Easter

I love Easter - I love the springy colors, the easter eggs, the Starburst jelly beans, the nice weather, dressing up, pretty flowers, and most importantly that it signifies the most important thing in my life - that I have a relationship with Jesus Christ because of His incredible sacrifice on the cross and that it didn't end there - that death did not hold him down but He lives again! And because of that each person has the opportunity for individual and personal relationship with our Creator God. Wow.

This Easter our church had a 7am - after sunrise, sunrise service. Because Tristan was on the worship team it meant for a pre-sunrise wake up in order to be at church at 6am for practice - and we live 45 min away! Church was full for the service - and I think a big part of that was the buffet breakfast everyone was going to afterwards :). The service was wonderful - a combination of old and new songs, the kids had a part in the service and Sigel jumped up to participate without being prompted - I felt like such a proud mama - Sunday School has been a huge struggle for Sigel and us - getting him to go happily and behave in class - and here he was jumping up to do something in front of all the adults - it was a proud moment and a moment for us to remember that he has made progress! After church practically the entire church went to the Marriot for their breakfast buffet - YUM! This was Sigel's first 'buffet' (buffet's are not common here) and when we explained that he can eat as much as he wants he was super excited! He came to the table with 2 big plates of food and ate it all and went back for more! We then went back and had a nice nap before our friends came over to paint Easter eggs. We all had fun painting the eggs and then had an Easter Egg hunt - we had 70 plastic eggs hidden for 4 kids and they were excited to find them! The dad's hid them really hard so we had to help at the end. Sigel took off running in his flip flops and fell/slid twice before we made him change shoes - he found lots of eggs but also had a nice egg on his head for a few days from one of his falls. I'd say all in all Sigel was pretty impressed with the U.S. Easter traditions. Because Honduras is mostly Catholic Easter Sunday is not a big deal - the day Jesus rose from the dead - instead the big deal is Good Friday when Jesus died. We talked with Sigel about the fact that without Easter Sunday there is no significance to Good Friday because death would have won.

This week I spent hours and hours tutoring math. Jorge has quarterly tests that started on Friday and will go for a week. He hadn't studied for math or understood anything until we sat down and studied together. It was about fractions and he just didn't get it. He didn't understand about simplifying, looking at a picture and writing that it was 1/3 of the circle that was shaded etc. So Jorge and I sat at the table studying for over 10 hours this week! I think I'm as nervous as him about what score he earned. I'm also Sigel's math and writing teacher so a lot of time this week was dedicated to teaching. Marisol is also struggling in math and English so she was over for a few hours working with Tristan on math.

This Wednesday I had a part to play in our youth group. Usually I'm just around and the support - I don't have a teaching part. This week because Tristan was working on importing the truck I got to do his part and I really enjoyed it. All I did was lead a small group discussion for 15 minutes - but to study and do it in spanish and then to talk with the kids for 15 minutes in spanish was super fun and rewarding. I felt like I'd accomplished something :).

Tristan's big project this week was importing the truck - he had to go to the El Salvadorian border for the day to collect paperwork and pay a guarantee that we would actually import it, then it took 2 days of office work - sitting, waiting, getting papers signed and collected, inspections etc. Basically it's a really pain in the butt. Friday at 4:30 we got the call that the truck was finished and we could pick it up (during this time it had to be impounded)! We now only have one more inspection to do with the truck and then have to get the Honduran License plates & pay for registration. YEA! This means no more leaving the country every 90 days for the truck! Unfortunately while it was in impounded, someone tinkered with the ignition - we had to turn in the truck and the key. It seems to be running fine but it was very aggravating to have that happen - we can't even trust the agents at the customs impound lot when we're following the system. Now our prayer is that no one made a copy of the key or something so they can steal the truck. It's always something. But the good news is that the truck is 85% of the way imported and we can almost move on with life :).