His Provision

     Last July while doing anesthesia in the United States I met a woman by the name of Marie Paredes.  She was from Honduras and we briefly spoke about the country and it's beautiful people with the hopes of getting our families together again before we left the country.  

     Fast forward 6 months to the end of December, we still had not had an opportunity to get together, but we arranged a meeting at a restaurant 2 nights before we were to leave.  Ken, Kayleigh and I met Marie and her daughter over dinner at a restaurant and Marie was kind enough to share all her contacts in Honduras, including many family members involved in medicine and dentistry who wanted to help our mission to serve the Honduran people.  She told me about her cousin Maríalos who is a dentist (the lady standing next to me) who had a home in Zamorano she visits on the weekends. Marie said she would contact her and inquire about any rental properties in the area.

      Once we arrived in country we knew we needed to find something right away as teams would be arriving soon to the house we were staying at on the Children's Home property.  We looked with some friends for a suitable house to rent, but everything we looked at was either way over our budget or would require so much work that we would have to spend way too much money to make it workable for our family of 5.

    We got in touch with Marie's cousin, Maríalos, and she made some phone calls and arranged a meeting with Doña Veronica (the lady next to Ken) who had the PERFECT home for us (furnished) and within our budget! Needless to say, this could only be orchestrated by God and we are beyond ecstatic that He has provided us not only with a home, but even beyond our expectations by being in a safe area with lots of land and two wonderful landlords that we look forward to getting to know better.  

     God is so very good, and we thank all of you for your prayers in this matter.  And the best news....we now have a place for you to come visit us, so please feel free to come on down!  We would love to have you!

His Protection

  It was a frantic morning that began at 2:45am.  After getting myself ready, I woke up Ken and the kids and we began the process of "the big move".  We were to be at the airport around 4am for a 5:30 flight out of Dothan.  Shout out to Matt Johnson who was kind enough to drive us to the airport before the crack of dawn!  We were also very happily surprised to be greeted by some members of the Herndon,  Garrard, and Locke families from our church.  I know it was not easy to get up that early on a school day!

 

 We certainly felt everyone's prayers as our first obstacle we faced was the denial of two of our bags due to a Honduran embargo this time of year that only allows 2 bags per a person.  I asked everyone to pray as we tried to move things around in our bags so as not to miss important things like homeschool materials, etc...Our friends were kind enough to take the two bags as we said our goodbyes.
  We made it through check-in OK and went to get on the plane, but were surprised that Kayleigh, our 13-year-old, was selected to go through extra security.  We later realized this caused a 15 minute flight delay in Atlanta as apparently they went through all 10 pieces of our luggage in TSA.  We heard the captain say that we were waiting on some pieces of luggage to make it through and sure enough we looked down and saw all 10 of our bags being loaded (each one had a piece of paper stating it had been inspected by TSA).  Feel free to give Kayleigh a hard time about being a potential terrorist, her brothers certainly did.  

   

We arrived in Tegucigalpa with our dogs, children and bags and were warmly greeted by our BMDMI mission family and taken to Pizza Hut for lunch.  We followed another mission family up over the mountains after lunch to Zamorano valley where we would search for a home the next day.  After stalling in heavy traffic (another opportunity for impromptu prayer), and having some difficulty getting our vehicle up the mountain, we were glad to be coming down the other side into the valley...that is until Ken informed me about half way down the mountain that we had no brakes!  It was at this moment that I realized why we needed so many people praying for us on this day.  

  As Ken worked the hand brake and downshifting to slow our speed so as not to take our friends in front of us off the mountain with us, the children and I prayed during what seemed a much longer, steeper, and curvier road than we remembered. As we pulled up into the Good Shepherd Children's Home, I praised God that we had arrived safely after such a harrowing trip.  If you ever wonder why we missionaries covet your prayers, this is it!  In fact, a few days later in another vehicle I was following to Tegucigalpa, this same missionary family had a tire that had ripped to shreds internally somewhere on the road, but did not blow out.  Yet another miracle for sure!

We have learned that God's promise in Psalm 121:7 certainly applied for us on that day, "The Lord will keep you from all harm- He will watch over your life."

And so we are here, and praising God for His Protection.  Stay tuned as I share about His Provision!