So it’s been a little while since our last blog and we want to apologize. We wrote our last blog one month in to our move down here to Honduras, but now, at the end of our fifth month, we write our follow up. There’s been lots of reasons why we haven’t updated our blog, but only updated our facebook page, www.facebook.com/1step1day1mission, recently. Internet goes out here a lot, I mean a lot!, our computer crashed, we get busy, we get tired, and yes, sometimes we even get lazy. So we apologize to all of our supporters and prayer partners out there for not updating more often than we have.
We want to give you a recap of the last couple of months, but will do that over this week and next on 2 different blogs. We have had lots a good things happen over that time, some struggles also, some prayers answered and some that haven’t been,…yet. We have learned a lot, and still need to learn a lot more.
We have had periods of health, and some of injuries and sickness. But we are doing great, resting in God’s promises and His protection each day. We stand amazed most days at the beauty of God’s creation here and how fortunate and humbled we are to be able to take part of what He is doing here.
At last we wrote, we were staying at the Furrow’s house, who run the orphanage. We were there for the first two months or so living on the side of their house where their parents stay when they are in country. Once their parents came to visit, it was time for us to head out, and since our place was not finished yet, we made a quick move down to the volunteer house where short-term teams usually stay. We were there for about 2 weeks with our kids and with Cynthia’s parent there for a couple of days.
Once we got the floors poured in our place and metal bars on our windows, we quickly made the move up to our casa. Our first night, we didn’t even have a toilet functional yet, but we were that excited to get in, that we went ahead and jumped on the opportunity. Over the next month we were able to finish all the water, doors, screens over the windows, etc. It was a challenging, but fun process that definitely made our family closer, as we weren’t used to living together in such small areas. It was a lot of fun to be able to help the Honduran’s here with the construction and hand-mixing all the concrete for the floors and the porch.
The kids started going to the village school 2 mornings a week, which they love, and that has given me a unique opportunity to meet and hang out with all the kids form the village. When they are not at the village school, Cynthia has been busy leading them through homeschool. She would probably say it is still a work in progress, but I think she is doing awesome. The kids are learning, and most of the time there aren’t any tears or fighting.
Cynthia has also been helping lead Kinder, which is a preschool class on Tuesday and Thursday morning for all the preschool age kids here on the property. We have three orphan preschoolers, but a total of 7 preschool age kids here including all the volunteer families. She has been having a lot of fun using her work and college experiences over the past couple of years with the kids. Several of the orphaned have some delays, which of course is expected from their backgrounds, but already she is seeing improvements in their communication and behavior.
We started an afternoon “school” here at the orphanage for all the neighboring village elementary aged kids on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays. That has been real exciting have 50-55 kids here on our property that we get to teach and share with. One of the most exciting things for me is getting to lead the bible class on Tuesday afternoons. We mix in some worship music, some discussion together, of course I have a lot of help from my translator Doris, and read scripture about our amazing Savior, Jesus!
Cynthia’s sister, brother, and parents have all made it down at different times and they have all helped us in our transition a lot. Our kids have loved seeing people from the states come down to visit!
We have also been able as a family to go down to the mission hospital in Rio Viejo on Mondays to assist locals with their dental needs, mainly taking teeth out so far, but hopefully soon after getting some more supplies, we will be able to do fillings also.
We have also learned a lot from God through living here, through prayer time and reading His Word daily. I had started working through the New testament this year and its amazing how often through Paul’s, Peter’s, and John’s letters how they continually encourage us to love one another as brothers and sisters in Christ, to be gracious towards each other, to desire to serve each other, to be forgiving towards each other. At first when I’m reading it’s like alright I get it, lets move on to something else, but once you try to live it out, you realize it is a lot more difficult than you think. And when you are living in a community with different people from different backgrounds and different ages, you start to realize how important it is to be reminded about how we treat each other. Sharing each others burdens, forgiving, working so that you don’t become a burden to others, LOVING each other are very important not just for your relationships, but for bringing God glory in the way we live when outsiders look at us.
The one thing that we keep hearing over and over is keeping our eyes fixed upon Jesus. In the good times, praising Him and thanking Him, and in the sickness, the struggles and the frustrations, seeking Him and His guidance. Because if our eyes aren’t focused on Him, than it is easy to get off course, easier for those frustrations to grow and make us bitter, make us angry, but if our eyes are always on Him, than no matter good or bad, it helps us to stay on the course, on the path He has led us to.
We look forward to updating ya’ll some more next week with some of the things going on.
Thanks so much for your support and your prayers!
God bless
-Bakers
1step1day1mission 