The Exploits of a Honduran Teacher

the encuentro

I spent this past weekend at a retreat center about an hour outside of Tegucigalpa in the mountains. It was absolutely beautiful. The mountains are different than in the States- they are shaped differently and aren't as tall, but I still consider them mountains. 160 young men went ranging in age from 12-25 and most of them were new Christians (less than a year) or not Christians at all. We spent the weekend going through different "conferences" with the big group and we also had time in small groups. The retreat was basically set up in the progression of salvation: conviction, confession, liberation and then filling. Several guys accepted Christ for the first time and lots of others had their lives completely changed. The Lord came in power, cleansed hearts and set people free. A lot of the guys that came were into drugs and lots of other stuff, and they were set free.
I had a good weekend too. I was refreshed and felt called to complete obedience once again. Plus it was just great to see God move in so many guy's lives. However, there were some things that didn't sit well with me... there was a lot of focus on outward manifestations of the Lord's work, which doesn't bother me too much, but this weekend I felt like it was focused on more than it should have been. The role of the Holy Spirit is to glorify Christ, not ourselves. But all in all, I felt like the weekend was really beneficial for everyone.

On Sunday, Brian and I were laying around in our dorm and all of a sudden something dropped down onto my leg. I thought that someone had thrown something at me, but when I looked down there was a 3 inch scorpion on my leg! Right away it started crawling up my leg towards my stomach and I kinda yelled out. I couldn't slap it away with my hand because it had a big stinger sticking up, so I just sat there frozen. Then right as it was about to crawl up my shirt, Brian grabbed his Bible and smashed it. Gracias por la Palabra de Dios! That was actually the biggest scorpion that I have seen in real life and it almost stung me. I talked to some of the Hondurans and they didn't seem to think that it was that big of a deal, but I would have had to go to the hospital if it had stung me.

Here are some pictures of us and our new hammock...

posted by Whitey @ 4:26 PM