News from the Francises in Honduras March 2015

News from the Francises in Honduras 

March 2015

Dear praying friends,

It’s time again that we share a little bit of news! A number of things have happened in our lives during these last few months.

Family:

We have a new grandson!  Our daughter Annie travelled to Viet Nam in the end of January to meet and adopt James, a 2 year old boy with some special needs. He’s a real cutie, we love him already even though we haven’t seen him except in pictures. He took to his new mother immediately, the adaptation is going well. Our other grandchild, Elena (Daniel and Claudia’s daughter) will be four years old in April. How time flies! She’s a very bright child.  We occasionally get to see her and talk with her by skype. We don’t expect to see either of our grandchildren before September of 2016.

Work:

Every Monday I make the two hour trip to El Progreso by bus  where I meet with 30 pastors and leaders of churches to facilitate the First Principles course. They are a keen bunch, and we have some pretty intense discussions. I return home the following morning.

I.

Tuesday evenings, Lise and I go to the Nuevo Pacto church in a “colonia” on the outskirts of Siguatepeque. There we have a First Principles course with the pastor and a group of leaders and potential leaders. I will soon be handing the leadership of this over to the pastor as he is beginning to catch on to the idea of Socratic discussion. 

Every Friday afternoon a keen young man named Miguel Orellana comes to our house for a couple of hours of teaching. He works in a distant village all week, so he can’t get in on any group courses (although he has now joined a First Principles group on Friday evenings). I led him through an apologetics course, and am now teaching him how to prepare a sermon. He has been taking more and more responsibility in the Hermon Baptist church.

The last two Saturdays of March, and the probably the first Saturday of April I will be spending from 1:00 pm to 8:00 pm teaching a Homiletics (How to Preach) class in Tegucigalpa, the capital, which is a little over two hours bus ride from here. So I will be staying over Saturday nights on those weekends.

In mid-April I will be joining Josué Claros, our national theological education coordinator, in Alubaren, a remote area in the south of the country, to continue First Principles courses with a group of pastors there. With this group it is much more of a challenge, as many of them have little or no education, with a certain amount of difficulty in basic reading skills. 

Possible Future Project:

We are still praying about the possibility of spending two weeks in La Mosquitia, a rainforest area of the country, that we can reach only by boat or plane, to do some basic teaching with the pastors there. Much will depend on finances.

Lise:

Lise is helping me with the First Principles course in Nuevo Pacto, helping to model how to facilitate a Socratic discussion. She also facilitates a group in Hermon Baptist church, along with a trainee, named Marcela.  Sunday morning she teaches a Sunday School class at Nuevo Pacto Baptist church, and Saturday afternoons she helps with the AWANA program at Hermon Baptist church.

Health:  

We have no major health issues, in fact for our age we are doing pretty well. I (John) have realized that I’m not as tough as I was even 4-5 years ago, after a trip it takes me a while to recover from tiredness. In part that may be due to respiratory issues.  So, while I don’t go looking for more work, I am able to handle what I have.

Finances:  

The financial aspect is becoming a bit of a challenge on two fronts. It seems that in the past six months our support has diminished, and our mission account is going into the red. This will eventually have to be addressed. On the other front, the purchase power of our present income has diminished quite a bit. The Canadian dollar has lost a fifth of its strength in relation to the Honduran lempiras, and at the same time prices have risen considerably here. This means our “purchase power” has actually been reduced by about a quarter of what it was a year ago. For us personally, it is not a major hardship, although it can limit future projects (such as helping the pastors in La Mosquitia). We feel, however, for those Hondurans who have been living at less than subsistence level, and whose income has not increased at all, but who have to face rising costs, even in the area of food.

Thank you for praying!