Christmas in Honduras

This year was the first time I ever celebrated Christmas outside of the US. There were some big differences and some similarities.

The biggest difference was the lack of family. This was also the hardest part of the holiday season and about living in another country. Also, fireworks are much more popular here in Honduras than in the US. At least for Christmas anyway. It was fun to watch the fireworks at midnight as the calendar flipped to December 25th. (Especially fun from the rooftop porch of our new place!)

One similarity I saw was that people got a little crazier as it got closer to Christmas. We live really close to the main mall in town and it just got nuts in the last few days before Christmas. (Which was hard for us since we were trying to find things for our new house at this time.) Another unfortunate similarity is that Christmas (as well as every other day) is supposed to be about Jesus Christ, but for much of the world it is about me me me.

This year, Christmas Eve was a very special day. We spent it with our new team here in La Ceiba. Our time together started with a good old fashioned traditional Christmas dinner. It was delicious and fun as we got to hear about some things that are family traditions of our teammates. After that, we had the 'gringo church' Lessons and Carols service where Ashley and I got to light the final advent candle. We also did a small gift exchange that was a lot of fun. We took turns passing gifts out and laughing together. It was a great way for us to start to get to know our teammates better and was a lot of fun for all of us!

As for Christmas day, Ashley and I spent it in our house relaxing and being together. Nothing too exciting, but it was a good day for us to think about the amazing gift we have received of Jesus Christ and the life that He has given both of us. We also got to Skype with many of our family members which helped a little in the missing of them. We hope that you had the chance to dwell on the love of God and the immense gift of His Son this Christmas!

We are in our house!

We are so excited to share with you all that we moved into our new home on Wednesday! Eight days after we arrived our house was ready for us to move in (kind of). We have had some repairmen in and out of the house and at least one of them will be back (supposedly) next week. We had been hoping to be able to get into a house before Christmas so that we could have a sense of home and the Lord provided!

It has been a little crazy these last few days. We moved in and needed to do some shopping for furniture and household necessities. We have found some and will continue our 'settling in' after Christmas. We had a little set back yesterday when we lost power for about 6 hours because a vegetable delivery truck pulled down a power line just around the corner to our place.

We live pretty close to the mall of La Ceiba, so everything has been kind of intense the last few days with Christmas getting closer. The traffic is busy all day and people seem to be in the I-Still-Need-To-Buy-Christmas-Stuff 'spirit.' We are looking forward to getting moved in and getting to know our neighbors and our city a little bit better over the next few weeks.

Welcome to Honduras!

We made it! We are in Honduras! 

Ashley with our bags outside the airport in Honduras.

On Tuesday December 13, we flew from Costa Rica to San Pedro Sula, Honduras then took a two and a half hour drive to our new home city of La Ceiba, Honduras. Our flights and bus ride were easy, no problems with luggage or anything else. Our teammates helped us move into our temporary house and we got to spend some time with Shannon and Kate (teammates) for dinner. 

Since getting here about three days ago a lot has happened! We found a house! This is something that just doesn't really happen here in Honduras. On Wednesday morning, we looked at an apartment and two houses with a realtor and the second house we looked at was perfect! It is bigger than we need, but is under budget and is close to a lot of things in this little city. Yesterday we signed an agreement saying that we will be renting the house and we are hoping to sign a contract and begin moving in on Monday! (We know that there are many things that could come up between now and then that could change that, but we are praying that we will be able to be into our new house before Christmas and will be able to use these last two weeks of the year to start making the house into our home.)

We also got to go to the Christmas show for the school that all of the kids on our team attend last night. It was quite a cultural experience. It was about 2.5 hours long and the lights went out about halfway through. The kids of our team did great and we got to cheer them on as they performed. 

We are so thankful to be in the place where God has called us and to have such great teammates to serve alongside!

Can I graduate?

The answer is YES! We did graduate!

On Friday morning we graduated from The Spanish Language Institute. We have spent all of 2011 here in San Jose, Costa Rica studying Spanish. Four hours of class each day, five days a week, for about 11 months and we are now finished with our formal studies. We will continue to learn more and more Spanish as we live and minister in Honduras.

Before the ceremony with the Honduras flag.

I got to carry the flag into the ceremony!

Ashley singing Solo Cristo.

With our diplomas.

The Graduates.

Hae Su (classmate), Lissette (teacher), Mike (me)

All three down.

In my last post, I said I was finished with two out of three 'tests.' On Sunday I finished the third.

I got the opportunity to preach the Gospel to the people of ICRICEN (Iglesia Cristiana de Centroamericana) this past Sunday. This was the first time I ever preached in a church service and it was in Spanish! I will admit that I was quite nervous, but the Spirit gave me the words to say and (I think) clarity and (mas o menos) the correct pronunciation.

I am so glad the Lord gave me this opportunity to learn how to write a sermon and also how to do translation and also how to share a message in front of a group. I feel like I learned a lot and look forward to having this opportunity in the future. Although I am not going to be a pastor in Honduras, having the skills of writing a message and delivering it I think will be very useful in our ministry.

Mike preaching on Philippians 2:1-11.

I spoke on the importance of unified community and that it is only possible through humility and because of how humble Jesus Christ was for us to come to this sinful world and to die on the cross in order to save us.