I went to chruch today...

I bet I have your attention now!

I joined two of my room mates, Courtney and Stephanie, and my co-teacher Eddie, for an evangelical church service led by American missionaries this morning. The girls have been going and told me that it's quite an experience mainly because the people who host it are very interesting. They live in huge house, built and funded by their church back in the States. This house can sleep up to 40 people at time in multiple bedrooms, it has two floors and 3 separate wings, and two huge porches with a total of 11 hammocks. They also have a pet monkey and another pet called a kikajoo (or something weird like that) which is a relative of the monkey and is a little furry cuddly thing with a long tail.

We went at about 9:30 and had coffee and donuts and met the very eccentric Susan, who lives in the house with her husband. Susan is from Springfield Ohio and appears to be kind of a crazy hippie who is loud and outspoken. I've heard she usually speaks in tongues during the service, however I didn't witness this today. She showed us the animals and we wandered around the house and met a few of the people staying there. They are missionaries from Canada and came to help build a house in a near by town for a woman and her 7 children because her husband and oldest son recently died in a car crash. Susan and her husband have different groups stay in the house and help out with missionary projects.

The service was in a nice open room upstairs and there were about 30 people, including 5 or 6 kids who live in the village, one of them my student. (otherwise everyone was American/Canadian). We started out with music, they had a guitar and piano and screen with words to the songs. This was my favorite part, not only because I like music, but also because it was neat to see the Honduran kids dance and play tambourines, etc, along with the music, even though they didn't know what we were singing. I love that music affects and means something to everyone no matter what the culture, religion, or language.

Then the pastor began the sermon with a very heavy southern accent. He spoke very quickly, similarly to an auctioneer, and interrupted himself often with "amen"s and "praise the lord"s. I wasn't a fan of what he had to say, although it was definitely an interesting experience and not as intense or forceful as I had imagined. The part that bothered me though, was thinking about the kids who didn't understand what he was saying and imagining how they were perceiving it. The pastor yelled rather than spoke and most of what he said sounded very angry. I think I would be afraid if I were in the kids' shoes and could only hear his tone rather than the words.

Afterwords, Eddie invited us over for tea (he's Irish) and we sat outside with him and his girlfriend, Amy, for almost 4 hours talking. They are really interesting people. They were both lawyers in London and about 6 months ago, after a year and a half of planning, they quit their jobs and left to travel the world for a year. They leave this Thursday to continue their journey. Sounds awesome!

This afternoon we attempted to go for a swim, but it started thundering as soon as we got to the beach and it was pretty choppy so we decided just to sit by the water for a little bit until it started down pouring. When we got home we cleaned our house to prepare for Leah's arrival tomorrow!! She will get to La Ceiba at about 7pm and I'll meet her there :)

I don't think I'll use my computer tomorrow, so I'll write again on Tuesday. Miss you all!!