For those of you who may have lost count, I’ve now been in Honduras for 43 days.

Yip yip hooray!

I have changed this cheer to say “yip” instead of “hip” because I have a new favorite store. It’s a grocery store on the first floor and a lovely craft store on the second floor. It’s a wonderful, magical place called Yip. I went through the store singing, “IIIIIIIII’ve haddd the time of my liiiiiiiiiiife, and I’ve neeeeeever felt this way before!” (You know, from Dirty Dancing (I think) and that one cruise commercial.) We found Dr. Pepper, Vanilla Coke, Trolli gummy worms, Kleenex, stencils, popsicles…awesome things. And for good prices! Win, win, win.

This past week has been quite a week for celebrating. Besides discovering the wonders of Yip, on Wednesday (Sept. 10) we celebrated Day of the Child with pinatas, pizza, soda, and some fun skits!

Here are a couple pictures from our celebration:

Minion piñata!

With a few of my second graders 🙂

We also celebrated 193 years of independence in Honduras! The actual independence day is today (Sept. 15), but we celebrated on Friday since today we’re out of school for the holiday. The kids dressed up in traditional Honduran clothing–the girls with beautiful dresses, long braids, and makeup, and the guys in white button-down shirts, blue jeans, bandanas, and hats. They all looked so cute!! We marched from the school up to the capilla (chapel) where we sang the national hymn, saw traditional dancing, heard songs, poems, and history, and celebrated with traditional Honduran food.

The march up to the capilla.

First, second, and third grade singing a song for the program.

With one of my sweet third graders.

Our principal with the kids.

My roomies and friends.

We had a half-day on Friday since we just had the Independence Day Program, so my roomies and I took a tiny vacation and stayed in a fancy hotel in the city for the night! We were celebrating all kinds of things: Independence Day, Day of the Teacher (September 17), and Amanda’s upcoming birthday! It was really nice to be able to get away for a night and just chill. We’re getting plenty of time to rest and recharge with a day off for Independence Day and another day off for Day of the Teacher. This week we’ll only have 3 days of school!

I’ve still been attending the professionals group at Impacto on Friday nights and I go to their Sunday morning service as well. It’s not the same as my church back home of course, but it’s a solid church with great people, and I’m glad to be a part of it!

Prayer Points: We lost one of our teachers last week due to some personal problems, so we’re in need of a new high school teacher. Please be praying that God will bring the exact person we need and that the students won’t fall behind in their work. One of the students who is finishing his last semester of schooling is taking a medical school entrance exam (something like that) next weekend that’s really important, so please pray for him too! And lastly, we got a new baby this week! He is 18 months old (but he looks more like 6-8 months). Please pray that he’ll bond with his mentor parents and counselors and that they’ll have wisdom in loving him and taking care of him.

Thanks for keeping up with me and all that’s going on here!

Thank you for your support!

I’d love to read any comments or answer any questions that you have!

Peace out, y’all!

XOXO

Lindsey

Buenas!

I’ve been in Honduras for almost two weeks now. I came for two weeks last summer and one week this year in June, but soon I’ll beat my longest stay—by a lot. Yay!

We started school this week, but only went Wednesday through Friday. It was really nice to start out with a short week to get to know my students a little bit and see what changes I needed to make. Right now I have five students in third grade and four in second. Soon I’ll have five–and maybe six–in second! Surprise, surprise, but kids in second and third grade have short attention spans. I realized on the first day that I didn’t have enough planned for them. I did student teaching with a second grade bilingual class, so I have a little experience, but I’ve never had my own class or started out the routines and everything at the beginning of the year. All that to say that I’m new at this, so I’m learning too 🙂 I appreciate that I’ll have to put some thought and creativity into making learning fun and engaging for my students. If there were no challenge at all, I wouldn’t have anything to work on. So hopefully I’ll keep up that attitude!

I have some very sweet little students and I’m so thankful to be here and have the students that I do, and have this opportunity to love them and teach them and pour into them. I want to do a good job, but I know that I have so much room to grow and things to work on. I know that I need to be purposeful in seeking the Lord and praying for my students and asking for the Lord to give me His heart for them. Please pray for me to be wise and spend my free time well.

Speaking of wisdom, that’s our theme in my class this year! I brought a lot of owl decorations for my room, so when we were encouraged to pick a theme verse, choosing one about wisdom made sense. Our verse is Proverbs 15:14 which says, “A wise person is hungry for knowledge.” I’m really hoping that as I teach my students how to be wise and make wise decisions, that I’ll grow in wisdom as well.

On a note unrelated to school, I went to a young professionals group at one of the churches here last night. I was really tired after a long three days at school ;), but I wanted to go to the group because I really want to get involved in a church and small group and have connections outside of the ranch. I was wrestling about whether I should stay home and rest, or just go ahead and go to the group, but I just couldn’t feel peace about staying home…so I went! Even on the way there, I felt peace and joy about it and knew that going was the right choice. We got there early so I sat and journaled for a little bit before we started and talked to a few people. There were some very kind, welcoming people! I know quite a bit of Spanish, but I’m definitely not an expert, so when I found out we were playing a game of CatchPhrase with “professional words,” I was a little worried. People were allowed to explain to me in English though and when it was my turn they found easier words for me (like phobia and columnist), so it worked out! Their annual retreat with university students and professionals is next weekend, and Kim–who I went to the group with–had signed up, but is going to have to miss it unless something changes because she needs to stay with one of the little boys who is having a tonsillectomy. She said I could take her spot if I want to, and I feel like God worked it out for me to happen to be invited the week before their retreat, so I’m going to a retreat next weekend! Even though it’s a little scary for me to just jump right into something brand new. But, I think it’s gonna be good! Please pray that it’s wonderful and that I let God do what He wants to do in my life. And that I let God do what He wants to do in my life in general 😉

Peace out girl scouts, and thank you for keeping up with me and supporting me!

Here are some pictures of my classroom:

And one of my little students:

I’ll take more pictures of everything and post them soon!

XOXO

Lindsey

Welcome to my first blog! And my first blog post.

This is the place I will share my every thought and feeling.

So sit on down and settle in!

Just kidding 🙂

I will share some thoughts and feelings, but I won’t bore you to death with every little thing that runs through my mind. The plan is for people to like reading my blog, so I’ll do my best to make it enjoyable.

I decided to start blogging because I’m planning on moving to Honduras in August and I want to keep people updated on what’s going on there–and now, before I leave, what’s happening here in the good old U.S. of A as I’m raising support and getting ready to go.

Raising support is kind of scary. I’m moving to Honduras to teach at an academy that’s part of an organization called World Gospel Outreach. It’s not a paid position though, so I have to find people who are willing to partner with me by donating to me monthly. These people will make it possible for me to move to Tegucigalpa and do what God has for me there. I seriously cannot do it on my own.

Which is kind of cool, actually…

If I got a job here and saved up for a couple of years, I could make enough money to move to Honduras and support myself for a little while. That wouldn’t be a bad thing. However, God wants me to go now, and I think it’s better to do things with other people, so I’m going the support-raising route. If I just do it all on my own, no one else gets to be involved with me. Yeah, they could still hear about what I’m doing and care about it, but it’s not the same as actually investing and being a part of it. I really don’t want people to just give me money to give me money. If you feel like you should support me but you don’t care that much about what I’m doing, I’ll still gladly accept your support, but I really want people to connect with what I’m doing, care about it, and genuinely want to be involved.

One of my biggest fears in raising support is that I’ll share my story with people, tell them all about Honduras, and they’ll be interested in what I’m doing and excited about it, but then when I mention that I need support, they just tell me again what a great opportunity it is and wish me luck. Please, please, please, if you can help, help! It makes me think of the scripture in James 2 that says:

14 What good is it, dear brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but don’t show it by your actions? Can that kind of faith save anyone? 15 Suppose you see a brother or sister who has no food or clothing, 16 and you say, “Good-bye and have a good day; stay warm and eat well”—but then you don’t give that person any food or clothing. What good does that do?

17 So you see, faith by itself isn’t enough. Unless it produces good deeds, it is dead and useless.

I know that I sure haven’t given to people every time that I should have, but being in the situation that I’m in, these verses make a lot more sense to me and I can really connect with what they’re saying. Don’t just “hope” something will happen if you can actually be a part of making it happen. Get in there and do something! We can apply this to a lot of areas in life. I can apply it to wanting to be disciplined. I have a lot of trouble with that, but I do have control over it, so instead of just saying all the time, “I really want to be disciplined,” I could take some steps and work on changing some habits so that it can happen! Basically, words and thoughts are not enough by themselves. Yeah, we all wish there weren’t little kids starving in Africa and all over the world, dying of preventable diseases, but unless we decide to do something about it, it’s going to keep on happening.

Anyways, I could make this a really long post if I go into all of the things going on in my mind, but I’ll refrain and save those things for another time. (I hope to use some higher level words–like “refrain”–in my blog to make me sound smarter. But really, just to take it to the next level, you know, and be professional-like ;))

Thanks for reading my first post 🙂

I hope it wasn’t boring and that you’ll come again.

I also hope and pray that you’ll connect with me and be excited about this too!

Let’s be people with faith that produces good deeds!

If you want to check out the organization that I’m working with, you can go to www.wgoreach.com

If you’d like to donate to me, follow the link above, choose “Donate” at the top,  the fourth rectangle “Support Our Missionaries” on the next page, and then choose my name “Lindsey Speer.” If I can get a direct link to work, I’ll put it on my next blog!

If you’d like to email me with any questions or some thoughts to share, my email address is lindsey.speer@wgomission.org

Peace!