Well, tomorrow will be two weeks of living in Honduras, and 14 weeks until being back in the states. I think it’s an interesting place to be in the sense that for two weeks I have been walking down the path that living in Honduras is, and it’s been long enough and there have been enough turns that thinking about the routine of my life just two weeks ago seems like it was from a different time, a different age. At the same time, I have no problem comprehending that I am still very much at the beginning of this semester, and a whole lot more path remains to be walked.
I chose to stay in Tegus this weekend instead of taking a weekend trip, giving myself ample time to rest, relax, and situate into life as it’s going to be for the next while. We went to the mercado on Saturday, which was thick with Honduran culture and commercialism. (As a side note, apparently a sure way for a guy to get catcalls in a machismo dominated culture is when women are trying to sell him things.) I also am minutes (I just need the internet) from finishing my Biology paper, which will be good to finally put to rest.
On Sunday, I concluded that God was messing with me. I’m not exactly a big fan of television, and that was actually one thing I was looking forward to leaving in the states when I came to Honduras, but it turns out that my family can go full days with the TV on. On top of that, half the time the TV is on, it’s in order to watch Honduran version of the conservative talk radio. And to just add a little more to it, the church my family attends is actually a satellite church founded by some church in Los Angeles, CA, complete with the concert feel by the band and three morning services of about 1000 people each. If you aren’t aware of my opinions on these things, suffice it to say that I don’t normally seek out situations like these.
I was reading today from “Becoming the Answer to Our Own Prayers”, a book written last year by Shane Claiborne and Jonathon Wilson-Hartgrove (a good book, recommend it for sure). In the development of one of the chapters, at one point the booked talked about how a lot of times we (the “we” here being culturally white Christians) have our ideas and theories about what theology and sociology should look like. In our development class, we also talked about how often North Americans come into a setting and automatically think they need to fix everything.
While I’m here in Honduras, and while I watch conservative radio with my family and attend la iglesia cuadragularhn.org, I’m hoping that I can evade both of these things, and for once in my life actually keep my mouth shut and learn from the situation that I’ve been put in. Obviously easier said than done, but it’s early in the semester, and I still have a whole lot of path to walk trying to get it right.
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