How Time Flies

Things have been going well here, in fact, more like flying together faster than we imagined possible.  We thought we would just be teaching this year, while doing research on the side for starting the children’s home.  We have been teaching full-time, yet also working almost as much getting ready to start a children’s home here.  

It’s been exciting to get a vehicle, to look at more properties, and to begin the legal work to get established here.

We’ve just finished our exams for the first quarter.  And now comes all the grading and report cards.  We’ve both enjoyed teaching this year.  It’s been great to get to know new students and to teach kids that are excited to learn.

This past week we had the privilege of having two friends visit from Minnesota.  We hung out together, they helped us at the school for the week, and for the weekend we visited an orphanage and had an afternoon at the beach.  We enjoyed having you Olivia and Sasha!

Property Hiking

We’ve spent a lot of time looking for property the past couple of months, where we can build the children’s home.  This is quite different than what we think of with real estate agents and neat for-sale-signs in manicured lawns.  Here it means talking to person after person, each with their own connections about who is selling.  And here looking for property means hiking, crossing rivers on foot, walking through cow pastures, and getting ticks.  Every place we’ve been has included these things (but don’t worry those of you who dislike ticks, ‘cause once the cows are gone, the ticks will go too). 

It’s funny when our big concerns for buying land are whether the previous “owners” really have the deed, whether the land will get washed away in the next big hurricane, how many days we’ll blocked off from civilization due to flooded rivers every year, how we can get a car to the property, and how soon we’ll get cell phone reception.

While we still want to look around other places in northern Honduras, we’ve decided that we’d love to be in the Congrejal River Valley.  After living there for several months, we’ve decided being an hour from the city is just fine with us.  We like the “vida tranquilla,” even if our own schedule stays busy.  Some big incentives though are the school, Instituto el Rey, and the soon-coming medical clinic in the area.  

Some of you may ask whether we’re crazy to want a location way out there, but don’t worry, our sanity is in tact.  We’ve found out that we’ll be able to take in kids from all over the country, even the biggest cities, where there’s the most needs.  It’s actually a great thing for the kids to be away from the cities, whether to get away from negative influences or from an abusive family.  We want to give them a country life where they can get a good education, learn a good work ethic by having some farm chores, and where they can go swimming in the river or go build forts in the woods.