AMY!  On my calendar today it says Amy Day!  It is a great day to celebrate a beautiful life!  It was 14 years ago that she met Jesus face to face and danced in a field of heavenly daisies!

My niece brought life everywhere she went.  If you ever met her you loved her!  That is just who she was!  Today I want to remember all the fun times - all the laughter she brought to all of us!  I loved her leaving silly messages on the home answer machine that would sound like she was an English maid so that when people would call the house they would get a little surprise!  She loved to laugh and bring that joy to everyone around her.

She loved to watch Saturday Night Live and then re-enact her favorite skits.  And she could come up with some of the funniest voices!  Oh I miss sitting around and watching her entertain us.  "I'm feeling a little verclempt! "  And Mr. Bean and his Christmas Socks....days in the hospital watching Mr.Bean and laughing with her!

So today I am so glad that I have friends coming to my house to spend the day after a long and tiring week for all of us and we are celebrating love and friendship in Honduras.  It is fitting that this celebration fell on "Amy Day"! 

Amy I love you always, my little niece!  Always you will be in my heart and be an inspiration to me! 

This morning I was going to go to Tegucigalpa to pick up Lauren, who is coming to the school to be a teacher in High School.  We have all been very excited about her coming!  This morning I felt a little nervous about driving to Tegucigalpa by myself.  This is not normal for me to feel this way.  I have made the trip many times by myself, so I didn't know why I was feeling that way.

This morning when I asked for a volunteer to pray for our day, I asked her to also pray for me and the drive and for Lauren to not have any problems in her trip here.  And then before I left to head to the airport I asked Paty to please pray for me as I was concerned about driving by myself.  Again, I didn't know why I felt this apprehension about the trip.

I headed out, and once I got through all the crazy construction and the road opened up I turned on some worship music and was singing and worshiping and enjoying the beautiful scenery and then I heard God say....You are not alone on this trip, I am with you!  WOW!

I guess I needed to feel alone, and feel concerned about driving alone in order to be totally blown away by His word!

So God and I made a great trip to Tegus, and picked up Lauren and got her back to Comayagua safely.

God is Awesome!

Dia de Lempira...this is one of my favorite celebrations of the year!  It is so much fun and we get to eat all kinds of great Honduran food. 

This is where we sold our fried fish....the whole fish... this is very typical here.  One of my kids asked me why we don't eat them this way in the United States...he was explaining to me that there is something inside the head of the fish that is very good for you....I did eat one of our fish but I did not eat any part of his head....

Here Katherine is peeling the green bananas to make platinos....yum!  I learned to do this and was available for many people's viewing pleasure.   I had many people coming to watch me and give me some tips...it is HARD work, turns your hands brown for days, and stains your clothes...yep I learned the hard way!  But I was happy to learn!

Here is one of our tables that the girls decorated for our restaurant in the Department of Colon.

This was created by the 10th graders along with Miss Kathy.  They were the Bay Islands

I loved the centerpieces they created for their tables!

Ana is grilling some chuleta (pork chops)

Here is Comayagua

Mrs. MaryCruz and one of her students are preparing some yummy food

Fernando and Gordon were grilling some beef - their Department made a typical plate with beef, a slice of cheese, some tortillas, beans, avacado...I was told it was very good.

Miss Rosi making papusas!

For those of you who have been here and know Miss Merlynn, this is her daughter.  She is a Mini-Merlynn! 

Here is our plate of food....I had to take mine to go because I was still sick and on a jello and water diet still....but my plate came home and in my fridge until I was able to eat it....I had to not think about what this little fishy looked like a few days ago!  But he was very good!  He was served with encurtido (cabbage in vinegar and the color comes from beets) and platinos which are the green bananas I cut that you fry, sort of like making french fries,,,,only way better!

Mr Jonathan and Miss Rosi

I love hanging out with these kids!  We were preparing for Dia de Lempira and 9th grade was going to be representing Colon, so we were going to be selling fish since it is on the coast.  Francklin's family raises talapia, so we went fishing at his house :)

The boys caught the fish with nets....and put them in a bucket.  I was initially freaked out when they told me we needed to catch the fish and clean the fish....oh my gosh!  And we were planning to do 50 fish!

FIFTY !!!

It is beautiful at Francklin's house!

We started putting the fish into buckets as the boys caught them....

And some of the boys played with them....GABRIEL!

After they were caught it was time for the cleaning....Now I have NEVER cleaned a fish or even seen someone clean a fish but these guys were excited to teach me! 

I did it....most of it....I got pretty good at removing scales and would pass it off to the boys to cut it open and pull out the middle....

But I touched and saw some pretty gross stuff - they made sure of it!

Francklin found a sac containing fish eggs in one of the fish. 

I did learn that if you squeeze them too hard things from inside come out a hole in the bottom of the fish...oh my!

Fernanda got a little help from Gabriel....we didn't want anyone to miss out on the fun of cleaning fish! 

 Sandy is hitting it with a rock to be sure he is dead....but she doesn't want to touch it.

Katherine Paola, this girl isn't afraid of anything! 

Look at this giant fish!  She was showing him some love right before she scraped off his scales, sliced him open and removed all the yuckies!

It was a lot of fun with these kids....and when we had finished, Francklin's precious mom took over.  She and Francklin got up early the next morning and fried all the fish  and this is what we got...

Here is why I think we have the best P.E. teacher!  We don't have much equipment for P.E., we have soccer balls and goals, and volleyball net and balls....But no equipment has not stopped Mr. Heber!

One day the boys were practicing ball control....all it takes is some broken chairs (Restoration church does that chair look familiar?) and "ladder" and some traffic cones!

The little kids practice many skills with hula hoops - hula hooping, as well as jumping and twirling it with their feet and jumping (sort of like our lemon-twist toys)....he is amazingly creative!

He made a "balance beam" out of an old peice of wood that most people would have thrown away. 

I see this creativity in so many of the people here!  Where there is a will, there is a way!