McCanns in Honduras

Above: A picture of our route to school every day. The blue house on the left is our home, and the green school on the right side is the Instituto de Lengua Espanola. The purple trail is our walk to school, and the purple camera icons are the places were we took some pictures.

Photo 1: One minute into the walk we pass our favorite neighborhood park, Parque Los Sauces. You can see all the grass and trees of the park on the other side of the road.

Photo 2: Two minutes later we come to the longest straightaway of our journey. This road has two little tiendas, a local bus stop, and a menacing street guard we’ve become friendly with.

Photo 3: At the end of the street in the previous photo is this park, La Copa. La Copa has a basketball court we’ve played in some, a few run-down swings for Lucy, and a couple soccer fields. Once we reach La Copa, we’re over half-way there!

Photo 4: 8-10 minutes after we leave home, we’ve arrived here, the back gate of the language school. The big blue building is the gym at the school, and the gate is right in front of it.

Thanks for walking with us, hope you enjoyed seeing a little more of our daily life.

Above: Lucy, cool shades, and half a nana.

Every morning around 7 am we take about a 10 minute walk to school. It is a weird feeling to be up and walking around that early, but the sun has been up for a few hours, so it feels like late morning. We usually give Lucy a snack to keep her happy on the walk, but lately she has just held onto her banana the whole way. Yesterday a dog came up and started licking her nana, so if she wants to eat she better learn to eat quick!

Above: All the books it takes for one beginner Spanish student.

Well we’ve finally started our first full trimester at the Spanish Language Institute in San Jose, Costa Rica. We’ve been here for a while studying Spanish, but that was all child’s play compared to the next four months. Lindsey and I have taken our placement test and been placed in good classes, we both have people on our level or a little higher who will push us to learn even faster. Here is a glimpse of our day at ILE (Instituto de Lengua Espanola):

First Hour: Conversation/Language. In this class we simple talk Spanish, a lot! We talk about ourselves, our family, our life, and anything else the teacher wants to ask us. We even pray in Spanish! Talk, talk, talk, and at 7:30 in the morning no less.

Second Hour: Phonetics. Here is where we take the words we’ve learned and try to say them so that actual Spanish-speakers can understand us. It is amazing the difference between knowing the words you want to say and actually saying them correctly.

Third Hour: Grammar. Nouns. Adjectives. Verbs. Remember those English classes you had as a kid? Like that, but in Spanish.

Fourth Hour: Grammar. More nouns, adjectives, and verbs.

By the end of the day, we are beat. But it is amazing to see what we can learn in just one day, and then to multiply that by 4 months truly is encouraging. We may actually learn Spanish after all!

Above: Lins ready for school.

This picture encapsulates the transitions we’re going through in life right now (look closely and you just may see a pooch). Just last week, Lindsey and Baby Tico (our baby) transitioned from the first trimester to the second. Our first trimester coincided with our first few months here, and it was not easy. New foods and smells did not mix well with Lindsey’s pregnant stomach, but we’re hoping things get better in the second trimester.

Also in the picture is Lindsey’s book bag, the one she will be taking to our first day of school tomorrow. We’ve finished up our intensive courses and tutoring, and now we are starting a four month trimester. We will be in class 4 hours a day, 5 days a week, all in Spanish. We’ll be studying language, pronunciation, and grammar.

We’re excited to see what the Lord has in store for us this next trimester.

Above: A typical street in La Caiba, Honduras

On Tuesday night, Mike and I returned from our scouting trip to our new home. We had a great time learning more about the city and its needs, meeting people, seeing the sights, and dreaming about the future of our church planting ministry.

We’ll have more details in the days to come, but for now here is a brief list of what we were able to see and do in three days.

We visited/toured the following potential ministry sights:
- A local agricultural university
- A publicly run nursing home
- A small private hospital
- The large public hospital
- A school for our teammates daughter
- Multiple houses for rent
- A hotel for short-term teams
- An immigration attorney
- A boys orphanage
- Multiple neighborhoods
- A poor village

We were very encouraged by all the opportunities for ministry, but it was also daunting to see such a great amount of need in such a small city.

Stay posted for more details about our future home.

Above: A view of La Ceiba from the town landfill.

As you are reading this, I (Sean) am (hopefully) on a plane headed to La Ceiba, Honduras, via San Salvador and San Pedro Sula. Mike and I will be arriving in La Ceiba around noon Saturday and meeting up with our team leader in to check out the city and begin to lay the groundwork for our future ministry. We are essentially starting our church planting work from scratch, so this is an important planning trip. Some of the things we hope to do while we are there include: housing search for our two families and future interns, setting up schooling for our teammates daughter, meeting with immigration attorneys, touring the hospitals, checking out the neighborhoods and possible ministry sites, meeting with past and current ministries, and much more.

From time to time, as we learn some Spanish, we’ll try to help you learn some as well.

Above: The family ready for a day out in the rain.

Rain (pronounced “you-via”). No other alternate translations, simple rain. In Costa Rica, and most of Central America, there are basically two seasons, the rainy season, and the not rainy season. We arrived here in the not rainy season and didn’t see any rain for a few months. Then a few weeks ago it started raining every afternoon. Although the rainy season isn’t here in full, we have had a few good tastes. The lesson we’ve learned is never leave home without an umbrella or jacket. Some interesting tidbits about the rainy season in Costa Rica:

- Despite the fact that the Tico’s are used to the rain, no one seems to want to go out in it.

- When people do go out in the rain, they almost exclusively use umbrellas, not rain jackets. Rain jackets seem to be a strictly gringo thing.

- There are taxi’s all over the place in San Jose, we’ve never waited more than 5 minutes for a cab, but when it rains there are none to be found. We were stuck out in the rain the other day and asked someone to call us a cab, but he said there were none available, they were all in use. So we put a trash bag over Lucy’s head and walked home.

- Amazingly, the rain can seem to come and go in an instant. It will be very hot and clear in the morning, then pouring in the afternoon, and clear and cool again at night.

The boy scout motto prevails here when going out, always be prepared!

Above: Lindsey and Lucy in front of the jaguar exhibit.

A while back, we headed out the check out the zoo in San Jose. We arrived early (read first ones there, we punctual gringos) and had the zoo to ourselves for a while. We checked out the monkeys, iguanas, sloth, birds, lions, cats, toucans, parrots, peacocks, snakes, turtles, alligators, and too much more to name. Our favorites were the monkeys, which we made a point to see twice. It was great fun to check out new animals and have such close interaction with the nature of our new country.

Above: Sean and Lucy checking out the monkeys.

Part 3 in a series on our apartment in San Jose.

Above: Our bathroom with Lucy’s “tub” in the middle of the shower.

Our only bath room lies just off our bedroom. It is all pink tile, no shelving, and open windows like the rest of the house. Some interesting features include:

- Obviously the tupper-ware tub (pictured below in use).

- A hot water shower. Almost all showers in Costa Rica don’t have hot water, but instead have “widow-makers.” A “widow-maker” is a little heater that sits on top of the shower head and heats up the water right before it comes out. It works sparingly, and as you can tell by the name, isn’t the safest contraception in the world. Our landlord added a water heater to our apartment, which we love and use continually.

- Oddly, the bathroom came without a mirror, medicine cabinet, towel rack, or any shelves to speak of, so we’ve had to make do.

(Funny story about the shelves. One night, after some neighbors had had some things stolen off their deck, we heard a massive crashing in the middle of the night. Assuming the worst (someone breaking through our window), I jumped up and ran yelling like a mad man into the living room and then straight into Lucy’s room, ready to clobber with my bare hands any possible intruder. Fortunately, no one was there. After our nerves finally settled down, we searched the house for what could have made such a terrible crashing, and found it was our make-shift shelf in the bathroom. That red, blue, and green canvas thing in the picture is our shelf. It was filled with soap, razors, lotion, medicine, etc., and when it broke off the hook, everything came crashing down on the tile, making the horrible and terrifying racket. Not to worry, we have reinstalled the shelves with reinforced hooks and have assured ourselves that it will never happen again.)

Lucy seems to enjoy her baths, of course she probably has no idea what she is missing. We have tried to shower with her once or twice (which is how Tico’s bathe their children), but she doesn’t seem to like it very much. For now this is the best solution, as long as she doesn’t grow any more!