It's not easy to take a picture of a puppy . . .

Here's the proof, from our recent photo shoot with our new puppy, Bunny:







Turns out, it's just like trying to take a picture of a toddler - when we distracted her with a stick she forgot all about dodging from the camera!

An Unexpected Double Bunny Situation

We recently acquired another puppy. This makes six dogs for us. The new pup is a mutt, mostly lab, with characteristics indicating that there's a good bit of hound dog in her ancestry. She has a thin face, long floppy ears, and her legs and feet appear much too large for her body at this point. When excited she wags her entire body, and she tends to leap while running. She's adorable, although she may grow up to be an odd-looking adult. We mostly bought her for her potential to grow huge (based on the size of her mother).

The pup has a sweet, loving temperament, and has been named "Bunny," because of the ears and the huge legs and feet. We also thought that a huge dog named "Bunny" would be kind of funny.

Last night, Russell and Iris dropped by the house. Russell had some paperwork he needed to handle with Allen, and he said Iris was coming along because she had a surprise for me.

Well, I was certainly surprised when Iris handed me a teensy tiny bunny. A real bunny, this time, not a puppy! A lady on the street was selling the baby. Since we recently lost both of our pet bunnies Iris thought of us, and got it for us.

The baby bunny is so small that we're not certain it's eating solid food. We're waiting to see how it does before we get too attached, but at the same time, the baby has already been named "Thumper."

Oh, I don't have the camera today (Allen took it along with him, on a trip to visit a project site), so I'll have to add pictures of the two "bunnies" a bit later.

There's a poinsettia in the middle of my veggies

This year, I was able to participate in a charming Christmas ritual which I have neglected since living in Honduras - the traditional killing of the poinsettia plant.

Before Christmas, I happened to see a lady in town carrying around about a dozen plants to sell. It was an interesting and healthy-looking collection of flowers, including a geranium, some snap dragons, and one poinsettia plant.

Well, I haven't had a Christmas poinsettia in years and years - which is sort of odd, when you consider that they are native to Central America. In a rush of Christmas spirit, I bought that plant, even though my experience with plants in general, and poinsettias specifically, hasn't been encouraging.

I put the plant in an antique crock on my kitchen counter, and watched it change from a healthy plant to a less healthy plant, to an eyesore. The demise was slow, but steady, accelerating when David, unbeknownst to me, watered the plant with enough water to drown the poor thing.

When all the craziness of Christmas was behind us, I looked at what was left of my plant. All of the green leaves were gone, but two sets of red (are those leaves, or flowers?) were left.

I started putting the plant outside for part of each day, as I knew one reason for its decline was not getting enough light in the kitchen. Gradually the plant showed some will-to-live, and I needed to put it somewhere safe, where it wouldn't get scorched by the very bright sun we had in early January, where I wouldn't just forget about it and finish it off with neglect, where the dogs and cows couldn't get to it, etc. The only location I could come up with was the vegetable garden.

There was a spot in the garden where I had planted some lettuce seeds saved from last year, and nothing ever came up. So, I plunked down the poinsettia there, amongst my other types of lettuce plants.

It is now putting out new leaves! Hurrah! I may have started a new ritual - the resurrection of the Christmas poinsettia! Sounds more like an Easter tradition, but I'll take what I can get. When the plant gets bigger, I'll have to move it to a more appropriate location, as poinsettias can grow to be a large shrub here, and I don't think I'll be wanting a large shrub in amongst my lettuces.

And that's the story of why there's a poinsettia plant in my vegetable garden.

My Garden in Progress

Back in November I finally started my garden, something I've been planning for a couple of years. I actually did a bit of vegetable gardening last year, in 5 gallon buckets. This year I was ready to start on a more permanent garden.

One of the first problems related to setting up a garden was choosing a location. Our property is large, and there's a nice garden spot downhill from our house location, but it was far enough away, and along a steep enough path, that we didn't feel like the garden would be convenient enough if we located it there.

Before we'd purchased the land the trees had been harvested from the flat land at the top, where we've located our buildings. As a result, much of the soil has washed away, and the ground is rocky and not especially fertile.

As you stand on the flat, high part of our property, where the buildings are located, you can barely see the garden. You can see the temporary fencing (to keep the dogs and cows out), but the garden begins just on the other side of a ridge.



Below is what you see as you approach the top of the ridge. The garden is still very much under construction, as you can see.


And here (below) you can see the garden up close. Closest to the gate is a section of garden which is mostly lettuce. There is also garlic, a few very tiny cabbage plants, two snapdragons and a poinsettia. I'll explain about the poinsettia tomorrow. The second section has beets and carrots, and space for additional beets and carrots, to stagger the harvest. The third secion has bush beans and some beleagered pea plants. Unfortunately I've found that the zampopos (leaf cutter ants) really like pea plants. I've been fighting them off, but I'm not sure I'm going to be successful enough to actually harvest any peas.



You can also see, in these photos, the next part of the garden, which is still under construction. Christopher digs down (breaking up and removing lots of rocks in the process), and then he, Bethany, and David fill the section with a mixture of topsoil and dried manure.



We're getting close to our earliest harvests - leaf lettuce, beets, and carrots.

A Tale of Two Construction Projects - here's the second one

As you can see from the photos, this is a larger church than the one I wrote about yesterday. The smaller church from yesterday (in Belen) is the first church building for a congregation which has outgrown it's beginnings as a house church. That church has about 60 people in regular attendance - about half adults and half children.

The church in the photos above is being constructed in the town of Guacutao, and it is the project of a congregation which has outgrown an earlier church building. The congregation of about 250 people currently worships in a church building which seats 250 - so they can't fit any extra people during special events, outreach services, etc, and they need room to grow.

Although the Belen church was being built of adobe blocks, this larger church is being constructed of cinderblocks.

Church construction projects continue to crop up all over Lempira. We've seen a decrease in funds being donated for church construction projects, so we're not able to materially help all of those who ask.

A Tale of Two Church Construction Projects - here's the first one

This week Allen visited two churches, which had asked us for help with their construction projects.

The first project, shown in the following pictures, is located near the town of Belen.

Mixing concrete

Foundations

Some members of the church congregation

There are certain things we look for, before we consider helping a church financially, with their construction project:

First, the land must be owned by the church, not by an individual.

Second, the church must have enough congregational support to get the foundation and walls constructed without our help. Most of the churches in the rural areas of the mountains are constructed from adobe bricks, and this type of construction isn't expensive, but it is labor intensive. By the time the congregation has achieved this much of the construction, they will truly feel that the construction of the church is their project, not something the gringos have given to them. Sadly, when outsiders completely give a church to a congregation, it isn't rare to find that the congregation expects outsiders to pay for ongoing maintenance and other expenses, too. We feel it is important for the church congregation to have full ownership of their building - we just help out some in the process. We've also had instances where, when we've helped finance an early stage of construction, the churches were slow to continue the construction, seemingly waiting for us to do more. By helping with the roof, we guarantee that after we've helped, the church will at least have enough of a structure completed to hold services in.

The church near Belen has fulfilled the first requirement, and they're on their way toward the second. Allen was able to give them some helpful pointers, on ways they can improve the wall construction, during this visit. Once the walls are completed, if we have the funds available, we will purchase supplies needed for the construction of the church roof.

I plan to post about the second church construction project tomorrow.

Things I never saw in the Suburbs

Before moving to Honduras, I lived most of my life in the Maryland suburbs - a rather affluent part of the US. I was thinking of starting a series of blog posts on things I see along the roads where I live now, that I never saw in the suburbs. Here's the first installment, which was the inspiration for the series.



From the Land Cruiser (that's the vehicle's snorkle you see on the left side of the picture) . . . what is that beside the road? Surely it isn't . . .



Yep. It is. Cow carcass.

"If That Cat Could Talk, What Tales He'd Tell . . . "

Here's Smudge, the cat, back where he belongs on David's (unmade) bed.

Smudge is David's best animal friend, and he's been missing for the past month. Being a tom cat, he tends to roam about a bit, get into fights, etc, so for the first few days of his absence we weren't especially concerned.

But weeks passed without any sign of Smudge. Most of the family had (silently) assumed that Smudge had met an untimely end. David didn't make this assumption, and no one wanted to tell him that with the passing of so much time it was unlikely that we'd be seeing Smudge again.

Last night I was up in the middle of the night, killing a mouse, when I heard a commotion on the front porch, then noises on the metal roof. I went outside to see what was going on, and there was Smudge looking down at me! I called to him, and he came right down the ladder that was up against the house, and willingly let me pick him up and carry him into the house.

Smudge was very hungry when he got home, almost choking on the cat food I gave him, because he was trying to eat so fast, but he doesn't appear to have lost weight during his time away from home. He's a very good hunter, so that's not especially surprising. He's got a few nicks and cuts, but he's not really hurt anywhere. So, I do find myself wondering - where has he been for a month? What was he doing? What brought him back now?

Smudge isn't telling. But he's clearly glad to be home again, where he can luxuriate all day on David's comfy and unmade bed. David isn't making the bed, because he doesn't want to disturb Smudge.

Visiting Rodeito Feeding Center

Since our arrival in Lempira in 2005, we've felt compelled to help with the problem of malnutrition in the mountain villages. With food prices climbing, the need for feeding centers has grown significantly. We are now providing food to 74 feeding centers, scattered throughout several departments. Keeping the participants in the program accountable - to make sure that the food gets into the bellies where it is most needed - is a big task, and part of this involves us visiting the centers to see them in operation.

Back in October, when Allen's parents were visiting for Russell's wedding, they traveled with Allen to visit the feeding center in Rodeito, Lempira. Here are some pictures from that visit.

A Hodge Podge

I've been too busy to blog . . . so here are the highlights:

Allen is home from a six week visit to the US. He visited friends, spoke at churches, and loaded the annual shipping container in Maryland. We're glad to have him back!

Another bridge project is underway, so most of this past week Allen and some collection of the children have been out working on that. It's a fairly large bridge, so they'll be working on this one for a while.

We've been baking and decorating mountains of cookies to give away as personal gifts (not as gifts for all the pastors - that would take forever). We're almost done putting together the platters of cookies; I'm hopeful that the last ones will be delivered tomorrow.

Once the cookie baking and gift delivering is finished, we'll start in on the cooking and baking for the big Christmas Eve dinner being held at our house. We'll only have our family, Iris' family, and Rachel's boyfriend, but that's still a pretty big gang of folks to feed. We splurged on a big turkey - an expensive, imported item for us. We're all looking forward to the feast!

My garden is going like gangbusters. It's just a little, semi-experimental garden, since I'm such a novice gardener, but I now have lettuce, beets, carrots, cabbage, bush beans, peas, and garlic growing. The weather this December is much hotter and sunnier than last year, so I'm having to watch all these tender plants pretty closely. It's also the dry season, so I'm doing frequent waterings. So far, it's still fun.

This past week, Allen bought another cow. This one was pregnant. It's a kind of funny story. Allen went to see the cow late this past week. The owner of the cow and Allen dickered on the price, but were unable to come to an agreement. That night, someone set off fireworks right where the cow was and got her all upset, so that she was running all over her little yard in panic. The owner was terrified that something might happen to the cow, or the unborn calf, if he didn't sell her and get her out of the city right away. (At Christmas, firecrackers are pretty much a constant all over the cities of Honduras.) So, the owner called us and agreed to the highest price Allen had previously offered, and then we suddenly owned a very pregnant cow who had to be moved ASAP!

Yesterday morning Allen, Bethany and David drove to town and started walking the cow, very slowly, toward our property. They didn't make it. The cow was done, and wasn't willing to walk another step, when they happened to be at the property of a friend of ours. So the friend agreed to let us keep the cow there, and to keep the cow and calf (once it arrived) until we were ready to move them the rest of the way to our place.

This morning we got word that the cow's water had broken, and later that a local animal midwife had been called in, because the cow was having difficulty delivering her very large calf. But all came out well in the end - we have a new female calf, large and healthy! Pretty neat, huh? The next thing on my agenda is learning how to milk a cow, and starting to make cheese. I'm excited about the possibilities!

The container Allen loaded in Maryland is now in the port here in Honduras. It will be going through customs this week, and soon we should have it here. Please pray with us that we won't have problems as we get the container through customs and unloaded up here in Gracias. Once the contents are unloaded, we'll be busy busy busy putting together the gifts for the pastors and the orphanages.

That about covers the excitement at our house. Merry Christmas everyone!

Did you pray for us today?

I was just wondering, since it seems like someone might have been praying when Russell fell off the roof today, and only sustained a badly sprained ankle.

He was cementing down some clay roof tiles on our team house, when he slipped on some wet metal roofing (that's what's under the clay tiles) and discovered that there was nothing to grab onto, to keep himself from falling. At an estimate, he fell maybe 18 feet.

He drove himself back into Gracias, and then went to the hospital, where they did an X-ray and put on a cast. Apparently the damage is a very bad sprain, not a break, but it did involve some bone damage, and they want him in the cast for the next month.

So, if you pray for us (even if it wasn't today) . . . thanks!

Sorry for the silence

I've had lots on my plate recently - fortunately nothing bad, just stuff that needed to get done, and I've not had much of interest to say here, or time to say it.

I do have an update on the IRS situation: we still haven't received the official notice that we won't be required to pay additional money. So, while this isn't exactly bad news, I don't yet have the "closure" I've been waiting for. You can keep right on praying about this - I certainly am!

I've started gardening, which has taken up some of my time, as well as that of the kids. I'll share some pictures soon . . . right now they'd mostly just be pictures of dirt, so not all that interesting. It's weird to be planting in November and December, but I've noticed that the neighbors have new gardens sprouting now too, so I'm certain that I'm on the right schedule!

So far I've planted lettuce (three varieties), spinach, carrots, beets, and garlic. The kids are preparing the new garden beds ahead of my planting, so I'm putting things into the soil gradually, as each bed is set to go. Soon I expect to put in beans and peas, tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers. Everything is an experiment for me, so I don't have a big overall plan, unless you consider "learn from my mistakes" to be a plan. ;-D

I've also been working on a newsletter, and trying to get lots of housework and schoolwork done before the big container shipment arrives. It's all keeping me busy.

Now, just to add a couple of pictures to this post, I thought I'd show you a couple of interesting bugs we've recently found:




The caterpillar above is about 3 inches long. The pictures don't do it justice - in real life those "branches" growing out of the caterpillar look exactly like a real plant. That's some impressive camouflage. It's pretty hardy, too - Boo keeps bringing it leaves and it's living in a container on the kitchen counter. I'm pretty sure a caterpillar this hardy must be something that will decimate the garden!



The cats were playing with this moth, before Rachel grabbed it for a picture. The red you see on one side is a small wing peaking out from under the larger wing. There's a matching red wing on the other side, but it's tucked up so you can't see much of it. The moth is on a 3 x 5 card, so you can judge the size.

This has been some week

Actually, this entire series of events took more than a week, but this past week has been particularly rough.

First we got word that we were going to be audited by the IRS for the year 2008. With a meeting scheduled, we worked hard to have all of our receipts and documentation together, to prove that we had presented our income and giving accurately and honestly.

Then we had a preliminary meeting with the IRS. At this meeting, the agent assigned to us said that our paperwork was very thorough, and that she thought we'd probably be told that everything was okay, and that we would not be required to pay additional money to the IRS.

This was reassuring, but turned out to be inaccurate. When the agent presented our papers to her supervisors, they disagreed with how some of the paperwork had been handled. Not that they didn't believe that we'd received and given away money as we stated, but that we might not have gone through the right paperwork channels.

This ruling meant that we would potentially owe thousands more than we've already paid, plus there was a suggestion that, since we did our paperwork the same way in other years, the IRS would potentially want to audit us for the years before and after 2008, back as far as they are allowed to audit. Just the thought sends chills up your spine, doesn't it?

That was the way things stood for a week, while Allen worked to get some better resolution to this issue. Lots of people were praying for us!

Allen spoke with three different lawyers. Two were lawyers who specifically work with Christian organizations, the third was the H & R Block lawyer who represented us to the IRS, for free, because we had used H & R Block to prepare the taxes for 2008. The three lawyers all agreed that the way we had handled the tax return should have been acceptable. The H & R Block lawyer wrote a letter to the IRS, explaining the manner in which we had obeyed the tax laws. The letter was delivered to them this morning. By late morning, we received unofficial word that the ruling was going to be changed, and that we should expect not to owe any additional money.

I'm cautiously optimistic. I'm feeling more hopeful than I've felt for a week, but I think, until I have a piece of paperwork direct from the IRS stating that we're in the clear, I'll still be feeling unsettled and a bit nervous.

Some weeks are like that, I guess. I just hope we don't have another week like this one anytime soon!

Why Can Food in the Tropics?

That was the question I asked myself, when I thought about taking on home canning. Here are a few of the answers.

Although one might think that since we live in the tropics we can just stick our hands out the window and grab a banana or mango any day of the year - well that's not quite the case. We have seasons here (rainy and dry), and seasonal foods as well. We are able to benefit by purchasing these foods when the price is best, and storing them for other times of the year. Canning is a super way to do this.

Also, we have a limited amount of freezer space. Currently, we're just running the little freezer on top of our refrigerator, because we don't have enough power to run the chest freezer. By canning some vegetables and meats, we have some extra food stored beyond what our freezer can hold. Plus, there is always the possibility of losing power, and thereby losing all the frozen food. I'd love to be able to say "that can't happen to us, since we're using solar energy" - but it only took a couple of lightning strikes to teach me that we're vulnerable to power outages, too.

We've experienced few major disasters in Honduras since my family has lived here (nothing even close to the significance of Hurricane Mitch). Even so, there have been times when bridges have washed out, and landslides have closed roads - it actually happens quite frequently here in the mountains. Honduras doesn't have lots of roads. If the major arteries are shut, food and fuel and other supplies just can't get through. The unions use this fact to their advantage, by holding their strikes on the major roads. Usually they get the attention of the government very quickly, as traffic rapidly piles up in both directions. Allen and several of the children were caught in a huelga (a strike blocking a road) a few years ago, and they were stuck in traffic for a couple of days! So, I say all that to make a case for having some extra food around the place - enough so that our family won't be in trouble if we can't get to where food is being sold, or if the food can't get to our part of the country. Last year, during the curfews related to the political situation - which sometimes lasted for several days without a break - we were relieved to have some stored foods in our pantry!

One final advantage to canning has been the ability to create "convenience foods." We don't have many options for quick and easy meal preparation available to us here, and the options we have are generally imported - and therefore expensive - items. The ability to pre-cook a large amount of meat (or beans, or veggies) and have that item ready to heat-and-serve is an unparalleled luxury for us!

So far, we've successfully canned chopped chicken, ground chicken, green beans, red beans, orange slices, and tomatoes. We're quite pleased with the results!

A word to my friends in Maryland and the surrounding area

The official Gifts for Gracias collecting has ended, as we always try to set the mail-by date early enough that there's time for donations to travel by mail.

HOWEVER, the container will not leave Maryland for two weeks or so. This means, if you have anything else you'd like to get into this shipment, the time is NOW to get it to us.

If you need info on how to get in contact with the people working on this project in Maryland, send me an email (trish @ sowers4pastors.com). But do it today! ;-D

Canning chicken

Today we canned 7 quarts of chicken meat, with broth. Here's how we do this:

We started with five frozen chickens, purchased from town. Five chickens gives us seven full quarts of chicken. We'd previously canned up four chickens into seven quart jars, and those quarts had less chicken and more broth. Seven quarts is the magic number, by the way, because that's how many quart jars my pressure canner can hold at one time.



There are different ways to can chicken, including putting the meat into the jars raw. We've chosen to roast our chickens first. We end up with lovely roast chickens, and lots of grease and drippings in the pans.



We don't want to waste anything here, so we collect all of the grease and drippings, and save them for making gravy. I put 1/4 cup grease, 1 cup of drippings, and 1 cup of water into a freezer container. I generally get enough to put the makings for three or four batches of gravy in the freezer. Then, whenever I want to make chicken gravy in the future, I'm all set!



The meat is pulled off the bones, and set aside in a big bowl.




As each carcass is picked clean, we dump the bones and skin into a pot of water boiling on the stove. Eventually this will be the broth that we put in with the chicken.



In the midst of the canning we had to fix supper. Since I had more grease and drippings than I could fit into my freezer, we decided to use gravy in tonights supper, so Rachel whipped up a quick batch of biscuits for biscuits and gravy. It was nice to be eating chicken and gravy on the same day that we canned chicken, as the smell of the chicken cooking makes everyone want to eat it now!



We didn't have quite enough chicken broth, so we filled the jars the rest of the way up with hot water.



I won't go into the details of all the steps involved in making sure that the food will be sealed safely into the jars, but rest assured that we are carefully following all the directions. Once the chicken is in the jars, and the hot broth is poured over the meat, we pop the jars into the canner for processing.

We have to set the pressure on our canner slightly higher than the general directions, because of our elevation.



And there's the result of all this work - cooked chicken, ready for seven future family meals.

I was going to explain how we figure the benefits of the canning in this post, but it has gotten kind of long, so I'll save that for next time.

Home Canning in the Tropics

I've been doing some research lately, on home canning. As our family adjusts to our new, rural lifestyle, I've had to figure out what new activities we should incorporate. Canning wasn't something I was certain would be of benefit to us, for several reasons.

First, I figured that people living in the north (not northern Honduras - I mean like in the US and Canada) store foods through canning because they only have appropriate weather for gardening during a small portion of the year. By canning seasonal foods, people in colder climates have a way to save their home-grown produce, or produce purchased at a low price when a certain food is in season, for use during the winter months. Here in the mountains of western Honduras, our climate is fairly consistent all year long. We have months when we receive more or less rain during the year, but our temperatures only range from highs in the mid-90's down to around 40 degrees (Fahrenheit, of course). So, theoretically, the climate in our area should make it possible to grow some vegetables and fruits pretty much year around. Additionally, our family doesn't depend on our own gardening for our food - we currently purchase almost all of our fruits and vegetables. Although we hope to change this, it will be a gradual process, as I learn (likely through a good bit of trial and error) how to successfully garden here. So, I wasn't sure that there was a good reason for me to do any canning at all.

Second, there are costs related to the process of canning. There is the purchase of a pressure canner, jars, and lids, plus the cost of gas or electricity used during the canning process. The amount of time involved also must be factored into the equation. I wasn't sure if these costs would be offset by a significant enough benefit to the family.

The more research I did, however, the more I became convinced that canning foods would be a useful tool in my family's repertoire of cooking skills. Last Christmas I gave myself a canner and a small collection of canning jars as a present. The equipment arrived in our shipping container, along with the Gifts for Gracias donations. It took us months to dig our house out from the arrival of the container, and it wasn't until that was mostly under control that I found the time and motivation to actually start experimenting with canning.

Now that we're in a comparatively quiet time of the year, we've begun. So far, we've canned green beans (14 quarts), chicken in broth (also 14 quarts) and orange sections in light juice (7 pints). It's barely a start, but I have to say that we've found some significant benefits for us, even here in tropical Honduras!

I'll expand on this in the next post.

Okay now, this is kinda pathetic

Last night at dinner we had a new treat - something we bought on impulse, as we hadn't seen it at our regular grocery store in Gracias before. It was margarine spread - the kind that comes in a big tub, you know?

We usually only get those sticks of margarine that don't taste anything like butter. I don't think they're really trying to taste like butter. Actual butter isn't available here.

So, we were having what we call "munchy-crunchy-lunchie" for dinner last night - that's chips and salsa, cut up veggies and dip, maybe some cheese. Then we added some (homemade) bread with the margarine spread.

You'd have thought the spread-on-bread was gourmet fare. Boo ate so much of this! David opined that he's sure they'll have margarine spread to eat in heaven. Gus snuck back later for a bedtime snack of margarine spread on crackers (he said he'd been thinking about how good this would taste the whole time since dinner).

I'm feeling like my children are just a bit deprived. ;-D