Christmas in Honduras

Bruce & Linda Hanson – Honduras

For Christmas this year we got Seth a padded cell. No, really. Kesia wanted a keyboard and will start keyboard music lessons right after Christmas. Bruce is hoping that his new Palm Pilot will keep his phone numbers and schedule better organized. Rachel, our 25 year old that we kicked out of the nest many years ago followed us to Honduras (!) and is teaching at a school here. She wants, mostly, to know what she wants to do with her life. And Linda just wants the usual things: world peace, an end to poverty and equal rights for all. Oh, her hammock will be nice for reading novels in the shade of the backyard.

So back to the padded cell. The houses in Honduras are made of cement (the nicer ones like we get to live in, anyway). Seth plays the drums. Cement walls and drums. And cymbals and cowbells. Think about it. (Aside: at one point Kesia started to play the violin, but then changed to the keyboard. Beginning violin and drums in a cement house. Think about that!). The neighbors complained. Well, we complained, too, and we want to encourage his musical expression. So, we bought $40 worth of foam and glued it to the walls in the store room, put up pictures of famous drummers, organized Bruce’s junk, and presto! Seth’s own padded cell (shared with Bruce’s junk). Hope it works. We’ll keep you posted. 

So we wait for Santa, and we wait for the Christ child to come once again. Following the Sunday school curriculum that our church in the US sent us we have placed a cradle in the living room and are filling it with strips of brown paper on which we have written nice things we notice that others are doing during the season of Advent. There are only four strips so far, despite the cradle being available for several weeks. Sometimes it’s hard to notice nice things about others when your worried they have more presents than you do.

We do have some concerns about Santa’s arrival. Our poems express them:
There’s mice in the sofa and tics climb up the wall
There’s spiders in the bedroom, in the yard noisy bullfrogs
Will Santa want to enter with the critters and the noise?
No chimney to fall down from and outside our fierce guard dog!

And:
No snowfall, no snow angels, no snowmen or windy cold
Only rain and mud and puddles and mire and sludge
Our undies on the line never dry — its just too wet.
Will the sleigh be able to reach us without the ice? What do you bet?
A jingle of sleigh bells would set our minds at ease,
But we hear only the buzz of mosquitoes in the trees.

We trust that somehow the magic of Christmas will prevail and Santa’s arrival will come unhindered.

We are celebrating Christmas in San Pedro Sula, and the week after Christmas will spend time with Bruce’s sister, June, visiting from Texas, and his mother, Lavina, from Arizona. We’ll visit the amazing Mayan ruins of Copán again. And, we’ll go to the beach if it stops raining.

Our year has been particularly challenging, with some health problems for Linda and Seth and the death of Bruce’s father, Harley. We appreciate all your kind words of concern and support. In the year to come we anticipate some changes in our work which we look forward and will let you all know more about when we know more. It remains a privilege to be a part of the lives of the people of Honduras and to have you all as a part of our lives as well.

Christmas blessings to you and Happy New Year,

Bruce and Linda Hanson
Rachel, Seth, and Kesia

Bruce and Linda Hanson are missionaries who serve with the Evangelical and Reformed Church of Honduras assigned to the Association of Evangelical Institutions of Honduras (AIEH). He serves in the health ministries as a nurse. Linda serves with her pastoral duties and also works as a physical therapist.