More reflections

Karie - Spending a week at the children's home in Honduras was amazing! I could really see God at work. We started off strong with our painting project, we were ahead of schedule and getting things done faster than we had anticipated. We had cool cloudy weather for the first few days. Then the sun came out….and we could see many different shades of our 'melon' colored paint all over the place. Since we mixed the 5 gallon bucket of paint ourselves, each bucket came out a slightly different shade. So we decided to go over each room with a 3^rd coat being careful to only use paint from one bucket so that it all blended evenly. Looking back at it now, I can see how to apply it to my life. Often I do things in my life that I think look good on the cloudy days, but once they get into the sunlight I can see my mistakes. When I give those things to God, he is my source of light- I can clearly see what areas need improvement.

And for me, it takes practice and some help to do things right- that's what I learned from the tortillas! One afternoon I had some free time and Marianna was making tortillas, I walked over there and soon enough Pastor Alex said something about me helping with the tortillas. My Spanish isn't very good so I'm not sure what he said but I can't help but wonder if he just thought it would be funny to see me try! I watched Marianna shape a few tortillas out of the dough and thought this doesn't look so hard. But no sooner had I tried to make my first one that Lisbeth was next to me shaking her head and pointing that I should put that back in the bowl of dough and try again. Marianna started shaping them for me so that all I had to do was flatten them- those turned out much better than when I tried to do it all on my own! I feel that was another lesson God taught me, that we all have our own role to play and when we work together we can accomplish so much more than on our own.

Overall, it was an incredible trip. I loved getting to know all the children and playing with them- especially Candyland!