Hasta luego (see you later): the phrase I finally decided on telling people as we parted ways. Because, really, after my Masters/Credential program is finally completed (expected date: by Oct. or Nov.), I will contact IST and see if there are any job positions for the winter/spring partials. If not this year, then the following fall, I’ll return as a teacher to Honduras to complete the last year of my 2 year contract.
As I leave Tegucigalpa, I have mixed feelings. Though excited, thrilled even, to see family and friends, to regain my independence, and have a world of possibilities at my feet, I am sad to say good-bye to close friends, especially the N.A. teacher community which served as my family for this year.
As I find myself on a plane once again, I remember the flight down to Honduras at the beginning of the year. I was bright eyed and hopeful, surveying the people on the plane, wondering whom I would be teaching with and living daily life with. I reflect on first impressions of people, which seem hilarious in retrospect, now that I actually know the person. I remember how we met up in Tegucigalpa, loaded down with suitcases filled with clothes, school supplie, and precious memories of home that would carry us through the year. How my housemates and I got locked out of our house on the first day we got the key, and it poured rain. And a neighbor offered us fajitas on a paper plate as a gesture of welcome.
That day seems long ago now, even though it’s only 11 months in the past. Over the past year, I have grown closer in trust and proximity with these people.
I was deeply impacted and I would even say changed through these special gringos, sharing a year of living and teaching together:
laughing over first day stories, being squeezed together in a taxi which we finally got a good price for, venturing down the street to the pulperia or buying mangoes from the Fruit Guy, spending Sunday mornings at the same church (almost always followed by lunch and Frisbee), being a shoulder to cry on after regretfully, inevitable muggings, sharing first experiences of seeing the country (Ceiba, Copan, Lago, Yuscaran, Amapala, etc) or others (Guatemala!), learning whom are morning people and whom are definitely NOT by sharing the 6:30a school bus, picking their brains for teaching/classroom advice, pulling out the mattresses for movie night, leaving Loarque to hit the mall/get a granita at the airport/go out to dinner/appetizers, having crazy, costume parties or teacher spelling bees, going to see the opera, sharing anxieties and finding solutions, and sharing in Bible Studies, teacher devotionals, and (my favorite) worship nights hosted in someone’s home.
Thank you to everyone who encouraged, inspired, challenged, and even just walked alongside me this year. Thank you especially to those at home (in the U.S.) who held us in prayer. God taught me many life-changing lessons and helped me begin to see truth amongst injustice, grace amidst discipline, patience amidst frustrations, peace amidst chaos, and His steadfast love and constancy amidst it all.
So, as I move on to what’s next (for now house/pet-sitting in Santa Barbara and presenting the Masters of Education on July 5th!), I remember that my life is ultimately in God’s hands, that my heart belongs to Him, and my days have a sovereign purpose, that is bigger than anything I could plan for myself. Again, I make a commitment to pray, “Not my will but yours be done Lord.” I’ve realized that this is a dangerous prayer, because as we pray it, not only does God work on our hearts to make our own desires closer to His, but also He stretches us by putting us into situations where we have to completely have faith that His will is best.
I recently heard the song, “Faithful God,” by Laura Story, and I have to echo the lyrics here, as her words have resonated strongly with my experience in Honduras this year:
“Faithful God, every promise kept
Every need You've met, Faithful God
All I am and all I'll ever be
Is all because You love faithfully
Faithful God
May the love that caught my heart to set it free
Be the love that others see in me
And may this hope that's reaches to the depths of human need
Be the song that I sing in joy and suffering”
May we remember God’s faithfulness whenever, wherever, and with whatever He calls us to serve.
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