First Ultrasound

Yesterday was my first ultrasound and the doctor's determined that everything was fine with the baby. Due to the size of the baby my due date has been moved up to the 24th of December. Yeah!!!
They did notice a myoma on the outside of the uterus. The doctor said that this is very common and not to worry. I did some research online to try and figure out what she was talking about and discovered that it is pretty common and as long as it doesn't grow there should be no problem. The doctor told me that it is common for the uterus to absorb the myoma with time (as it grows).
Please pray with us that this is what will happen and that we will have no problems with this.

Airport News

"The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord, as the rivers of water: he turneth it withersoever he will" Psalms 21:1.

For many of you who have been praying about the airport situation, we have good news. The airport is scheduled to be opened in 8 days.

Many people have been effected. We talked to Domingo, a leader of a church in the mountains (where they don't even have electricity) and he has been hugely affected. He makes leather stools to sell to business owners in the tourist town of Valle de Angeles. Valle de Angeles has had no one come into Teguc so they have had no business. Therefore Domingo hasn't sold any chairs for over a month. That means his family has had no income for over a month.

Over all there were an estimated 30,000 people who would be affected by the closure of the airport permanently.

We are praising the Lord for his changing the president's heart on this matter, because this president is not one to change his mind even if he is wrong. He has been listening to the council of some president that have very communistic tendencies. We are so thankful that God moved his heart in this way.

Baptism Sunday

This Sunday we had the privilege to see Carmen and Noel baptized.

Carmen is a direct result of our church's missions trip. Carmen was befriended by Bernadette, one of the ladies who came. Bernadette encouraged Carmen to follow the Lord with all of her heart. Carmen told us just after the group left that she wanted to get baptized. We had scheduled the last baptism service with her in mind, but she was not able to get baptized on that day because of some health issues. This week, though, everything worked out perfectly. We had a great service and Carmen was so happy to be able to take this step of obedience.

Noel is the son of Juanita, the lady with Elephanitis. He has been coming off and on for several months. For the past two months Jason and Ernesto have had a great burden for Noel and have put a lot of emphasis on getting him to return. He has been coming faithfully for three weeks now. Last Saturday he went with Jason to Bible Institute to see how it is run and to decide if he would like to enroll next term. They were talking about Biblical fellowship and somehow, someone raised a question about baptism. Noel asked Jason after that if he could be baptized the next time we had baptisms. Jason told him that tomorrow was the next service. He then told him not to tell Ernesto (who has been praying that Noel would get baptized) so they could surprise him. Ernesto had been praying that Noel would come to us without us having to talk to him about taking this step. Ernesto was so surprised when he saw Noel get into the water. He told us as he got out of the car at his house that he still can't believe it. The devil has really been working hard trying to discourage all of us.

Ernesto and Nelly have been plagued with many health problems. Nelly has such problems with her back at this time that she has had to miss services for the past two weeks.

The devil is trying to discourage us through a new church that is starting up in Ojojona. Baptist Medical and Dental Mission used to be a part of BIMI, but decided to form their own group many years ago. They have a habit of coming into towns where there is already a good Baptist church and stealing all of the members to form their church. They are very pentecostal in their teachings and are at the other end of Ojojona, but a few months ago they started a "house church" next door to the church. It is really frustrating to us as we have seen this happen so many times before. Please pray for us that we won't get discouraged and that God will keep moving in the people of Ojojona. On the heels of a great victory is when we are the most easily discouraged.

Tate News

The reason for my inconsistency in keeping you all updated on what is going on here in Honduras is, I am pregnant again. For those of you who know me know that I get very sick in the first trimester. Well, this pregnancy has been no different. I have been so sick that I have not been doing anything that is not necessary. I am due around the end of December and am now 11 weeks along.
The kids are excited though. Audrey practices with her babies every day. The kids can't wait until Christmas when the baby will come. Please pray for us as Mommy being sick is not a fun time for anyone.

Airport update

We went and saw the plane a few days ago and were surprised at

how there were not more lives lost. Praise the Lord for his goodness on that matter. Five people died in the accident. The pilot, the Brazilian ambassador's wife, and a banker (who died from a heart attack) were on the plane, and the plane landed on a pickup truck and killed two young men. The road that the plane landed on is usually clogged by buses. It is a miracle that there was not one bus on the road at that time.

They are in the process of cleaning up. The plane looks the same outside, but looking through the doors you can see that they are dismantling it from inside.

At this time it is a big discussion on what they will do with the airport. It has been determined that the pilot touched down in the middle of the runway. Tegucigalpa has a short runway and touching down in the middle does not give you time to stop. For a pilot to land at Teguc they must be super qualified. This pilot has been employed by Taca for many years so who knows what went wrong. We do know that he landed the airplane going the wrong way. The control tower suggested that he land in one direction because of the direction of the wind, but he wanted to land with the wind.

They are talking about closing Teguc permanently and moving it to Comayagua and using the Palmerola airbase which is jointly used by Honduras and the US. At this time there is no terminal and they would have to convert a hanger into one. We are praying that they find someway to keep Teguc open as it is a 1 1/2 hour drive to Comayagua. That would make it much harder for us and would lose Teguc much tourist $.

Taca Flight 390

Today was a sad day for us. As Audrey was washing dishes from breakfast we lost power. We had no clue what was going on until a friend of ours called us to tell us that a plane had just been involved in an accident. We live very near the airport so they were wondering how we were. We were without any form of finding out what was going on so we got in the car to listen to the radio and found out it was a big plane from TACA that had over shot the runway.

Honduran news has said that 5 died (three died inside the plane including the pilot, and two were trapped in their cars underneath the plane), but the articles that I have read have stated that two died. When we saw the news reports we were praising God for the small amount of causalities. It could have been so much worse. Also, several of those first on the scene came just to steal the baggage of the traumatized passengers.

While nothing "official" has been said, we know that for some reason the plane kept going right off of the end of the runway. Thankfully planes land away from our house so we were in no way harmed.

There is talk of closing the Toncontin airport (just remodeled and very nice) for a time and flying people into Comayagua (1 1/2 hours away). We are praying that this doesn't happen as it would be a huge headache for us. The city has been in the process of taking down a really big hill to extend the runway, but we don't know if that is going to halted at this time.

If you would like to see the news article you can click here. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,360842,00.html

Water, Rain, and Dogs

We have not had any water for three weeks. We have a tank that holds 1,500 gallons of water. We have had to buy a truck of water a week for the past three weeks just to use for showers, washing clothes, and washing dishes. Finally after a week of calling, Sanaa (water company) came out today to fix the problem and found out that someone turned our water off just to be mean. I, however, am not convinced that that is the problem. We are supposed to get water again tonight from the city so we will soon know if that is what was wrong or not.

We have had good rainfall this past week. It has made it so nice here. Once our water starts coming in I can spring clean. I am going to start by washing curtains. I have some beige lace curtains that are now dark brown from the dust. I hate to let them get so bad, but when you have no water there is not much you can do.

We had baptism Sunday scheduled for Sunday. A few days before one of our members called to tell us that a dead dog had been thrown into the water hole where we baptize and told us that we should cancel the service. We asked him to take the dog out. His wife called on Friday and told us that the dog was still there. We went out on Saturday and found out that God had cleaned it for us. It had rained so much that everything floated down the river. We had our baptism service and two from our church got baptized. One was Jordan and the other Cristian (8 years old). To have children get baptized is a huge step. Here there is a very common belief that children shouldn't get baptized until they are 12 (the age Jesus went to the temple). It is very hard to get parents to give permission. We were so excited for Cristian to finally get permission. We had a great service with Bro. Alan Jackson's church joining us. This was the first for them to baptize in the river and they loved it.