If you know me, you know I’m not the most prompt, timely person. And you would also probably say that that’s an understatement. I know, it’s true. I wish I had written a new blog before now, but what can ya do?

I’ll try and catch y’all up.

The last time I wrote was a couple weeks before I was going to head home for Christmas. The two weeks of school before our break were so much fun and they flew by!! Here are some pictures of our good times!

This isn’t the greatest picture, but I got to have some of my second and third graders who live on the ranch over to my house to bake cookies for our Christmas party and I really enjoyed it! It’s so cool that I can just invite them over to my house. I might have been exhausted when they left, but we had a good time!

And speaking of our Christmas party….

Here’s a picture you may have seen on my Facebook of the cutest kids in the world celebrating together at school! We ate yummy food, gave presents, and watched Christmas cartoons.

And, we got to wear pajamas!! Another exciting thing that day was that we ate outside on the basketball court. That may not sound like a ton of fun, but check out our set-up!

When you can’t just run over to Walmart or Target or the nearest party store, you get creative. And we definitely have some crafty, creative people with good ideas here!

We had a big Christmas program and lunch on our last day of school, and then got out at noon. And then we (me and my teacher amigas) tanned under the warm, bright sun in the middle of December.

Explanation: My poor student got knocked in the eye with a music stand!! And, you may notice that I’m holding a ribbon.. We won third place in the Christmas door-decorating contest!

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And now I will transition into the going back to Texas part of this post. Honestly, it was really hard leaving Honduras. I wanted to see my family and friends, but Honduras is my new normal, so it definitely wasn’t easy to leave. I flew from Tegucigalpa to Houston, and then set my feet on U.S. soil for the first time in almost 5 months. That’s not a craaaaazy long time, but it’s the longest I’d ever been away from my family, so it was long for me. It was different seeing so many white people in public and not speaking Spanish to anyone 😉 I got a donut from Shipley’s, got some coffee from Starbuck’s, went over to my gate, sat down, and cried. I didn’t mean to and I didn’t even realize it was coming, but yeah, I cried. I had to remind myself again–like I mentioned in my last blog post long ago—that Jesus is my home. He’d been with me in Honduras, He was with me then, and would be with me in Odessa. After taking some time to journal and listen to Jesus music, and just get my thoughts out to the Lord, I felt comforted and way better. It took a while (like a little over a week) for me to really adjust to being back in Texas, but I really had a good time, and I was really grateful to get to hang out with my friends and family!!

Here are some pictures 🙂

              

Fun times with my hermanos going to see Christmas lights, making a gingerbread village, and hanging out (:

        

Awesome, last minute road trip to Ruidoso with my wonderful family! We had a blast snow tubing, hanging out, and almost burning down our cabin. Shout out to Dayna for noticing the smoke!

                

Here’s our little family photo shoot. This was also the day that I ate a yummy steak from Logan’s Roadhouse. Woot woot!

While I was home, we had some crazy, not normal, icy weather. I was supposed to head back to Honduras on a Saturday, but my flight was cancelled due to the winter weather. When I first found out, I was upset. Also, it was super annoying because I had to call United and talk to a computer that kept asking me if I wanted to book a new flight for “today or yesterday.” Really? Thankfully, I was able to talk to a real live person, and she booked me a flight for Monday. I still wasn’t happy about it, but I knew that it wasn’t a surprise to God and that it would end up being good, and that I needed to change my attitude.

So, of course, everything worked out wonderfully and I got to hang out with all these people that I wouldn’t have had the chance to see if I’d left on Saturday. I got to get coffee with a sweet friend, go to a super fun surprise party, go to church one more time, talk to my estudiante y amigo, have lunch with friends & family, and see some of the awesome people who support me. It ended up being a really good thing. God’s pretty smart 😉

                           

It still took me a while to get back to my Honduras home because my flight was suuuuuuper delayed out of Midland due to unpreparedness on the part of United. But, since it was their fault that I missed every flight going to Honduras that Monday, they gave me meal vouchers, booked me a hotel room, and scheduled a new flight for me for the next day. And it was first class! That was pretty cool. I still don’t know how I feel about United after all this, but the free stuff helps. And I actually enjoyed having an extra day alone to think and relax. God knew that would be good for me too.

Anyways, I’m back again and I’m glad. I’m thankful for changes that I didn’t expect. I’m thankful that God always has my back and that He works all things together for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purposes! I’m also thankful that He has me in a place with pretty, warm weather during the winter (most days).

I’m gonna stop this blog now because I think it’s gone on long enough and I don’t want to cram anything else into this post. I’ll save more for another (hopefully soon) time.

Thank you for reading my blog, amigos y familia y patrocinadores. Thanks for the prayers and support. I so appreciate you all!

Y’all are the bomb.com!

Peace & love,

Lindsey