a landing to remember

our honduras adventure began with quite an entrance. we had heard stories of the bumpy landings that are common in the tegucigalpa airport. the runway is very short, making it a difficult place to land a plane. in fact, there are a limited number of pilots who are even certified to fly here. so needless to say, we were prepared for a less than smooth landing. as we bumped down on the runway, i thought “is that all? that was a lot of hype for nothing.” immediately following that thought the plane banked hard to the right, and lets just say if i hadn’t been wearing my seatbelt, this aisle seat passenger would have been plastered to the window. you know the landing was exciting when the pilot comes on the intercom during taxi and simply says “wow”.

saturday night we stayed in tegucigalpa, the capital city. after dinner jeremy [an american missionary] took us out to the streets to hand out some food and see where the kids at project manuelito come from. there were less kids than usual, probably due to the recent political issues and government curfews. many of the ones we did see were high on glue and pretty out of it. while it's hard to see kids living in those conditions with no hope, it does make me excited for sunday afternoon when we'll get to talanga and get to meet the kids that have been blessed with a chance for a better life.

we had a personal police escort for our night on the street, so i'll leave you with a picture of my new friends...

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simply be who you are, where you are

that's a quote the bible study girls and i came up with while we studied ecclesiastes this summer, and that's what i hope to do next week in honduras.

my mom and i are leaving in the morning with a team from calvary, our church in st. louis, to spend a week at project manuelito. calvary has been partnering with this ministry for a few years now. it is a place for kids who were formerly living on the streets to live, be loved and have the opportunity to choose a different kind of life for themselves.

we know we'll be doing a lot of "handy work" around the property...fixing things, painting, washing clothes, etc. we're also planning on giving out a lot of smiles, laughter and hugs. but as with most mission trips, we'll never really know until we get there.

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the body cast adventure

three weeks ago my friend tara called to tell me that her daughter sophia had broken her femur and was in a body cast for four weeks. naturally i responded as any caring friend would, which means i laughed and said she should have practiced her delivery more because her joke wasn't believable at all. but after hearing her recount the story of her fall off a balance beam at the park, i figured out it was for real.

as you can imagine, the thought of caring for a three year old in a body cast, along with her one and a half year old sister, was a tad overwhelming. so i worked some travel magic and flew from georgia straight to cali to help out for a few days.

despite the obvious setback, we managed to have a great time. it's always so much fun hanging out with the ardens...chatting, laughing, spontaneously breaking into song and eating matt's delicious popcorn.

the arden family

sophia . shelly . tara . tori . matt

loving their aunt shay shay

and just to show you that she really is in good spirits, here's a video of sophia singing her rousing rendition of "jesus love the little children this i know".

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for my dear friend

happy thirty lindsey!

you are special because you are...

it's great getting to visit you...you're one of my favorite friends.
love you bunches!

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the pickle pop

bet you didn't know about this southern delicacy...

i found this little gem at a peach farm in georgia while visiting the broomes. it tastes exactly like you would expect a pickle flavored popsicle to taste. luckily we also made a batch of our legendary peanut butter balls, so it all evened out. as always, it was a super visit...i love me some broomies!

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