Buena Vista

My arrival at Buena Vista on Monday, my home for the next five months, was a celebration of more than merely seeing the place I have waited so long to see... it was a breath of tranquility after a long and curvy, jouncy and wild ride from Tegucigalpa past bony animals and over pot-holed roads, along with two clutch starts due to battery failure, an empty stomach, and a parched throat from a mere cup-and-a-half of water in some twelve hours.

My journal entry last night said dia quatro at the top of it--so yes, now that I am on my third full day here at the school, I feel as if I can tell a little.

Buena Vista is beautiful indeed and as was told me from the beginning, is set in a little valley surrounded by grand green hills. Yes, of course showers are cold. No, we do not have electricity. Yes, we are on winter vacation until February and I therefore have a little more of a chance at working out the Spanish chatter of the few staff around me before my English classes begin.

It is quiet here, oh so quiet, fifteen minutes away from the bustling little village of El Suyutal, and therefore protected from all but the braying of donkeys and the crowing of roosters from various places around campus. The slower-paced Honduran lifestyle has my eyebrow quizzically angled at one moment and my heart leaping in delight at another... everything is all so new.

This evening five of us trooped out to the village for an evening prayer meeting where I was once again reminded of how American I am. I have taken so much for granted. Here our church is a roof with three walls, a cement-pad floot. But truly, the hearts and hands are so warm, even to a tall white girl who stumbles so badly when asked where she is from that she says, "I am Vermont." And then I have so often taken for granted the kinship of a conversation where every detail is understood, at least in word. This evening I stood in the center of a jolly group of church folks, smiling and nodding at all the appropriate places and catching the general drift...but I must remember that it has only been five days...

Oh, there is so much to say... about new friends, about our dogs and cats and parrots, about lonliness, about mealtimes and cooking, about the rats in the storeroom, about hikes, about lesson plans... But oh, the time is short. Someday too, pictures will be coming, friends.

I continue to be amazed at how God is blessing and how I have the assurance of His strength. Each day I am reminded that I am not here of my own accord, but that He has placed me here, and that it with His power that I will do the task before me. It is enough--or rather, the crowning cap on my joy.

Another P.S.

For those of you who faithful friends who watch out for my very blotchy posting record, I will continue to use this blog for my five months in Honduras--that is, when the time and internet connections allow.

Some choose to begin a new blog to chronicle their missionary experiences, and yet I believe that to separate this journey from the tale of my life would be to sever it from all that has led up to it and leave it dangling, cold and vulnerable, for the owls to snatch.

Exquisitely Guided and a Winged Horse

It is hard to believe that I have spent the last fifteen-and-a-half years in school, and nearly as difficult to realize that the thirty-first half will be completed as soon as I turn in one last, finished assignment this morning.

And that will be it for now, for the next five months, unless one counts a sixteen hour drive home in the snow as the final test of the semester.

A month from today I board my first commercial flight as I leave Boston, MA for Honduras, flying to a land of Spanish and guava fruit and scanty communication, and beginning my post-school life before my schooling itself is finished. Am I frightened to embark thus? Well, perhaps, but only as jittery as any one might be while on a runaway horse that has promised not to kill you and yet is racing at full speed toward a cliff. I have chosen to believe that the Horse has wings.

A Question

Does God grow us in straight line, ever onward toward one end like the sleet pelting against ones nose and backback,

or does He nurture us more in a circling pattern like the first snow flakes of the season tickling the tree branches, teaching us to revisit old thoughts in a new manner and learn anew from past experiences,

or does He gently mist His will and His purity upon us like an autumn rain, only in such amounts that we will be able to bear it,

or does there have to be one answer?

Sometimes I am as confused as the weather was today.

Out the Window

If she meets you in the bathroom

with a sad look on her face,

and a yellow shoe in each hand

dangling from a long white lace,

And she tells you that she's washed them

but the stain can still be seen

and they're really, really wet now,

and she can't remove her screen,

Then open up your window, friend,

And let the shoes hang out,

In company of the golden tree,

And the wind all whistling about.

If she takes the long thin laces white

And ties them in knot

And, coolly, on the hinges there,

she drops those shoes she bought,

And she tells you that she'll leave them there

a-drying in the sun,

until no water droplets drip,

from soles or yellow tongues,

Then open up your window, friend,

and let the shoes hang out,

in the company of the golden tree

and the wind all whistling about.