The Other Orangehouse

I am grateful for el otra casa anaranjada, the other orange house. Like ours home in Texas, this house in La Ceiba, Honduras is also a rusty shade of orange. Aspects of this house are nicer than our own: the windows, some of the furniture, some of the art on the walls. And some is not as nice: their is a fair amount of termite damage, there are very few electrical outlets, and it leaks when it rains.

The boys and The M love it here. Everything is an adventure right now, whether it's watching PBS in Spanish, or going to the grocery store, it's all fun. We have been working on getting the house ready for receiving students and now have internet, food, delicious coffee, towels, and other essentials.

Here the boys enjoy cooling off in our front yard during an afternoon rain shower. It rains frequently here. La Ceiba lies between the beach and the mountains. These run parallel to each other and leave a strip of land only a few miles wide. My guess is that when the weather systems come in from the coast, they hit the mountains and dump their rain. La Ceiba is lush, and the Pico Bonito national park is nearby.

This is our living room. The dining room is behind it. The floors are either ceramic tile or wood. Almost everything is up off of the floor, and we suspect this is to facilitate mopping. This we have done once, and our conclusion is: it's a pain.


Here Jono is having some Lego time. He is in a nice room with wooden floors and a wall full of huge windows. We have converted it into the playroom/computer room/entertainment center. Last night we watched a movie on the laptop; we had a copy of Mosquito Coast from 1986. Harrison Ford stars as an inventor that is fed up with the direction the culture of the United States is headed, so he moves his family to the jungles of Central America. There he builds a machine to produce ice for the natives, because "ice is civilization". Does this sound familiar? It's not exactly like our situation, but it was pretty close! Especially since I look like Harrison Ford.

The Mostquito Coast is actually called La Mosquitia, and it is the easternmost part of Honduras. There are no major roads that connect it to the rest of the country where the Miskito peoples have lived since the 1600's. I would love the chance to visit there, but it would require a boat or plane ride to get there, and I don't think we can afford the time or cash.

This little nook is my peaceful place. It's in the master bedroom and the window looks out over the front yard. I find myself not going there often enough. I am running around putting out fires, cleaning up, doing laundry by hand, or driving our SUV here and there (which takes more time than I am used to). I think that what my soul needs, however, is to sit down and be with God. I need to listen to him when he says in scripture, "be still, and know that I am God".

I find comfort in a passage from Psalm 40 in the Living Bible paraphrase:

"O Lord, don't hold back your tender mercies from me! My only hope is in your love and faithfulness. Otherwise I perish, for problems far too big for me to solve are piled higher than my head."