One Year and Back in Texas

Well, we completed our one year commitment to Roatan and are now back in Texas.  I cannot believe it flew by so fast!  There were days that I thought the year would never end and others that just seemed to fly by.  Each day was filled with such awesome opportunities to minister to others and just be a great example of what Christ's love LOOKS like.  We are truly blessed and thankful for this past year and know that HE has some great stuff ahead for us! 

Here is a look at our final hours on Roatan:

Pastor Jeremy and Melissa made us a yummy dinner on our last evening so that we would not have to worry about one more thing, we hung out and let all the kids play out side.  They made fern leaf headdresses and of course, Laney ended up streaking all of us with nothing but a fern headdress on!  Great fun and more memories to add to our unending list.  It was fun to just chill for a bit, but we had not even packed our bags!  I know, we are one crazy family of six, but we would not be "us" if we did things any other way, right?  We stayed up until around midnight, I woke up around 5am obsessing about our day ahead knowing we were nowhere near where we needed to be in order to board our flights...

Our last day was definitely a whirlwind, since we were not even totally packed, Melissa and Kerry had to literally come to the house and get us re-packed and ready to fit into six check-in bags.  Got it done and we all raced to the airport and in need of showers b/c it was so darn hot the day we left.  Really, it had been raining almost daily for a couple of months and our last two days on the island ended up being so beautiful, gorgeous sunsets, still water, perfect weather!  Made it even harder to leave!

We had such a great group of friends there for us on our last day...Mike and Kerry and their three kids, Jeremy and Melissa and their twins, part of the youth group...we are truly so blessed to know all of these people that will be a part of our family forever.  Tears were flowing and of course we were running behind, the airline was calling our names, we were shoving airport hot dogs down b/c they don't feed you anymore on Continental flights (pretzels and drinks only or you can buy food), kids running wild, bags piled up on Trey and I, kids crying because their carry-on bag is too heavy for them to carry; we looked like a definite YouTube video in the making!  And of course, we get randomly selected to have our check-in bags searched...seriously, those zippers were about to pop and they actually wanted us to unzip and pull our stuff out and then try to shove it back in, along with four kids and the heat!  I have GOT to stop praying for patience, my opportunities to be patient are far too many!  It all worked out and they felt sorry for me and checked two of our carryons so that the kids didn't have to struggle with them....gotta work the mom with four kids thing when you can, right?  Oh, it gets even better, we were seated two by two by two, that's right all over the plane by twos.  Trey took Parker and I took Laney, leaving Anna and Wiley with some man that said they were the best behaved kids he had ever seen....who was he sitting with?  Just kidding, they are great kids, just more apt to act out with Trey and I. 

Trey's Uncle James and his girlfriend, Linda, were waiting for us at the airport.  We went straight to Vernon's Country Catfish, what a great first meal, we were STUFFED!  We took home two boxes of leftovers, our stomachs are not quite adjusted to eating American food.  We will get there though, I am sure of it.  James and Linda had brought over Christmas presents for the kids, so we had our Texas Christmas with them, the kids went crazy and were so pumped to get some really cool gifts.  It has been a long year of doing without most material items, so they definitely were in shock.  We spent our first night at our house that we rented in Graystone Hills, on air mattresses and pallets b/c we had not moved in yet and it was night time.  It was freezing cold to us, pretty funny how thin our blood seems to be after being in tropical temps for a year.

We spent a couple of nights and moved a few things in before we packed up yet again and headed for Florida....that's right, to Disney World.  A good friend of ours that we met on a mission trip this summer, lent us his RV to take to Disney and stay at their camp grounds.  It was a crazy decision to road trip it and do such a big trip, but we wanted to reward the kids for sticking it out in Honduras for a year.  We had fun, camping in an RV is really cool, all those slide out walls and a real shower.  A house on wheels that drives where ever you want to go, I mad sandwiches while Trey drove, in a kitchen with a fridge, pretty cool.  Anyway, we had a blast at Disney and could have spent another week or two there and still not done everything there is to do around there. 

Once we got back, it was time to start thinking about school, stocking the fridge from scratch, and all those other real life things.  It is going well, we are still not one hundred percent moved in, or unpacked, I am sure that is surprising!  Kids have started school and are doing well, we are back at our home church, things will get to normal sometime soon.  I am not sure what "normal" will be for us, we have changed in so many ways, it will be interesting for sure.  Please continue to pray as we transition into this new life, we love our friends and family and thank you for all that you have done for us over this past year and always.  We are truly blessed.

Take care and God bless,
Connie and Family