First Meeting in our New Kingdom Hall

Yesterday we had our very first meeting at our new Kingdom Hall (where Jehovah's Witnesses have their religious services).  As I mentioned in our previous post, Kingdom Halls all around the world are built entirely by volunteers.  This particular project took about 2 months to complete and had volunteers come from all over the world.  All the funds for the build are contributed from Jehovah's Witnesses around the world.  Without these funds and volunteers, we would never have been able to have such a beautiful place to meet!

We were not able to help with the project, as we were working in the US at the time.  However we had a great privilege of being there yesterday for the first meeting!  We had about 66 people in attendance, which was wonderful since there are only about 33 Witnesses in Taulabe.  Many in the community even stopped by to peek inside before we started.  It IS the only building with a parking lot in our town after all!



We had beautiful new bench seats, new sounds equipment, bathrooms with running water and flush toilets (WOW!) and even overhead fans!  I feel like we are livin in luxury now! 




Everyone was all smiles when the first meeting started.  Even though there was a random helicopter that kept circling over the building the whole time!  What are the chances that the exact time of our meeting, someone decides to land a helicopter right next door in a soccer field??

 Our little buddy Jonatan reading his assigned bible verses.  He is in the Theocratic Ministry School.  It is a school to help us learn how to be better public speakers and converse with people that we encounter in our ministry work.

 This is an older shot of the outside of the building during the construction work. Sorry I don't have one of it when its all cleaned up and finished :)



And finally, this is everyone in attendance.  You can almost see our little white faces all the way in the back! Haha.  It will be a day that we remember forever.  The Taulabe congregation has come SO far in the past few years and grown so much.  They very much deserve this beautiful meeting place that they can be proud of! 



Saying Goodbye to Minnesota!

Well its time to head home.  We've been in the US since August working and spending time with family and friends.  But now its time to get back to our real life!  We have missed our friends down in HN sooo much and can't wait to get home and catch up on everything.
While were were gone we had a Kingdom Hall built (its what we call our place of worship or where the Jehovah's Witnesses have our services).  A group of volunteers from various countries came to help build our new hall.  Although we were sad to miss out on the action, we are so appreciative of all the volunteers' hard work and efforts.  Some were people that live in Honduras and do this construction work full-time.  Others came from other central american countries and still others came all the way from the U.S.  The stories that I've heard about the project sound absolutely amazing!  Can't wait to get back and see the finished product!  We will post pics and more details when we arrive home on Weds.

We fly out on Weds morning at 5:30 am..Yuck!  But we leave with happy hearts and full bellies! Haha...we've definitely taken advantage of being back in the states.  Went to McDonalds, Olive Garden and Chipotle as much as possible!  That should hold us till next year. Of coarse we can never get enough of family while we're back.  We love to spend time with our niece and nephew, Ruby and Zane.

 

 

We wish we could be with them for longer but thankfully they are SO supportive of our lifestyle.  We are only able to keep doing what we do because of the love and support of our family and friends.  Thank you to you all for everything you do!  We look forward to next year and already miss you all!

Aaron and Bry's new blog

Hi everyone!  Welcome to our new blog.  Sadly, our old site run through Multiply.com has been shutdown.  So we have decided to try something new with this blog.  We will try to post pictures and experiences as often as possible.

For any of our new friends, here is a little about us.  Aaron and I have been married for 3 years in May and we have had the priviledge of serving in the Central American country of Honduras for all 3 of those years!  We currently live in a small, mountain village called Taulabe and are absolutely loving every second of our lives!  We spend our time volunteering in our community and throughout the country in a bible education work and construction.  To support ourselves, we work in northern Minnesota for 2 months at a sugar beet harvest. We know, its a strange job! But it works great for our lifestyle because we can work hard and quick, then use the money to last us the rest of the year in Honduras. 

Throughout our time in HN, we have had many, many adventures and met many amazing friends.  Many of these friends have become our surrogate family since we are so far from home.  We have seen babies being born and kids turn into teenagers.  We really feel apart of the community and they have warmly excepted us into their lives!

   We try to share all our experiences so that you all can have a little taste of Honduras through our eyes. If you have any questions, feel free to leave us a comment or email us. We hope that you enjoy the rest of our blog!

Our First Honduran Funeral

This summer, the husband of one of our friends was hit by a car while riding his bicycle and died.  We knew him very well and it was a tragic loss for our friend, Maribel, and her 7 year old daughter, Mayrin.  However, now that some time has passed, we wanted to share with you all the local customs for funerals.  (Disclaimer:  we have the up most respect for the Honduran culture, and we are by no means making fun of their traditions.  We are just sharing our story from our point of view, however humorous or morbid that point of view may be!)
So Monday afternoon around 5, we received a call that Maribel's husband had been killed.  We were of course shocked and saddened.  He was only 30 years old.  Than, about 10 minutes later, Magda calls Bry and asks for help.  Apparently, Maribel was on her way home with the casket and we had to go to her house and break her door down and "prepare".  I didn't fully understand what was going on, but it seemed urgent so I agreed.  You see, the custom here is to have the open casket on display in the family's home for around 3 days.  During these 3 days, the entire town, family, passersby...pretty much the entire world, comes by the  house and gawks at the body.  The family is expected to provided food and refreshments for all these people.  And this also lasts throughout the night!  So....Aaron and I ran to the nearest corner store to buy plastic plates, etc., coffee, sweet bread...pretty much anything we could find to feed a million people.  Then we went around and gathered flowers from our trees to make some floral arrangements.  Aaron helped load all our chairs from the Kingdom Hal into a truck and, of coarse, don't forget a long table to lay the casket on!  The we headed to Maribel's house.  Aaron and Mario broke the locks to get into the house, while Magda and I started cooking like madwomen.  Right as we were finished setting everything up, the pickup truck arrived with the casket and about 20 people hanging off the back, including Maribel and her little girl Mayrin.  It was a sad moment, but when you are totally in shock of how strange a situation is, its so surreal that we didn't have time to be sad.  The family carried the casket in and placed it right in the front patio.  Immediately opened the lid and everyone gathered to stare at the body.  Needless to say, we stayed far away from that table!  
But wait!  Thats not all...then the family informs us that Franklin actually died on Saturday night, but they couldn't contact Maribel until tonight, Monday.  And the body isn't "prepared" or anything...so...we have to get him buried by 10am the next morning because he's already starting to decompose!  So we spent the entire night attending to the passersby, making food and coffee and making arrangements for a short bible talk in the morning at 9am.  At one point, the family began to talk about lifting the body out of the casket to put ice underneath him to preserve him more!  Then, since the caskets are basically cardboard, they decided against that.  I guess they didn't want the body falling through the bottom as they carried him out!  :)   Then they wanted to take our large, metal food serving trays to place under the body to catch the water!   The final decision was to put the trays with ice under the casket, on the table, and hope that the cold air floated up and cooled the body.  Do you think that really worked in 95 degree heat?
We got home in the early morning hours with enough time to shower and sleep a couple of hours, then it was back over to Maribel's.  6 men were selected from the family and friends to go dig the grave site at around 6am.  All the sisters from our congregation arrived to start cooking a full breakfast and lunch for the guests.  There were roughly about 100 people there, so you can imagine the amount of work.  At times it was really hard for us not to lash out...for example, most of the attendees were simply people passing by the road that saw what was happening.  They would enter, gawk at the body, point at it and make comments, then enter the kitchen and get a plate of food and then leave...not even paying their respects to the family.  The locals didn't seem bothered by it, so we assume its part of the culture.  Guess some things we will never fully adapt to.
Mario gave a very beautiful talk.  Was very encouraging and comforting.  Then Aaron helped carry the casket to a nearby pickup truck.  (We will spare you all the details of Aaron's close encounter with the casket!)  Everyone walked behind the truck to the nearby cemetery.  They lower the casket into the hole, open the lid again so that everyone can say their last goodbyes...and then fill the hole in.  Then its BACK to the house for more food and drinks.  We finally were able to go home around 3pm to shower and rest.  Then it was back again around 6pm to spend some time with Maribel and her daughter alone. Thankfully most the guests had finally left and we could visit with the girls.  We remembered all the good times we had with Franklin...like the time that we taught him how to play "Spoons", a loud, sometimes violent, card game!  Maribel said that he always talked about that night. 
It was a crazy week for us and we had alot of new experiences.  We sometimes do not understand the culture here, sometimes we even find it strange or funny...but we never forget that there are probably lots of customs that American's have that foreigners probably find strange.  It all depends on your viewpoint :)
Aaron told me yesterday that if I die here in Honduras, he's going to punish me by having a traditional Honduran, open-casket, funeral!  Hahaha, that gives me plenty of incentive not to drop dead here!

Aaron's First PublicTalk

Just wanted to share with everyone a pic of Aaron giving his first talk earlier this year.  We were all SO proud of him.  His spanish was amazing and everyone loved his memorable illustrations!

 
He's an old pro at it now.  Normally he has about 2-3 parts per meeting and also sound department! HA! But at least we are in a nice new Kingdom Hall now!