Guess Who's Back, Back Again!

Good morning! We have made it! It's hard to believe that another year has gone by and we are back in Honduras. Many of the advance team work up early yesterday morning to begin our travels to Honduras. Tricky and I got up around 3AM, met up with Catie and Hannah 3:30-4:00 and began our drive to Pittsburgh Airport. On the drive to the airport we hit a few road blocks: construction and Tricky missing exits, but nothing to worry about Tricky simply crossed the grass area in the middle of the road. I think it gave Hannah a heart attack when he did that, haha!

Bags ready to go!

3am Selfie

Our first plane took off at 7:15 toward Atlanta. Then from Atlanta we flew into Tegucigalpa. We have a total of about 17 people who arrived on the advanced team. After getting moved into our temporary rooms we were able to get the bank envelopes and the Barnabas notes all set up for when the full team arrives on July 2nd.

Katie and Hannah

Kentucky Team

Tricky gave a short devo about lying. He of course included his grandkids in the story. Good news, we know that Braxton listens to Larry's sermons on Sunday's!

The team was very tired and I think we were all in bed by about 8:30! Today we are planning on building a house, from what I have heard we have ALOT of houses to build on this trip!

Hello Coffee!

Home away from home <3

I have tried for so long to get a picture of this sucker!

Changing Gears

I am sorry I have not been as faithful to posting this blog here in Costa Rica. It is definitely a different trip then Honduras. In many ways we have a lot more free time, fellowship time; however we have longer days (We leave around 7:30 and do not arrive back till 9:00-10:00) and only have internet back at the hotel. So today I am going to play a little catch up and I will tell you about Wednesday and Thursday

Each day we have followed the same schedule. I did switch it up slightly on Wednesday because I decided to go door knocking instead of to the VBS. Wednesday was an amazing day Cristian filled the baptistry because he had faith that we would need it. Although we did not use it that day we have had a women with interest, I am continuing to pray for God to break her heart and give her life over to God.

In devo today Diane talked about Women's Role in the church. She used adult coloring pages in her lesson. As she spoke and discussed things we all were coloring these pages. At the end of the lesson she said this: "When you began there were only lines, these lines are the men, they are the structure. The frame around the picture is God he keeps everything together. Finally you added the color to the picture, women are the color the are creative and add life.

Door knocking in the rain.

 Delicious bread!

Thursday was our final day at the Purral church. It was a hard thing to say goodbye to these people that everyone has grown so close to.

Diane had planned a wonderful thing for the women's class Thursday. I started the class out by leading the song "Make Me A Servant" and Diane discussed the verse Matthew 20:26-28.

26 Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and 27 whoever wants to be first must be your slave- 28 just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many. 

With all of that in mind and all the serving that the women of the church in Purral had done for us we wanted to take some time to serve them, so we gave them a Spa Day. This by far is one of my favorite things that we do on trips like this.

In our stations we had the following things:

• Brown Sugar Foot Scrub
• Rince/Massage Foot Gel
• Hand/Neck/Back Massages
• Manicure/Pedicure 

To end we had this poem read:

 My Costa Rican parents.

Louise and Maria

I was going to write about Friday as well but the internet is not cooperating. I will update more hopefully tonight or in the morning. 

A Day Less

The days in Costa Rica are very similar. Each day we have the same basic activities. Here is my basic schedule:

5:30 - Breakfast at Dennys

I stole this picture from Patty's blog, this is one of the choices we have for our breakfast each morning. 

Two parrots sitting outside yesterday morning. 

7:30 - Load the buses to leave for the church

8:30 - Devo at church

9:00-11:30 - Women's Bible Study (the men also meet at this time)

12:00 - Lunch

The food here is great and then we also have a great amount of servants who do the dishes after we eat!

12:45-4:00 - We break off into three groups

• VBS group at the local orphanage 
• Painting crew at the local orphanage
• Door Knocking crew

 Practicing for the VBS skits

Getting the juice bags ready for VBS

5:00 - Dinner

6:30-8:00 - Gospel meeting 

Tim and Chase are an excellent speaking team. They swap back and forth between who is doing the Spanish and English, which is very difficult to do!

9:00 - Arrive back at the hotel and goto bed

I wish I had more pictures to share with you but sadly we are not able to take pictures of the kids at the orphanage because it is not safe for the kids pictures to be posted. I titled my blog today a day less because each day Christian, a member of the church here, reminds us that when the day ends it is a day less that we all have to serve Him. We are a day closer each day to going home and we are a day less to have an opportunity to bring more people to Christ. Don't waste any of the time that you are given. 

Shift in Work

Costa Rica is a very different trip then Honduras. We have a lot less "free" time so I don't promise a post every night but I will do my best to keep you all up to date. We are staying in the Best Western Irazu, which is totally different than when we were in Honduras. Here is Costa Rica we are going to be doing a lot more work with the church. We are having a gospel meeting each night, will be doing a lot of door knocking, and VBS. 

Church Service

Door Knocking

Climbing this hill is slightly easier then climbing the hills in Mololoa.

I will update more if I can later but right now I don't really have time. 

Satan Is Defeated!

The time had to come eventually that the Honduras portion of the trip would end and we would head off to our work in Costa Rica. I am very excited and ready for the work in Costa Rica but my heart will always be in Honduras, it is never easy leaving. Knowing I was going to Costa Rica made it slightly more bearable then in past years though! I am super tired so I am simply going to post some pictures with captions for this post, would love to hear from all of you!

We put up a sign at the schools we had build. 

The sign says the future starts here. 

My nieces and I. 

Scott and I

Tricky and I

After going to put the sign up we went back to the Jesus statue for the afternoon. The team broke off into groups of 7-10 people and we had some reflection time to really think about the things that have been seen, been done, etc throughout the last two weeks. 

Back at Villa Gracia we ended our trip in the most amazing way! Angela, Parker, Kassidy, and Molly made the decision to dedicate their lives to God. It was the perfect way to end this chapter of the trip and I could not be more excited for them to start their new Christian walk with God. Satan was surely defeated this day!

 Goodbye Honduras:

Being that it is the 4th of July we paid tribute by singing on the bus to the airport. 

I somehow managed to be one of the lucky ones that was upgraded to first class. 

I was given this very tasty "snack" as they called it. It is a crape filled with chicken and ricotta cheese. It was very good! I may have to start flying first class more often, haha!

Welcome to Costa Rica!

Roommates! 

I will be rooming with Cassidy and Sarah while in Costa Rica.

We are staying a a Best Western hotel.

We found this wonderful little place to eat just down the road from the hotel. 

It is great eating with my adopted mom and dad down here. We don't often get

to have family meals. :)