try to keep up

My, my, not since March have we blogged eh?  I do enjoy blogging, but clearly, when things get busy, this particular aspect of my job gets put to the side.  

And since March, we were extraordinarily busy.  Many of you know that we (Valerie and Felipe) are now empty nesters and thus are trying to help the mission in a new way this year, spending roughly half our time not in Honduras, but working in the US...visiting churches, coordinating containers, trying to promote Hill Climber Coffee more, attending a few conferences...you get the idea.  Lots of travel, lots of work...plus at least for me, I still have a lot of the work I do in Honduras that fortunately travels with me.  It was good to be in the USA for almost three months, but wow...it is different.  Good different, and also hard different, because that type of developmental work is often times with a long term lens.  We were very blessed to see doors open quickly and God bless us in our doubts, giving us some clear answers to why we were there.  We got funding for one of the clinic projects, in Las Botijas, that otherwise...would not have happened, well, for sure not the way it did, and some other things as well.  But overall, it is a different muscle, and we are learning still how to do things like this, especially long term and as the mission is growing.

The good thing is that everything in Honduras continues when we are gone.  We do miss our live/in person leadership devotionals every Monday, we try to do them via WhatsApp when we are not here, it certainly isn't the same, but beat the alternative.  

One of the things we are struggling with right now is sharing and getting people in the US involved with Hill Climber Coffee.  We have a great product, it is doing great things in Honduras, but the last part of our goals with it is that we could find enough homes/support for it in the US to actually make it grow and contribute financially.  If it doesn't...it is still an awesome way to support our communities and churches, but it certainly has the potential.

We have been blessed to see road work happen this year, like...concrete poured?...and more fruit trees, and a lot more overall you might have seen on social media.  

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The physical and spiritual work in Honduras is going great...but we are still praying, wrestling, and struggling with how to do the end product side yet.  Be praying for us, because it is quite the conundrum for us.  And if you have any advice, or glaring reasons why it isn't working, or we aren't working, on that front...please let us know!  It feels like we are doing things well...but maybe also like there is some glaring issue we aren't able to see, a blind spot if you will.

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We are excited to see more groups here this year.  Amazing what more we can do with people here to help.  

We have had three teams already this year, and did our first brigade in Guayavillas, a new church plant that Luis, a pastor who has come from the congregation in Cantarranas (and studied up North with LifeLine for quite a bit as well) has been taking on, with Jonathan's support.  Here is Luis in the picture starting the prayer before the brigade that day.  

We are hosting three more teams this summer, and two more in the fall...very exciting, and opening lots of doors to some familiar places we have not been for a while, and to some new places as well.  Things are still a little different compared to pre COVID with hosting teams (we are still masking here everywhere, and the hospital visits are still not possible) but for the most part there is a lot we can do and a lot of places to go.  We will be doing more clothing this year with groups, and a lot of construction in Las Botijas and Sampedrana, helping with the new clinics there, and the Milk Project ongoing construction specifically in Las Botijas.  

Overall...things are busy.  Too much going on, and plans for what might be going on, to go over here now, but I will try to keep up better on this great platform to go more in depth than we can elsewhere.  Got something you have been wondering about but that I haven't addressed or mentioned?  Drop me a line!