The stretch from the middle of August through the end of October is by far the busiest time of the entire year for me as service coordinator at the Finca, and I am about halfway through my second year doing it! ÁNIMO!! SI SE PUEDE, NATE!! SIGUE CON ÁNIMO!! I am known to always, always, always have lots of energy, but my self-talk this time of year is often these words of encouragement that I have to remind myself during the late nights trying to get everything organized and accomplished. It is the only real time of the year that I sometimes just don’t feel that I have the energy to go forward. That I am not physically and emotionally capable of doing the job at hand any longer… but here we are!! Doing the best we can!! SIGUE CON ÁNIMO!!!
After my vacation in the US ended on Monday, August 18th, I had less than a week to finish the planning for our missionary retreat to Comayagua and La Paz! I attempted to get some of the planning done while I was home on vacation, but I also wanted to be intentional and love my family and friends that I so rarely get to see throughout the year. That being said, we were on retreat from Sunday, August 24th through Saturday, August 30th!! We had never gone to Comayagua (the Missioners of Christ are there) and their retreat house in Las Cabañas, La Paz before, so it was an incredibly difficult retreat to plan for given the uncertainty and the flexibility that it required with the constantly changing travel plans. Nonetheless, IT WAS A PHENOMENAL TIME TO SPEND AS A COMMUNITY AND WE HAD LOTS OF QUIET TIME WITH JESUS!! God is great!!!
Once the retreat ended, 3 of our summer missionaries had less than a week left at the Finca, so I needed to do exit interviews with them and plan for their despedida as a Finca community. At the same time, September is a huge month culturally here in Honduras, as they celebrate Flag Day on September 1st and Independence Day on September 15th. The Finca school/colegio does a big Flag Day parade and an even bigger Independence Day parade every year, completed with a full marching band orchestrated by one of our Finca teachers and lots and lots of incredible details celebrating the Honduran culture. This year, we did the Finca school parade on Friday, September 12th!
I am also in charge of our boys’ clothing bodega at the Finca, and twice every year we have a venta (or sale) for our Finca employees and for the outside communities. The Finca gets MANY, MANY, MANY donations every year from organizations in Honduras and visitors from the United States, so we sell clothes, shoes, and toys that either don’t fit our Finca kids or that we have in excess to the employees and outside communities for only one lempira (or $0.04) per item. We always try to do a venta on the day of the Independence Day parade at the Finca because all of the parents from the outside communities are already inside the Finca supporting their children, and they are able to all go running for the venta once the event at the school ends. However, in order to get the venta ready, Rachel (the girls bodega coordinator), Theresa (just a gracious hearted helper), and I had lots of work sorting through the last-minute donations and setting out all of the items that we were going to sell. All in all, we sold about L. 2,000 (or just shy of $80), so not a bad day’s work!
September 10th is also Día del Niño (or Day of the Child) in Honduras, which is naturally a huge celebration at a children’s home! The kids all celebrated at our school/colegio on Wednesday, September 10th, & we celebrated as a Finca community on Saturday, September 13th. We celebrated with all of our Finca children, tías, missionaries, religious sisters, some ex-Finca residents that now live with their family members, and some of our other professional staff at the Finca at the Aguas Termales (or Hot Springs) that is close to Trujillo. We as missionaries are always in charge of planning and executing the party, and this year the party was full of swimming in the hot springs/pools, playing soccer in the nearby campo, eating snowcones, hitting piñatas, eating cake, and genuinely enjoying one another’s presence. Although it was A LOT of work for the missionaries to plan the entire party, it was an ABSOLUTE BLAST!!!
& today actually, I am traveling to Antigua, Guatemala for a retreat for our 3 new missionaries that have been studying Spanish & will be returning to the Finca with me on September 30th! It is an absolute blast to return to Antigua every year where my mission experience first started just over 4 years ago and to have the opportunity to get to know the new missionaries on a deeper level and prepare them for the next two years of their lives, which will undoubtedly be 2 of the greatest and most challenging years of their entire lives!
Once the new missionaries arrive to the Finca with me on September 30th, they will start their two-week long orientation! That orientation is full of talks with me and our professional staff at the Finca to prepare our missionaries to adequately serve and protect the children that are entrusted to us by the Honduran government. The long-term missionaries will then have two weeks of shadowing/discerning jobs, and they will receive their jobs for their first year at the Finca on October 30th.
Lastly, “Y” is a young teenager at the Finca that will be having her quinceañera on Friday, October 17th! We receive lots of help from our professional staff at the Finca and former missionaries visiting at that time, but we are in charge of planning her party on that night. We will also have an immersion group of 7 or 8 people from the United States from October 18th through October 26th! The immersion groups are SO, SO fun, but it is a lot of work for me to plan and organize.
I love my life and my job at the Finca so dang much, but these two months every year challenge me in ways that I have never really been challenged before. I have continually learned the lesson of depending more and more on God because only He can sustain us through the ups and downs of life. God is great!!
Please pray for Isabella, Emily, & Emmet, who will be arriving at the Finca on September 30th!
Please let me know how I can pray for you!
God Bless!