Stormy Evening

The other evening before it rained the sky looked really perculiar, so I got out my camera a took a picture of it just because I thought it looked weird. You can see the neighbor's window in the picture too.

Holiday Baking

Sugar cookies! Hannah put on the "pinkles" for us.

Mom convinced dad to buy some cherries and already shredded and sweetend coconut so we could make coconut macaroons!
And someone brought us some canned pumpkin to make pies with!

We had plenty of treats for Thanksgiving and Christmas. (Don't worry Grandmommy! :D )

Chocolate Experiments

Someone kindly sent us some chocolate right before Thanksgiving and ever since I have been experimenting and trying out new recipes. 'Smores and more! YUMMY!

Dad has also been experimenting with chocolate. He has been fermenting, toasting, winnowing, grinding and melting his own cacao beans. He finished his second batch. It was fine at first, but after he remelted it, he tempered it wrong. End result: "Frosted" chocolate kisses! (the chocolate bloomed)

pretty, aren't they?

Sunday Afternoon Ministry

Shanell Martin, April (my sister) and I often go visiting together on Sunday afternons.

Most recently, we visited Mirian, a young woman who is dying of cervical cancer. I felt led to give her a sweater of mine, as I have 3 or 4. It was a cold, rainy day and she had no sweater on when we arrived. She was so happy and pleased with it. We sang a few songs for her and asked her daughters to join us singing too. It was a very nice visit.

Carla and Dilcia, her two daughters. (she also has sons)

That same day, we stopped by to see Yanori, a young teenager who had decided to follow Jesus, but has changed her mind since and is now wandering after the world and it's alluring disasters.

Yanori's brother, Kerin, is a different story. It looks as though he has decided to follow Jesus-- no turning back! Praise The Lord! :) Kerin is taking classes at the community center and is one of our best students as well as one of our biggest pancake eaters. :p

We also visited Rosa, a young woman with high blood pressure. She was snuggled into the hammock in their living room, resting and keeping warm.

We sang some songs for her too and even sang one in English!! We were singing, "I've Got The Joy, Joy, Joy, Joy Down In My Heart..." and we just HAD to sing the verse in English that goes, "I've got the wonderful love of my Blessed Redeemer way down in the depths of my heart..." It must have sounded hilariously funny to them, but we enjoyed it!

Romelia, a young teenager who recently accepted Christ who is Rosa's neice.

Julissa is also Rosa's neice. In this picture she has her hair twisted up in rags to curl it.

To end our day of visiting, we walked home in the rain and got soaked! Well, almost. There were a few dry spots! :) On the way back to Shanell's house, April and Shanell jumped into a mud puddle just for the kicks. They will have a fit when they see this picture on here! :D

We picked some tangerines from the Martins tree before going inside for some hot chocolate. :p After warming up and drying out a little, April and I headed home. :D :) Here in Honduras, away from high-tech devices, we teenagers must resort to jumping in mud puddles in order to goof off. :p BTW, just becuase I am not in this picture does not mean that I do not find a form of "release" as well. The next Sunday we went visiting together, I was hanging by my knees from the Martins tangerine tree! :p (lucky for me, however, no one had a camera) ;)

Damaris

I have recently made friends with a young girl, Damaris. She is 16 years old. Her husband's name is Rene and he is 30-ish. Their baby girl's name is Raquel (Rachel). She is 1 year old and has just started walking.

This is her younger brother, Eder.

(In an effort to get to know her better) Damaris and I color together each time she visits. We ended up with so many drawings that we started taping them up on the wall! (She visited me every night for a month straight!)

We soon filled this wall and started on the next! :)

We have around 3-4 walls worth of drawings! We joke that after wallpapering the walls, we will start on the ceiling.

Damaris has gotten quite good at coloring. The pumpkin-like squash they have here is green, so when she asked why mine was orange, I explained that in the USA we have orange squash. The next one she colored was orange (below) and my next one was green! :)

I LOVE Raquelita!!! She is sooooooo adorable!!! :D

I Finally Figured It Out!! :p

No, it didn't take me this long to figure out how to blog. I have been busy creating and updating blogs for my family as well as updating the website. And actually, I have been so busy with the work around the house here, that I haven't even updated the website or the family blogs recently! So, anyhow, I will try my best to upload some photos of what I have been doin around here. :)