Our hearts are breaking

We just learned that a dear friend, deacon over youth at West Metro,  and amazing Christian brother fell ill and left this world suddenly and unexpectedly last night.  I can't even describe to you the pain we are experiencing here this morning and the shock.  I can not begin to imagine what it is like for his precious wife and children.  

James baptizing their oldest son Michael

What an amazing Christian father, husband and friend

We're blessed to have been touched by him and will treasure our memories of this great man.  

We look forward to seeing him again!  

Please all of you reading, if you will be in fervent prayer for the Olson family.  

Saying Goodbye

By now, many of you have heard from loved ones and know that we are in San Pedro Sula. just FYI if you haven't heard from your loved one...don't take great offense...it's those that can get internet access on their phones that were able last night to email and such.  And not even all of them.  

Anyway we made it to San Pedro Sula with no problems.  We're about to go eat b'fast in the hotel and then head for a quick stop at a market a block away.  Then it's off to the airport to begin our journey's home!!   Thank you for all of your prayers and love while we've all been away!!

Irlinda (she teaches in the school) came the night before we left to paint toenails.

She was there til midnight painting away.  

Jennifer getting some sweet love

One class after receiving their futbol socks (boys) and dresses (girls)

eating at a family's home.  Precious precious family!!

We're really proud of this wall!!!!

Fun together in the hotel

Charlton cleaning the "Great Wall"  

Antonio...with the bees nest that was cleaned off the wall in the prep work.  

Beach Clean up

Melissa working at the school

Kevin leading singing at the Limonal congregation

MaryKyle playing the flour game at the youth devotional

I just kept meaning to upload a better picture of our iguana friend

so thought I'd go on and do it!!

Currently we have people at the hotel preparing for a festival that Bruce and Julie are heading up for the school children today.  We also have a group of volunteers down at the wall giving it a 2nd coat and working on the columns .

We also have a small group finishing work at the Mision del Caribe congregation with Santiago.  

Also some at the school finishing the paintings for the sponsors, and another small group doing their best to finish the ceiling, wiring and fans at the school.  

Our last day will be filled to the brim!  

After lunch we go out with other Christians to distribute the clothes to families that live on the mountain.

And then....a special treat for the ladies tonight.....

one of the teachers from the school is coming up to the hotel and giving pedicures, no doubt while the guys play in the pool!!  

A fun ending to an amazing trip!!

We thank you again for sharing your loved ones with us.  Without them so much work could never have been accomplished.  So truly....THANK YOU!!!

  

Happy 4th!!

The stars and stripes were flying in Trujillo today to honor the US.
Really!!
If you didn't know, Trujillo was the first capital of Honduras.  So the US had an embassy here at that time.  Of course, the capital is now in 'Teguc' and the embassy is not here, but on the old beautiful bldg that was once the embassy many years ago they flew an American flag today in honor of the 4th of July. So cool!!

And really...what's the 4th without ice cream?  It wasn't homemade (boo-hoo)  but we did enjoy it immensely!  A few of us did get homemade liquados (like a milk shake or closer perhaps to an orange julius).  Not sure, but I think mostly all who did got mango....YUMMO!!  One of my favorites.

We had a super end to our campaign this morning!!  Another HUGE crowd!  Ricky did an amazing job (not a bit of surprise there) speaking about Our Christian family, the Church (Dago's last night was on raising a Christian family).

We also went to families houses for dinner.  We mostly divided up into 2's or 3's.  I haven't heard a single person who didn't have an amazing time and just love it!!  It was fun listening to all the stories.

Candido and Wendy came to the hotel after dinner.  Candido was dressed to swim, but Wendy looked gorgeous, as always, and was fully clothed.
Long story short, she and Jennifer Mills (GA) ended up jumping into the pool together both fully clothed and joining all those in the pool for races and a game of Pollo Frito (think Marco Polo).  It was a super fun night!!

Hope you had a blessed 4th as well!!!

Saturday

So another good day was had by all.

A group of us:

Sara,  Jack G., Cole, Ricky, Raquel, Christian, Revonda, Beth V.,  Savanna, & Jessica P.  Headed to the Museum in town....we warned them all it would be an interesting experience and it did not disappoint.
We played with the monkeys out back and waded in the river fed by a natural stream to cool off afterward. We also stopped by the grave of William Walker (look him up...interesting Trujillo history.  Perhaps I should offer a prize to who finds out first who he was and why his death is significant to Trujillo and Honduras....hmmmmmm)
Anyway.....then we stopped by a local grocery store so I could get a few supplies for an afternoon activity.
Of course seeing things like that and just experiencing the culture here can be fun...the trip ended for some by a fully cultural experience....piling into a taxi.  Jack, Cole, Sara, Savanna, Jessica and Revonda all piledi into a little bitty cab and headed back up the mountain.

Another group:
Tom, Jack V, Bruce, Julie, Walter, Leigh and Annina went back down to the school to work some more on the ceiling, lights and fans.

And the rest either went hiking in the rain forest with 'Pablo' or stayed to rest at the hotel.

After lunch, a few girls (Jessica P, Savanna, Jennifer, Beth V, Raquel B., Annina and myself) headed out here to Little Hands where we were met by 3 women from the local church.  They taught the girls how to wash clothes by hand in a 'pila'  Think washboard and huge concrete holding tank for water attached.  I have a picture a few posts back I think of my kids from behind washing their hands in one).  They got about halfway done before the rain picked up and it was just about time to go.  To treat them for their efforts I made a mango cobbler (and since I'd promised Annina one!!).  We were joined with our cobbler by Brenda Young and her crew from Washington who had just arrived and were getting settled in.  They will be here a couple of weeks working with Little Hands Big Hearts.

We had a great campaign tonight!!  I can't remember how many kids Aaron said they had in children's class tonight, I want to say 56, and that was with age limits so that it didn't include the youngest or the older kids.  Dago did a great job delivering a message on being a Christian parent in this world!

Tomorrow we will have our final campaign meeting.  'Pablo' will be taking the rental van out to pick people up early!  We will also be dividing up to eat dinner in church member's homes.

We thank you for your continued prayers and for your words of kindness!!

I pray you have a wonderful 4th of July!!!

And now what you all want.....I'm doing my best to get pictures uploaded and looking for different faces, but please please understand uploading pictures here is not at all like at home. It takes 5-10 min for each and every picture.  Last night I would click upload and then doze.....until finally I just slept too soundly to wake and click again.  I woke up this morning and that picture was still attempting to download several hours later.  ha ha ha ha!!  

Raquel (not me), Savanna, and Jessica P

working at the school.

Jeremy, Walter and Daddy (aka Jack) at the school

Laura, Kenzie, and Annina

(3 states represented in this picture!!!)

preparing the children's Bible lessons for the campaign

Left to Right

Barbara, a tiny bit of MaryKyle, Jennifer, Katee Jo, Sara, and Jessica G

doing some hard HOT work on "The Great Wall"

Bruce, Tom, Katee Jo, Jack, Cole, Jessica G, and Beth Ann enjoying some down time at the hotel

(again 3 states represented in this picture)

Katie C taking advantage of a little downtime and a cool breeze to update her journal

Tim cutting out an elephant trunk in preparation for children's Bible class.
Seen in the background:  Leigh, Aaron and Roxanna (the teacher her at Little Hands)

pictureless update

okay I need desperately to get ready to go...or we'll be late to pick everyone up to go for our field trips today.  So when they get home and talk about how we were late in the mornings be sure to explain it was all for you...so you could see or hear about their work here!!  :-)

Since I got some pictures to upload I wanted to just give an update of our efforts here since lack of time...and internet connectivity have kept me from posting the last few days.

We are all doing FANTASTIC! 

Truly.  So much so, that we had scheduled a team that had worked hard the day before to have some down time and rest time at the hotel yesterday morning, and first thing that morning our phone rang here at our house and it was someone saying “just a heads up no one that is schedule for rest time wants to, they want to work!!”   

I mean really…wow!!  What an amazing group of people we are blessed to be serving alongside! 

So we reworked the schedule and happily factored those folks back into work projects!! 

Several have VOLUNTEERED to get up with Walter and Daddy & be at the school this morning by 6am to work some more on the wiring and ceiling they are working hard to complete.  Let me tell you, it was amazing with all the new fans Walter (AL) and Aaron (MS), Daddy (GA) and team have installed and the eave vent/fans that we brought and have been started....just how cool that building in the school is now.   Wow!!!!!  Last night sitting in there even with standing room only at our campaign it was getting a little cold for me amazingly! 

Speaking of our campaign…..God is GREAT!  As I said, it was packed. 

We had taken our van out to an area called “Honduras Aguan” where the Mision del Caribe church is.  The minister out there, Santiago, planned to bring his truck as well.  It had looked like a storm was coming and rained just a little so they thought that would be PLENTY of car space to get everyone here as they thought some wouldn't because of the threat of rain.  But the church members out there invited neighbors and relatives just as they had talked about the importance of…..and 23 people loaded into our 15 passenger van and more than that were packed like sardines standing in the back and crammed inside the cab of Santiago’s truck.  10 people or more were not able to get here….sigh….so tonight we are arranging for another vehicle to drive out there and perhaps more trips 

We had a ladies class taught by Evelyn (The principal at the school) and translated by Maybelline (the director or Little Hands Big Hearts).  Then, a Men’s class taught by Ricky (minister at the West Metro church in Georgia) and a children’s class planned and taught by our North American and Honduran young people that are college age…ish..  It all went wonderfully.  The topic for last night was living as a Christian Woman/Man    God’s expectations are the same for Christians in North America and in Honduras so it applied to ALL of our lives!  It was a blessing to share in a class with my Christian sisters!!!

Tonight the men and women will be together and the lesson will be taught by Dago (one of the church leaders here), and then tomorrow for worship Ricky will be preaching. 

Please, if you will, keep these efforts in your prayers. 

This afternoon a group will join the Limonal congregation to do some evangelizing and also inviting to the meeting tonight.  Another group will head out here to Little Hands where ladies from the Buenos Aires congregation will be teaching our ladies/girls to wash clothes in a pila (I'll take pictures don't worry)  meaning by hand with a washboard.  We will be washing all the clothes we plan to donate that we've been wearing so that Monday we can get those distributed!  Then tonight after dinner it's night 2 of the campaign....another blessed day here in Honduras serving a loving Savior!!!  

Your families are blessing me each day….I thank you for sharing them with us and with our Honduran brother and sisters!!!

team building...merging from multiple teams from all over the US into ONE team working for the Lord!

Franklin (caretaker of the school) and Christian working hard

working hard to plan the Bible classes that take place during the campaign.

playing a fun/silly game at youth group Thurs night! Beth Ann being a GREAT sport....as always!!!

some girl chat time by the pool.....notice Savanna over to the left is braiding Revonda's hair.  So Revonda has limited head movement in this picture (thus so little of her head is showing!)

Need some help!

okay so it's come to my attention that the blog address was put in the Goodwood Church's bulletin incorrectly.  The Goodwood folks would love to have messages from home as well.
I have no contact info for anyone at Goodwood here at my house and will not have the modem with me at the hotel with the group today.
Is there anyone out there that can help me out and get a message to some folks at Goodwood that can pass the blog address along.....

Laura or Phil perhaps??  or if you are reading this and know someone that worships with that congregation....please help!!

These team members love your messages of encouragement...whether they know you or not.  They also love hearing messages from home (don't worry you can't leave too many and completely embarrass your kid or loved one...they are all appreciated).


Thank you so much!!!

a few pictures

I'm attempting to load some pictures, but wow is it challenging!!  I'll keep trying as I have time though so hopefully more of you can spot your loved ones!!  By the way, if you don't know, you should be able to click on the pictures and make them larger.  If you want to spot more gringos you'll especially have to in the first picture!!

This was before more came in tonight at our 'campaign'.  It was a great crowd!!!  

Can't wait to see tonight and tomorrow!!

Friends and brothers.  These two hit if off 3 years ago....and nothing has changed!

It's great to see them together again!

At 'the wall' We've joked about having t-shirts made up or to signify 

"I've been to the wall...and survived"

 Notice the angle at which everyone working on 'the wall' must stand while working.  Now imagine those stones wet with the soapy water you are using to scrub it with....this is the first crew that headed to the wall the first day.   The wall is now clean and pink!!  

My heart is filled with Joy from the Lord

In addition to all the many directions on projects we went today, we also divided up and worshipped with 3 different congregations.  

My family worshipped with the congregation at Limonal. We were, as always, was asked to lead some songs in English as well.  'Pablo' and I happened to have their youth group song sheets with us which includes a lot of songs in English and Spanish.  So he and Kevin used that to lead songs so we could all sing in our own language, but together. It was beautiful.  Just before the sermon 'Pablo'  lead "I love you with the Love of the Lord"  and switched to Spanish for the 3 time through and the praise lifted up in that building gave us all chills I think.  It was amazing!!  

We had some share some wonderful experiences tonight at our time together as a team after dinner and worship.  

Barbara and Jennifer both talked and shared about their experiences out distributing food to the families served by Little Hands Big Hearts and how amazing of an experience that was for them.

Beth Ann spoke of how amazing it was to get to hold a precious little baby tonight at church and snuggle with her and just enjoy spending time with the people.  

It was great to hear the experiences so many have had all over Trujillo!!

So far no one is sick just so you know. We are all trucking along and doing great!!  

Well, all but our fearless amazing leader, Emilson....the Honduran administrator at the school.  He's not feeling well at all.  So please if you will be in prayer for him!!  

We thank you for your prayers and love the comments.  If anyone from Kansas, Louisiana, etc are reading....please please we (And your loved ones) welcome you comments!!     

We all love reading them all so we thank you for them.  It's a such fun to share with everyone the messages of encouragement.  From those they know and those they don't....so Washington folks, etc....

You know how we love comments and getting messages.  It's fun for all at night to listen to them!

we're famous

So it's been an adventurous day for some.   There is no gas in the gas station in town.  Another gas station had gas, but they were closed til 2:00 for siesta.  So heading up the mountain after a HARD day of work (they did a fabulous job!!)  the van ran out of gas.  So it had to be pulled to the side of the road, and that group had to walk the rest of the way up.

I was told by my good friend here, Eda, that her Mom and another lady from the congregation made donuts for the crew that was working on the wall efforts and children's classroom floor efforts at their congregation!!  So kind.  They wanted a way to thank the group.  One lady who made the donuts, her grown daughters gathered last week to make and then sell on the streets 100 tamales.  They were able to sell them all which raised enough money for their mother to have money to live on for a little over a week.  She shared some of that with the group today by using her pantry supplies to make donuts!!
Of course, they don't realize that yet (I've not seen that crew yet this afternoon to tell them), but she returned their sacrifice with one of her own.

Then on our way to our home for lunch the radio was on and we heard something about "Escuela Cristiana"  (The Christian School) so we turned up the radio.  It was an interview with our friend Alfonso about his work and effort to get the beach cleaned up. The announcer was saying telling the citizens of Trujillo that foreigners came in and worked together with Hondurans to clean an area of the beach yesterday, that they should now do it for themselves.  Then Alfonso answered questions about the work and what we all did yesterday and what it means going forward for the citizens of Trujillo.  He did a super job!!

We're FAMOUS!!

I can tell you that the crew with me today working on the sponsor project were great.  I had Jessica P, Jessica K., Leigh, and Beth Ann....and then my Mother and I.

I also know Yefrin and Maybelline said those with them visiting families and distributing food had a very good morning.  They had with them Tim, Christian, Jennifer, Barbara, and Katee Jo.  I've heard great things about their trip so I can't wait to hear from the group themselves.

Also at the school were Walter and his trusty assistant and translator Aaron!!  Wow....they worked!! They were working on figuring out the electrical challenges at the school and also where to put new fans that we bought and if we'd need more and also what all would be required to wire new ones, etc etc....
trusty Walter, he even rewired his hotel room last night to get lights working and such!!  Wow...what a skill to have!!

It's thus far been a great day!  The group has enjoyed lunch and a bit of a siesta (hopefully) and now will divide up amongst projects yet again.  They were able to get some gas from Yefrin to put in the van and will go fill up at the other gas station soon.

Thank you to those praying and thank you to those that shared their loved ones with us or made it possible for group members to be here!!

A quick overview of our Wed

A busy day is ahead.  Prayers are appreciate as we start into our busy busy part of the trip.
Just thought I'd let you know the things that will be happening today....quickly or I, myself, won't be ready and make it.

One group will be at the school helping with the Sponsor project..overseeing all the students painting pictures for their sponsors.

Another will be heading out with Yefrin here at Little Hands to visit the families they work with and help with their regular rice and beans delivery.

Another group will be heading to the school to look at the wiring and get started installing some new fans.

Another, is coming here to the Little Hands campus to start the clean up of the wall along the front road and prep it for painting.

Still another will be going to the church at Eduardo to start mixing concrete for the floor in their children's class area and also to start finishing the wall around the building for securities sake.

And the last group will head out to Honduras Aguan to the Mision del Caribe congregation to work on finishing their children's class area.  Which will involve both carpentry and concrete mixing work.

As you can see we are going in many different directions.  Our family along with our Honduran brothers and sisters have worked as best we can over the last week to prepare for this as much as possibly and do as much prep work as we knew to do.  As always there are always things we think of RIGHT NOW going into it that we overlooked.  So I ask that you pray for a smooth day with great attitudes, patience and love as we work together and maintain, as we always say, our "Rigid flexibility"
Because things will always come up and plans will always change.  Here in Honduras we can plan and plan and plan, and things will always change or not be done beforehand or whatnot.  So we always prepare everyone to be extremely flexible and expect the unexpected!  
Our prayer is that today goes as smooth as possible and when we gather back together today at lunch and then tonight at dinner, everyone is bubbling about the new things they discovered about themselves and the experiences they had today and that in some way they find a way to touch a life or make a new friend!!

We thank you for all of your messages and the love you send our way!!

(please excuse the typos...I'm typing fast)

tired...in a good way

Well....it's late.  And we are ALL tired!
The team made it to Trujillo exactly on time with no problems at all!
They unloaded, got settled in and we all headed to the school where the teachers and one of the teacher's wives had prepared a fantastic lunch for us of some typical Honduran foods.

Then we headed down to the beach along with students and teachers from the school and cleaned and cleaned.  We cleaned land owned by the municipality. they helped by hauling it all off.  The private land all around us we left with trash...in front of restaurants and such..  The goal of this program is to push the businesses into keeping their own property picked up as well.
The school decided to adopt one piece of property and they worked HARD on it today getting it looking great.  They will continue to go down and pick it up and work on it as time passes.
The push is to get the citizens to take ownership and take notice and care.
My family is now back to our house (on the opposite side of town) we left the group sorting through supplies and such before they headed to bed and after a wonderful devotional time together.   Off to bed now, work will start early in the morning.  We will be dividing in 6 different directions, I think it is, tomorrow.  Lots of good works going on.  Everyone is doing great!!!  We all appreciate your prayers and words of encouragement!!  More to come later.

They are here

UPDATE:  

EVERYONE is here with no problems...if you read the other post the bridge is now reopened (talk about an instant answered prayer!!).  The van will meet up with them along the way somewhere I think.

Everyone is safe & starting the next leg of the journey!!  My only concern with the bridge being closed was lack of bathrooms on the longer route with this size of a group.  So no worries there :-)  HOORAY!!!!

Answered prayers aplenty!!  It's a beautiful day in Honduras!!!

Oh and super cool....Irma (the maker of the crafts/baskets in previous post) showed up a while ago.  I had given her a part of a book of mine on crafts to make with palm leaves.  Sure enough she figured one out and came to show me.
She took a knife from my kitchen and chopped down a palm frond and started weaving and teaching me.
'Pablo' has the camera with him or I would have taken lots of pictures.  But it's a graduated set of 3 baskets hanging on the heart of the frond.  SOOO cool!! (Sara if you are by chance reading this it's the one on the cover of our books!)
I MIGHT could make one by myself now...well with a lot more practice. Pretty cool though for sure to see it happen so quickly from the tree to hanging on my door!!  AWESOME!!

Family members, friends, church family etc of Team Members

I'm sure your loved one has told most of you, but if not, they won't have internet access while they are here in Trujillo.
We will do our very best on this blog updating (just FYI our internet access isn't a constant either....so again...we'll do our best) and posting pictures.

We welcome you to leave comments for them and encouragement here and we'll read them to the team each night at our devotional time together!

This time tomorrow

I'll be scurrying about getting room assignments completed, etc.....

All Team Members are currently enroute from all their various locations; Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia and Kansas.

I've checked and all flights are on time which puts them arriving in Honduras within just a few minutes of each other.
Bruce, Julie and gang from Kansas have had a long night already. Their flight into Atlanta was delayed and they only got 2 hours sleep before getting up and meeting up with the rest of the team departing from Atlanta to board the flight for Honduras.
Hopefully they will get some good rest this evening where they are staying!  Hammocks are a plenty there along with the relaxing sound of ocean waves so hopefully it will help them recover before completing their journey to Trujillo in the morning!

I'll be surprised if any team members got a great night sleep last night.  At least for me, I've just come to terms with the fact that I will not sleep the night before I head to Honduras.  Excitement and last minute things to do always prevent sleep.

The 6-7 hour drive from the airport here is somewhat helpful, but not completely as you don't want to sleep and miss something and....well driving on Honduras highways is just a different experience altogether and doesn't really lend itself to lots of resting....at least for me.

All team members should arrive within about 20 min of each other to the airport here.   There they will be greeted my 'Pablo' and Emilson who are using the morning to tie up loose ends running errands before they (and the bus drivers) meet the team at the airport and begin another part of their journey.

They will travel halfway tonight so as not to be on the highways past dusk for safeties sake and make the rest of the journey tomorrow morning where will be waiting to greet them!

It's going to be a great trip!!

The sun is shining

('Pablo' and Jose working on getting Pablos trick kite in the air a few evenings ago)

Well the tropical storm has moved on and we are back to sunny and hot.

Today the city is recovering from the Carnival festivities yesterday. There are people out with rakes (yes really) raking the trash in the streets and everywhere!  It will be a long hard job for them, it's amazing the amount of trash everywhere!

The restaurants must have done very good business last night because they were all closed today.  Which means they were either out of food to serve or they were sleeping off the nights activities.  

We went from one place to another after worship only to find them all closed!

We finally found one place with the owner and some family members there. They didn't have any food on their menu available but said they'd be willing to prepare us a typical b'fast plate and promised it would be delicious.  Then she came out to take our drink orders

 "Juices or Cafe con leche" she offered.  "What type of Juice?"  we asked  

 She had to go check what might be left.  

Then came back and said "sorry we are actually all out of juice...only coffee and sodas"  

No problem...."what type of sodas?  Do you have banana?" the kids wanted to know.

"sorry I don't actually know what we have left, let me go see...."

"sorry.  We only have Coca Cola left...no other types" 

We just laughed with her and ordered 4 Cokes ('Fonso was with us) and 1 Coffee. 

But they were right....the food was DELICIOUS.

First they brought us some little 'pan de coco' rolls (coconut bread....really it's just like a dinner roll, but made with coconut milk so there is a hint of sweetness to it) with some peanut butter and some jelly in little bowls along with some pats of butter.  Even peanut butter and jelly can be made attractive on a plate with pretty little bowls!

On the menu for our thrown together meal:

grilled beef kabobs

guacamole (no doubt freshly made right then and OH so yummy!)

cheese slices (the cheese hmmm hard to explain,but often a side on a typical platter)

scrambled eggs

mantequilla (again sorry can't explain...but sooo good to dip your beef and tortillas in!)

freshly made tortillas

tomatoes

It was PERFECT!!  

Delicious and I didn't have to cook!!

We sat up high overlooking the bay and felt the breeze blowing off the ocean and enjoyed seeing the sun glistening on the water!!   It was a great way to spend some time together after worship.  Just relaxing and overlooking the wonder of God's creations!!  

(my wonderful husband doing one of his favorite things.....

he LOVES the beach and kites and the combination of the two especially!)

Prayer request

UPDATE:  Thank you to any of you who might have read this message and said a prayer.  He did a SUPER job.  God was with him!!  So so proud of my amazing husband and thankful for a God who listens and answers!

It's late Saturday night.  Tomorrow 'Pablo' is preaching......

Tomorrow 'Pablo' is preaching in SPANISH!!

So please if you will pray for him.  Pray for those listening to understand him and take something away from his message that they can use to grow as a Christian (or become one).   Please stop and just say a prayer if you will for him and for the congregation who will be hearing him!!!  I'm so proud of him and I know he'll do a great job.  he's sure put a lot of effort and heart into it!!


PS  if you are reading this blog and wonder why on earth I call my husband 'Pablo' and then you wonder if you are reading about the right person because well his name is nothing like that in our North American life.  Well true.  It's not.  But his first year coming here he didn't think on his feet quickly enough when asked his name to give the Spanish translation of his name.  All he was thinking is that there are parts of his name North American name that's not easily pronounced in the Spanish language because the sounds don't exist.
So instead he went with the translation of his middle name which he knew easily....'Pablo' and it stuck.  He soon realized the Spanish translation for his first name, but by then he was already 'Pablo' to friends, taxi drivers, etc  Then for the blog we like to not plaster our given names all over, just seems wiser.  So it works for that too.

Mangoes keep falling on my head

Okay perhaps really not on our heads (although it COULD happen), but all day long you hear loud BOOMs and BANGS where they are falling on the rooftops of the buildings here.   We have had fresh mangoes just about every day.  Several people have come and gotten bucketfuls.  The best ones are up in the tree though.  The ones that aren't over ripened and ready to fall.  So how do you get them down?  

Well one option that 'Pablo' thoroughly enjoys is 

you throw your machete up at them to knock them down.   Alfonso and 'Pablo' had a great time the other night doing this.  'Fonso' was able to take a bag full home with him and we have a bag full here.

 Another option is climb....high...like Julio is doing (in flip flops no less)! 

But no matter, there is always a tasty reward at the end of your efforts!  

That didn't cost $1.79 like mangoes did at Kroger just before we left.  

YUMMY!!  

(if only I had some jelly canning jars to make some mango jelly that I could carry home....sigh)

oh and not to rub it in any more or anything, but yesterday for lunch we had bananas grown right here on the the property, there are also papayas, icacos, and every day the first week we were here someone was kind enough to chop down a fresh coconut for John Mark to drink the milk from.  

He loves fresh coconut milk!  

Tropical Storm Alex

Tropical Storm Alex seems to have moved on past Trujillo and is moving more Westward. We have had a lot of rain here.  It rained most of yesterday and poured all night last night and has done that several nights this past week.
Yesterday the plan in the city had been to postpone Carnival until next weekend because of it.  But today it's moved on west and the rain has stopped and the sun is pushing through the clouds slowly and thankfully Carnival is back on.  I say thankfully, because it would have been a pain with our plans with the group to have Carnival here next weekend....meaning all of downtown is shutdown and extremely difficult to navigate through and such.

We appreciate the notes of concern we were sent, and just wanted everyone to know that we are fine here!