We are still struggling through the week without PACEs for my 2nd graders. Hopefully soon! I had a very rough day with them yesterday. Not sure what it was....just felt like I was that teacher from the Charlie Brown show "blah blah blah blah blah" and no one was listening or following anything I said. Today was a good day! The morning actually went by quickly for me.

One of my students, Alejandro, who has had behavior problems in the past, had a pretty good day today. I have figured out part of the problem with Alejandro is that he is extremely intelligent. That coupled with being a 2nd grade boy who can't sit still, and when he gets bored he is all over the place.

Yesterday I was working on following directions, and at the same time we learned new English words. I wrote several sentances on the board and asked the children to draw the picture.

"The boy has black hair. He is wearing green pants and a blue shirt. He has brown shoes." While I am helping the other children with "Miss, what is hair?" and "What is shirt?"....Alejandro already has his boy drawn and colored correctly and has drawn a speech bubble and written inside "I am bored" ha ha ha! I saw his picture and said honey I know you are bored, just hang with me and we will get through this week until our PACEs come! I think once we get the work that he can do and work ahead when needed, it will be better for all of us!

Today we were reviewing the questions of "How old are you?" and "How are you?" When I asked how old are you, the first answer I got today was "7, thank you" LOL! A combination of the two! I got tickled, but thought it was such a sweet answer! We practiced both questions today and the kids are getting better with understanding them! The older kids still ask "how many years do you have?" I had 4th grade girls asking me that today, so hopefully my 2nd graders will learn the correct question.

Well I am about the last person here at the school, so I am about to head out and catch a taxi to go home. Lance leaves for the U.S. tomorrow for almost 3 months, so he and Annette went to Teguc this afternoon to spend some time alone, away from the pull of the school and demands of life in Comayagua. Please pray for them both as they spend these months apart.

The first week of school is over! Praise the Lord we all survived! Now if we could only get our PACEs! Annette learned last week that Drew, the person who is in charge of the warehouse in Tegucigalpa where our PACEs are ordered from, is in the U.S. and for some reason they cannot do anything without him. AND he is not scheduled to return until some time the first week of March. WHAT! This is a disaster for our kids! So Annette spent a lot of time on the phone and sending emails, and finally as of Thursday afternoon our order has been approved by Drew and the go ahead has been given by him to pull our order from the warehouse. But still it will probably be the end of the coming week before we receive our PACEs.

We will all be thankful when they arrive. Teachers as well as the students!

Friday my class was watching a muppet movie to fill in some time and they were getting noisy and not watching the movie, so I paused it and said do you guys want to watch this movie....and to my surprise many of them said "NO! We want to do work" Oh my, please watch the movie, I don't have any work!

Well I now have a lot of pages of worksheets that I asked Rosibell to copy for me from some activity books I found in the office, and so I will have worksheets for us to do next week. That will hopefully help fill the days!

Once again I have a funny story. I have a feeling I will have a lot of these in the days to come!

The children always learn certain phrases in English. Just like we learn them in Spanish. Like I can say "Buenas Dias" in the morning to the parents as they drop off their children...but if we get much deeper than that I am floundering for words. So all the children know that if you say "How are you?" they respond "Fine, thank you." Well they do a funny thing when asking your age...they will say "How many years do you have". So Friday morning we were doing some acting things out. Meeting people for the first time, introducing yourself, greetings, those type of things, in English. So I told them instead of asking "how many years do you have?" you should say "How old are you?"...to which they all replied "Fine, thank you." NO no no....like cuanto annos....you say "How old are you?" ahhh some of them finally got it and told me 7 or 8. Then to confuse things more....I wanted them to learn the difference between the two questions. But they are having a little trouble. So by the time they left Friday, we were saying "How old are you? Fine, thank you" And "How are you? 7"

I see we will need to work on this! It is fun!!!

Last week I said a couple of things to one of the boys in Spanish...because I didn't know if he understood what I was saying to him in English and he thought it was sooo funny that I spoke Spanish. He just giggled and giggled! He is my problem child....so I am working hard to connect with him and get him to cooperate.

I am excited about the days ahead with these kids. But it is a LOT of work! Please pray for me to have patience and wisdom. (Next time you see Wes at church you can ask him about me dragging the boy to the office! That is Alejandro!) Please pray for all my kids, but pray specifically for Alejandro and for his behavior and learning ability, and my Patience!

It is fun having Jim and Wes here! It is a different experience for me....being here already and having a team from Restoration to come. A good experience! I am excited about this year!

Love you all!

First Day of School! I survived and my 2nd grade students survived! I was excited and nervous this morning. We do not have our PACEs yet, so trying to come up with lessons and activities for the students is challenging. We made it through today reviewing the alphabet and numbers, speaking numbers in English, speaking and pronouncing the English alphabet and writing the letters and numbers. These children can speak English, but some not much and some very well, so it is a challenge. But when they are in English class they are supposed to speak English. I have 17 students, although I only had 15 in my class today. But that was plenty! Of course I have a couple of boys who are going to be trouble...and a couple kids who are going to be a challenge as they are obviously below the learning curve and I have some who are way beyond the average 2nd grader. My hands will be full...but gladly so!

It was also good to see many of the older students who I worked with last year. I got to hear about their vacation adventures during the last two months of being out of school. Today we only had a half-day of school, but the rest of the days, I will be in the Learning Center with the 3rd through high school age kids in the afternoons.

I had a funny thing happen today in class. We had practiced counting, and some of the kids were struggling with the numbers...I didn't know if it was just English they were struggling with or if they would also have trouble with writing and recognizing the numbers. So after speaking the numbers, I asked all the children to write the numbers. I had several of them coming to me with their paper showing me they had written their name. I said to one little girl "Write your numbers to ten"...she wrote Sofia Sofia Sofia Sofia Sofia Sofia Sofia Sofia Sofia Sofia...her name 10 times! With that it finally clicked with me they were not writing numbers they were writing their name....so I stopped them all and we talked about the word number...what is a number.....finally the lights all flashed on in their little eyes and they got what I asking from them. It was a learning experience for me!

I was running out of things to do today so I was happy when it was 12:00 and time to end the day. So I worked this afternoon on some activities for tomorrow that will hopefully fill the day with fun! Please keep me in your prayers as well as the children and teachers, and Lance and Annette who have a large responsibility with the school and teachers!

A lot has happened since I last posted....

We moved the refrigerator and stove into the cute blue house...the couple, Rickie and Lucy, arrived in Honduras. The plan was that they would live in this house until they return to the U.S. on May 15, and then I would move in. Well, while we looked and made a decision about the house, we had driven by it at different times of the day and night and it always seemed peaceful. We even stopped and spoke to some of the neighbors and got all good reports. If we didn't know better we would think the owner had bribed everyone on the block to be on their best behavior until the missionaries arrived from San Antonio. They day they flew in, we pulled up to the house and there were 3 drunk men sitting on the sidewalk under the kitchen window singing. Oh great, is this their welcoming committee? It has continued to get worse while they have been there. Men looking in the kitchen window, telling Lucy she is "bonita" (pretty), and now there are drugs involved with some of the people outside. It is a pretty rough block. So we are moving them into an apt. which is right across the street from the new house that Lance and Annette are moving into. These apts. are very nice, pretty new, have closets and cabinets, and they will be very safe! I will continue to be on the lookout for a house to rent, but it won't be needed until sometime in May. So.... until then I will be with Annette and Lance at their new house.

(I would move into the apts. but there is no place for Samson and it is a little high for my price range - but God will provide a place for me and Samson that is safe!)

I was in a training last week for School of Tomorow (the curriculum we use at the school). It was a good experience.

Last Thursday a team come from San Antonio and we had a teacher retreat at a campground about halfway between here and Tegucigalpa. It was all day Friday until Saturday afternoon. It was a great time! A lot of the teachers received ministry and we all received prophetic words from the team who came. I have been hearing much positive feedback from the teachers this week about the retreat.

This week we are getting our classrooms ready for school to begin. The teachers are all being very helpful and giving me ideas of how to set up my classroom. I need their ideas and their experience! We have a great group of teachers here! I spent much of the afternoon with Merlynn and Mary Cruz (who neither speak English) and they were helping me get set up and giving me ideas and tips. We are learning how to communicate as they teach me Spanish words and I teach them English words.

We have moved half of the house (Annette & Lance's house) to their new house...then we had the team come...so now we need to get that finished and get all moved into the new place, plus get Rickie and Lucy moved....and school starts on Monday!

We all need strength and stamina and patience and wisdom about how to get it all accomplished!