A Typical Day
My good friend Joe Romano wrote asking what a typical day is like. Good question.
Evenings here are perfect. Last week during the full moon every night was glorious. I sat on the back porch with the lights out looking up at the stars. Because of the ideal temperature, I sat without shirt, shoes or socks. The stars above are not familiar. Only once a night, around three in the morning, is the silence of the night broken by the faint exhaust of a high altitude airliner. When the rain approaches it can be heard afar off. We’re not talking ordinary rain; we’re talking torrential downpours; we’re talking run to the windows before half the room is drenched. Lizards line the walls at night, waiting for a clueless moth or locust. The lizards’ screech is so loud it startles. Our bed was built high enough so as to be able to feel any breeze blowing in through the windows. About ten paces from our windows is a main road traversed by passersby at all hours of the night. It took us quite awhile to realize they weren’t right outside our windows plotting a palace coup. Many a night I’ve stood in the shadows with a hammer at the ready only to realize that the sounds that awoke me were dogs investigating our compost pile.
One of three things wakes me in the morning: sunlight pouring in the eastern window despite the brown bed sheet we’ve hung up as a curtain; a rooster crowing with all his might right outside the same window (this one wakes me up with a jolt); or Corgi barking at the top of his lungs. Make no mistake about it-roosters crow at all times of the day or night. But all roosters crow at dawn. For the uninitiated it can be a frightening cacophony. Our neighborhood stud usually starts crowing with gusto around four in the morning. To his credit, his is a robust, deep-throated crow that can be heard for miles in the stillness of the night. He’s not struggling like some of the elder roosters to attract the young chicks. Corgi, our neighborhood dog would give his left paw for some of that sex appeal. He stands about six inches above the ground. He’s about a foot long- if that. His resembles a Welsh Corgi according to Gabrielle our resident canine expert. She named him. He belongs to our landlord and neighbor Doña Digna although you’d never know it by her actions. We’ve yet to see her feed or pet him. Our affections have won him over. He sleeps on our porch, comes to the backdoor at dinnertime (along with Bethany’s cat harem) and wags his tail when he sees us. The problem is his ego doesn’t match his size. He carries himself like the Italian Stallion of Puerto Lempira. He prances when he walks resembling the famous Lipizzaner stallions. He regularly gets the snot beat out of him by the other dogs. Out of compassion, I’ve discouraged him from tagging along when we leave. It’s no use. Love has won him over—or at least the occasional scrap thrown his way.
Almost always I’m the first one up—sometime between 6:00 –6:30 am. I try to pray right away before anyone else rises. Mornings are glorious here with the walls of the thunderheads ablaze in burning hues of orange and red. Students walk unhurriedly toward school. Girls dressed in uniforms of navy blue skirts, short-sleeve white shirts, white socks and dark shoes squint as they head into the rising sun. The boys wear navy blue pants and kick empty plastic Coke bottles pretending they’re soccer balls. All carry bulging backpacks-- proof positive that good ideas and functional designs are universally appealing. Corpulent nurses, their dark skin radiant against the brilliant white of their uniforms, carrying lunches in discarded plastic grocery bags, walk with such reluctance toward the hospital it appears an invisible force holds them back. They stop at the slightest excuse to converse with friends. If you could see the hospital, you’d instantly understand their hesitation. Small foreign pickup trucks scurry by the back door heading for the airport. They carry passengers arriving down at the pier borne on dugout canoes powered by outboards. The planes, twin turboprops built in Czechoslovakia, arrive around 7:30. Anyone not yet awakened by all the other noises, will invariably emerge from under their mosquito net at this point. By that time I’ve been studying the Bible for an hour. These days I’m listening to Jon Courson out of Calvary Chapel’s Applegate Fellowship in Oregon. He is one of the finest Bible teachers I’ve heard. I have a set of CDs containing his teachings on the entire Bible.
By 9:30 I’m beginning to eat breakfast. Fresh oranges, papaya, pineapple or bananas are usually available. I follow that with cereal or oatmeal smothered with cold fresh milk in cardboard containers. I first saw milk stored in this fashion while living in London in 1977. It requires no refrigeration until opened. Bethany and I drink whole milk. Karen favors the powdered milk. The sugar, consisting of chunky, dirty white crystals (fresh from the cane), must be carefully stored. Thousands of tiny voracious ants scurry by on the wall searching for even the smallest crumb. When I’ve been a very good boy, Michaela will occasionally share one of her delicious western omelets with me. She’s become quite the cook down here. I love to read while eating breakfast and these days I’m in the middle of Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris. Life doesn’t get much better than this!
Every morning at 10:30 I teach the prisoners down at the local minimum-security prison. This is the highlight of the day for me. They’re such an eager bunch! They actually do their homework and are anxious to share with me what they’ve learned overnight. I spend at least an hour there. Afterwards I head to the internet café to download the day’s emails. The café is about half the size of my kitchen. Six computers are squeezed into that tiny space. Jorge, Pastor David’s brother-in-law, runs it. He’s a wiz with computers and never ceases to help me. I brought with me from the U.S. a tiny portable 128MB external hard drive known as a SanDisk. I simply plug it into the café’s computers, download the emails and plug it into my laptop at home. I do this so as to save money at the café. Normally it takes about 10-20 minutes to send and receive the day’s emails. It costs between $1.50 to $2.00 for that time. The normal download time is huge-it takes about one full minute to open, copy and paste one email to the SanDisk. If there’s inclement weather in the area, double that time. Ugh!
From there I’ll head to the shops to pick up groceries. These consist of open-air stalls in front of wooden huts or actual retail spaces in plaster buildings. Once you step inside everything is dark, as they don’t believe in using electricity during the day. Usually the owner of the building is also the owner of the store. There is no price competition. What you pay at the pier for jumbo shrimp is exactly what you’d pay the guy who shows up at your door with a cooler loaded with shrimp atop a wheelbarrow--$1.34/pound. Go figure. During the harvest a pound of beans goes for about 13.4 cents. Right now they’re selling for 50 cents. Yet no one stores them here. During the harvest they sell them to merchants who then ship them to giant storage facilities in La Ceiba. Nine months later they pay those same merchants to bring them back—at a markup of over 300%! (I smell a business opportunity here.) A fresh lobster dinner at the nicest local restaurant will set you back $6.70. A gallon of unleaded gasoline however will set you back $3.40! A dozen eggs costs $1.61, a quart of milk $1.07 while a box of generic Corn Flakes goes for $1.98. This month’s electrical bill came to $30.10. The rent is $200/month.
From the shops I head home. Along the way I pass the one and only bank. Without any computers to verify a balance, they must fax a copy of your bank register to La Ceiba. Next they place a call to the same office. Only after someone there confirms you have money in the account and has calculated the interest you’ve earned in the interim, does the teller give you money. On an ancient typewriter she pounds out the numbers on your account register. Teachers are paid once a month. When they are, enormous lines form at the bank for four full days. Every electrical and phone bill must be paid at the bank. If you go first thing in the morning or during lunch hour on any other day, there’s hardly a wait.
Next I pass the Catholic Church compound occupying one square city block. It’s by far the nicest complex in town replete with an arched topiary and a lawn mowed by machete. Every Sunday, strains of European music fill the air making one think he’s in a small Austrian village. Other than during a mass, I’ve never seen the priest in public. The army base, also one square city block, abuts the church property. It consists of two camouflaged shacks. In between them a common roof provides shelter for the kitchen and mess hall. The rest of the property consists of grass and mango trees. About twenty soldiers guard the base. They’re a motley crew comprised of scrawny young bucks whose faces resemble a deer caught in the headlights. When not playing soccer, they lean against the barbed wire fence talking with young ladies in waiting. Don’t ask me why they’re here in the middle of nowhere. When I asked them if Honduras had an enemy they all sort of looked at each other. Finally one soldier answered, “Nicaragua.” Heck, half the town is Nicaraguan! And the Moskito Indians have populated the coast of what is today Honduras and Nicaragua for millennia. People constantly travel back and forth between here and the closest Nicaraguan town. Because President Reagan chose to base the Nicaraguan Contras here, many people still hold a grudge against the former enemy forgetting that those same Contras soldiers now live in Nicaragua.
Across the street from the base is the hostel housing a contingent of Cuban doctors. These doctors (both male and female) leave Cuba for a two-year stint in a Central American country. It’s one of Castro’s ways of endearing his otherwise miserable government to fellow Latinos. They’re paid $20 a month! That’s why they all share one small house with six bedrooms. They deny they’re forced into this overseas assignment. One of the doctors is a friend of ours. She’s an anesthesiologist. She’ll see her husband and two sons only once in the two years she’s away. She takes English lessons from Karen and attends the same church we do. In private, she tells us no Cuban would ever speak publicly about his hatred of Castro and his government. Spies are everywhere. Dissenters are punished.
The hostel shares a corner with a tiny wooden shack which doubles as a store and a home for a family of four. The husband sits just outside the store watching a television that rests upon a shelf up in the corner of the store. Usually he’s surrounded by a contingent of neighborhood kids. His taxi is parked next to him. I can’t understand how he makes any money with his taxi since it’s always parked. How do you spell “money laundering?”
Thank God a fresh ocean breeze almost always blows across the bay from the northeast. When heading out in the morning, as soon as I turn toward downtown and the bay, that breeze nearly blows my baseball cap off. It’s just strong enough to cool down what would otherwise be insufferable heat. Once home, it’s time for a light lunch. I try to eat up the leftovers. Everyone else is seated around the kitchen table, headphones on, doing their schoolwork.
On Tuesday’s and Thursday’s I head back out to teach at the army base at 1:00. On those same days I teach a bunch of 9th graders at 4:00. I’m teaching all three groups of students the same thing--the Gospel of John. A couple of years ago I read the same seven chapters of John every day for 30 days. During the next 30 days I read the subsequent seven chapters, and so on. I came away from that experience absolutely convinced that anyone sincerely seeking to find truth will discover it by carefully reading John’s Gospel.
I’ve been teaching during the Wednesday night church services on the Book of Acts. We go through each chapter, verse by verse. At the Pastor’s request, I’m also in the midst of preparing a curriculum on the lives of the Disciples for the Monday’s night men’s study group. This is a great group of about 10 men who meet each week to study various biblical themes. Most are new believers. One distinguished looking gentleman is about sixty years old. He’s been an alcoholic most of those years. His lime green turtleneck is sullied, his pants those of a hobo. He’s been a professor in the local schools since graduating from college. His keen intellect and excellent Spanish give proof. I’ve taken a liking to him. We walk home together after the meetings. A few weeks back he shared with me it was only after watching a fellow drunk and friend die that he realized his end would be the same without Christ. He’s so disarmingly honest when he speaks of his struggle with the temptation of booze that it’s frightening. I gave him his first Bible about a month ago. He sat staring at it speechless, fighting back tears. Last week he confided in me his clothes embarrassed him now that we attending church. Two days later we met at one of the ubiquitous second-hand clothing stores. He picked out a couple of pairs of pants and a few new shirts. Would you join me in praying that the Holy Spirit (the “Promise of the Father”) would baptize him? So when I’m not teaching, I’m preparing to teach, studying the word of God, praying that He would send His Holy Spirit to guide me. It is an unspeakable privilege. It has been very humbling to sit back and watch the Holy Spirit work in the hearts of the listeners. More than ever I’m convinced of the accuracy of Paul’s words:
“For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12)
Sincerely,
Ed Eagan
Evenings here are perfect. Last week during the full moon every night was glorious. I sat on the back porch with the lights out looking up at the stars. Because of the ideal temperature, I sat without shirt, shoes or socks. The stars above are not familiar. Only once a night, around three in the morning, is the silence of the night broken by the faint exhaust of a high altitude airliner. When the rain approaches it can be heard afar off. We’re not talking ordinary rain; we’re talking torrential downpours; we’re talking run to the windows before half the room is drenched. Lizards line the walls at night, waiting for a clueless moth or locust. The lizards’ screech is so loud it startles. Our bed was built high enough so as to be able to feel any breeze blowing in through the windows. About ten paces from our windows is a main road traversed by passersby at all hours of the night. It took us quite awhile to realize they weren’t right outside our windows plotting a palace coup. Many a night I’ve stood in the shadows with a hammer at the ready only to realize that the sounds that awoke me were dogs investigating our compost pile.
One of three things wakes me in the morning: sunlight pouring in the eastern window despite the brown bed sheet we’ve hung up as a curtain; a rooster crowing with all his might right outside the same window (this one wakes me up with a jolt); or Corgi barking at the top of his lungs. Make no mistake about it-roosters crow at all times of the day or night. But all roosters crow at dawn. For the uninitiated it can be a frightening cacophony. Our neighborhood stud usually starts crowing with gusto around four in the morning. To his credit, his is a robust, deep-throated crow that can be heard for miles in the stillness of the night. He’s not struggling like some of the elder roosters to attract the young chicks. Corgi, our neighborhood dog would give his left paw for some of that sex appeal. He stands about six inches above the ground. He’s about a foot long- if that. His resembles a Welsh Corgi according to Gabrielle our resident canine expert. She named him. He belongs to our landlord and neighbor Doña Digna although you’d never know it by her actions. We’ve yet to see her feed or pet him. Our affections have won him over. He sleeps on our porch, comes to the backdoor at dinnertime (along with Bethany’s cat harem) and wags his tail when he sees us. The problem is his ego doesn’t match his size. He carries himself like the Italian Stallion of Puerto Lempira. He prances when he walks resembling the famous Lipizzaner stallions. He regularly gets the snot beat out of him by the other dogs. Out of compassion, I’ve discouraged him from tagging along when we leave. It’s no use. Love has won him over—or at least the occasional scrap thrown his way.
Almost always I’m the first one up—sometime between 6:00 –6:30 am. I try to pray right away before anyone else rises. Mornings are glorious here with the walls of the thunderheads ablaze in burning hues of orange and red. Students walk unhurriedly toward school. Girls dressed in uniforms of navy blue skirts, short-sleeve white shirts, white socks and dark shoes squint as they head into the rising sun. The boys wear navy blue pants and kick empty plastic Coke bottles pretending they’re soccer balls. All carry bulging backpacks-- proof positive that good ideas and functional designs are universally appealing. Corpulent nurses, their dark skin radiant against the brilliant white of their uniforms, carrying lunches in discarded plastic grocery bags, walk with such reluctance toward the hospital it appears an invisible force holds them back. They stop at the slightest excuse to converse with friends. If you could see the hospital, you’d instantly understand their hesitation. Small foreign pickup trucks scurry by the back door heading for the airport. They carry passengers arriving down at the pier borne on dugout canoes powered by outboards. The planes, twin turboprops built in Czechoslovakia, arrive around 7:30. Anyone not yet awakened by all the other noises, will invariably emerge from under their mosquito net at this point. By that time I’ve been studying the Bible for an hour. These days I’m listening to Jon Courson out of Calvary Chapel’s Applegate Fellowship in Oregon. He is one of the finest Bible teachers I’ve heard. I have a set of CDs containing his teachings on the entire Bible.
By 9:30 I’m beginning to eat breakfast. Fresh oranges, papaya, pineapple or bananas are usually available. I follow that with cereal or oatmeal smothered with cold fresh milk in cardboard containers. I first saw milk stored in this fashion while living in London in 1977. It requires no refrigeration until opened. Bethany and I drink whole milk. Karen favors the powdered milk. The sugar, consisting of chunky, dirty white crystals (fresh from the cane), must be carefully stored. Thousands of tiny voracious ants scurry by on the wall searching for even the smallest crumb. When I’ve been a very good boy, Michaela will occasionally share one of her delicious western omelets with me. She’s become quite the cook down here. I love to read while eating breakfast and these days I’m in the middle of Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris. Life doesn’t get much better than this!
Every morning at 10:30 I teach the prisoners down at the local minimum-security prison. This is the highlight of the day for me. They’re such an eager bunch! They actually do their homework and are anxious to share with me what they’ve learned overnight. I spend at least an hour there. Afterwards I head to the internet café to download the day’s emails. The café is about half the size of my kitchen. Six computers are squeezed into that tiny space. Jorge, Pastor David’s brother-in-law, runs it. He’s a wiz with computers and never ceases to help me. I brought with me from the U.S. a tiny portable 128MB external hard drive known as a SanDisk. I simply plug it into the café’s computers, download the emails and plug it into my laptop at home. I do this so as to save money at the café. Normally it takes about 10-20 minutes to send and receive the day’s emails. It costs between $1.50 to $2.00 for that time. The normal download time is huge-it takes about one full minute to open, copy and paste one email to the SanDisk. If there’s inclement weather in the area, double that time. Ugh!
From there I’ll head to the shops to pick up groceries. These consist of open-air stalls in front of wooden huts or actual retail spaces in plaster buildings. Once you step inside everything is dark, as they don’t believe in using electricity during the day. Usually the owner of the building is also the owner of the store. There is no price competition. What you pay at the pier for jumbo shrimp is exactly what you’d pay the guy who shows up at your door with a cooler loaded with shrimp atop a wheelbarrow--$1.34/pound. Go figure. During the harvest a pound of beans goes for about 13.4 cents. Right now they’re selling for 50 cents. Yet no one stores them here. During the harvest they sell them to merchants who then ship them to giant storage facilities in La Ceiba. Nine months later they pay those same merchants to bring them back—at a markup of over 300%! (I smell a business opportunity here.) A fresh lobster dinner at the nicest local restaurant will set you back $6.70. A gallon of unleaded gasoline however will set you back $3.40! A dozen eggs costs $1.61, a quart of milk $1.07 while a box of generic Corn Flakes goes for $1.98. This month’s electrical bill came to $30.10. The rent is $200/month.
From the shops I head home. Along the way I pass the one and only bank. Without any computers to verify a balance, they must fax a copy of your bank register to La Ceiba. Next they place a call to the same office. Only after someone there confirms you have money in the account and has calculated the interest you’ve earned in the interim, does the teller give you money. On an ancient typewriter she pounds out the numbers on your account register. Teachers are paid once a month. When they are, enormous lines form at the bank for four full days. Every electrical and phone bill must be paid at the bank. If you go first thing in the morning or during lunch hour on any other day, there’s hardly a wait.
Next I pass the Catholic Church compound occupying one square city block. It’s by far the nicest complex in town replete with an arched topiary and a lawn mowed by machete. Every Sunday, strains of European music fill the air making one think he’s in a small Austrian village. Other than during a mass, I’ve never seen the priest in public. The army base, also one square city block, abuts the church property. It consists of two camouflaged shacks. In between them a common roof provides shelter for the kitchen and mess hall. The rest of the property consists of grass and mango trees. About twenty soldiers guard the base. They’re a motley crew comprised of scrawny young bucks whose faces resemble a deer caught in the headlights. When not playing soccer, they lean against the barbed wire fence talking with young ladies in waiting. Don’t ask me why they’re here in the middle of nowhere. When I asked them if Honduras had an enemy they all sort of looked at each other. Finally one soldier answered, “Nicaragua.” Heck, half the town is Nicaraguan! And the Moskito Indians have populated the coast of what is today Honduras and Nicaragua for millennia. People constantly travel back and forth between here and the closest Nicaraguan town. Because President Reagan chose to base the Nicaraguan Contras here, many people still hold a grudge against the former enemy forgetting that those same Contras soldiers now live in Nicaragua.
Across the street from the base is the hostel housing a contingent of Cuban doctors. These doctors (both male and female) leave Cuba for a two-year stint in a Central American country. It’s one of Castro’s ways of endearing his otherwise miserable government to fellow Latinos. They’re paid $20 a month! That’s why they all share one small house with six bedrooms. They deny they’re forced into this overseas assignment. One of the doctors is a friend of ours. She’s an anesthesiologist. She’ll see her husband and two sons only once in the two years she’s away. She takes English lessons from Karen and attends the same church we do. In private, she tells us no Cuban would ever speak publicly about his hatred of Castro and his government. Spies are everywhere. Dissenters are punished.
The hostel shares a corner with a tiny wooden shack which doubles as a store and a home for a family of four. The husband sits just outside the store watching a television that rests upon a shelf up in the corner of the store. Usually he’s surrounded by a contingent of neighborhood kids. His taxi is parked next to him. I can’t understand how he makes any money with his taxi since it’s always parked. How do you spell “money laundering?”
Thank God a fresh ocean breeze almost always blows across the bay from the northeast. When heading out in the morning, as soon as I turn toward downtown and the bay, that breeze nearly blows my baseball cap off. It’s just strong enough to cool down what would otherwise be insufferable heat. Once home, it’s time for a light lunch. I try to eat up the leftovers. Everyone else is seated around the kitchen table, headphones on, doing their schoolwork.
On Tuesday’s and Thursday’s I head back out to teach at the army base at 1:00. On those same days I teach a bunch of 9th graders at 4:00. I’m teaching all three groups of students the same thing--the Gospel of John. A couple of years ago I read the same seven chapters of John every day for 30 days. During the next 30 days I read the subsequent seven chapters, and so on. I came away from that experience absolutely convinced that anyone sincerely seeking to find truth will discover it by carefully reading John’s Gospel.
I’ve been teaching during the Wednesday night church services on the Book of Acts. We go through each chapter, verse by verse. At the Pastor’s request, I’m also in the midst of preparing a curriculum on the lives of the Disciples for the Monday’s night men’s study group. This is a great group of about 10 men who meet each week to study various biblical themes. Most are new believers. One distinguished looking gentleman is about sixty years old. He’s been an alcoholic most of those years. His lime green turtleneck is sullied, his pants those of a hobo. He’s been a professor in the local schools since graduating from college. His keen intellect and excellent Spanish give proof. I’ve taken a liking to him. We walk home together after the meetings. A few weeks back he shared with me it was only after watching a fellow drunk and friend die that he realized his end would be the same without Christ. He’s so disarmingly honest when he speaks of his struggle with the temptation of booze that it’s frightening. I gave him his first Bible about a month ago. He sat staring at it speechless, fighting back tears. Last week he confided in me his clothes embarrassed him now that we attending church. Two days later we met at one of the ubiquitous second-hand clothing stores. He picked out a couple of pairs of pants and a few new shirts. Would you join me in praying that the Holy Spirit (the “Promise of the Father”) would baptize him? So when I’m not teaching, I’m preparing to teach, studying the word of God, praying that He would send His Holy Spirit to guide me. It is an unspeakable privilege. It has been very humbling to sit back and watch the Holy Spirit work in the hearts of the listeners. More than ever I’m convinced of the accuracy of Paul’s words:
“For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12)
Sincerely,
Ed Eagan
posted by Eric Stephens at 20:19
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