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My last letter reported the loss of my year’s computer documents. God shined in mercy and grace and allowed the recovery of pretty much all that was lost (one of God’s specialties…), thanks to a team effort. My communications expert brother Ted tackled the USBs, rescuing their vanished contents. During my trip to Mexico, the technician at daughter Wendy’s school found the supposedly clean computer “full of viruses and crawling with worms”, so she thoroughly scoured and reprogrammed it. Although it is taking me a while to relocate everything, I am back in business. Yes!!
Money. I always need to organize my money before I leave the house. The multiple bills will mix, no matter how careful I am! Named after a historic indigenous leader, the Lempira uses an “L” instead of a dollar sign. Bills sport portraits of historical heroes on the front and scenes of historical or tourist importance on the back. They must bear a portrait-repeating watermark. L.100. and L.500. bills have a metallic strip woven down the middle. Bright pink L.1.00 notes are worth approximately five US cents. Deep purple L.2.s (ten cents) can get confused with magenta-cast purple L.500 notes (=$25.00). Pinky-tan L.10s (=50 cents) fade to the golden tan of L.100s (=$5.25), and the similar blue of the L.5. (=25cents) and the L.50. (=$2.50) can also be mistaken. Don’t expect change anywhere other than a bank or supermarket for L.500. or above! •
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October 07/yr. 2
in Honduras
--Janet Alcántara
“So shall the word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish the thing that I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.”—Isaiah 55:11 This month, Josefina Santos (Coordinator of our Preventive Health program) and I went to Mexico for two weeks to study the programs of the community development organization, AMEXTRA. Josefina wanted to familiarize herself with their rural and urban health programs. I was interested in their work with women and how they motivated them.
AMEXTRA Director Eugenio Araiza, myself (with whimsical hand-puppet Amextrín based on the logo I designed years ago for AMEXTRA), Operations Coordinator Verónica Vero, Eugenio’s wife; and Josefina Santos, Director of the ICLH Salud para la Vida (Health for Life) program. AMEXTRA stands for Asociación Mexicana de Transformación (Mexican Association for Transformation). This Christian-based agency promotes community participation, unconditional service, wholistic transformation (including a theological component), justice, and compassion. How consoling to discover that the attitudes of apathy, “Gimme”, and “Do it for me”, are common to the culture of poverty in all countries, and not some fault of how we are doing our work in Honduras. I found hope that with persistence, faithfulness, patience, and time, those who do respond become very strong leaders indeed in their communities. We were kept very busy, but my leisure-time perks were helping daughter Wendy move into her newly-purchased apartment, and eating luscious Mexican food at every meal! --janet Deaconess Janet Russell Alcántara/Iglesia Cristiana Luterana de Honduras/dcsjanet@hotmail.com |
