Our Puppies

Here is Domascos, the cocker spaniel and Tinbon the lab (which means "Big Belly"), name by the kids because when he got here as a puppy he had a bloated belly. Now they are 8 months old.

An Orchestra and a Church

Saturday evening I got to attend a Christmas concert, performed by the Filarmonica de Honduras (Honduran Philharmonic)...in a parking garage. Think of the highest level of performance in our country, like the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, would you ever think to find them playing in a parking garage? Doubtful. Apparently nobody bats an eyelash here for that. A new experience, good concert, well performed and very moving, just strange location.
Then for Sunday... here is a picture of a "church building" that we attended service at yesterday. It was on a mountainside, way high up in the clouds and also a very poor community, even for here. Quite appropriate I would say for my previous post, this is what a church building should be, as minimal as possible! Of course, air conditioning is not needed here.

waking up

I would say that I have been in a state of waking up for about the last three years. My first trip here two and a half years ago only verified what was already happening in me. I would not say that I am awake, as this journey is a growth process and I don't believe we are ever fully awake. What do I mean about awakening? That the church as we know it (regardless of your denomination of choice) is seriously in a dream state if they think that filling the pews, thithing, practicing strict tradition, and merely talking about change and being Jesus, is guaranteeing their salvation. What I just described is "going to church" not "being the church". As much as fellowship is important, I know few people that "are the church" outside of the four walls of the building. Why have we reduced church into four walls, and why were walls ever built in the first place? If anything, this only solidifies our mistaken mentality that church is confined to a place we meet. And, yes, I am going to say it, whether you want to believe it or not, the Church of Christ is a denomination. Maybe not in the technical definition, but I would have to challenge the idea that it is not segregated out just as any other with our blurred views of tradition and legalism. I recently heard this analogy: "The difference between a philosopher and a theologian is that a philosopher is like a blind man in a dark alley looking for a black cat that doesn't exist, while a theologian is like a blind man in a dark alley looking for a black cat that doesn't exist, but thinks he's found it". Oy vey, if this doesn't describe the Christians that the world considers us to be! My challenge to you is to read and live what you read. The Bible of course, but we seem to somehow miss what it says about how we should live. So, I also have some recommended reading. To most of you I have already recommended "Messy Spirituality", by Mike Yaconelli, read it first if you haven't already. From there, I recommend "The Irresistible Revolution" by Shane Claiborne. This is not to say that I am suggesting we should all be and live exactly the same way. As the book points out, we all have our talents and contributions, but we need to find our own revolution and live it instead of sitting in this dream state of "being a good Christian". This revolution I speak of is only radical to what the church has become, it is not radical to Jesus or what He intended the church to be.

A day in the life...

By no means is anything of this a complaint, this is just a very new environment to get used to. So, for those of you curious about what I am doing here, here is a day in my life of Casa de Esperanza. Each day there are shifts for caring for the kids of seven hours at a time, but the job is like any parent, the shift is never really over, there are always other things that need to be done that is impossible to do when trying to keep track of 15 children. They are on their school break that we call summer in the states, so for the next two months, there are 15 kids 24/7! We wake up at 7 and have a devotional with the kids, then it is breakfast, chores, playtime, lunch, naptime, more playtime, shower, dinner, rest of the chores, and then quiet time (movie) until 8 at which time they go to bed (sort of, try getting 15 kids to be quiet and go to sleep) so it is usually around 9 which is when the rest of us have our time to ourselves, so getting to bed early is a privilege I had once this week as I just decided not to do anything for myself but take a shower and go to bed. Feeling much better today as I feel much more rested than I have in quite a while. Getting used to the nighttime noise took a bit to be able to sleep through, the roosters around here are very confused and think all night is appropriate to be cockadoodledoing and getting the dogs all riled up to bark all night. Oh and there is a tree that grows some kind of nut that fall off the tree because of the heavy night winds and then hit the tin roof, it is enough to catch me out of a dead sleep several times a night.
I miss home sometimes, but at the same time, as soon as I stepped off the plane here, I felt at home. There's plenty to laugh about things that are so different from the states, but there is a sense to that this is comfortable and of belonging here, a sense of purpose, more than I have felt it quite a while, maybe ever. I hope I can find a job that let's me go back and forth between here and home more often.