with and serve with and learn from (Capillo Calvario)
- making new friends with the 25 new teachers coming and opening myself up again to new relationships
- confidence and faith as the Lord directs me now as a "leader" though I don't feel ready or prepared enough

Here is the next passage the Lord spoke over me in giving me vision for this next year:

Isaiah 49: 1-6
1 Listen to Me, O islands,
And pay attention, you peoples from afar.
The LORD called Me from the womb;
From the body of My mother He named Me.
2 He has made My mouth like a sharp sword,
In the shadow of His hand He has concealed Me;
And He has also made Me a select arrow,
He has hidden Me in His quiver.
3 He said to Me, “You are My Servant, Israel,
In Whom I will show My glory.”
4 But I said, “I have toiled in vain,
I have spent My strength for nothing and vanity;
Yet surely the justice due to Me is with the LORD,
And My reward with My God.”
5 And now says the LORD, who formed Me from the womb to be His Servant,
To bring Jacob back to Him, so that Israel might be gathered to Him
(For I am honored in the sight of the LORD,
And My God is My strength),
6 He says, “It is too small a thing that You should be My Servant
To raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved ones of Israel;
I will also make You a light of the nations
So that My salvation may reach to the end of the earth."

Thank you again dear friends. Please let me know how I can be interceding for you and what the Lord is teaching you, nothing delights me more. I love you all and thank you for your partnership for the gospel of Christ.

And a link to a song that has ministered in the same way by Chris McClarney called "Waste it all"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umkbx6DQiSs

May Honduras -- POR FIN!

The end of my first year of teaching: Crazy and difficult

I almost went insane, but God carried me through to the end. Nothing about it was easy, or good.

With a visit from my mom and Sarah to carry me to the last week, the end was in sight, but so much to happen before I could come home. Parents to yell, kids to go nuts, grades to finish, goodbyes to be said.....I'm so thankful it is over now.

My metaphor: it was like running the hardest race of my life and getting to the end and finding there is no prize, there is no one there to cheer you on, just sweat, tears, and a tremendous beating heart.

All this to say, I'm ready to come home. I'm tired, and God has 6 weeks for some rest and rejuvination, because next year is an ominous and fearful sight just around the corner.

A trip to Tela at the end, reflecting on God's faithfulness and blessing the Lord for what He did in and through us, as well as spending last moments in sweet friendships.

April -- Semana Santa/Spring Break

Happy Easter and Greetings from Honduras!

After making it through a grueling stretch of school without breaks everyone staggered into Semana Santa in desperate need of a break and some rejuvenation.
I must say that I had no idea how difficult it would be to guide 20 children through 94 solid days of school in a row with a one day break for a random cancelation. By Wednesday I had completely lost it and felt like a madwoman. Patience was gone and the kids had had enough and we had no choice but to just push through to the end. So our 10 day break came at JUST the right moment.
I prayed for a long time about what Semana Santa would look like for me and how to spend that time and found that when submitting plans to the Lord He always has more planned than I could ask.
Saturday morning at 3am we boarded a bus that began a 15 hour travel day and many adventures. I didn’t realize the amazing amount of traveling I was committing myself to within a short period of time, but when I got home on Monday afternoon I added the travel hours and it came out to be 53 ½ hours altogether, which adds up to a lot of time on a bus, staring out the window and praying for many many many things.
In-between long bus rides I found myself remembering what it feels like to be a real person again as we frolicked on the beaches of El Salvador, went on a zip-line canopy tour, ate fish and shrimp and talked for hours amidst the ambiance of candlelight and crashing waves and just found everything to be like a fairy tale. I was amidst wonderful company with my friend Gina and her sister and best friend who came down to visit.
On Tuesday I began the long travels back to Tegucigalpa and then got up at 3:30 am Wed. morning to board yet another bus to head out to a tiny pueblo in the middle of the Honduran mountains, completely switching gears. This time I accompanied my Honduran friend Waldina to her family’s rural farm house, which was just the adventure I was looking for. There were so many moments that I just had to throw my head back and laugh because it was so fun, and yet so crazy!
To describe a little bit of the setting in which I spent 6 lovely days I’ll tell you some of my favorite moments:
- Mashing our own corn to make tortillas over a fire
- Dozens of chickens, 4 turkeys, and 4 dogs always running around our feet (one of which we killed and then ate for Easter dinner on Sunday!)
- Thousands of flickering fireflies at night dancing all around
- Enjoying afternoon rainstorms from the hammocks on the front porch
- Packing 15-18 people in the back of a truck and bumping along 4 wheel drive roads to a random river where we crossed a huge suspended bridge to find hot springs bubbling up in the middle of the road and a random mariachi band to sing for us, then spending the afternoon swimming in the river and playing a lively soccer match on the shore.
- Climbing trees with machete in hand to hack down dozens of mangos, of which we devoured way too many!
- Washing my clothes by hand on rocks by a stream and realizing what it is like to live life with no running water…oh America, we are so blessed.
- Semana Santa sawdust carpet artwork and procession after procession flowing through the streets
- Slip sliding through mud in the rain on a 45 minute walk with luggage in hand at 3 in the morning to catch a bus to head home
- Huge spiders, a scorpion encounter, dozens of ant bites and quite a few mosquito bites to top off the real rural Honduras experience!
My friend Waldina approved my missionary status after I survived the week of craziness and enjoyed all the adventures. We laughed about my Spanish, talked about our crazy students, met new friends, tried new food, and enjoyed the calm, quiet, and rest of the life on the farm.

So, 2 completely different experiences all in one week, all of which could only be completely successful with the guidance and protection and faithfulness of the Lord.
There are many many more stories, but I am always way too long winded, so I will stop there.
Isaiah 40 has been my power verse to pump me up and push me through to the end of this school year. I meditated on this chapter every day of break. When you finish reading this e-mail, please stop and grab your bible and read it, because it is truly inspiring. Each of these verses in this chapter will carry me through till the end of the year in different ways and I continue to wait and hope in the Lord as He renews my strength and does for me more than I can ask of Him or imagine could come to pass. Please pray these verses over my kids and me as we finish out this school year.
Each and every one of you have been anointed in prayer over the past week as your faces flooded my mind through the long hours of travel. I miss you and will keep praying for you as well.

March Update -- Walls and breakthroughs....

We made it half way through March! I know there’s a lot of spring break happening in the states this month, but ours does not come until the end of April which feels like a century away (only 34 days – but who’s counting?:)
I’ve been praying a lot for different missions trips going on, and it’s been fun to think about God’s work ALL over the world! We are part of such an amazing worldwide community!
So let me share with you a little bit about what God is doing in my tiny part of that community here in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

This time of the year for us is the hardest as we wait for Spring break and the kids (not to mention the teachers) hit academic, relational, behavior, and spiritual points of frustration. Everyone has been reaching the end of themselves, and as hard as that is to watch (and experience) it is SO good because when you get to the end of your patience, the end of your own strength, and the end of yourself, you have no choice but to look to the Lord to carry you through, and that is exactly what He loves to do.
I myself hit a huge wall this week after receiving some hard news from several friends in the states and found my kids to be almost completely unresponsive for two full days, not to mention all the craziness of planning a field trip, family fun day, and an observation lesson….I was definitely at the end of my rope.
Then God led me to Nehemiah (which we are studying this week in Bible). Nehemiah is organizing the remnant of Israelites to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem which are complete rubble. Not only is the work difficult, but then there are surrounding nations that have set out to stop the rebuilding and kill the Israelites.
Nehemiah 4:10 says “The strength of the burden bearers is failing, yet there is much rubbish; and we ourselves are unable to rebuild the wall.”
4:14 (20) – “When I saw their fear, I rose and spoke to the nobles, and officials, and the rest of the people: “Do not be afraid of them; remember the Lord who is great and awesome…Our God will fight for us.”
6: 9 – “They were trying to frighten us, thinking “they will become discouraged with the work and it will not be done.” But now O God, strengthen my hands.
But at last Nehemiah finishes building the wall and 6:16 says – “When all our enemies heard of it, and all the nations surrounding us saw it, they lost their confidence; for they recognized that this work had been accomplished with the help of our God.”

I’m hoping that these verses speak for themselves of how the Lord takes us when we are discouraged, and weak, when our strength is failing and we are afraid that the enemy will get the best of us, that God strengthens us, that He fights for us, and that in the end everyone will “recognize that this work had been accomplished with the help of our God.” -- And this is the ultimate goal anyway, for the Lord to be glorified, and everyone else to recognize that!
So, although it has been a very hard and long week and discouragement has threatened to ruin the work of my hands, “the joy of the Lord is my strength” (Neh. 8:10) and God has been the one doing everything in and through my weakness.
I know I’ve written home dozens of e-mails on this topic, but it continues to ring true and I continue to encourage you to look only to the Lord when your strength is failing, He wants to be glorified more in the work He is completing through us.
On another note, yesterday we went on our first field trip to a blind school to spend time with the kids there and see how they learn and interact and live. When I announced the field trip my class was very upset because we weren’t doing a “fun” field trip or going out to a restaurant to eat. About half of them asked if they could get permission from their parents not to go, and I was upset with them for this attitude. They wrote in their journals that afternoon about what they were thinking this field trip would be like and most of them were just scared.
As I prayed about this I realized that these kids just haven’t been exposed to people different from themselves. This society so isolates people with special needs, that they had just simply not experienced anything like this before.
The next day I took the kids to 4-5 passages in the bible where it talks about Jesus interacting with the blind people, and one specifically in Luke 14 that talk about a master giving a banquet, and when all his friends give excuses for not being able to come Jesus says, “But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind….” I told the kids that Jesus commands us to count these people as more worthy than our friends, and that by us bringing pizza to these kids and playing with them for a couple hours It is like us “inviting them to a banquet” like Jesus commanded. So we spent time praying for God to change our hearts and attitudes.
But the incredible part of this whole experience is just how greatly God DID change their hearts and their attitudes and used them to really minister to this school of blind kids, which are like the rejects, the outcasts, and the ones that are difficult to love.
The field trip was turning into a disaster because no one would give us details about what we would be doing, or what it would be like, no one was setting it up for us, and every time I called the school it, the director changed the plan. The day before we were scrambling to get everything in order, and I just told the kids that we were going to have to be extremely flexible and trust God to work this all out for us.
He absolutely did, more than we could ask or imagine and I came back exhausted, but so proud of the way my kids showed Jesus to this school. The parents who helped were AMAZING, the kids were more loving and obedient than I have ever seen them before, and we brought so many donations and things to bless this school that they were completely overwhelmed.
I wish I could describe all the pictures I took in my mind, of these dirty, ugly, blind kids, some with their eyes clouded over, others with more disabilities, all with ragged clothes, and smiles on their faces just hanging onto the students from our school. They were laughing and playing and just eating up the attention and love, and after the initial hesitation my kids just jumped right in, without hesitation or boundaries.
We were a blessing, but we also received a HUGE learning experience, and when the kids came back and journaled about their time, they were not scared any more. They had each connected with a specific child, and they had a new understanding of people like this and a love for them. I was just beaming at how outstanding my kids were and how the Lord’s hand was truly over our trip. He is working in and through us, and the moments when it becomes evident are so exciting.

I just passed the 2 page boundary on this letter, so I better stop writing.
Today is family fun day and I volunteered to stand in an area and get water balloons thrown at me for a half an hour….that should be fun. ;) My kids are a little more eager to pelt me than I would like, so we’ll see how that goes.
Thank you for listening (as I always take more of your time than you probably have) and for your continual support and prayers.
I love you guys and know that your prayers carry me through more than I can fathom.
Continue to rely on the joy of the Lord as your strength and watch the Lord do amazing things in and through your weaknesses!

January Post -- Back from Christmas!

Looking at the last 5 weeks since I’ve been back in Honduras after Christmas has my head spinning! So much has been going on, and it doesn’t stop! I’m wondering if many of you can relate to that feeling, but as we head into this spring season and near spring break, I know that time will fly faster and faster!
So I’ve been taking some moments a day to stop and reflect and enjoy the people and things God has placed in my life at this time. Even if it’s 5 minutes of quiet reflection, it always seems to bring a smile to my face and renew that attitude of thanks that sometimes comes and goes.
So, I don’t even know where to start because there is too much to tell (as you can probably tell from my ramblings already ) But I do want to share with you a few things that God has been doing and thank you for your prayers for me. You are all so faithful.
Teaching has been better since arriving back after break. I know God renewed my heart and mind over Christmas to return and run the race marked out for me with perseverance. Everyday has been strenuous, but then I see God carrying me through all the more. I wish I could put into words the little changes I see in my students, but all I can say is that things are just….better. Instead of 1 good day out of 5, I am getting used to 4 good days out of 5. I’m enjoying teaching more, and finding my kids enjoying it more too. I’m not being met with as much opposition or attitude in the day to day things. We’re working as a team more, and learning how to love each other when it gets tough…..so many life lessons all the time!
So our next class challenge is a chapel presentation that we have to put on. We’ve been planning it for the last month and God has been leading us all along. Today we finally put it all together and I’m getting extremely nervous for how it is going to turn out. I told God that He’s in the business of turning ordinary nothing into extraordinary things for His glory, so He’s going to have to show up big time for this one if He desires glory from what we are seeking to perform….so 7:45am on Friday, please be praying for us as we put our best foot forward and see what God pulls together.
In other areas I’ve been seeing God grant peace and patience and again, just feel renewed each day to press on and enjoy the here and now. My bible study has been encouraging and refreshingly “real”, my friendships have been deepening and I’m finding joy in many relationships here that were more surface level before. Any time that I spend outside of school and in the city is amazing just to be with the people and speak Spanish and enjoy this culture.
Recently I’ve been hitting walls again in regards to how to minister to the poor here. A brief glimpse into these ponderings happened when I was getting on the bus after grocery shopping one morning and a little boy (about 4) came up to the door and just looked through the glass, pleading with his eyes. The bus driver opened the door and gave the boy a left over bottle of coke and the child ran off happy as could be and smiling and waving. I asked the bus driver if he knew the boy and he shook his head, but then he just looked at me and big tears swelled up in his eyes and he started sobbing saying “I grew up just like that boy, that was me!” As I watched his heart reveal itself through the tears, through the compassion, and through the reality of his life I wondered at myself….when was the last time I cried over the orphans on the street corners? When was the last time I stopped to bring joy to a grimy little boy happy with a simple bottle of coke? When was the last time I prayed for the old woman limping along the roadside. When was the last time I opened my eyes to look into the eyes of a man digging through the trash looking for cans and bottles to recycle? I’m living amongst poverty and hardship and yet I’m still an American with blinders on, walking proudly through the streets, it’s so frustrating, and yet so real and I keep looking at Christ’s example while He was here on earth, and I find myself falling miserably short. Pray for me in this, and share with me thoughts and ideas if you can.
As for my church, we are still in the process of finding a new pastor, and it’s taking a long time and becoming a burden to some of the men in the church. It is still going strong, and I definitely still feel called to stay through this season, but I would ask you to also pray for the church as we seek God through this stage and what plans He has in store.
Ok, well, my ramblings have gone on long enough. Just wanted to touch base with you all and thank you again for your faithful support and prayers. I am blessed and hope to encourage you in any way, shape, or form with the words that came out on paper tonight.

Big hugs to all, and make sure to take those moments of reflection each day to stop and see what God is doing and entrust Him with the things that are to come.

November Update

I write to you looking forward to this coming week of Thanksgiving, excited to share with you the overflowing thanks in my heart for what God has been doing, and what He continues to do.

As I shared a little bit in my last letter home, life here has not been a picnic, it’s been more difficult than I’d like to admit at times. The week of parent teacher conferences was the hardest because I was sick and had so much stress that kept building up, as well as tough stuff going on with kids in my classroom, which I asked you all to pray for.

Since that low point, God has been slowly giving me small successes which were building up to a huge miracle that happened in my classroom this past week.

THANK YOU for praying for me faithfully! In speaking with my mom this past week she passed along messages from many many people asking how I am doing and sharing that everyone has been praying for me. I can’t really express how much I feel these prayers, but I do, and you help me to look to God for each moment of every day and I can feel the extra strength on the hard days. I don’t deserve your faithful love and care, but I am blessed by it.

So, this week started out with a hard day on Monday, I was discouraged yet again. However that afternoon I spoke with a friend online that I had been praying for throughout the past 5 ½ years to come to Christ. I hadn’t talked with her in about a year, so I asked her about where she was spiritually and she said she has just started going to a Christian church….which is an incredible answer to prayer that came completely unexpected after so many prayers for so long. She’s so close to taking that step towards salvation! Tuesday I woke up without motivation and wishing the week would just hurry up and get over.

I came to my Heavenly Father and told Him I was tired, inadequate, and feeling like a failure.

He brought me to Psalm 121—which armed me with words that I needed to step into the day ahead with confidence that my Jesus was walking with me, and that He wouldn’t let me stumble or fall. I wrote in my journal, “Felt God wrap His arms around me today in a real way.”

Wednesday morning I decided to share with my kids about the prayers God had answered with my friend during devotion time at school. God led the discussion and opened up their hearts like never before. I talked about how God can change relationships, He can change hearts, and He can change lives and habits of sin…but sometimes we have to pray with faith for a long time before God answers….in my case over 5 ½ years. The kids caught on quickly and shared about parents who weren’t getting along, or father’s that were smoking, and a few other tough situations the kids were dealing with….reminding me that it’s not about what I’m teaching the kids academically, it’s about what I can help them understand spiritually, and they embraced it wholeheartedly.

Thursday morning started out normal. I have to get on my knees every morning and claim the Lord’s strength and power over my job, because I honestly can’t do any of it on my own, and if I do it is a disaster!

During devotions Thursday morning my two boys that have been trouble all year got into a fight, it was too big this time to overlook, and the whole class was involved. So I stopped everything and said, “lets talk about this, we can’t go on like this. Something needs to change. What do we need to do to help each other get along.”

We stepped into a huge discussion. ALL the kids were participating, trying to help the two boys get along, and work together as a whole class. There were many tears on the part of Josué, and the kids were surprisingly mature in so many of their ideas of how to get along. I refused to “separate” the boys from one another always.

So the discussion went on for about 25 minutes, it came to the point where I was reminding the kids that we couldn’t love one another on our own, we could only do it with Christ’s love through us and they brought up two key things I had been teaching them in devotions.

1.) Extra grace required people – people we just need to extend extra grace to in order to live and dwell in unity within a community.

2.) Prayer for God to change the relationship

The KIDS reminded me of what I taught them yesterday and so we decided to pray. The kids stretched out their hands towards Roy and Josué and began praying over them, praying for their relationship, praying for us as a class to love one another and encourage one another.

The Spirit of God was definitely in the midst of us, I could feel it through the whole discussion, through the way the kids expressed the truth to one another, and how they decided all together that they needed to love one another, extend grace, and pray for one another.

At the end of about a 20 minute prayer session I prayed and then we had a big “group hug.”

Then the kids had Spanish class, and then PE class. When they came back from PE the teacher said, “Roy and Josué were talking to one another today!” I was really surprised, but decided to keep my eye on them. During Math, not an unkind word was said between them, and at lunch time Josué pulled his chair up to Roy’s desk to eat lunch with him. They were talking and laughing together and the whole class was freaking out watching them.

We realized right then and there that God had done an incredible miracle. The kids said, “God answered our prayers and we didn’t even have to wait!”

THEN, at recess later that day, my class organized themselves into two teams and played kickball all together with no help. They came back and said, “Miss Nyhoff, we feel like a class today.”

I was so proud of them and couldn’t stop thanking the Lord for His mercies, greater than I could ask or imagine.

As my mom said, “Those are the days you live for and pray for.”

I’m still treasuring this in my heart, realizing that God is truly at work in hearts, in lives, and He is using me with this group of kids.

So, that was a long story, sorry to draw it out so long winded, but I wanted you to get the full picture of what God has done.

I am claiming that Josué and Roy’s good relationship will continue, that through God’s power their attitudes have changed towards one another, and that they will not return to their old ways of treating one another. ONLY by God’s power over our classroom.

I have the opportunity to share tomorrow morning at teacher devotions about some of these answers to prayer and I’m a little nervous. Will you say a prayer for me when you get this, that I would be courageous in encouraging the other teachers to pray and take leaps of faith, and watch God work?

This Thanksgiving I’m headed down south to Nicaragua to spend the short 3 day break with my old partners in ministry and beloved friends in Managua.

I’m still praying about what this time will look like and how to spend the short time with everyone, as well as dealing with the stress of traveling 7-8 hours by bus to get there. But I’m excited to take another step with those relationships.

Please pray for guidance and protection.

When I come back we will jump into the Christmas season and have 3 short and crazy weeks before I am home for Christmas!

I can’t believe how the time has flown by, but also how God has been working so much in relationships, in the time He gives me for each day, and in the strength He gives when I am weak.

Thanking God for EACH of you as you are a huge part of what keeps me going here, and the support that I need.

I miss you, I love you, and I’m already beginning to pray about time over Christmas and how God is going to orchestrate time with each of you.

October Update

I decided it was time for another update, now that we are almost through October and fall is in “full swing.” Anyone I talk to is feeling busy, maybe stressed, and that “mid Semester hump” that we have to get through. This week was the end of the 1st quarter. It’s hard to believe we have been in school for 44 days! Wow, and I’ve been out of the country for almost 3 months!

I feel myself missing fall a lot while I am here. I miss the trees changing colors, the crisp fall weather, the apple cider and pumpkins, corn mazes and the coming of winter….ah, please enjoy it for me!

Here the weather has been constantly changing. Last week it rained all week, almost nonstop. This week it has been windy and cold and the sun has only come out for a little while….not the “fall” I was envisioning.

In September I had a few hard weeks right in a row, feeling the reality of this first year had blown me over. I have been in a good place though recently, realizing my complete insufficiency to do anything on my own and having to constantly rely on the Lord for wisdom and insight moment by moment. I have been spending a lot of time in prayer, and that aspect is yielding fruit and keeping me going, though the days are hard and long.

I adore my kids, I love greeting them every morning and finding funny things to laugh about throughout the day to make school fun, but I can’t hide from the reality of this being my first year of teaching. I have such high goals and aspirations of the kind of teacher I want to be, and yet the day to day reality of everything holds me back in so many respects. I fail daily, I struggle because my kids think school is “boring” (a word we are no longer aloud to use) and I have a few kiddos that are shaping up for a long journey in learning to love and serve one another this year.

God has been so faithful to me as I walk this road seemingly “alone” in the struggles and has ALWAYS sent what I need. My principle has been extremely supportive and sat through multiple parent meetings with me this past couple of weeks, listening and defending me and the school. My respect for him is growing with each interaction.

So as I teach, sometimes I wonder who is learning more, me, or the students? All I know is that I’m learning “un montón” every day, but it is clear that God is faithful, He has equipped me for the work of my hands, and He is carrying me through, especially on the hard days when I have to run to Him because I feel like such a failure.

I guess it’s time for me to ask for some prayer with some of my tough students. I definitely need some help in dealing with them and loving them, so 3 specific students are:

1.) Roy is my class bully – comes from a rough family situation and it shows

2.) Josué is the hard one for people to love – very annoying at times, even to me

3.) Andrés has yet to learn the power of his words and attacks people with them, as well as being the class clown and always wanting the attention.

These three are in constant “war” with each other and pester each other incessantly.

Please pray over my classroom environment and for these boys hearts, and for wisdom in each moment as I struggle to do what is “right” in leading and guiding them. I also need new ideas and strength as I know this is just the beginning in our journey together.

2nd I would ask for your prayers for parent teacher conferences next week. I am getting a little nervous for them as some parents are quite intense when it comes to their children, school, and grades. Please pray for wisdom, a guarded heart to take what they say with understanding and a listening ear, and to know how to encourage the parents in how they are raising their kids, but be able to give constructive criticism on the other hand.



Apart from school, I have been finding many outlets and enjoying different aspects of this culture and country. 3 weeks ago another teacher and I went to do a teacher training for a small neighborhood school in one of the poorest parts of town. The teachers are volunteers and right out of high school, but they have beautiful hearts to serve the kids. This was an awesome opportunity because God has already given me so many resources in this area after the 8 months in Nicaragua. We’re hoping to make a commitment to training the teachers at least twice a month and God is adding to our number teachers from school here who are willing to help, which is very exciting! Please pray for this little school and our relationship with the teachers.

Two weekends ago I went to the southern coast of Honduras to a island called Amapala with 3 other teachers. It was a grand adventure to get out on our own and spend some time on the beach, and interact with people in a different setting. We traveled by every sort of public transportation available (7 hours with a cost of $6 to get there) and on the way back we hitched a ride in the back of a truck! I attached a picture for you to get a glimpse into our adventure -- it was beautiful!

This weekend I went on a women’s retreat with my church to a retreat center about an hour outside of the city. It was a great time of getting to know the women, worshipping together, and again...sharing many adventures! We had a bonfire on Saturday night and the Spirit of God was greatly received and it was a neat time of sharing and prayer and surrender. Afterwards we roasted marshmallows…which NONE of the women had ever done before! (They call marshmallows “besitos” here – which means little kisses!:)

It was so fun watching all these women like little kids crowded around the fire with sticks of marshmallows. I attached a group picture for you to see.

After this weekend I am feeling much at home in this church family, and God is confirming that this is where I am supposed to stay and serve.



Ah, there is so so much to share, that I just don’t know where to begin and end.

God has been working in my heart and mind in many many ways, but again just showing me that He is faithful when I am obedient and surrendered to Him. I can do nothing on my own. I want to testify again to the power of prayer, and encourage each one of you to pray more, specifically for anything and everything. God directs us moment by moment as we tune our hearts to His voice and gentle leading. Don’t miss out on anything He has to show you and tell you in a day.



So brothers and sisters, I must not bore you any longer. Thank you for reading about my life and journey, but more specifically for praying for me and supporting me. I have felt your prayers, and needed your support as I continue to seek my place here and wait on the Lord to reveal relationships that He desires to bless and grow. I do miss home very much, y tengo mucho falta de cada uno de ustedes (I feel the lack of each and every one of you in my life here!) I pray God’s hand of faithfulness and joy over each of your lives and hope to hear anything and everything from you when you get moments to share.



Filled with the graciousness of El Señor,