Heart of the King Ministries

55 posts

Two Months and Going Strong

We are just completing our second month in language school. As our last post mentioned, we are settling, settling into where the Lord has placed us for this time. The Lord is good! We have stayed on track and are learning a lot of Spanish although the more you learn the more you realize how much you do not know and how much more you need to learn. We are both deep into our second book. There are seven books overall and the books get more difficult as you go taking longer to complete. Completion of book seven classifies you as fluent. We are told there are few (if any) who even start book seven, we will see how close we can get. We know the Lord is for us and will help us get a good base. As we start to minister full time, we can and will continue to study the language to become more fluent. Learning a second language is a life-time endeavor. We are looking forward to completing language school and starting to work directly with the people to show and share the love that Jesus has for them.

Where is the refrigerator?

We are also getting used to a lot of the cultural differences and just plain everyday differences. We recently went with some friends to “Pricesmart” in San Pedro Sula which is about a two hour drive. They are owned by Walmart and it is basically a “Sam’s Club” warehouse store. I was not surprised when turning the corner I saw a
rack of eggs sitting beside the bottled water. The refrigeration of eggs is only needed in the US, Australia and Japan (maybe a couple of other countries, by far, most of the world does not refrigerate eggs). This is completely safe for here and other parts of the world because of the method the eggs are handled and prepared from the hen to your grocery cart. Egg shells in the US are treated and must be refrigerated! You learn lots of little things like that while living in another country. We now have eggs sitting on our counter!

Lychee Fruit

Our school teachers are very aware that we students need to learn about food in Honduras. They took us to the market on Thursday and told us about the different fruits and vegetable available here. The lychee fruit is strange looking but delicious, the maracuyá fruit (passion fruit) makes a great juice. Platanos (Plantains) and bananas are plentiful and for now melons and pina (pineapple) are available. Several children came up to us trying to sell bunches of dried chamomile flowers, we declined but one of our teachers said it makes very good tea. I have looked up the recipe, just boil water and add teaspoon of dried chamomile flowers and sugar or honey if you want it sweetened. I might try some of this tea later. We bought large fresh aguacates (avocados), less than 50 cents each, and I made guacamole for the first time. I added a little too much fresh squeezed lime juice but it was still great.  Last week at school we learn how to make tortillas. They use a tortilla flour so you just have to add water and knead the dough, form into balls then let it rise. Next you estirar (stretch) the dough into a tortilla. We gently smashed the dough balls and pressed them out to thin tortillas. The el comal (tortilla pan) was greased and hot so we placed the tortillas down and let them cook. Believe it or not ours really looked like a tortilla and they tasted good too.

Pupusas

We filled them with frijolies (beans) and queso (cheese), which is a typical breakfast here and ate them up. I will practice making these at home and fill them with frijolies (refried beans), queso (cheese), pollo (chicken) and aguacate (avocado), Gene will probably add jalapenos-hot ones, looking forward to this meal! We also made pupusas a couple of weeks ago.  These are made with a different type of flour.  They are smaller and thicker and taste great.  You eat them with cabbage and carrots cooked in vinegar.

A few weekends ago we went to La Esperanza, a city not too far from here but in the mountains. Our school director, Mike, asked us to ride up with him to a village he is working in. They are planning to put in pipes and run water to each house in the village. This is a community project and gives Mike a great opportunity to be a witness of God to these people. He is doing things right by just being the overseer of the project and giving the people of the community a chance to take ownership of the project and improve their own lives.

This time in language school is proving to be extremely valuable not just to learn the language but to learn and understand the culture. Our teachers are great at explaining things around us and relating how our actions can seriously affect our acceptance in this culture. This training will give us the ability to minister the word of God more effectively to the Hispanic people.

That’s it for this month’s update. Until next time, thank you for your prayers and support. May the Lord bless you and your families. AND, God bless America!

We are currently in need of your prayers that Spanish classes will continue to go well. Also we are in need of funds to cover our October, November and December tuition. Your support is greatly appreciated.

 

If you feel lead to help support us financially, all gifts are tax deductible and should be mailed to:

Heart of the King Ministries, P.O Box 4018, Woodland Park, CO. 80866-4018

Checks should be made payable to Heart of the King Ministries. If you would like to use a credit or debit card or your PayPal account, PayPal is available on our website at this link (www.heartoftheking.org/donations).

Click this LINK to view photos from Siguatepeque and the Spanish Institute of Honduras (newer photos appear toward the bottom of the gallery). We will continue to add photos to this gallery while we are attending school.

Blessings

Gene & Robin Willis