Honduras - Day 11

The dog was up yelping again last night. I had the foresight to listen to my iPod last night. The combination of the noise reduction earphones and Enya really helped.

This was my second day out doing children's ministry. The school that we went to this time was very different from the other one. The other school was out in the middle of no where and very run down. This school was the polar opposite. The school was very cool and very clean. One of the things that I noticed, walking around, was that all the classrooms had posters with various English words on it. Some of them had things such as verb forms. Others were just letters with associated animals.

Obviously, this school was very wealthy compared to a lot of the other schools in the area. I learned later that it was actually a private school. No wonder they have so many funds. I even saw a computer lab tucked away in some corner.

When we got to the school, the kids were having some sort of recess or break. I thought it would've been a good opportunity to interact with the kids, but that didn't happen. I also saw a lot of kids with drums and drumsticks. There must be some sort of drum festival or something going on.

In between one of the sessions, I took Jesse to the bathroom. While I was waiting outside, I engaged conversation with a little boy named Carlos. The other school I was at, I was a big novelty and the kids didn't say much to me. This one was different. He was very eager to have an exchange. He slipped in a little English too and I was just amazed at how good his English was. It was far superior to my level of Spanish.

The last class we were at was the 6th grade class. Carlos actually happened to be in this class which was kind of cool. On one of the walls, there was a poster of the female reproductive system. There was also a picture of a sperm. I found this very odd to have up on the wall. The kids knew enough English that Joy was able to teach part of the lesson in English. It was a real blessing for her to be able to interact with the kids on a different level than just being behind a desk with puppets.

While we were going through our routine, I noticed Nahum off to the side. When he's in front of the kids, he's full of energy and very alive. But when he was sitting off to the side of the room, he looked almost sad. I don't know if it was just today or it was something that I had just failed to notice last week. I later found out that he had been experiencing a kind of headache all around his head for about a week now. I was awed by how he was able to still hold up in front of the kids with no visible signs of wear. He went to the doctor this afternoon to get checked out, so hopefully, he's alright.

After the class, we got ready to leave. The principal of the school invited us in to her office to give us some thanks. She brought out some donuts and Pepsi for us. This is the first time to, my knowledge, that we got any kind of reward. Even though I was appreciative of the jesture, I was eager to leave. Blanca was taking us to a place to eat outside of town. She was the one that had introduced us to the beef stew in the market, so I had high expectations for this place.

We headed out there and the place was very nice. Unlike most of the shops in Siguatepeque, it was more formal. It was a buffet, but they served you the food. When you go to the table, they took your tray and placed your food for you. It was all very different from what I was used to, not only here, but in the states as well.

I was expecting the food to be good, but it wasn't really. Some of it was, but the protein I chose, pork chop, pressed chicken, a strip of beef, was all very tough. The flavor seemed okay, but it was a chore to cut and chew. One of the best things there was this heavy white creamed pasta. It was good, but the tiny bit that I took was really filling. I barely touched my plate and I was full.

Around the restaurant were various cages with animals inside. There was one cage with macaws, another with ducks and tucans, and yet another with turtles. Blanca told us that there were peacocks out back. We went to see them along with geese and rooster and chickens. There was also a cage with two pumas in it.

One of the really interesting things we saw was a guy roasting coffee. We got to see the raw plant that was put into this medieval looking cast iron ice cream churner that roasted the beans. There was also a nice pile of beans off to the side that were already done. The aroma was fabulous and he was kind enough to let us touch the beans and take a picture of him.

We went back to Siguatepeque and I pretty much collapsed and fell asleep. There was stuff that I was supposed to do, but I was just way too tired. I napped for about an hour when the power went out. I tried sleeping a little longer, but the heat was just too much for me. I decided that I should give it a shot anyway and went to the bookstore to see if they had power.

It was odd because there were some shops that seemed to have power. Their lights were on or they were blasting music in to the street, so it didn't really make sense to me where they got their power. The power was out at the bookstore too. I went back to the hotel to pick up the Myers-Briggs book to read. When I got back to the bookstore, power had returned. The store was a little busy, so I sat down and read.

As I was reading about the personality type that Ethan was supposed to fall under, I realized that a lot of it was describing my personality. I know that I'm an XXTJ, but I thought I leaned more towards the S rather than the N. But according to this description, I'm a pretty strong N too. The more I read about this stuff, the harder it is for me to peg what the source of the conflict is. I was sharing this with Linshuang and she commented that it may have nothing to do with personality. It may have something to do with the other person. That was something I hadn't thought of and was definately a possibility.

I didn't get to read for too long before the computers were freed up. I backed up the critical files and tried installing Quickbooks 2005. Alas, it required administrative access to install. I asked Blanca if she knew the password, and she didn't. We contacted Marlon, who not only wrote the POS but who also set up the computers too. He gave us a password that didn't work. We called back and got another one which didn't work.

I had seen Marlon log in to his own username last week, so I knew that that worked. I asked Blanca to contact him and get the password for that account. No go. He did manage to tell me how to get in to safe mode. I did that and was able to create a new account with administrative rights. I logged in to this account and installed Quickbooks 2005.

Marlon had told us that his POS could be interfaced by Quickbooks. I was skeptical because that would mean that Intuit provided an API for other people to use to interface with their software. Considering that Intuit has their own POS software, I find this very unlikely. Still, I gave it a try. Nothing.

I had basically spent the last two hours, if not the last week trying to get this POS working to no avail. It was 6 O'Clock, time for training. We called it a day and went off to the office. I was going to play with Jesse and Grace, but Linshuang was overwhelmed by the number of people in her class so I went to provide my great pointing skills and broken Spanish along with my moral support.

This was a really fun group. We laughed a lot and joked around a lot which made the training very enjoyable. Linshuang had to pretty much teach two classes because she had two computers. The people on the one were picking it up fairly quickly, while the other was kind of straggling behind. I could tell that it was all very taxing for her, so I did my best to keep her spirits up by being goofy. It seemed to work. If nothing else, it made her laugh.

After dinner, we had our debrief. It's crazy how fast you can go from being encouraged by a weekend to being so discouraged by what happened in one day. After a little more than a weeks worth of work, we basically had nothing to show for the POS. To add to that, we may have made things worse by introducing them to different software and scrapping what they had been working towards. Granted, the POS that they had was a POS, but even if it were working, I don't know if it would be a good recommendation for them to use it. Just dealing with Marlon today has been a horrifying experience.

One of the things that I hate to be, is a burden. Whether it be emotionally, financially, spiritually, or physically, I don't like to be a burden on people. I do my best to be self sufficient or to do things on my own. I'll ask others for assistance only if I really need it. Basically what we were doing was telling them to spend all this money to get a system that they should of already had. My recommendation is to not to move to the new version of Quickbooks but to try and get the inventory that's in the POS into their existing Quickbooks. Whether this is possible or not, is something else.

On the bright side of things, Joy's mom is better. All the people that have seen her are testifying that, for all intents and purposes, Joy's mom is back to normal. Praise God. Even admist this discouragement, he still gives us something that we can really praise him for.

So there's a lot that still needs to be prayed about.

• We need to have a solution for the POS.
• Training is going well, but it is very taxing on Linshuang. Pray for energy and focus.
• Children's ministry is very taxing for me. Even though I'm not really interacting with the kids much, I am just really tired when it's done.
• Jesse and Grace have been really good, pray that they continue to be in good spirits and high energy.
• Pray for Nahum and his health.
• Continue to pray for Ethan and Forward.
• Continue to pray that I would receive my confirmation.