shout it aloud!

 

scenes from the “new normal”

Some scenes from Tegucigalpa.  These were taken on a Saturday afternoon, on our normal route in and out of town.  Most are near the Brazilian Embassy, where ousted President Mel Zelaya is.

a group of soldiers march towards el centro

graffiti everywhere

 

familiar faces

Making friends

With Fernando

A happy couple

Our good friends, Jose and Karla

Best buds

 

La Quinceñera

We attended a quinceñera party for Marlen last Saturday night.  It is a special birthday celebration for girls when they turn 15.

Venus gets ready

Man to man

Boys club

Pretty Denia

Ready to make an entrance

Oh the theatrics!

Open air church with lights of Los Pinos in the background: beauty in the simple

Birthday princess

 

dance party

Once every three months we have a birthday party for the youth group, here are some pics:

Game time

DJ Memo and boys who don’t want to participate in the dance game

Snacks!

Alex

Milton

 

church pollution

Most evangelical pastors agree that the church’s eternal mission should not be affected by political crises.

“I particularly am of the point of view that we cannot pollute our missions as a church by temporary societal causes,” said Peñalba. “We have to learn to live in the new reality being salt and light.”

(from article in Christianity Today)

**Peñalba is the pastor of a large evangelical church in Tegucigalpa

My observations:

church in temporary societal causes = polluted church missions = not being salt and light ??????!!!!!!!!!

being salt and light = learning to live in a new reality??????!!!!!!!

“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men. Matthew 5:13

temporary societal causes in Honduras right now = power struggles, human rights issues, issues of violence, civil disobedience, peaceful demonstrations, government and more

Here are some famous words of another pastor who had a totally different world view.  A world view that understood that the mission of the church was seeking the shalom of the greater community, which was very much tied up in the temporary societal issues of the 50’s and 60’s in the US.  I’m glad he didn’t decide to accept to “live in the new reality”, which was one of hatred, racism and oppression.

A riot is the language of the unheard.

An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.

He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.

Martin Luther King Jr.

 

taking the words out of my mouth

(Another excerpt from the book quoted in the previous post)

I have been thinking a lot about war, violence and pacifism lately, so I skipped ahead and read the chapter in the book by Fred Bahnson on peacemaking.  His opening sentences could sum up my experience lately:

I haven’t always been a pacifist.  I was once part of the vague majority of Christians in America who knew Jesus said we’re to love our enemies, but believed that doing so was “unrealistic.”  I thought Christians could, at times, use violence in the defense of justice.  I lived that tension between Jesus’ command and what seemed to be a matter of “responsibility.”  Questions plagued me: Isn’t it wrong to “allow” innocent people to be killed if we can prevent it, even if that means killing the assailant?  What about the Nazis?  Jesus didn’t really mean love all your enemies, did he?

 

good stuff

I’m reading “Schools for Conversion: 12 Marks of New Monasticism” and it is rocking my world!  Here is an excerpt form Shane Claiborne’s chapter:

The more I have gotten to know rich folks, the more I a convinced that the great tragedy in teh church is not that rich Christians do not care about the poor, but that rich Christians do not know the poor.  A few years back I surveyed people who said they were “strong followers of Jesus.”  Over 80% agreed with the statement, “Jesus spent much time with the poor.”  Yet only 1 percent said that they themselves spent time with the poor.

It is much more comfortable to de-personalize the poor so that we do not feel responsible for the catastrophic human failure that someone is on the street while people have spare bedrooms in their homes. … When we get the heaven and are separated into sheep and goats, I don’t believe Jesus is going to say, “When I was hungry you have a check to the United Way and they fed me,” or, “When I was naked you donated to the Salvation army and they clothed me.”  Jesus is not seeking distant acts of charity.  He is seeking concrete actions of love: “you fed me…you visited me, … you welcomed me in… you clothed me…” (Matthew 25)

When the church becomes a place of brokerage rather than an organic community, she ceases to be alive.  Brokerage turns the church into an organization rather than a new family of re-birth…. The church becomes a distribution center, a place where the poor coe to get stuff and the rich come to dump stuff.  Both go away satisfied (the rich feel good, the poor get fed), but no one leaves transformed-no new community is formed.

People do not get crucified for charity.  People get crucified for disrupting the status quo, for calling forth a new world.  People are not crucified for helping poor people.  People are crucified for joinging them.

(talking about the early church in Acts) Redistribution was not systematically regimented but flowed naturally out of love of for God and neighbor.  I am not a communist, nor am I a capitalist.  As one person put it: “When we truly discover love, capitalism will not be possible and Marxism will not be necessary.”

 

daily photo

Snapped this while organizing the study.

 

Brown Sugar Pineapple Goodness Sauce for Ice Cream

I pulled this recipe together after reviewing a few I saw on the web.  You can also add rum!  It tastes especially good the day after, when the flavor soaks in.  Better than the stuff from the jar!

Brown Sugar Pineapple Goodness Sauce for Ice Cream

Ingredients:

1 fresh pineapple

1 T butter

~1 cup brown sugar

optional: rum

Instructions:

Start by melting the butter and about 1/3 cup of the sugar.  Keep it on low while you cut the pineapple, you don’t want it to burn while you work.

Cut the ends off the pineapple and discard.  Pay attention, this is the best way to cut up a pineapple.  Trust me.  My mom taught me and I live in a country where we eat a lot of pineapple.

Stand the pineapple up and cut it into quarters.  Now you are going to cut off the hard inside corners, throw them away.

Now cut the rough outside off, like this:

Keep the outside parts because depending on how juicy your pineapple is, you could use a spoon to scrape out the fruit pulp.

Next, you will cut the pineapple up into chunks and eventually a pulp.  Choose your method: a knife and elbow grease, a blender or a food processor.  I decided to try out my new mini-processor I just bought at the grocery store for $7.  Sometimes you get your money’s worth…. in this case, I did.

You want a pulp, but not a puree.  Keep some small chunks for texture.

Add the pineapple to the brown sugar and butter.

Now you will have to use your cooking intution.  Depending on the size of the pineapple and how juicy and ripe it is, you will have to adjust cooking time and the amount of sugar you add.  For this size pineapple, I added almost a cup of brown sugar.  Taste as you cook.  You will notice that before you add the remaining sugar, the sauce just tastes like pineapple.  As you cook (on high now), you should stir occasionally and cook until the sauce sticks to a spoon and all the thin liquid has evaporated from the top.

This sauce is even better the next day!