School plans, coconuts, and a man on a horse

     I either have a great idea or a lovely bunch of coconuts (doodly-doo).  While I do love that song, I’m quite allergic to coconuts.  They make my mouth itch.  Which means that what I have is a potentially great idea.  But, this great idea has a bit of back planning.  So sit down while I tell you a short story.  What?  You’re already sitting?  Stand up.  Now sit down.  Now look at your man.  Now look back at me.  Huh?  Here goes. 

      So, we have a sweet new plan for school.  Right now, we’re doing a work-at-your-own-pace system for school called Educatodos.  It’s a US-Aid funded program to help Honduran Children get accredited through grade school.  It’s a very simple system, so we also teach lots of other classes at school as well.  I teach English, Math, Geography, History, and an assortment of other classes as well.  Anyhow, there are a few problems with this method.  1) I don’t speak a ton of Spanish and my school is in Honduras.  Whenever we get new girls, there is a huge language barrier.  2) Most of our materials (books) are donated from the states.  They are in English.  This makes it hard for me to teach the Spanish-only speakers and nearly impossible for them to learn.  These are the problems that we face at school every day. 

     And so here is the solution.  Mrs. Pam has a missionary friend who runs the largest bilingual school in Honduras.  After discussing some options with her, we’ve decided to try and open our school as a sort of satellite campus of this large and successful school.  We would use an internationally successful program called PACE that would come in English and Spanish.  From my understanding, it is a work-at-your-own-pace program (hence the name, PACE), but incorporates teacher interaction and is much more geared towards preparing children for the university.  We’re still nailing down the plans, but we’re hoping to start this school at our ministry (PTC) as early as January.  This would be a great way to provide a better education for our girls as well as reach out to the community with Christ-focused Education.

     Now here is where you come in.  Ready?  The schooling would cost money.  Each one of the PACE books cost in the ballpark of $2.50.  The children use a number of these books for different courses throughout the year.  Other general school materials (pencils, paper, ect) and fees for educators and uniforms add in to bring the grand total of tuition to about $300 a child per year.  $300!!!  I feel like that is a bargain price to help give a child living in a ministry across the world a hope and a future.  Don’t you?  

     So what I’m looking for are sponsors.  Sponsors to help my girls get an education.  $300 a year is not a lot of money.  I don’t have a great job in the states, but I clear $300 in a week.  In one week I could pay for a girl to have a great education for an entire year.  Most of you who are reading this make MUCH more money than I do (when I’m working a job that actually pays money that is).  You could probably send a girl to school for a year with just one of two days of work.  Or, maybe you’d like to help but really can’t afford this.  Why not share this with your Sunday School class or church group and sponsor one of my girls as a group.  $300 divided by 12 months comes up to $25 a month.  If that is spread out amongst a group of people, the cost comes up to……… pocket change.  

     So think this over.  Share it with other people.  Help me spread the word.  Most of you who are reading this blog know my girls down here.  Or, at least you’re familiar with my ministry.  Help my girls out.  I was blown away by how quickly everybody volunteered to buy shoes for my girls a few months ago.  So that’s why I’m posing this idea to you.  Now, we’re not starting this until January hopefully, but if you or your group would like to sponsor a girl, let me know.  Or, pretty soon I’m going to type up a more formal letter with information that I could send to Sunday School classes, care groups, or churches in general.  If you can think of anybody who might like to help, let me know so I can give them the info. 

You can reach me by e-mail at BHeath09@gmail.com or by message on facebook.

     This was pretty long, but I really appreciate you reading it.  Your time and efforts encourage me more than I can explain.  Thank you.

Home sweet Hogre

I'm back in Honduras.  The weather is wonderful.  I spent about 6 weeks in the states working for my brother.  I'm extremely thankful for the job, but goodness gracious its hot in Georgia.  But I have alittle more money in my pockets and little more muscle in my arms. 

So first thing, I got to spend the first 2 weeks of this trip with 2 teams from my home church.  We had such a large group last year that my church split two groups to send them to the farm this year.  It was really cool to start of my trip in Honduras with my church family there.  My parents even made it down during the second week.  I was pretty super busy, so i didn't get to spend quite as much time with my teams as I had hoped.  Yet it was great staying with them in the mission house and watching them with my girls. 

We have a few MAJOR changes going on at the school.  Last week we hired two Honduran teachers (with college degrees) to take over alot of the teaching responsibilites.  Its both exciting and intimidating at the same time.  I have real high hopes for where the school is going.  The new teachers will be able to cover alot of topics I'm not capable of.  The will also help to take some of the responsibilities at the school off my shoulders.  Yet, I'm not so sure the teachers like listening to a young, North American all of the time.  Now, I by no means know everything about school in Honduras and I obviously need some help up at the school with so many girls.  Yet, in the meetings so far, they seem very.... confident.  I think confidence is a good thing, but sometimes too much confidence can be a bit annoying.  Or if your confidence deters you from taking the director of the school too serious, it leans towards problematic.  They keep telling me about how they have been trained and how school runs in Honduras.  They don't understand yet that want better than that.  But we'll get there when we get there.  Be in prayer for the school please.  We've got some hard weeks of work ahead of us.  But I really feel like we'll be better able to serve the girls in the end.

I'm going to make this a short blog because even though its my day off, I have several more things to do in La Esperanza, need to pick up my bike, and I need to get back to the farm for a meeting.  A couple more things to pray for though please.  1) there have been talks about getting satellite internet at the farm.  This would be awesome.  I could talk to my family for free AND the girls could skype sunday school classes or supporters from the states.  This would be nice.  And 2) sometime in the near future I need to start thinking about fincancial support for the future.  I've been in Honduras for a year and I really feel that God is calling me back for long term (think years, not months).  So far I've been working in the states for months at a time to pay my way.  Yet, I think in order to be down here as much as God has planned for me (and as much as I simply want to be), I will need to look at some other options.  Pray for me though if you think about it.  Sorry I have to pictures and not many fun stories.  I'll try to do something interesting before I write my next blog.  Thanks for reading and please pray for my girls, the staff and myself.