Greenery

One of our supreme delights here in Honduras is the wide variety of beautiful flora. It seems that something has been in bloom since we arrived in August. Often the colors are just eye-popping to us.

We recently have acquired a few plants by various means.

This one was on the patio when we moved in but has recently blossomed. We find its blossoms humorous (see close up below).

This little guy started growing in the drain in our pila (read: laundry room). We're not sure what he is yet, but we thought we'd at least give him a better home.

Recently a friend bought us a tree. We have long found members of family araucaria. We're not sure exactly which species ours is, but we like it nonetheless. (In the picture below you can also see a recently acquired aloe plant and our latest attempt to get avocado pits to sprout, or "spout" as Ellyn says).

Let the re-education begin

Well, it is only day three of Ellyn's schooling and we are already afeared that a future transition into the American schooling culture may be rough.

Today Ellyn came home singing a song that was sung at school--her first exposure to this rollerskating classic. It seemed a familiar ditty up to a certain point.

You put your right foot in, you put your right foot out,
You put your right foot in, and you shake it all around.
You do the hockey-pockey and turn yourself around,
That's what it's all about!

You do the WHAT? The above attempts to capture Ellyn's pronunciation which we take to be her attempt to recreate what she heard from the teachers. 

We wonder: will this get her picked on in the states?

Honestly, from a purely linguistic standpoint we're a bit baffled by this. The letter "o" in Spanish is only ever a long "o", as in, say, the word "hō-key". Why the native Spanish speakers here would pronounce the word "hokey" as "hockey" is beyond us. It may be related to the fact that the letter "h" in Spanish is almost entirely silent except in some loan words like, say, "hockey" for which Spanish has no word of its own (owing in large part, no doubt, to the fact that there are very few Spanish-speaking countries with naturally occurring ice).

To write "hokey-pokey" in a way that a Spanish speaker might pronounce it similarly to how we do in English it would have to look something like this: joqui-poqui. Even at that, the initial "j" would likely be more guttural than we pronounce the initial "h" in English. (For an idea of a guttural "j", think of how some pretentious people pronounce the last two letters of Johann Sebastian Bach's last name). 

(For the further linguistically curious: there is absolutely nothing right about the word "hockey" being used in Spanish. As already mentioned, the "h" is aspirated rather than silent and the "o" is short instead of long. But beyond that, the letter "k" is hardly ever used in Spanish, and consonant clusters like "ck" that produce only one sound are uncommon and "ck" in particular is unheard of. Furthermore, few words in Spanish end in "y".)

The Lord is Risen!

We enjoyed our Resurrection Sunday Sunrise service at Parque España, a small park near the church that overlooks the city. Since Sunrise came at around 5:30am I must confess that it was a "Sunrise Service" in name only; we met at 7:00. 

We were privileged to have the Coro Unido (United Chorus)--a volunteer choir of members from various churches--encourage us with two familiar songs: "Un Día" (One Day) and "La tumba se encerró" (Christ Arose). We joined voices--and languages!--on one verse and chorus of "Christ Arose."

After the early service we ate breakfast together and then had a time of fellowship until our regularly scheduled worship service. 

We hope that you had a similarly joyous celebration of the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

 The Coro Unido warming up. They arrived at 6:15am to rehearse, sang two songs in our 7am service, then left to serve in their own churches! Thank you!

A view of the choir and the city.

Choir and congregation.

Holy (week) Hail!

Though rainy season is still over a month away, we have had a few cloud bursts recently. Today's was quite dramatic with thunder, lightning and even hail! Perhaps because of the hills and valley, the storm seemed to linger and the thunder seemed quite close for some time. The surrounding countryside is quite dry so the rain is welcome.

We are still in our first year so are still experiencing things for the first time. This week the experience of note is the mass exodus that takes place during Semana Santa or Holy Week. The newspaper reported the other day that over 50,000 people had already left the city. Apparently, life almost comes to a standstill.

Among the departed is a hefty percentage of the congregation. Many of our number are teachers and so have the week off. Costa Rica, Roatan, Utila, Panama, Copan, and Colorado were all mentioned as destinations this week. We still hope to have at least a few faithful at our services this weekend.

Last week I was invited to join a friend for a day trip about an hour outside the city. Equipped with portable equipment and over 1000 pairs of used glasses, we set up in a medical center and in a few hours examined over 40 people and gave out quite a number of glasses. It was fun to experience a different bit of ministry life and to see the profound improvement that a simple pair of used glasses can make. Thanks, Mark, for the invite!