Austin and Taylor finished their 12th (and final) week of language school in Copan on Thursday. Ben and Julie finished their 6th week of language school in Copan on Friday. All of us have much more Spanish to learn, but we feel it is important to get settled in Gracias and begin making the relationships here. We will try to find a good Spanish tutor locally to help us practice and continue to progress. We also may bring over a teacher from the school in Copan for a week a couple of times to help us. Ben and Julie may also go back to Copan for a week at a time. We are committed to continuing to learn the Spanish language so we can effectively communicate the Gospel of Christ with the people here. Please join us in prayer as we seek God’s will for how we should continue to learn the language. We all made new friends and added to our unofficial extended families through our host families in Copan. God provided some lovely people to host both Austin and Taylor as well as Ben, Julie, Leighanne, and Hannah. We believe these friendships are friendships that will last us a lifetime and we really do consider our host families to be a part of our family.
This weekend has been very busy as will the whole next week as we try to get everything settled into the new house. All of the furniture and appliances have been delivered and we are in the process of getting them all connected. We were able to eat fresh fruit from the market, juice, and make our own coffee at home this morning for breakfast (1st time since being in Honduras that we were able to eat at our own home).
PRAISE! — Austin and Taylor received their missionary visa on Friday (that was why Thursday was their last day of class). This happened very quickly and enabled them to not have to extend their tourist visa — they are officially residents of Honduras now. The rest of us have had our paperwork submitted and are awaiting the call to go get ours as well — we expect to be 6 to 7 weeks behind Austin and Taylor (perhaps a little more with Christmas in the middle of it). Ben and Austin also now officially have RTN numbers, which are required to make larger purchases in Honduras. The RTN numbers also allow us to own property (vehicles, land, houses, etc.).
There have been a number of people who have helped us tremendously in our transition to become Honduran residents. I hesitate to start naming them, but I do want to do a shout out to Russell Sowers (http://sowers4pastors.blogspot.com/) as he has been so much help here in Gracias. Russell has helped us find the home, driven us around Gracias, Santa Rosa, and San Pedro Sula helping us find things, hauled appliances for us, installed several important items in our new home, and his mom and dad even fed us Thanksgiving Dinner last Saturday. Without a doubt, I know that God placed Russell and his family in our path to help us. Russell and his family have several awesome ministries that we look forward to learning more about and hopefully partnering with them in some of the ministries that they are already doing.
Also, you can be praying with us about a possible ministry that we may be able to get started in the next few week here in Gracias. We don’t want to give details yet because we are still working out exactly how things will work, but it is a possible partnership with another ministry that will give us exposure to a number of the pastors and other church leaders in the area while allowing us to help out another ministry (not to mention force us to practice our Spanish!). As soon as we have the details worked out we will share on our weekly blog.
Blessings!
— The Agee Family