2015 Newsletter

My “newsletter” has been my updates and photos posted to Facebook.  If you see me on Facebook, you know a lot about my activities this year. As this year is coming to a close, I thought it would be good to put it all together. A time to look back and be amazed at what God has done this year, and expectant as I look forward to next year. 

Ruach – Science Teacher

I made a big change in my responsibilities at Ruach this year. I became the science teacher for 3^rd – 7^th grade. What a difference to go from supervising high school and managing their learning through Paces to teaching 5 science classes each day. I had to learn a lot of material to teach the students, and I loved it! We did some amazing experiments, got to use microscopes for their first time, and even extracted DNA from strawberries.  I had fun teaching and loved watching the kids have fun learning about the amazing world God created!

The first time on the microscopes!

I loved the excitement of the 3^rd graders when they saw the chemical reaction that occurred when adding baking soda to vinegar! The looks on their faces, the oohs and laughter are things I will treasure from this year.

In 2016 I will continue teaching science for grades 4^th through 8^th.   

Ministerio Renuevo

This is the church I have been attending for several years.  I am so grateful for this church that has become family to me!

Children’s Church - I help Marjorie with children’s church and care for the babies and toddlers during the service.  I have been able to provide a snack for the children and workers each Sunday.  

Girls’ Bible Study – Marjorie and I began a Bible study with the teenage girls at the church. We meet at my house at 8:00 on Saturday mornings. We completed a study on purity and are currently in the study Beautiful Inside and Out.

We often have time to play games together after our study, before the girls have to catch the bus back to their homes. We have seen the girls learn and grow in their relationships with each other and with the Lord.  It is a sweet and precious time each week.   

 One Saturday the girls learned to make banana bread.

English Class  - We just finished our first 6 weeks of English class in a community outside of Comayagua.  There are many people from this community, La Isla, who attend our church, as well as the girls’ Bible study. I, along with my pastor and his wife, have a burden for this community. Imagine not having running water in your home. Imagine not having a front door to your house. Imagine your home has one small room for you, your husband, and your children.  Imagine having dirt floors in your home. Now imagine that you are happy, you have joy, you are giving and loving and trying your best to care for your family. These things are hard to imagine, but this is the reality for the people in La Isla. Many of the adults in the community did not study beyond the 6^th grade.  Our desire is to encourage the children to learn and study and ignite the desire to continue their education. 

We had 29 students who completed the 6 weeks of class.  Most days there were students at the school waiting for us to arrive. The children were excited to learn English and spend that hour with us each Tuesday after school. 

First Day of Class

At the end of our 6 weeks, we held a ceremony with the students and their parents to recognize their hard work.

Esmeylin, Clarisa, and Estefany with their certificates

Gabriel and Luis

 Celebration Day with our English students

We will continue with English classes when I return to Honduras in January.  Pastor Joel has a lot of ideas and dreams for how we can continue to minister to this community. This is just the beginning of what God has planned for them. 

How can you help?  Pray! Pray for protection, for knowledge, for wisdom, for strength, and for provision. You can help with financial support monthly, a one-time gift, or any amount throughout the year.  In addition to providing my living expenses, your support also pays tuition for some of the teenagers of my church attend high school, refreshments for the girls each week at Bible study, drinks and snacks at church each Sunday, special activities and supplies in science class at Ruach, and materials for English class in La Isla.

All donations are tax deductible and can be made payable to Ruach Ministries and mailed to Elaine Pack, 3524 Creekside Court, Bedford, Texas 76021.

Thank you!

Stephanie Price

In the day when I cried out, You answered me, and made me bold with strength in my soul.  Psalm 138:3

Broken, Yet Beautiful

I was blessed by my son to get to spend a week with my family on vacation in Orange Beach, Alabama.

It was my final morning at the beach, and I was out walking along the edge of the water.  I was enjoying the beauty and the vastness of the ocean.  As I was walking along I was praying about some things that were heavy on my heart.  I was walking and worshipping in my heart,with this song we sing at church.  It is one of my favorite songs....

Y la gloria de Dios

cubrira la tierra

como las aguas 

cubren la mar

And the glory of God will cover the land, 

as the waters cover the sea

I love this song, and as I looked out at the ocean, where you could not see an end, I worshipped.  

"For the Earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea." Habakkuk 2:14

As I was walking, and talking with God, I was watching for seashells.  I had walked by some that were broken, but I was searching for whole seashells.  I saw a broken shell come up on the shore, and I thought "that is so pretty, but it is broken."  

That is when God spoke in my heart.  "Those seashells are broken, but they are still beautiful, just like you."

So I kept walking down the beach, and picking up broken seashells.  I came back with both my pockets full of beautiful, broken seashells. 

This morning in our Bible study, I had each of the girls choose a broken seashell that they liked, then I shared this story with them.   

We each have a shell to remember that no matter what we go through in life, regardless of bad choices we make, no matter how broken we might feel, we are still beautiful!

We are part of God's beautiful creation!  Created in His image! 

The Day I Saw Reality

Even as I sit here now writing this, I am thinking about what I learned yesterday, what I saw yesterday, the reality of my brothers and sisters, people I love, a reality I was not aware of.

My heart is broken!

I am embarrassed, I am ashamed of myself.  Ashamed of what I have.  Ashamed of the things I have complained about, ashamed of things I considered difficulties, when actually I live in luxury!

Yesterday I was with Marjorie in a community called La Islia.  We have many people from this community who attend our church in town.  If you have come here on a mission trip with Jim Pack in the last couple of years, I have probably taken you there to give out food, and prayers, and hope to the people who live there.  

Many Saturday afternoons Marjorie and I are visiting families whose children come to church.  Families we want to visit and encourage and talk to about the hope they can have in Jesus, and pray with them.  Many have invited us into their small homes, I have sat on their bed because that is the only furniture in the one room of their house, they have shared a bag of chips they run to buy from the pulperia and a bottle of coke or a can of juice.  

These are beautiful, lovely, people.  Always happy to see us coming to visit.  Happy to sit outside to visit with us.  

The kids come and share their churros with us (chips or other fried things), they are giving and welcoming and children of God!

Yesterday as we were walking down the street on our way to visit a sweet lady, Delmi, we realized she was not at her house, but across the road in the small channel where water runs through, she was washing her clothes, and had just had her bath, and one of her teenage daughters was headed there with her towel, soap and shampoo.  (when I say a small channel - it is about 8 inches across, and 8 inches deep)

I was shocked!  Yes, I know there are people here in Honduras who do not have water in their homes, but I never imagined it was any of these people who I know.  I saw their reality, and I was ashamed of myself.  My heart broke!  Not in a way that I feel sorry for them, but broken!  Broken in pieces and I can only cry and pray and ask God what can I do?

There are only certain times that water runs to certain barrios in town and around Comayagua, and people adjust their lives to that schedule, or they keep their pila filled with water for washing dishes and other daily necessities.  For the people with more money, they live in a home with a pump and a tank or even a cistern so that they don't run out of water even when the city is not sending water your way.  I live in one of those apts.   The only times I don't have water is when my pump is not working properly, or the days of no electricity.  

But this community has no water in their homes! 

I have learned to shower from water I have carried upstairs in buckets - but that is not every day, and still I am in my bathroom, in my own privacy.

I know how to flush toilets with a bucket - hence my nickname from Lance of Bucket Girl - still I have water in my house!

I cannot get it out of my mind today, or out of my heart!   Some of the girls who come here for Bible study live there.  Many of the kids who are in our class at church on Sunday nights live there.  They are all beautiful, happy people.  

Today I am feeling broken and ashamed!

Science Class

Wow I cannot believe the last time I wrote an update about classes was at the end of the 2nd week of school.  We are almost at the end of the partial now, and so much has been going on.

We have taken tests, gotten detentions, learned that some days science class is a lot of fun, and some days it is just writing vocabulary words and taking notes.

The great thing about elementary students is that even when they are in trouble they still hug you and kiss your cheek and say "I love you, Miss."

So let's start with the 6th grade when they finished their bread project.

They swiped their slices of bread in various locations of the school and every couple of days they would inspect their bread and write down what they saw.  Some kids didn't really see anything happen, but some were growing a new world on their bread!

They were using a Magnifying Glass to try and pick up the details 

of the organisms growing on their bread.

The winner of the grossest bread is Flavio's group.  

This bread wiped the soccer field, which turned out to be worse than the bathroom bread.

The hypothesis for some of the groups was that the bathroom would create the most organisms, so we learned that our hypothesis was not correct.

5th Grade

After 5th grade did a virtual lab on the computer we did a similar activity in class.   We were testing the best surface to bounce a ball....cement, grass, wood, or a towel.

They learned the best place to bounce a ball was on the cement.  They learned about conducting an experiment, and I learned about one of my students.  He cannot sit still for anything!  But when we did this activity he was the first one who "got it" when I was giving the instructions and he became the leader of the boys' group.  Super proud of Alex!

3rd Grade

Third grade is a challenge on many levels.  There are 14 little wiggling people.  They are cute as can be!  Some of them understand most of my English, and some of them don't, and I have one new student who rarely understands anything I say, but he has the sweetest smile that makes your heart melt!  They have all made improvements since the first day of classes, when I had a lot of blank stares!  Miss Elena comes to class with me also, so they get some explanations and instructions in both English and Spanish.

One day we did a virtual lab with the 3rd grade, and they were catching ants on various surfaces, demonstrating the use of camouflage as they learned about making a hypothesis, planning and conducting an investigation and recording their results.

It was a crazy 40 minutes!  But they had fun!

7th Grade

We have been doing some STEM (science - technology - engineering - math) Projects and team building projects this partial.  The kids have gotten pretty creative.

Here they were in teams and they were each given a bag of marshmallows, 5 feet of string, 5 straws and 10 toothpicks. The goal was to hold as many marshmallows as possible off the ground.  They had 2 minutes.

TIME IS UP !  COUNT YOUR MARSHMALLOWS!

Next they did a team building activity where they had string tied to a rubber band, and only using that to move the cups, they had to make a pyramid.   The two teams were racing to see who would complete the pyramid first.

I had to keep saying...."No Hands" "don't touch the cups!" 

Your automatic response is to grab whatever it is you are trying to manipulate, when it isn't going in the way you want it to go.  This was a lot of fun!

Our winning team!

More 7th grade!

We are going to be studying space in 2nd partial, so we did several projects involving space, planets, etc.

We did one project where the kids had to come up with a way to save the planet if there was a large asteroid that was going to hit earth.  Amazingly there are asteroids out there larger than the distance from here to Tegucigalpa....I was amazed!

We learned that NASA is actually working on a plan to deflect an asteroid, if there ever is one that size that is heading towards earth.

The kids had some interesting ideas....of course the boys just wanted to blow it up.   One of my students designed something to hit the asteroid and break it apart and then "vacuum" up all the pieces of rock to take back to NASA and study.

We also learned about comets, and the kids made a model of a comet.  I told them to try and use recycled materials, and things they could find at home, rather than going out and buying things.  Each group had completely different ideas, it was so fun to watch!

This group made paper machete and then painted it gray (the nucleus), and added glitter (coma), and made the tail with tissue paper.  They spent I think 40 lempiras (about 25 cents)

This group made their comet with a flashlight and clay and tissue paper.  All their supplies they found in their homes so they spent NO money!  The light shining out of the back of the comet was the tail, great idea!

These two boys....always my boys!  They spent the first day sitting and complaining that they didn't know what to do and they were looking up experiments on the internet.  We had a few moments of the testing of wills, but I told them to use their creativity, even though they assured me that they had none...and finally the final day to turn in the project they showed up with an idea.

The spray painted a plastic ball (nucleus), they wrapped some crumpled tissue paper around it (coma), and then they cut a hole in it.....this is where the tail would come from.

Keep in mind these are two 7th grade boys! 

I was just happy they started to use their minds and creativity!

Their plan was to pour a package of baking soda inside the ball, then two small pepsi's, shake and there would be a foaming explosion out of the hole and that would be the tail of the comet.

It didn't work, but we all had a fun time watching them try to make it work.

And they got great points for creativity!  

They spent so much money!  They bought spray paint, and baking soda, and tissue paper, and pepsi's....but they won for the most creative concept!

4th Grade

In one of their lessons we were learning about models.  So we made some 3-dimensional models of our classroom.  The kids were so creative!  They didn't want the project to end, they kept coming up with more and more ideas!

The girls were including the decorations I have on the walls.

Here you can see the air conditioner and Mr. Christian's filing cabinet.

Daniel made the white board. 

Here is a picture of my whiteboard (along with Mr. Christian's computer class drawings)...but you see he put everything I have on the whiteboardj "big idea" and he included my "raise your hand" sign and even Mr. Happy. They all love Mr. Happy!

When the boys were done, they had the computers in the center, and the projector hanging from the ceiling.  They had included so many little details!

Engineering!

Then we had a unit on engineering.  We learned about the steps of the design process, planning and building a prototype and testing your prototype.

So we were making something that would protect an egg when dropped from 1 meter.

They had a blast!

German is so happy that his egg survived the 1 meter drop!

He is showing me his egg, they drew Mr. Happy on their egg.  

Not only did Mr. Happy survive a 1 meter drop, he also survived a 2 meter drop! 

 Way to go German and Daniel!

Jesus and Jennifer had the idea to make a parachute attached to their protective case for the egg.

Jennifer is ready for the 1 meter drop!

And the egg survived!

All the students' eggs survived the 1 meter drop, and these two groups also survived the 2 meter drop.

I had one set of partners who had difficulty working together, and did not make anything....you can pray for my 4th grade girls.  We seem to always have a few of them who cannot get along.  Girls!

After vacation we will have 2 short weeks left of this partial.  That means I am almost 1/4 of the way through the school year.  It is a lot of work, A LOT!  But it is also a lot of fun!  And when one of the kids finally "gets it" or they are excited about learning, or they start asking questions.....it is all worth it!