It's 93 degress and we're in winter here!

December and January are supposed to be the coldest months - usually in the 50s and 60s. Friday while we were in the city it was 93 degrees! We did have 2 weeks of cold weather but this hot weather is really crazy. Another problem is that we didn't have a long enough rainy season which means we are really short on water. How is works is that the water company rations water by neighborhood and they decide how often they will open the pipes for each neighborhood - some are everyday and others are once a month for 2 hours. Usually they don't start really rationing water until March or April - this year they've already been doing in the month of January - and a friend of ours that lives in a neighborhood that receives water every day is now only receving water twice a week. So it's already started - and that makes we worried for those neighborhoods that usually only receive it once a month - how often they will be getting water. Water will be rationed until May/June when the rains start to come back. We probably won't have any rain between now and then.

This last week Tristan worked with a team from Vero Beach, Florida. This is a team of 65 people that will be coming down in June to continue the work on the medical clinic and also do a huge medical clinic at the same time - all out at El Ayudante. So this last week was the pre-team and the goal was to set up everything for when the team comes down - so they set up hotel and food plans, met with DR's, planned buying medicines for the free pharmacy, worked on construction ideas, met with the mayor, saw the mission site, etc. They were basically driving Monday through Friday. Tristan met them in San Pedro Sula - a 6 hour drive from our house -they drove them back to Tegucigalpa - with stops along the way - and then back to San Pedro to catch their return trip - so Tristan put on 1,000 miles in the 5 days! It's a good thing he likes to drive :). Tristan also was the translator for the week which he said went really well. These people were really great and fun to work with - they took great care of Tristan and really appreciated his effort & servantness. I met up with them the night they were here in Teguicalpa - stayed at the Marriott (which I was really excited about - they had a bathtub!) and then spent the last 2 days of the trip with them. It was very fun to get to know them and then nice to drive back with Tristan so he wouldn't have to do it alone. Although we were staying at hotels and traveling, it definately wasn't a vacation - we both came home super tired.

Seeds of Change (the ministry up in Valle de Angeles) has started a youth group and we are partnering with our church - CCI. We have now had 2 meetings and it's gone great! The first week we had 25 kids! We were thrilled with the outcome and worried about not having enough chairs. The wonderful thing with partnering with the church is that a Honduran speaking to a Honduran is WAY more effective than one of us foreigners trying to get our point across in a second language and speaking from a different culture. So we set it all up, brought food, invited people and participated and helped, but the team from the church did the worship, preached, and led the entire service. I think it'll be a great combination of team work. The second week there were 49 people (including leaders) !!!! We were blown away and definately didn't have enough chairs. :) The youth participated, paid attention - most of them - and when it was over nobody really wanted to leave - they just hung around and talked until the last minute possible. We have access to the town hall - which is in the middle of the pueblo (town) and only has bars on the windows so it draws a lot of people when they here laughing and singing and preaching. We had people coming by to check out what was happening the whole time. The second week we had a microphone and amp so that really made us heard throughout the whole pueblo. Please be praying that we'd get a consistant group of kids coming and can build relationships with the kids and most importantly show them about the love of Jesus.

Yesterday we actually took the complete day off! amazing for us. Joshua (Sigel's friend) was over for the day and they spent the day playing baseball with Tristan, painting, climbing trees, being super heros, and being silly. We went to the creek and hiked up a ways (it was funny because Tristan usually helps me over the rocks and Sigel has decided that he wants to instead - so now I have my 2 men helping me up the creek to the swimming spot). We brought sandwhiches and sat in the sun and Sigel and Joshua played in the water until they were shivering so badly their whole little bodies were shaking. Tristan and I cooked together - something we've been doing lately and really enjoying it! Tristan has also started cooking bread - with the help of the bread machine for the dough - so yesterday he was trying to perfect his recipe and made 2 loaves. I also worked on my sewing project which was great. It was really nice to have a complete day off - we both felt so rested by the end of the day.