Bessy’s Wedding

Happy New Year!

I’m still anxiously waiting to see my kids! This Friday we will open the daycare again. I’m very excited to get back to normal. The ministry closes for a month at Christmas because many of the families leave the city to visit grandparents and family in the villages. It’s a cool cultural thing to bring the kids out to the village for the holidays. Then when public school starts in February, the parents go back to pick up the kids. It’s hard to describe the difference in traveling here. For most of us, visiting family, that live a few hours away, could be a day trip (there and back); for a Honduran without a car, you wake up early, walk to the bus, take the city bus to the center of town, wait for the village bus to pass, then ride that bus a few hours as it makes stops along the way. It is a full day journey, so they do not make it often; and when they do get the opportunity, they make it last.

This past weekend, Bessy, one of the ladies I work at Casa de Luz, got married. It was a beautiful wedding with pink flowers that they picked from the trees (that matched perfectly with the dresses), balloons, and tissue paper. They had the ceremony outside the church, on the paved driveway, because the church wasn’t big enough for the guests. Its one of the only paved areas in the neighborhood. They covered it with pine needles and sawdust. It was hot and sunny, although covered in tarp, but she was happy and beautiful. Three of the kids from the daycare were in the wedding, it was cute to see them all dressed up. I’m glad I had the opportunity to be there. Many couples here, in the poor communities cannot afford weddings, so they move in together and say they are married. It was great to see Bessy, who serves and lives in the community do it the right way, in the church, with the community of believers.

Over the holidays, I got to celebrate Honduran style. Since it is very different than our style, I want to describe it to you, so you can picture Christmas and New Years in another culture. First, Christmas is celebrated on the 24^th/ 25^th at midnight. We ate nacatamales (corn flour with chicken, potatoes, carrots, and garbanzo beans boiled in banana leaves), torejas (kind of like a French toast simmered in sweeten condensed milk and cinnamon), and turkey (with salty spices, not at all like mom’s turkey). There were a lot of fireworks at midnight, then we hugged and kissed everyone. At Aben’s house all his nieces and nephews opened presents under the tree. On the 25^th the city is a ghost town because everyone stays out until morning. On the first, it is similar except they create a scarecrow full of fireworks. They call it the “old man” signifying the year past. Every corner has one, they put it on a plastic chair and light it. It’s a little scary because you don’t know what direction the fireworks are going to go off, but it was fun. Although it did not stop anyone, its no wonder they outlawed fireworks because of so many burn victims.

I also had the opportunity to help at Aben’s ministry by wrapping Christmas presents for the church and school. One of my favorite things at Christmas is wrapping; although I couldn’t wrap all my families’ presents, I still got to wrap a lot.

It was a good holiday season, but now I am ready for life to return to normal! Looking forward to the coming year with Casa de Luz!!