The Lastest Happenings

October 4, 2008

This evening I write from the shelter of my cabin here at camp. There are moments when I wonder just what the buildings are a shelter from other than the rain (and even then there are leaks occasionally). And yet I am ever so thankful for the shelter. The problem with my perspective on the buildings stems from my discovery this morning. I awoke to find a very steady stream of ants coming up through a crack in the cement floor in one of my rooms. I soon discovered that these black ants are the kind that bite. I began spreading baby powder everywhere to contain the ants to certain areas. Ants apparently do not like powder so you can use even non-toxic powders to control them. I probably spent over half an hour trying to get rid of them though.

While I ate breakfast I watched a group of them trying to find a new route to travel since most of their exits were being closed off with powder. Basically I wanted to send them out the front door. I noticed that when ants know where they are going, they move efficiently and in an organized fashion. But if there is no ant in front that knows the direction to go, the ants tend to wander around rather hopelessly, making very little progress. It appeared that no single ant wanted to venture out on its own. Although I did not spend a lot of time speculating as to the analogies there, I know that they exist.

Last night as I was driving around camp, I saw my first rabbit ever for Honduras. In the US a rabbit is nothing because they are so prolific but here at camp mammals are still scarce and so it was exciting to see one.

Today I helped with a group challenge activity for the deacons from my church in the city. It was interesting to see group’s response to the challenge presented to them. I felt like I did not do justice to the debrief and of course struggled to form some of the questions in Spanish. Nevertheless it was a good time and I think that each member of the group took something away to be learned.

The past few days there were some extra missionary children on camp so I tried to help provide a few extracurricular activities to help Cindy out so that she did not have to home school all six. Yesterday we did some art projects that I have wanted to try out with children. The easiest of the two was papermaking which the younger children did. The older girls worked on making pine needle baskets –something that I also want to try my hand at. The latter project appears to be a little too time consuming and tedious to be an activity for young children or large groups, but the end products are pretty neat. Tomorrow I hope to teach the Honduran children how to make paper and see how that goes. Teaching such activities to the Honduran staff children is always a truer test of how it will go with Honduran school children than is working with the missionary children. (Sadly I cannot post any pictures for a long while since my camera has died. It appears to have both a broken screen and immediately drain batteries though I am not sure what was the cause of either issue.)