Joy!

This week has been so full of blessings, I don’t even know where to begin or if I’ll be able to remember them all! I’ll just pick and choose the biggest ones.

Did you know that life doesn’t stop just because you decide to step out of the picture? It’s true. Believe it or not, your friends keep living their normal lives no matter what you’re doing with your own. I guess that realization kind of hit me at the beginning of this week and I started feeling really homesick. The first couple days this week were a little rough, and Wednesday was probably the worst. But then on Wednesday night I got to talk to my mom and Matthew, and then I got on Facebook and a bunch of my friends messaged me and by the end of the night I felt like I had talked to just the right people and had all the right conversations and was feeling much better. It just reminded me that God is definitely faithful!

Last night we had feeding, as usual for a Thursday night, but Darwin had a never-ending dentist appointment and we didn’t get out of the house to start feeding until about an hour after we usually leave. We weren’t sure how many people would actually be out since we were showing up so late, but we ended up seeing pretty much the same people as usual. Our third stop is at a little park and when we got there, there was a mariachi band playing on the corner. One of the guys who is usually at that stop, Junior, often sings mariachi songs for us and uses our water jug as a drum to accompany him, and he was over singing along with the band. After we had finished feeding, a few of the homeless guys walked over with Darwin, Alli, Tess, Amber, and me to where the mariachi band was and proceeded to ask us to dance with them. It was honestly so much fun to see them in that element, having a great time and dancing and laughing. It makes me wish that that were more what their lives were like, full of that joy we saw them with last night.

Today the four first graders we tutor in the Shine program (Escarleth, José, Dayana, and Claudy) didn’t have any homework, so we walked down to the river next to the church at Mateo. We ran around and played in the water and tried not to get too soaked : ) The kids found a bunch of tadpoles and Alli and Tess decided that it would be a brilliant idea to collect them in a two liter bottle and take them home to wait for them to morph into frogs, so we all had a blast trying to catch all these tadpoles and create a little habitat for them in this bottle (which is currently sitting here in our room and will no doubt start to smell like death pretty soon). I love working with them because you kind of get to get out of your own head and just act like a little kid for a while…they’re so carefree and I love that about them!

I really wanted to share all of the positives that I’ve encountered this week, and going back to think about all of them to write them here has made me realize again just how blessed I’ve been to be able to work here in Honduras. I came to help make a difference in the lives of people here, but I feel like I’ve been affected by them more than the other way around. I don’t say that to mean that I don’t feel like I’m accomplishing anything here, I just mean that what I’m experiencing here is so awesome, and I’m really glad I can share that with you all! I hope you can sense just a little bit of my joy!