Baking, Shopping and a Birthday

Well, today was quite a full day. We started out by going into Teguc to do the grocery shopping for the team coming from our church. Nine people will arrive around noon on Wednesday. Pray for their safety and a problem free trip! The eight other gringos here will be joining in their meals, plus they are hosting a meal for all the live-in workers here at the Finca, so that translated into a truck load of food! :) We left around 8am as usual and I thought we might be back around 11am. Well, we finally got back around 1:30-ish.

Zack and I were planning on going to a birthday party for one of his friends which was supposed to start at 2. Thank goodness we are in Honduras and that actually means 2:30-ish! :) We quickly unloaded all the groceries, helped Andrea organize some of it (the team will be staying with her in the "missionary house"), and got ready to go to the party. I really thank God for the convenience of cell phones. From Teguc I was able to call and ask Karla Patricia to help my kids get lunch, then call Lilian to take care of them (and wrap the birthday gift:) after she was done working and Patricia had to go to school.

Zack and I caught a ride with Angel who was taking some of the Finca kids to the party. I put Angelica, Ali, Lilian, and Jaquelin in charge of making dinner. The recipe was in English and between my girls' limited Spanish and Lilian's limited English and cell phone calls to me at the party, they made a great Beef Nacho Casserole for dinner!
Unfortunately, I didn't remember to take the camera to the birthday party so no pictures.

Yesterday, Sunday, we had some friends over for lunch. Guillermo and Luz Cerrito and two of their children joined us for lasagna along with Concho, Danilo and Andrea. We met the Cerritos at the Finca's sixth grade graduation this past year and went to their house for Sunday lunch a couple of months ago.
Guillermo works for a forage grass seed
distribution company and knows quite a
bit about agriculture so Harlan, Dwain,
Concho, Danilo, and Guillermo had a lot
to talk about! :)

All three of the Cerrito children attend a bilingual school and can understand/speak English. Daniel is 14 and got to spend the afternoon with Zack listening to the many and varied stories and thoughts that fill a 5 year old's head! :)














It was a beautiful day to look around the Finca and sit in the sun!














Ali spent part of the afternoon looking for bugs with Alicia, one of the Finca girls. It seems one of the colegio (highschool) girls needed to find and identify 17 insects!















This past week was fairly busy, as well. We, Audrey, Angelica,
Ali and I, thought it would be nice to have some good
homemade baked items on hand for the team when they come. So on Friday they baked brownies and chocolate chip cookies and on Saturday we baked banana breads and miniature pumpkin and chocolate whoopie pies with cream cheese icing. We also baked enough whoopie pies for the Finca kids and workers. It was two long days of baking, but we know it was worth it! :)

Harlan and Dwain are keeping very busy with the agriculture project. This week they installed the water tank and are working on the irrigation lines that will be used for watering the crops during the dry season that will soon arrive.















Harlan even got to play with fire in order to heat the tubing so it would slide over the fittings on the tank! :)














I'm sure that everybody's weeks are full and sometimes it may feel like we do not have the time to do the things we want to do or the things that we know are important. I believe that if we seek God first and ask him what he wants us to do and then make sure we are doing his will and not others' (even though what they may ask us to do are good things), then we will find that we have done what we wanted and the things that we know are important! Now I just need to live it! :) May God bless you as you follow his will wherever you are.

Time Marches On (towards March)

Yes I know that title is lame but it's all I could think of.

Hey everybody. Another week of life at La Finca. A rainy day, some cloudy days, some sunny days. Today happens to be a very beautiful day. I should be out working but it's kind of nice to stay in the shade for a bit after lunch. The rainy day was an unpleasant reminder that there are roofs waiting to be fixed around here.

What have we been up to too? Hmmmm.....Maybe I'll work backwards from yesterday. Probably the highlight of my week. I took another fairly long hike up into the mountains surrounding Valle de Angeles. I forgot to take the camera along so there are no pictures. Ali and a group of 12 kids went with me. This time up a different side of Valle. We headed up towards La Tigra National Park into an area where mines and mining related activities once took place. Interesting scenery on the way up. We passed a barren waste land where according to a local landowner the mining companies used chemicals to extract precious metals from the ore mined out of the mountain. Farther up we hiked along a stream up through a small gorge. Very pretty except the water is contaminated with some cloudy grayish white substance. Farther up the mountain the stream clears up. The scenery got better too as we continued on. Our hike finally ended at an impressive waterfall. Nature there seems a little larger than life with huge boulders, over sized plants and massive trees, some of which have fallen across the gorge. The hiking was a bit tricky. It involved crawling up and over some things and a lot of jumping from rock to rock. The kids did well. Some were a little leary of certain parts but all in all it was good for them. I do enjoy my trips into the mountans although my knees complain a lot!

Among other things last week I worked at getting a dedicated water supply set up to irrigate our gardening projects. I hope to more or less finish that this week. I also spent some time helping Dwain advance said gardening projects. Large ants know here as "sompopos" have been carrying off sizable portions of our young plants. We are searching and researching ways to control them but in the meantime it is a bit frustrating. Enough so that we've temporarily resorted to pouring gas down their holes.



Saturday we celebrated Valentine's Day at our
house with the Kennel family and Dwain and Audrey. We had a nice little fondue dinner together. All kinds of good things to dip into chocolate, cheese, or barbeque fondue. A nice time of "gringo" fellowship.




Angel, Concho, Danilo and a group of other older boys are working on the future computer lab. Everything seems to be moving along quite well with that. Basically it just involves re-doing the roof structure with steel using a design that allows for more natural light. Very similar to what they did with the library.

Last week was the first week of school here at La Finca. Although we've lost some good work help we're glad to see the youngest kids all occupied with classes in the morning. This gives us a time of relative peace and quiet. We pray they will all do their best and learn as much as they can this year. Middle school and high school classes will start this week at the public school. Danilo, Concho, and Miriam will be taking classes at the public university in Teguz.

Photos of the week past:

Some future bull riders! From left to right: Javier, Cristofer, Brayan and Zack












Zack trying out his alternative to sledding down the hill behind our house.







Trust God gives all of you the grace to keep "marching on"!

Farm stuff and fish?!

Hey y'all, it's me again. I know, I know, it should be Harlan, but he's busy :) and you'll just have to put up with me! This week's been pretty good, not too busy, but it's been c-o-l-d!! I know you think that it's much colder where you Northamericans are, but it's been getting down to 46 degrees or so at night and very windy. This translates to waking up to about 56 degrees inside my house and wind coming in through all windows and cracks and no heat to turn on. The upside is that it also means no mosquitos right now!! :)

This past Thursday we decided to go visit Agafam. Agafam is an agricultural fair type event held in Tegucigalpa. We, our family, Dwain, Audrey, and Andrea, left right after Audrey and the kids finished school. The animals there were mainly horses and cows from different farms and ranches around Honduras. They also had some chickens, rabbits (who were digging under the fence and getting in the chicken pen) and some ponies for rides.
The fair also had the usual rides, games, food stands, and other stands selling sweets, jewelry, clothing, cowboy apparal, etc. Zack is at least one more step closer to being a cowboy, although it's Ali who has been wearing the hat lately. :)

We had decided to eat lunch there and my lunch was, well... interesting. I decided that I wanted fish and asked it I could have it grilled instead of the usual fried. The guy said he could steam it for me, but it would take about 15 minutes. Well, 30-40 minutes later :) I received my whole
steamed fish. By this time I wasn't hungry (since I had been picking off of everyone else's plates:) and it didn't help that Zack kept playing with the fish and opening and closing it's mouth! It didn't stop me from eating it, but I did give most of it to a couple of boys who came asking for money or food. If you're really interested, Dwain took a picture of the fish before I ate it!

We did our weekly grocery shopping before heading back to Valle. Harlan dropped the women off at the grocery store before heading to a hardware store, Do It Center. Just a note... I called to let them know we were finishing grocery shopping and they were still shopping at the hardware store. That should put a stop to complaints of how long it takes to do the grocery shopping. :)

We've been having a lot of fun learning new things we can make from scratch. Audrey introduced us to homemade pizza crust, soft pretzels, granola cereal and granola bars. We also make our own peanut butter and hummus. Some of the things we hope to try are bagels, bread, yogurt cheese, etc. Angelica has also baked us some yummy whole wheat brownies and has plans to try some other desserts.

This afternoon, Saturday, we all kind of went our different ways. Angelica went with Andrea and a bunch of the Finca girls to go play volleyball and soccer with youth from a couple other local churches. Ali, Harlan, Dwain and Audrey took a group of the Finca boys to the top of the mountain on the east side of Valle.















The picture above/right is looking down at the Finca. Our house is to the far right.
























Flowers make anyone feel pretty :)




Zack and I stayed at the Finca while Zack and his sidekick, Brayan, went exploring, climbing trees, hunting rats under our house and throwing pinecones at them. :) I hung out for a little with Lilian, Jaquelin and the "babies" behind our house and then actually started some scrapbooking, which I've been wanting to start since we got here. It was great to have a little down time and relax.

Tomorrow, may you find a day of rest as you seek God and worship him with others!!!

Costa Rica and back again!

While we needed to travel to Costa Rica (or Belize, or Mexico, or Panama:) in order to renew our visas here in Honduras, it was also a wonderful time relaxing and resting with our family. Oh, and Andrea, but you won't see any pictures of her because I was expressly forbidden by her to post any! :) We thank God for a safe and fairly uneventful trip. We enjoyed seeing new and different parts of His creation.





<---I want to go down the slide, but...












...not really :)









Lots of fun in the pool!





























Some of the wildlife at the beach in Costa Rica!










































Harlan and Zack took a father/son day and went to a national park (while the girls hung out at the pool :)












Zack even learned how to use the camera!!


















The trip back also went very well. We thank God for his protection over us and the truck. We were not given the proper truck paperwork at the southern Nicaragua border which could have caused problems and a $100 fine at the northern border. God gave us an honest border agent who went and checked the computer and saw we were telling the truth. He said he would just note that we hadn't received the paperwork and he let us go! Please pray that everything was properly noted so that we won't have any problems in the future when we need to travel through Nicaragua again.

We arrived home on Thursday evening and now it's back to the usual routines of work and school. The kids had school Friday and Saturday to make up for one of the missing days. They did get to make soft pretzels as an after school activity so it's not all just work, work, work!!






























Just a quick little fun fact: during the time that I have been posting this blog I have killed at least... at least 10 mosquitos. I am really looking forward to having all my torn screens replaced and my ceiling fixed once the leaking roof is fixed! While it doesn't rain every day it is often enough that it's not advisable to take your roof off! :)

Thank you to all who continue to pray for us and support us in many ways. Thank you to all who sent Christmas cards (we received about 13 just last week:), birthday cards, e-cards and gifts. We feel very blessed!! May God bless all of you as you seek him.

From Costa Rica

Howdy folks! It is a real pleasure to be writing this blog poolside in Costa Rica. Yes, (note picture on right) we finally received our Honduran license plates and registration card last Wednesday! That meant we were able to go ahead with obligatory travel plans for renewing our visas. Yesterday, Sunday Jan.25th, we left Valle de Angeles at 5:00am hoping that we could reach our destination in Liberia, Costa Rica the same day. Thankfully everything went smoothly including the 2 border crossings and we had a pleasant and enjoyable trip for the most part. We drove about 2 hours in Honduras then made our first border crossing into Nicaragua. This border procedure went relatively quickly. We then traveled the whole length of Nicaragua taking about six hours to do so. I was expecting some bad roads in Nicaragua, but came away quite impressed with the ones we traveled on. Also some pretty sights along the way. Saw rice fields for the first time! The border procedure from Nicaragua to Costa Rica took longer (about 2 hours). It is a much heavier traveled border with some of the longest lines of trucks we've seen at C.A. borders. The Nicaraguan side was the usual confusing unmarked chaos that we are getting used to. The Costa Rican side was less confusing(and cost free except for vehicle insurance). From the border we drove about an hour arriving just after 5:00pm at our hotel in the small city of Liberia where we will be staying until our 3 days are up and we can go travel back to Honduras.

So far we are enjoying Costa Rica very much. The area around here is flat cattle country, very pretty with mountains to the east and the Pacific ocean about a half hour to the west. We hope to explore a bit in the coming days. Today we are just relaxing at the hotel, enjoying the pools and the warm sun. This area is in what I believe they call the "dry tropics". It is considerably warmer than in Valle de Angeles. There are several tropical fruit trees by the pool. Mangos are everywhere but unfortunately they are quite green yet, not what I'm interested in eating. It is rather windy here too.


Activities (and stresses) from the previous week are already receding from the mind as we unwind here. But here are some we can recall.




Me teaching my Sunday school class.
















Celebrating Janelle's birthday with the Kennel family at their home. We also watched part of the Eagles game there.









Planting of seeds and related work continued under Dwain's direction. I was also working on getting a water line set up for irrigation. Friday we took a field trip to a well known agriculture school located about an hour south west of Tegucigalpa. We were not able to get in to see everything we wanted to because a guide wasn't available. We hope to return sometime to do that.

More on Costa Rica and related travels next time!

Back in School

After a long vacation, Angelica, Ali, and Zack are back in school! They all seem to be enjoying it so far. Getting them up and going in the morning is somewhat of a challenge. Five people trying to use our small bathroom at the same time is also a challenge.

Audrey has set up a very nice little classroom for them. The classroom is located within Dwain and Audrey's house.



I (Harlan), along with a group of "finca" kids, have been helping Dwain get started on planting garden rows on the farmland. Dwain is getting acquainted with some of the realities of gardening here. So far all the work of preparing the ground is being done by hand. Slow going, but thanks to Dwain's persistent efforts we've gotten quite a bit of seed in the ground. Pray with us that most of it survives and does well. As I mentioned there are kids who are very interested in gardening and show up every day to help out. This is our goal with this project. Not just to produce food for "La Finca" but also to teach the kids and develop an interest in farming among them.

Bible classes have also been restarted this week with all the kids. Classes will meet Fri. afternoon at 4:30 and the same classes will meet for Sun. school. I am teaching the older boys. It will challenging for sure as it is with youth anywhere. Pray that something meaningful will be passed along to them during our time together.

We continue to wait for our truck license plates to be processed. This week they told us to wait until the 20th then check again. We would very much like to have them in time for when we need to travel to Costa Rica, but we'll try to go with the "flow"!

A certain very important (and special) person around here is celebrating her birthday on Sunday! Audrey, Andrea, Angelica, Ali, and Zack baked up some special treats (things she wouldn't normally eat) for the birthday girl. Today Janelle and I plan to spend some time by ourselves celebrating her birthday. Time alone is hard to come by here, so we're looking forward to it. Pray for Janelle and all of us as we continue face the many unique issues of life here at "La Finca".

This and That

Things have been pretty calm and quiet around here lately. Beginning last Sunday, a good number of kids have been leaving to spend vacation time with relatives until the end of this month. We do appreciate the "tranquilo" atmosphere but it seems almost a little too quiet. I can't believe I just wrote that!




Our past week began with the final push to get Dwain and Audrey's house livable before their arrival on Tues. I think we were reasonably successful in doing that, so long as you don't define the term "livable" too strenuously. We certainly had some great help from the kids here at La Finca. Wednesday dinner at our house turned into a "thank you" meal for the older kids who helped out with this project, Concho, Danilo, Patricia and Eliuth. Also we wanted to have Danilo and Concho for a meal before they left to visit family. Danilo left on Thurs. traveling to San Pedro Sula with his sister Adela who also grew up at La Finca. This will be the first time he has visited his family in San Pedro. Concho left on Fri. traveling by himself to visit family in the Lempira region.

Pray for Dwain and Audrey as they adjust to many new things here. Audrey will begin school tomorrow with Angelica, Ali, and Zack. It might be a bit difficult for them to get back into the school routine again but I think it will be a very good thing for them. Dwain has already started planting some garden and is working on other farm related projects.

Zackery and I (Harlan) had a interesting little hike today. We walked over to the other finca where the soccer field is. We thought Jimmy and Jorge were over there, but they were not so we decided to explore a new path in the woods above the soccer field. I was hoping to see some wildlife but wasn't too surprised to instead hear mooing sounds coming out of the brush. A neighbor grazes a couple of cows on this hill. I was, however, a bit surprised to see a very small calf, probably just a few days old, come down the hill and walk right up to us. We expected to see the mother show up especially since the calf was making good use of its vocal cords. But there was no sign of the other cows and normally they stayed on the other side of the hill. I wasn't quite sure what to do. By now I was pretty sure the calf was lost and very hungry. I decided to hike over to the other side of the hill to see if the other cows were there. As I started out, the calf followed me and Zack followed behind the calf. I wished I would have had a camera, it was an interesting sight. A wobbly legged, bawling calf on the side of a hill following me while Zack brought up the rear. Eventually we sighted the other cattle and one of the cows responded back to the calf's bellowing. After helping the calf find it's way through a wooded gully it finally made its way up the hill to mother cow for a drink. We were glad to see they belonged together!


Here's Ali hanging out in the "mandarina" tree in our back yard. It is one of the most popular tree around here. All the kids would like to get their hands on those mandarinas! We usually give them away anyway 'cause the fruit is small and generally quite tart.

More next time!