February - March

Blessings!

Since our last update… in January (sorry), there have been quite a few happenings going on with the Webb Family.

 

HFMM:

As many of you know and as was mentioned in our last update, Melodee has been taking on more and more with the Honduran Fellowship of Missionaries and Ministries (HFMM).  January and February were the busiest months for HFMM as they prepared for their annual missionary retreat.  One blessing this year was that Kyle was able to attend the event in full.  They actually planned it around him this year so that 1. Melodee could be free to do what she needed to do and not have to focus on the kids on top of loads of other things she was responsible for and 2. people would actually believe that she was not a single mother (since Kyle usually had some sort of AD/sport thing going on at the same time as past HFMM events). 

The retreat this year went extremely well with numerous positive responses given by the other missionaries being served.  One highlight for Juliana was Brad and Rebecca (worship leaders who came down from the US).  They left their child behind in the states with family and had a quick replacement for their child in the form of Juliana and Levi.  Juliana of course loved the extra love and attention she was given and was heartbroken when they had to go back to the states.  She even tried to convince us to let her skip school in order to see them off at the airport so she could give them one last hug. 

Another blessing the HFMM has received is a new full time assistant.  It had been months since the last assistant had left to follow a call to Africa to study and become a pastor.  This meant that all remaining HFMM staff pulled extra duties, dedicated extra time, and brought more work home to make sure the ship still sailed smoothly.  Lets just say the finding of this new assistant as well as the Semana Santa vacation break were both looked forward to with much anticipation.  

 
Soccer:
This year, Kyle’s soccer teams did very well with 4 out of the 5 teams qualifying for the national tournament.  Because of school regulations, only 3 teams were allowed to travel and participate in the tournament and all 3 of those qualified at least to the quarterfinals.  Unfortunately, Kyle’s heavily favored Juvenil (Varsity) Boys team suffered their first loss of their season in the quarterfinal play, ending their anticipated run at the championship.  They ended their season with a 9-1-2 record.  The Pre Juvenil (Jr. Varsity) Girls also had an impressive showing and ended up losing their first game of the tournament in semifinal play after dominating most of the game but ending in a tie after regulation play.  After losing that game in penalty shots they won the next one for 3^rd place (a first time happening in this category since Kyle has been at the school).  The Juvenil Girls team also did well and qualified for the semifinal match and ended their season winning 4^th over all (also a first time happening in this category since Kyle has been at the school.)  Next season looks to be pretty promising as there will be a lot of returning players for these teams with not a lot of turn over.   

As soccer ended, Kyle has started coaching volleyball again and has entered two of his basketball teams into the local “Diez Mejores” (Ten Best) tournament.  At the moment he is considering/praying if he should place a bid to host next year’s national Track and Field Event, Basketball Tournament, and/or Knowledge bowl. 

“Mr.” Sparkles:

Snowflake is officially gone and has been replaced by Sparkles (an answer to prayer).  You many be thinking to yourself…What?!?!  About five weeks ago Kyle had to go to San Pedro Sula (SPS) for a pre-national tournament soccer meeting.  He normally takes a four-hour bus ride that gets him to SPS one hour before the meeting but decided to catch the early bus (6:00am) so he could get to SPS earlier.  This gave him time to call around and look at cars since the prices of cars are slightly lower there in SPS than here in Tegucigalpa.  To make a long story short, he had found a minivan that he really liked that was “slightly” ($2000) out of our price range, but they were willing to come down some.  So on Monday he called the car dealership to offer our top price and after some deliberation, they agreed to bring the car to Tegucigalpa (a 5 hour drive) so our mechanic could look at, and if he cleared it, we would buy it for the price we had offered.  So that Tuesday, Mr. Sparkles (Juliana and Kyle have an on going debate on whether our cars are boys or girls) became part of the family. 

On the Friday afternoon after we got our minivan, Kyle got our other car (Snowflake) washed and vacuumed out, and then posted pictures of it on the HFMM facebook group late that night.  On Saturday, three people contacted us who were interested in it, two of them being people from our church.  On Sunday we brought it to church for one of them to test drive it and she ended up taking the car home with her so that her mechanic could look at it on Monday. Then on Tuesday she gave us a check for our asking price.  She didn’t even want to negotiate (blessing)!!! 

50^th anniversary and Family Fun Day:



Field Day during the 50th Anniverserary

The end of February and into March was a busy time as three weekends in a row were filled with school activities.   As mentioned earlier, the national soccer tournament was one of those.  Along with that included the school celebrating its 50th anniversary, and a few weeks later, Family Fun Day.  The anniversary celebration included an open house, reception, and a VERY long thanksgiving celebration/service (Levi went to the bathroom three times during the service).  A lot of alumni and former staff came back for the festivities and we got to have dinner with the Birky’s (former athletic director of the school and his wife who were both long time Pinares staff) one night. 

Getting nails done during Family Fun Day

During Family Fun Day, each of the different grades and classes of the school either create and run carnival-like booths or host a food booth.  Kyle has been in charge of his own booth as athletic director where he sells t-shirts and polo shirts as well as gets rid of old athletic department balls using a game he calls “Ball Box,”  a simple game where you have to shoot the ball…into a narrow box.  If you make one of your two shots, you win an old ball (soccer, basket, or volley).  If you make both shots, you win a polo shirt (only two people in the last 5 years has made both shots).

Fathers’ Day:

Fathers’ Day comes twice a year for North American fathers who live in Honduras.  That is because

All ready for the Father's Day program!

Honduras celebrates Fathers Day on March 19^th.  Being that Juliana is in Pre-Kinder, she and her classmates were involved with putting on a Father's Day Assembly in the gym and later invited their dads back to the classroom for breakfast.  A special blessing was when Kyle was presented a paper tie that was colored by Juliana and contained “interview” questions and answers.  Apparently Juliana thinks that her daddy is really good at volleyball and has no idea what he isn’t good at. 

Semana Santa:

Semana Santa finally came and went.  It was a much needed break for the Webb family which they spent cleaning the house, visiting with friends, going out to Comayagua to visit other friends and see the Alfombras (sawdust carpets), preparing for the Easter service, and a “special surprise” for Juliana because she was such a well behaved and helpful girl for most of the week.  The special surprise was that Melodee took her to see a special showing of the new Cinderella… in English!  Most children’s movies are only shown in Spanish, but one of our friends convinced one of the local theaters to have a special showing (what a blessing) for the Gringos in English today.        



Our yard had to be dug up to find a broken pipe / Juliana's class field trip

Poor sick boy

  
Thank you Lord for your many blessings!!!