Kick'n it in Catacamas

Well, I guess its been quite a while since my last post. My last week in Xela went smoothly with not much out of the ordinary happening, except that I paid for dinner my last night there and invited all the main (local) people that I had interacted with. Basically this means friends or family of my host-parents there. We had Dominoes Pizza and Pollo Campero (a fast food chain comparable to KFC or Popeyes) as well as some sides that others brought. It was a very good last night in Xela.

My trip to Catacamas went pretty smoothly. I took a nice air conditioned bus from Xela to Guatemala City, got it around 7:30 pm, and had a taxi bring me to a hotel. It wouldn't stand up to anything in the US, but it was a private room with its own shower and television, all for about $12.50. The taxi driver said he would come back at 4:30 AM to pick me up and bring me to the bus station. True to his word, he was waiting when I got down there, so that made things A LOT easier. Calling a cab at 4 am would not have been fun to figure out. "Ticabus" got me from Guatemala City to San Salvador, El Salvador for a 90 minute "layover" and then from there to Tegucigalpa, Honduras. A taxi took me from the bus station to Baxter Institute, the Church of Christ preaching school down here, where I met up with Dwight, an American living and working in Catacamas. We stayed at Baxter that night, went to a worship service at Baxter in the morning, and then took took the 4 hour bus ride from Tegucigalpa to Catacamas. Jorge (my "supervisor", for lack of a better word) met me at the bus station and brought me to the center (Mission Point Resource Center) where I am living.

I've been here for almost 3 weeks. Since part way into my time in Xela, and when i first arrived here, I thought a big part of my responsibilities was going to be helping to develop material for teaching local adults how to better teach bible lessons to children. Also, I thought I was going to be presenting that material to local church leadership, so that they could bring that material back to their respective areas and teach their teachers. However, after arriving, I was made aware that the material to be used has already been developed and all that was being asked of me was to give the local leadership some instruction in how to best present that material (i.e. strategies and methods of presentation). Though I've not done a lot of study in this area specifically I felt like I could have had a few good things to say. In the end however, it occurred to me that since Jorge has been presenting this material (that he himself developed) for the last couple years, his own experience doing so would be the best source of strategy and methods for presentation. Jorge seemed to agree with this and so I was left wondering what I might do while I'm here.

After a couple days of following Jorge around for various odds and ends, I decided I could try to teach English. Jorge jumped on that pretty quickly and within the next few days I had a relatively full schedule. As it stands, I am teaching about 26 hours of English a week, split between 4 groups. One is here at the Center, Tuesday through Saturday from 6:30-8:30. One is about 10 minutes away at a church that goes by the name "La Trinidad". It is Monday-Thursday, 2-4. The third group meets at a church by the name of "La Sosa" (the name of the small community it is in) Monday and Friday from 4-6. The last is about 90 minutes away over a terrible dirt road filled with pot holes you can't possibly avoid. The community is called "Las Casitas", and it is the church where Jorge preaches. Between the four classes I have about 65-75 students. I try to joke around some through the teaching, and it lightens the mood nicely. I think most everybody seems to enjoy the time spent. Many times my attempt to joke around falls flat because I can't communicate what I mean, so in that case, I become the joke, which still works fine I think. :)

As of this moment, English, both classtime and preptime, is my only official responsibility, but it seems like nearly every day there is some errand that Jorge would like me to come with him on because it is helpful in one way or another to have a second person. One example is that he has been having some things fixed on the two vehicles he has here, and so a second driver to follow him to the repair shop is convenient. I helped lug a lawn mower up to Las Casitas and mow their terribly high grass. Etc. Etc. And now that June is here there will be several different groups coming from the U.S. to help with various projects that I will probably end up helping with in one way or another, even if just to drive a second vehicle to transport them to and from project sites. I can't really know exatly what to expect in regard to my involvement with those groups. But I will be relatively involved with English at any rate. Not what I planned to be doing, but then again, I really didn't have any specific plans. All to the glory of God.

I will try to add pics later when I get some decent pics of english class. God bless.

Grace and Peace,
Bryan