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dream_of_sunlined_clouds
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Interests: Music, poetry, singing, God's grace, my friends, laughing, homestarrunner, computer games, my family, acting, goofing off, being crazy with my friends, dancing in the rain, thunderstorms, starry-starry nights, hugs, and growing up!!
Expertise: I am quite skilled in the art of making faces at people. Also in making little sense and eating large quantities of food.
Sometimes I like to mumble.
Message: message me
Website: visit my website
AIM:  trnslcntmst
MSN: swift_wolverine@hotmail.com
Member Since:
2/24/2005
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| This love is indescribable.
Too deep, too wide, too all encompassing to imagine.
It fills the universe to bursting, and then fills it some more.
It burns our hearts with its holy fire - holy, all consuming fire that cleanses, purifies.
This love is indescribable.
All the words in the world phrased in a million different ways could not describe it - they would be but a shadow of the true light of this love, they would be but a smidgen of dirt compared to the purity of this love, they would be but a drop in the ocean of this love.
Our God is love. And He is indescribable.
It's one of those days when I feel drunk off of His love, filled with the hope He's given me, bursting at the seams with His joy, and awestruck by His cleansing power. That He loves a wretch like me. The Great Physician. Jesus, lover of my soul. Lord, I love You. You are indescribable. | | |
| I wonder why it is so easy for me to care about what others think, and sometimes so hard for me to truly care about what God thinks. I wonder why imperfection is so hard to reconcile with; I wonder why different standards of life are so confusing and aggravating. Why is it so hard to be real and honest about who I am and what I stand for? I wonder why I don't know, for goodness sakes, I live with myself all the time.
Why is it so easy to love myself, but so hard to love others? Why is it so easy to mindlessly accept things when sometimes I know deep in my heart that they are not truly right? Why is peer pressure so easy to give into, and so hard to resist? God knows. God knows, and I sure as anything don't. Life is so confusing. | | |
| Today was a lazy day. the TORCH team that is with us now has only 10 people in it, and they are all pretty good builders. We went to Santa Ana today to build a single house. A single tall and smallish house, due to the fact that the house site was uber teensy. Everything on this house seemed to go good. The wood arrived in a timely fashion, we had all the tools we needed, yadda yadda, and all such stuff. We had a smaller crew than the norm, since Rayner was sick this morning, as well as Kale and Nolan. A lot of us weren't really needed, I felt like I was just getting in the way, and Karis felt sick as well, so after we had unloaded the wood we walked to Casa De Esperanza and chilled at the Tindall's house for a while. Chilled in this case meaning she slept and I read my Bible for a very needed bit. It's sometimes hard to get time away to spend time with God, and it was good to get some today. I fell asleep for a bit too - it felt really, seriously amazing. At noon, Matt came down to the house to ask if we wanted to go with the group and get papusas, and who says no to papusas? Definately not me. So we went and got papusas.
Not much to say about that, they were delish. After going back to the site again, and seeing that we still weren't really needed, Karis and I walked around Santa Ana for a bit, stopping at the Pulperia for ice cream (a strawberry frozen yogurt bar, yummy), and then walking to the bakery.
I got a donut there, and we had just walked out of the bakery when an old lady with some kind of grass or corn husks stuffed in her ears walked up to us.
"Mmm, food," she said, in Spanish of course, but to write all that out would be confusing.
After that she basically asked for my donut. I had just been thinking about how bad this donut would be for constipation (don't ask), so I gave it to her. She quite happily tottered off in the opposite direction, and Karis and I, with some laughter, continued in ours.
For some reason I started thinking about that verse somewhere in the Bible that talks about how God has planned out good works for us to do before the beginning of time, and I started to wonder, could even just giving a donut to a hungry old lady be one of those?
It really humbles me to think about it, how a cheap inexpensive donut might sometimes be the way to do God's will and show love to someone.
and then I started thinking about how the small things might sometimes be the biggest way of showing love. About how a single donut might be the only food that someone might get in a day. About how much I have, and how selfishly I've used it at times. About real, hardcore, nitty-gritty love, and how showing it lots of times requires giving up what I want. Anyways, the rest of the day: we went to the mall, and another intern named Rachel moved in with us. Not too much excitement. :] And now for the final adventure of the day: bed. Suh-weeet. | | |
| Happy Saturday!The past two days have been more slowish. Yesterday we went out in the morning to get the car started and go drop Karis, Russ, and Nolan off at Mas X Menos where they were going to meet the bus full of TORCH peeps.
That was the plan, anyways. And as it seems in our case, plans often go quite awry.
The galloper wouldn't start, AGAIN.
It made quite a few nice sputtering noises, and also a few noises I'm not sure a car is supposed to make, but beyond that refused to do anything.
After a bit of activity that mostly looked like: Nolan trying to figure out what the junk was the matter with the car now, someone calling Marc, and a bunch of inner hilarity on my part, the interns decided to catch a cab over to where they were supposed to be while Marc came to the inn to pick us up.
Alls well that ends well, I suppose, and good morning, Honduras. :]
So anyways, Marc picked us up, and we headed over to a random Dk'D where we picked up a lady who runs/helps out at a home for children who have HIV and AIDs (and her friend came too). From there we went to the warehouse where we got a bunch of children's clothing which we gave to her.
She was a cool lady, and kept trying to talk to me in Spanish, which I didn't understand a word of, of course. Blah, I really despise not being able to speak Spanish. Her friend at one point pointed to herself and said "Christiana," which means Christian, and then asked me if I was one too. I smiled and said yes. It's things like that that just make my day, things like that that remind me that Christ binds us together no matter what race, language, background, or any other differences we might have.
We dropped them off at their village, and then headed over to the dump to help a TORCH group hand out 250 food bags to the people who live in the dump. They had rice and beans and stuff like that in them, and they also gave them some water and clothes. It has been my third time to the dump, and I think I want to help more and more each time I go there.
One of my favorite
things that I got to do there was talk to the ladies and shake their
hands. They were so happy to get some food and clothings. Hopefully we
can bring them some shoes soon. Lots of the people there just had bags
tied around their feet for shoes.
God definitely opened some doors there, because we met this guy there who does dump feeds on Wednesdays and Fridays, and he knows a group who does feeds on Saturdays. It just happens that he's having a meeting really soon to try to coordinate all of the dump feeds so that the people can have a good meal almost every day. Pretty cool, eh? Yeah, I thought so too. God is so good.
After that we headed off to the fruit market to check out prices for future reference. It's so much cheaper than in the States, I bought a cabbage for 10 limperas, the equivalent of about 50 US cents. Marc bought some fresh mangoes, and we went back to the car and devoured them. Mangoes here are so good. I thought they were delish in the States - here, imagine mangoes 345348957314 million times better. That wasn't so descriptive, but true? Why, holy cows yes.
I saw some mangoes there that were the size of a cantaloupe. It was pretty crazy amazing.
I have a feeling we're going to be going there more often, a craving for fresh fruits and vegetables has lit my inner being.
That night a container filled up with medical supplies came in to the warehouse, and some of us went and helped unload it. It was pretty intense. Some TORCH people helped us unload it, but it was way past dark by the time we finished.
We went to Pizza Hut afterwards, and caught us a sweet pizza. We devoured our prey and went home.
Somehow I fell asleep on the couch, and woke up this morning feeling like some kind of evil train had trampled over me - with spikey wheels and hammers to the skull to boot.
My eyes felt like they had about a ton of sand in them. I ended up staying home and sleeping all morning till about 1. Rayner stayed too, she's had a sore throat and ouchness for the past day. Then Marc, Karis, and Nolan came back and we loaded up all of our loot that we had with us at the inn, and headed off to move to the manager of the inn's house. Someone else is staying in our apartments for the week, so the manager is letting us crash at his house for that time. His fam and him are gone for that time, so we have it all to ourselves.
His house is ginormous and beautiful.
Now I'm typing this and waiting for Karis and the other interns to get back from the mall with the best food in the whole world: gummies.
Well, they probably aren't the best thing to eat at the moment, but I am so thankful that God made them. So delish.
Amen.
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| An update? :]
Day 1: May 20
Flew all day. Arrived at
Casa De Esperanza at about 6ish, and got some of our things unloaded
in Marc and Terri's house. As supper was being made, the electricity
went out. We went and got some candles from the Childrens home, which
is a short walk away. After lighting those and getting supper done,
we all got together and prayed. Then we had a meeting about safety
and different aspects of what we're gonna do in Honduras.
It started raining about
halfway through our meeting, and we had to ajourn for a while to find
bowls and pots to catch the dripping from the leaks in the ceiling.
We couldn't talk for a while because the rain was so loud on the tin
roof. Even with all the commotion, it was very peaceful.
I think I'm in love.
Day 2: May 21
Today started out bright
and early. We left the house at 8 to go work and sort boxes and stuff
at the warehouse. We did some intense lifting and sorting, which was
fun. At about 12 we took a break and headed out to a gas station that
had a wendy's inside. I got this drink called Miranda, and it was
orange flavored, or naranja. There was also a banana flavored kind
that Keith got and he said it was really good. Mine was delish.
The sodas here aren't
nearly as sweet as the US ones, I like them a lot more. After that we
sorted more boxes and random labor, and then Marc came to the
warehouse for a bit. Kale, Keith, Rayner and I decided to go to
Mirador Oriente (a place with the Women's center that they're
building, and schools and houses they built) with him, and we got to
see a lot of the work that is being done there. After that we went
grocery shopping and headed home. We had grilled cheese and soup for
supper.
Day 3: May 22
Today has started out a
bit later than yesterday. We went to Church's (chicken place) and got
to check emails and stuff. The internet hadn't been working much at
home, so we went there. I ordered some chicken tenders and an ice
cream cone entirely in Spanish, which was cool. I think the lady
didn't understand me too well, but it's a start. After that we headed
to the airport to change some money. Then we headed over to Mirador
Oriente and gave school supplies to children. It was cool because
some of the congress members and the press was there, and they
decided to donate money or water there, and some stuff like that.
It's funny, the children and people call us 'gringos.' We stayed
there for a while and hung out with the people, then went home. I
made spaghetti for supper, and we had a sweet devo. When things get
less busy us girls are going to have a devo with Terri every day, and
then one at night with everyone. I really like being able to get into
the word and spend so much time with people who love God. Oh yeah,
today we got stopped by the policia for the second time in three
days. He wanted ALL of our ID's, and Terri had to threaten to call
the policia commissioner to get us out of a ticket. They actually
know him sorta. He gave them a 'get out of jail letter' just in case
they'd have any trouble with the police. I think I'm gonna get used
to this pretty fast, it's like no big thing to get stopped in the
Honduras. We're supposed to play stupid, because the police get
frustrated at the 'stupid gringos' and end up letting us go. I don't
think that'll be a problem, or I'll have to 'play stupid' in any way.
:]
Day 4: May 23
Today I got up at like 5
in the morning and headed out with Andrea and Kale at 6 to the
Women's center to do some work. Andrea and I shoveled some sand, and
man, I am out of shape. After thaw, Andrea and I went with Marc to
check out a housing site in Tegucigalpa. It's sad to see the living
conditions of a lot of the people. Lots of them are living in houses
that are worse than shacks, and when it rains all of their belongings
get wet. We didn't see any food in the lady's house, and Marc told us
after we dropped the lady off at work that she would probably buy
food with the money she got from working that day. I wonder what it'd
be like never knowing if I'd be able to get food or not in a day.
It's humbling and convicting.
After that Marc dropped us
off at the feeding center in Mirador Oriente, just down the hill from
the Women's center. We helped the women there feed the school
children lunch, and it was crazy because they didn't understand much
English at all. We had fun trying to talk with them. After that we
cleaned up and then the ladies gave us some of the leftovers from
lunch to eat: beans, rice, and goat cheese. It was really good.
Then we went back to the
Women's center And did some more work there until about 4. We found a
baby praying mantis and named it Ben Walker. One of the workers there
was telling us (in Spanish) something like it would bite us. The
conversation, when Marc came over, ended up on the subject of a cat
named 'perito' (puppy) and how it looked like Chinese food. I love
our coordinators, they're hilarious, and love God more than anything.
Sunday, June 1, 2008:
Yesterday the first Torch group arrived. There are 19 people here to
help us build houses and spread the Lord's love. We drove 3 hours to
San Pedro Sula yesterday to pick them up because the Tegucigalpa
airport was closed due to a plane crashing on the highway. Rayner,
Keith, Andrea and I got to know them a bit on the almost 6 hour bus
drive back home. Jenny's friend Twig (his real name is Nathan) from
Oklahoma City is in this group which is really cool. I love to see
his love for the Lord. We sang almost the whole way home, and I was
pretty hoarse by the time we got back home to Casa De. We got to meet
our new Torch interns that arrived at two in the morning on Saturday,
and they're pretty coolio. Claris and Nolan. Claris goes to Harding
and is friends with my brother Jon. Get Nolan together with the rest
of the guys on our team and Russ, the other intern, and things get
pretty hilarious. Last I saw them that night they were smearing
shaving cream on Russ's toes (since Russ had gone to bed a few hours
earlier) and having the greatest time ever. I like them.
Today we went to Church in
Sector Ocho. In the middle of the Lord's supper, Andrea fainted, and
there was a bit of a commotion with that. She's okay though, thank
the Lord. I have a feeling I'm going to pick up a bit of medical
knowledge, thanks to watching Marc, who is basically a pro at that
kind of stuff. The rest of the service went pretty good. We were
going to tear down the Church there after services so that we could
build them a new one before next Sunday, but there was some technical
stuff that had to be figured out before we did that. James, one of
the Torch peeps, was breakdancing for the children. After he was
done, there was this toddler who was imitating him for everyone, it
was so funny. We ate, Kale, Russ, Keith, and I went to Little Caesars
(mmmpizza) and then went to Villa de Angeles, where there is a bunch
of touristy stuff and shops. Did some shopping for Kale's B-day,
which is on Tuesday, and we got him a jersey, Rayner got him a black
leather bracelet that says Dios es grande (God is big) on it, and I
got him a cross necklace that 's made out of some sort of stone-ish
thing. We had supper at a fancy hotel, and Kale and Shelby and I fed
little tidbits to the hotel cats who were very ravenous. After that
we went to an old church and sang and had a devo. I felt so unfocused
and like I didn't really mean the words to the songs, so I prayed a
lot. Then we drove home and now I'm going to bed. Tomorrow starts
pretty early!
Thursday, June 12th:
Today was quite eventful. I'm kinda sad I haven't been able to blog lately, especially with everything that has been happening, but it has been so busy that it would take forever just to write down some of my thoughts and the events of the day.
This morning I got up at 6 and our devo was at 7. During the time I haven't blogged, we have moved into an apartment at the Humaya inn in Tegucigalpa. We've started having devos in the morning, which is such a great way to start the day.
So we had our devo up on the roof, and then headed out to San Miguel, a pretty bad part of town to build a house.
Now, San Miguel is up on the side of a mountain, and there weren't many roads close by, so we had to climb up a steep incline to get there. I was waay out of breath by the time I got up there, and we prepped the site for when the TORCH team arrived.
We didn't have any work to do, so Kale and Keith and Andrea and I sat around for a bit and talked about God and spiritual gifts. It a good talk.
The truck that was loaded up with all of the wood for the house arrived at location that was farther up the hill from the house site, so there was a bit more climbing. By now I was thinking "I'm going to be in amazing shape by the time I get back home," and huffing and puffings abounded.
Karis and Andrea and I made that trip a few more times carrying loads of wood, and finally all the wood was unloaded. The TORCH team arrived, and the work began!
I didn't really help with this house, but I hung around and got to know some of the TORCH peeps a bit more. There was a lot of people so I wasn't needed, and we are supposed to let them do the work.
I felt pretty lazy.
There was a girl there, about 13, who was watching her 3 year old sister. She told me they didn't have any food. She was so sweet. I wanted to give her money, but we went to bring some tools up the mountain, and by the time I got back she was gone. I hate stuff like that, because I get duped so easily and I never know if it's really the loving thing to do to give someone money if they're just going to go spend it on drugs or something. So I felt really bad, and I think next time I'm just going to give it to the person, because Jesus said, "give to him who asks of you," and "store up for yourselves treasures in heaven." I'm just going to do what's right, and if they chose to do the wrong thing with it, then at least I still followed my Jesus.
Anyways, about halfway through the day we had to go down the mountain again to get some tools and bring them up. When we got to the bottom we decided to try to get up to the place that the wood truck had dropped the boards off at. Jen's van was full, so Russ, Nolan and I just jumped up on the side step up thinger and held onto the racks on the top. It was hardcore and hilarious.
After climbing up steep hills all day, my legs kept trembling and being wobblyish, which made it hard to hang on for a long time going up steep hills, but it was so much fun.
We couldn't find the place, so we finally just headed back to carry the tools up the mountain.
On the way back, I don't know what the Hondurans thought of us, but it was hilarious.
One guy (I think it was the only English phrase he knew) yelled after us, "I'M SORRY!" and as we passed another group of Hondurans, all we heard was an incredulous sounding, "wow."
At the end of the day after the TORCH group got done with the house Steve and I carried the last of the tools back up to the very top of the hill where the truck had dropped off the wood.
Karis, Russ, Steve, and I hung around at the top of the hill for a while waiting for Nolan to come pick us up.
After a while we started to get nervous, because we were in a really bad part of town and the sun was setting. When the sun sets things get like ten times more dangerous because a lot of the men get home from work and get drunk. And lots of them don't like gringos. No bueno for us, huh?
So after talking a while about what in the world we were gonna do, we grabbed whatever tools we could carry (the most expensive ones, definately) and headed up the hill, hoping we could get to a safer part of town before darkness fell.
After we had walked for a bit we caught a cab for a few minutes and then ran into Nolan at the bottom of a hill where the galloper had broken down (the battery was drained hardcore). The cab driver tried to jumpstart us, but the car wouldn't start, and after a while he left, telling us that the car wouldn't start unless we could push start it.
Push starting the car was definitely going to be rough, as the galloper was parked uphill on an incline with another car parked behind it.
On our first try we almost got smashed between the galloper and the car behind it, and just as we were about to give it another try, two mormon missionaries that Steve had talked to and told "Dios le bendiga (God bless you)" to earlier in the day walked up.
Sometimes I wonder if angels can ever pose as mormon missionaries, because man, it was such a Godsend.
Anyways, they and some other Honduras helped push us up the hill and get a running start.
The galloper refused to start.
So we hailed another taxicab, hauled out the jumper cables again, and got some more juice.
The galloper finally sputtered and turned over. We paid the cab guy, thanked the people who helped us, and headed out of the bad part of town!
Or so we thought.
We got to Centro (another horribly bad part of town not even miles away from San Miguel) before the galloper decided to die on us again.
On a one way road.
With us turned in the wrong direction on the one way road, stopped at an angle which almost completely blocked the road.
With no way on God's green earth to start the galloper again.
Needless to say we freaked out a little bit at this point.
Nolan, Russ, and Steve finally got the car pushed into a parking position by the side of the road, as traffic dodging us decided they didn't want to wait for us to get moved and surged over the sidewalk behind us. I love Hondo driving, it is one of the most singularily hilarious things in the world.
We walked to the Dk'D (an offshoot of Dunkin Donuts in Honduras) that was on the corner and called Marc and bought some donuts and smoothies.
It was about 6:30 at night by now and we were ravenous. The lady working there was really nice and helped us out a bit.
The security guard that guarded the place helped us out a bit and watched the galloper and Russ and Nolan (who stayed outside) to make sure they were okay.
We gave him some cola and donut, which I think he liked.
Marc finally arrived at around 7 with Milton and a new car battery, and we quickly got outta there.
We dropped Milton off at his house and ate mimosa fruit and listened to music and Nolan accidentally hit some random cab driver with a mimosa seed, the mimosa seeds a pretty gigantic.
It was pretty funny.
So we got home and Rayner had made some luscious spagetti, and then we just chilled.
God is good, and it was a great day. I feel like He's really teaching me to trust Him more lately, even when situations are bad and I don't really see a logical way out.
This verse has really been on my heart lately:
"Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight."
That blows my mind. We serve an awesome God.
I'm gonna sleep way good tonight.
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