Update

Last week was spent in Honduras. Saturday and Sunday we spent at Covenant Community Church involved in their missions conference - it was an incredible event! What a missions minded church! Wow! I walked 20 miles on Saturday in training for the marathon I will be doing April 2nd. Tomorrow Madison and I are going on a field trip - will post pics when we get back. So we've been crazy busy, and with more to come this week!

Missionaries taking care of Missionaries

One of the things I really love about the missionary community in La Ceiba is that they take care of each other. There are no denomination lines, no "my church" "your church" mentality - we are all here for the same thing - to glorify Christ and bring His Word to those who don't know it. In the midst of that, I've had missionaries not on our team jump start my car, pull my truck out of a mud pit, drive me someplace when I've been without a car, pray for me, pick things up at the grocery store, etc. You get the drift. I've also been able to help out our own team mates - stitches, injections, assessment of ear infections, pneumonia, etc. Today I received a phone call from a fellow missionary friend of mine - Julie - to tell me that her 15 year old son was pretty sick with dehydration. After getting a good history, to make sure he didn't have any one of those cool tropical diseases, he pretty much was "just" dehydrated, but could probably be well served to get an IV. The way things are here, you can go to any pharmacy and get pretty much anything/everything you need medically. I had all the IV start supplies, alcohol, flush for the IV, tape, etc, but not the IV solution. So off to the pharmacy, and 10 minutes later back at his house with solutions in hand. He is now sitting comfortably at his house with his IV hung up with a hanger on the curtain rod watching a movie. And he was a GREAT patient! All in a days work...

Me in my element...

We leave back to Arizona tomorrow morning where we will be spending our final 6 weeks before we come back to Honduras for good. It's been incredible being here, enjoying our time, reuniting with friends and team mates, and all our dear friends in Armenia Bonito.

Braces

Madison outside of the orthodontist office in June 2009

mid-way through the process with multi-colored rubber bands

braceless Madison 22 February 2011

June, 2009 - Madison got braces on. Her teeth were crooked and not seating properly, but not "terrible". She truly only needed about 16 months worth of braces, but because of our timing, we left Honduras with one more month of "settling" for her teeth. So - our entire time in the States she has basically been wearing her braces as retainers. So, while we were in Honduras for this week, one of the things we wanted to do was to get her into her orthodontist. But I made the orthodontist promise she would only take the braces off IF she could get the retainer made before we left. Good to her word, in less than 12 hours her retainer was ready and my now braceless daughter is proudly wearing her retainer, and trying to figure out how to trill her R's with this piece of plastic in her mouth.

Children and malnutrition

What I deal with a lot in my clinic is a chronic state of malnutrition. The children in the village have access to very little healthy food. The typical day is rice, beans and tortillas. Almost no vegetables, and the only fruit are the random fruit that kids can climb trees and acquire. Here is an article about this:

About 800,000 Honduran children suffer from chronic malnutrition, according to the UN World Food Program (WFP).

The WFP described as alarming the number of families without access to basic foods in this Central American nation, where seven of every 10 people live in poverty.

"A country in which 27 percent of its children suffer chronic malnutrition is not only a problem of development but also of security," said WFP representative Miguel Barreto in statements published in the newspaper El Heraldo.

Barreto explained that malnourished children have physical and intellectual development problems that then makes their active incorporation in society difficult.

Peruvian expert Enrique Vargas, suggested implementing a nutritional program for children and adolescents similar to others implemented elsewhere on the continent.

The Honduran government declared 2011 as a year of food and nutrition security, and announced a strategy to guarantee the right to food.

"We have land that can produce, a proper climate for some crops but must work to teach the population that the land can be used for something," said President Porfirio Lobo.

However, campesino organizations such as Plataforma Agraria warned that the problems in Honduras have their roots in the unfair distribution of wealth.

In this country one percent of producers control one-third of the best land, while 375 small farmers have no place to plant.

http://www.insidecostarica.com/dailynews/2011/february/12/centralamerica11021202.htm

Honduras visit, Residency Cards, and a team

In four days we leave for Honduras. No, we aren't leaving for good....not yet...we have to go renew our Residency Cards. All this means is we go to immigration, hand our old ones to them, and return in a few days to get our new ones. Unfortunately, this MUST be done in person, or we have to start the entire residency process all over from scratch. Hence the trip. While there we will find out if Madison will get her braces off. She was due to get them off a month after we left Honduras - but we certainly weren't going to fly back to Honduras to get them removed, so her braces have been acting as a retainer. We already have an appointment with the orthodontist, it will just be a matter if she can get a retainer made before we come back to the States. And...while we are there we are hosting a team. They actually arrive before us, but will be staying in our house, so we will arrive with a house full of guests :-)

Busy...busy...busy

The Pettengill's have been busy. I know...since when has this changed? But we've had an awesome time visiting with everyone - and we want to take advantage of being in The States, as our time is quickly coming to an end, and it will be quite some time before we get back here. So, we've been off to several churches this weekend, and Madison and I taught in Sunday School this last weekend. Madison really has a blast telling about her experiences as a missionary kid (or - as a Kid Missionary).

Today we have the day off - yes, we actually have to schedule those and put them on the calendar - as every day off the week would be filled with things to do, and our batteries would run low. How interesting that in our lives we schedule everything from grocery shopping, to work time, to errand time - but we never schedule "off" time. Well, we've been running ragged for so long, we finally decided we needed to do that - so today is our schedule day off :-)

This Sunday we head back to Honduras for a week. We have to renew our residency cards. It was going to cost us more to pay our lawyer, and give her power of attorney then it would cost us to all fly back. So - for a few days we will be back in Honduras - same time a team is there - to renew our residence cards - then back to The States for our remaining time.

School Supplies For 400 Honduran Kids

With the generosity of supporters from the U.S. our team provided all the needed school supplies for over 400 kids in the poor community of Armenia Bonito. This made school a reality for many kids who would otherwise not been able to afford school this year.

Watch this 3 minute video to see the kids getting their school supplies:

Homeschooling

This year we are homeschooling Madison. I homeschooled Madison for 4 years before we went on the mission field, and most of what I did was a mish-mash of different curriculum's that are out there. This year we decided since it was her Freshmen year of High School, and all her grades from here on out are going to be looked at by colleges we decided to do things a little differently. This is an accredited school. Her report card will be recognized by any college. It's challenging, difficult at times, but Madison really enjoys it. She finished up her second grading quarter last week with:

English A+
Writing A++
Science A-
Math A
History A-
Spanish B+

Awesome job girl! And for that - FIELD TRIP this week to the Arizona Science Museum! Can't WAIT!

Celebrating 700

My 700th post was 2 posts ago, and I failed to mention anything. Funny thing - this blog. When we started our support raising and training oh so many moons ago - Mike was the primary person who wrote our family blog. He is a serious kind of guy. I really enjoy his blog - it's informative, educational, and always keeps everyone up on what's going on with our family. One day I asked Mike if I could guest write on his blog. He asked what I was going to write on - and I said I wanted to write on our geocaching experience while we were in New York City. He looked at me like I had horns protruding through my head and said...um honey...I knew what that meant. He didn't think it went with the "theme" of our blog. So, I started my own. And through that experience - I've found it more of an on-line journal than anything else. It's just pretty cool that people actually read it. Sometimes it's about my frustrations, other times it's about the ministry, and sometimes it's even about what I've tried to create in my kitchen. Overall it has a flavor of "Erin" to it. So thanks for coming along for the ride - I look forward to many more blogs to come :-)

Scholarship Kids

We have the privilege of being able to send 5 kids to High School through the generous support of folks in the United States. The government pays for education up to 6th grade - after that - to get quality education, you have to pay for it. Because of this, almost no children in Armenia Bonito, the village we work in, go to school past 6th grade. We saw the huge need for education, and so were committed to see how we could get some kids to High School. That's when we started the scholarship program. We had a number of folks in the US jump right in and commit themselves to pay for the kids! The school year is from February through November and the kids will be starting school in a week! Here our their beautiful faces:

George. This is his second year in our scholarship program. He is now in 8th grade!

This is Gracie - this is her first year in our program.

This is Carlos. He is new to our scholarship program.

Nancy is a second year recipient of our scholarship program.

And finally - Alicia - this is also her second year in the program.