Phew! What a week!

I know, I know, I've not been blogging as regularly as usual. But I have a boat-load of excuses, honest!

This week was the final session of the Bible Training School for 2008. For this special time, two pastors from Florida came to teach. So, there were extra logistics, including two trips to San Pedro Sula airport (3.5 - 4 hours each way), plus translators to arrange and house, and each morning breakfast included about 5 extra people.

The turnout for classes was especially large this month, which meant that we were scrambling just a bit to make sure there was enough of everything. The final day, when there was a big closing event, we were really crazy busy here!

First, there were the certificates. I had already printed these out, but three men, who are in leadership at the school, were supposed to sign each certificate. The morning of the event (with the certificates still unsigned) we learned that one of the men was out of town! Rather than distribute certificates with an unsigned space at the bottom, the morning of the ceremony I was printing out all of the certificates again, this time with only two signature spaces!

Then, there was the observance of Communion to be prepared for. Russell was arranging to borrow Communion cups from a local church, Chris was sent shopping for grape juice (which I was surprised he was able to find, but he did), and Bethany, Rachel and I were baking loaves of bread.

We try to serve cakes at the dinners for the pastors at the school. For this event, we baked cakes and purchased ice cream. Since there isn't any source of refrigeration where the school is held, we had to transport the ice cream at the very last moment.

Each pastor who received a certificate also received a credit toward a purchase of Bibles and study materials. The folks from whom we purchase these books were bringing them by this week, but unfortunately they didn't know that we had moved to a new house. They couldn't find us, and didn't know our new phone number, so they left town without delivering the books. We arranged for them to return, but the soonest they could do so was the day of the closing event. So, they delivered books to the school during the ceremonies!

In addition to all of this, the Hayes family is here, trying to get settled into their new house. They are still staying with the Ward family in Santa Rosa de Copan right now, because of an interesting circumstance. The Wards have a very nice parking pad inside their walls, so the Hayes were able to park their trailer full of household stuff off the street. This is very good for security, of course. However, the road in front of the Wards' house is being paved, and since the Hayes family arrived and put their trailer off the street on the Wards' lovely parking pad, the street has been closed, and they cannot get it back out again! It's a good thing the trucks aren't stuck in there as well!

So, we've had extra kids here some days, other days our kids were all over at the Hayes' new house playing or cleaning or painting, some days we've had extra people for lunch and dinner, other days no one was eating here - just a crazy, busy, wacky week! The kids are having a blast, of course!

Now things should settle back down for a few days . . . until the shipment arrives from Florida. That should be before the end of this next week. Then we'll really get busy!