Lots of miscellaneous news!

We've been very busy here. You'd think we'd be finishing up on our unpacking, but in fact, you'd be wrong. Our landlord is still working on emptying the house! He has a large storage room/bodega crammed full of stuff, and he has been having problems with his big moving truck, so he hasn't been able to get it all moved. He has now come several times for smaller pickup truck loads, so he's gradually whittling down the big pile of stuff. But meanwhile, we have our bodega stuff all over the house. Plus, Kirstin is planning to use half of this large room as her bedroom. Since she doesn't currently have a room, her boxes of stuff are also hanging about with no place to go. We are very hopeful that the landlord will finish emptying this room soon, so we can get this house looking more like a home, and less like a disorganized warehouse!

The Hayes family is due to arrive next week! Wouldn't it be nice if we had a house for them? Umm, like we said we would? Well, we don't. We've been trying to rent a house for them, and we've been experiencing the typical Central American problems. So, we are still scrambling for a house, with the family due in less than a week! Prayers on this topic would be appreciated!

Construction has resumed on the buildings out at the property, which is nice. We didn't have any theft or other issues out there while Allen and Russell were away, which of course is welcome news!

In breaking news, the truck in which Russell had a fender-bender in January is almost back from the repair shop. Almost.

We're working on getting our absentee ballots in so that our votes will be counted. It's been a bit of a challenge, as the mail is really slow from here, so we prefer to have our mail hand-delivered to the US, and then put into the US postal system from there. But, we really want our votes to be counted, so we're working out the details. This year, our family has 4 registered voters!

The tropical storm which hit last week really didn't affect us here in Gracias at all, however other parts of Honduras have suffered greatly. I was reading in Dr. Jeff Masters' Wunder Blog at www.wunderground.com (where I like to get my storm updates):

One of this hurricane season's biggest disasters continues to unfold in Central America, where the death toll now stands at 39 from ten days of heavy rains triggered by last week's Tropical Depression Sixteen and this week's tropical disturbance 91L. At least 10,000 homes have been destroyed and 250,000 people made homeless by the floods. Hardest hit is Honduras, where 23 are dead and 8 missing in flash floods and landslides. Approximately 60% of the nation's roads have been damaged, and the flooding is the worst since Hurricane Mitch of 1998 killed 10,000 people there. The past week's flooding has also killed four in Guatemala, seven in Costa Rica, four in Nicaragua, and four in El Salvador. In Belize, damage is at least $15 million from the floods, and some areas are seeing flooding worse than was experienced during Hurricanes Mitch and Keith. Satellite estimates suggest that up to a foot of rain has fallen over some parts of Central America in the past week. The heavy damage to crops across the region will likely cause severe food shortages in coming months, and substantial international aid will be required.

I know there have been a few landslides closing roads in our area, but that's pretty everyday stuff up here, so I hadn't really realized that the storms were causing major problems in other areas, until I saw it on the internet. Our biggest problem was getting our laundry to dry!