Family Visit

My family left on Thursday and I cried. Sigel comforted me at the airport and said " I know how you feel, it's sad not being with your family." Just made me cry more re-remembering what he is going through saying goodbye to his family forever. He's so much stronger than I.  It's time like this (saying goodbye in the airport, missing a family pizza night or a week at the lake with the family) when it's hard to live here. I know I'm in God's will - and I love it here! This is my life and I can't imagine anything else - but I would say my biggest sacrifice in being a missionary is not the physical safety, missing the extra money to buy 'that thing' that I really want, but it's being away from family. I am SO GRATEFUL for the time I had with my family but it just reminds me all the more what I'm missing out on on a daily basis.  I told Sigel that we can be sad about missing our families, but we still can rest in God and have peace about where we are - and that's where I'm at.

OK, on a happier note - we had such a great time with my family here! The crew was my mom, dad, brother Jeff, a family friend - Nicole, and Bob - stranger at first, but now a friend. The trip was a combination missions trip and family visit (my family doesn't sit around well :) ). So we built tables and benches for the mission house, the men went and cut down a tree for us so we'd have fire wood for the cold season (yes it does get cold here and there is no such thing as a heater so it feels even colder), we did the tourist shopping and hit up all the good restaurants, my dad preached at the Foursquare church on Wednesday evening and 3 times on Sunday morning. Dad did a great job preaching - it's a skill to be able to preach well with a translator and he did it great! There were about 300 -400 in attendance per service. Then on Monday we went to El Ayudante (the mission house we are building) and worked there through Wednesday. They were troopers because it's very rustic out there and there are lots of bugs - so far there are no doors, the windows still let in the bugs, cement showers, fridge was broken, and it was hot! But they did great! While there we tiled 3 bathroom stalls - the goal was more but we had "honduran complications." Because it is so hot and dry out there the tiles and cement walls were incredibly dry and sucking out all the moisture of the glue in seconds - so it was taking forever to get the tiles on there strong enough to not fall off and also to get them straight - it was VERY FRUSTRATING! Then Bob got the bright idea to soak the walls with water and soak the tiles in buckets of water before we put them on - and it worked! So after that it went way faster and the tiles are stuck on much better. The tables and benches were also finished and stained, and the patio roof was worked on - so it was a very successful time and we were really happy with what got done.  Wednesday night we went out to a steak house for the last night and stayed in a mission house of a friend of ours then Thursday drove them to the airport (6 hours from our house) and returned home. During the week we took Jorge with us (a teen boy that spends as much time with Tristan as he can) and he was a great help. On the drive home from the airport we stopped at Lago Yojoa (the lake) for fresh fish - Jorge and Sigel loved it! It was a long day home but it went well and we slept really good in our own beds. 

Today is Saturday morning - and this evening we pick up Amy and Gary from the airport - Gary is Tristan's 3 uncle and Amy is Tristan's 3 cousin - or something like that. Amy is here for 3 weeks and Gary for the first week.  By the time they leave, we'll have had company for 9 weeks straight :). Good thing God gave us a big house and that we're pretty easy with company.  Ok, we have dogs and muddy cars to wash - gotta go help.