Hi All,

Today we started with our usual devotional with the children in the courtyard and today, a pancake breakfast with the proverbial real dark coffee. By 8:45, we were loaded up in the van for a trip to one of the student's home in a rural area on the outskirts of Tegucigalpa. This was quite different from the urban home visited by the adult group two years ago. The family was very gracious to us by allowing photos and videos to be taken of the home and property. I noticed the walls and ceiling were very porous, making a difficult situation during the upcoming rainy season. They cooked their food on what appeared to by a sculpted adobe oven with an partially open fire supplying heat to pots sitting above it (see photos). They had a very small garden in back, four dogs that knew their territory and made sure you did too, a few chickens and what looked like a 20 pound rooster. I am exaggerating about the size of the rooster, but not by much. I missed the photo opportunity, but I think Barbara got a shot of him.

Next, we visited the Tech. School which is located about 30 to 40 minutes outside of Tegucigalpa. There we met Lazaro who heads up the operations there. He has been there since the beginning and has a good handle on English. He showed us the various teaching areas. There is a metal working area where students learn to machine metal, weld and other skills with processing materials. We visited the carpentry shop and also an area where the students train to repair common domestic appliances. One group of students were recoiling a small electric motor that may have come from a refrigerator.

After the trip, we returned to El Hogar where Bill and I were asked to help with the pre-election student assembly while the others in our group were escorted to the farm education facility in a rural area about 1 hour from the city.

 I was asked to video the assembly. I didn't know about this before I left from Orlando, so I only brought my camera along which can do video, but only supports 18 minutes worth. The program was 2 hours, so I had to guess a lot at where the candidates were in their speeches, so I could make cuts in acceptable places. This is a real problem when you don't speak the language.
Bill was asked to speak at the end and was well accepted by the students.

Tomorrow, I have to be ready to video the results of the election at 8:00 am and finish editing the video ASAP so I can make a trip to the Valley of Angels with the rest of our crew. I will need your prayers on this.

All the Best from Tegucigalpa,

Dave J

rural home we visited

 

Kitchen area with their children

 

daughter of the family

 

the mother with new baby

 

adobe stove

 

Debbie with the new baby

Bill and Dave at the finished brick wall

that was started during our last visit, 2 years ago

at the Tech School

 

Lazaro, head man at the Tech School

 

Students recoiling a small appliance electric motor

Student President Election Assembly

 

 

 

 

Wed, April 10, 2013

As I'm sure you can tell from the recent blogs, we've been very busy here. Claudia Castro along with her husband Raul, have acted as our staff coordinators in a big way during this visit. They have focused in on our particular talents and asked for our help in specific areas and we are, of course, glad to help anyway we can.

Along with coordinating our blog and collecting photos and videos during our stay, Claudia informed me that she needs a video for the government, documenting the upcoming campaign efforts up to and including the election of their student body president this Friday. After explaining to Raul what I needed to do this, he provided a donated laptop. I then spent most of today searching for, acquiring and coaching myself on how to use a video editing program I was able to download. It appears to be working well, so I think I'm finally prepared to generate a DVD of the election activities for Claudia between Friday afternoon and when we leave on Saturday.

Bill and Harold helped to finish up the director's office remodeling today and it looks really good (see photo below). Barbara was asked to volunteer her time organizing and presenting two group counseling sessions for the teachers today addressing stress issues concerning both the students and themselves. As you can imagine, this can be a real concern here at El Hogar.

Tim and Debbie continued their instrument lessons with the children today. Working intensely with the children each day, they have developed a lasting repoire with them and I'm sure will be missed once we return home Saturday.

For the project this evening, we organized a dance in the courtyard for the children. I couldn't attend, but I understand it was mostly the girls that did the dancing along with our own group. The evening ended with Debbie and Tim handing out donated recorders to the children as they were going to their rooms.

Tomorrow, Raul has planned to take us to visit the home of one of the children. Afterward, we're on our way to the Tech. School for a tour and lunch. We return to El Hogar around 1:00 pm, change drivers and head for a visit to the farm. Looks like a real busy day ahead.

Dave J

                                                Debbie coaching the children on recorder

                                                            Barbara with the teachers  

                                                       Bill with Andrea and her brother

                                                Bill and Harold's office project completed
                                                          and ready for Mat to move in.
                                                                                             

April 9, 2013
From Debbie Clifton:

Hola a Forest City Owls de Tegucigalpa, Honduras!

I am learning to teach in Spanish! The children here are teaching me many words and I have looked up MANY words in my Spanish/English dictionary!

My team of eleven adults is doing many different activities with and for the children; baking, sewing, playing recorder and keyboard.
In the evenings, we play games, dance or do crafts. They go to their dorms at 7:00 p.m., right after we give them a treat (popcorn, chocolate or dumdums - thanks to Mrs. Tittle and Miss Burgess)!

Hartman Hawks - I gave your letters to the principal. She is going to have the children write back! It will probably be en espanol!

I will have many pictures and stories to tell you when I get home!
Adios a mis estudiantes favoritas.

Dona Clifton

April 9, 2013
Good Evening,

This was quite a busy day beginning with devotional in the courtyard with the students followed by a hardy breakfast of scambled eggs seasoned with bell pepper and onions along with a side of refried beans and VERY bold Honduran coffee.

After morning hugs from many of the children, work was continued adding primer to the walls of the director's new office. While that paint was drying, Raul ask us to begin converting another small adobe building into the new Psychology classroom. This entailed cleaning the room out, caulking all the holes in the walls, then adding primer to the walls. Harold found an unusual crack that had developed in one of the walls and proceeded to probe it in an effort to clear it of excess debris. By the time we looked around again to see how he was doing, it had developed into a 3 inch wide, 6 foot long crevass. No harm was really done, but this put a halt in the operation until it could be pastered over.

The afternoon project was teaching the children about Noah and the Ark. Much of this was directed by Ann Croft with help from Debbie Clifton, Anna Cash and others. At the end, the children had completed posting pairs of animals on the large poster of the Ark that we brought from Orlando and they did a fantastic job (see the photo).

Barbara was asked to conduct a group counceling exercise with some of the children with identified special needs at the request of Claudia with the school psychologist observing.

After a busy day, we set up for Jenga and other games with many of the children until 7:00 p.m. followed by our nightly group meeting to recap the highlights and thoughts from the day's experience. Finally, it was off to the computer lab for many of us and then off to get some needed rest.

Dave J

          

                                                  Debbie working with her students
                                                                 at the recorders.

                                                                                

                                                                                  

 

 

Tim sharing time with students

at the keyboard

 

Students practicing on their own ...

 

Ann directing Noah's Ark with special

help from student

 

Noah's Ark project poster with animals

added by the students

 

Barbara in session with

special needs students and

attending personnel

 

 

 

I tried to tell Bill to leave the crack

in the wall alone!

 

 

that will help her this week.  We have Barbara to help with counseling (children, teachers, etc), Tim and Debbie are working with 7 boys to create a recital on Friday night and Dave will be creating a video of their official student election that will be held this week.  We have Ann, Jack and Anna who have stepped in and began helping with preparing the meals in the kitchen, Harold and Bill have run with painting 2 offices, and Shirley and I helping out where needed. 
Our team was involved with making pinadas and baking cookies during their afternoon school activities.  Monday night we had our activities with the girls...what a joy to spend time with them and play with their hair.  They absolutely LOVED the barretts, ribbons, etc...

Tuesday - Wow...with the prayers of you, our team is running with all the new challenges of this mission trip.  We thought we would be down here to love on the children and help where we can, however we have taken on so many wonderful projects that they will not end when we return home.  We are going to come home with new expectations of our parish and I am looking foward to sharing what we need.  Not only that, we have ¨lessons learned¨ for the next trip of missionaries. 
Today we helped continue to paint the offices  On a funny note, Harold decided he wanted to remodel one of the offices by simply scraping the cracked paint on one of the walls...this turned into a huge hole in the wall that required them to fix it before we could paint.  Lesson Learned - these buildings are adobe buildings...don´t scape; paint over!!! While part of the team was breaking down buildings, the other team was assisting in the kitchen.  Our afternoon activity was sewing tea towels; we will be completing these tomorrow during the second session.   Our evening activity was with the young boys...we ended up pulling out 6 Jenga games and puzzles for them.  We thought we would be playing a game, but boys will be boys and they turned this into building things...what a joy to see their imagination grow!  The large sterofoam puzzles were turned into houses, boxes, etc while the Jenga pieces were used for making towers, roads and designs.

Please give me a couple of days to share the emotional side and how God has provided for them.  Claudia´s daily lessons are quite good, the children see God in everything and this place is Peace on earth!  I truly want to share all the experiences from the last few days, however there isn´t enough time to write it all.  So, facts now and a final summation later.

Please continue to pray for the team...we need all your support through this journey. Much love.  Peace+

Monday, April 8, 2013

Hello All,
We didn't have a blog for Sunday since we had a power outage hit around 8:00pm. This lasted about 8 hours.
This is the first full day of work and activities at El Hogar for our group. We began our day meeting with all the children and staff at the Morning Devotional held in the courtyard. Claudia (who is acting as one of our main coodinators at El Hogar) proceeded over the program and introduced us to the students.
Next was breakfast and a meeting with Claudia at 8:00am where she discussed El Hogar in general and several of the younger children shared a little bit of their personal history with us. It was quite moving.
Following the meeting, Bill, Harold and I got started caulking the walls and painting the office that will be for the Director once its finished. Debbie and Tim were asked to help with the music curriculum for many of the children. Part of our team helped make Pinatas. Jack, being the great chef that he is, volunteered to help the children make cookies in the kitchen. Conner helped with several of the activites and has been a great inspiration and leader for us on this trip.

Some of the upcoming plans for the week include trips to the farm and tech school and helping with the campaign and election of the El Hogar student president at which Bill has been asked to be the key note speaker.
I've posted a few photos of the last few day's activites ...

Dave J

Church service on Sunday

 

                                                         A special treat for the children
                                                       Pizza Hut for lunch after church 

                                        Pizza Hut:  Bill,  Raul (big Raul's son), and Debbie

                                               (Monday morning)
                                               Tim and Debbie holding a music class with
                                                           with some of the children

                                     (Mon. afternoon)  Bill and Harold "HARD AT WORK"
                                                             preparing Director's office

 

 

 

 

 

Shirley helps with one or our Monday night activities,

styling the girls hair

 

(Mon. evening)

Bill shares his letter with his sponsored child

April 6, 2013
Hi All,

We had a great trip to El Hogar. Good weather flying and a great pilot to bring us in for a smooth landing. We were met by Raul, his son and other staff that helped us load up and make our way through the busy streets of Tegucigalpa and into the campus.
Once here, we indulged in a late lunch of tortillas, BBQ chicken and rice. The campus is much improved from my last visit two years ago with a remodelled cafeteria and repainted structures. The children were VERY welcoming and excited to see us we were equally excited to meet them.
Tomorrow, we´ll rise bright and early for church and a day filled with sharing and visiting with the children. Raul has a full and exciting week of work and fellowship planned for us and we're anxious to get started! We're still figuring out this computer system, so hope to have photos posted here in the near future.

Dave J