How to get a monkey off your back.

How do you get a monkey off your back? Life on the mission field in Honduras is like chasing monkeys with marshmallows and other ways to get them off your back and into the cage…. No really.

Church last night was good. Even in the rain. The church gave away a bicycle to a teen named Glenda, who memorized alot of scriptures in a month. She comes from a very poor family and tried very hard. Amen! One of the men came forward to pray and give a testmony. It has been a week of solid rain. All the ground around the property is very soft. Needing 4wd almost just to enter. Some of the ground in front of the dinning room and bedrooms has begun to wash away. So we are digging footers and putting in a secondary retention wall. Always something to do here. My do list is a mile long, but never get down to the urgent “to do’s” or the needful “to do’s” because we always are dealing with the emergency “do’s”.
In La Cruz the brother of Ermita trusted the LORD and wow what a change. He has chosen to give up the rather large multi generation family business which made drinking alcohol. In doing so, some of his business associates have even threatened to kill him. Yet he is growing in grace under the pastoring of Carlos. He is converting the plant to make medical alcohol for pharmacies and hospitals and the LORD has already opened doors for permits, licences, customers ect.



Lisa sent the boys to pick corn to make corn on the cob and found someone else harvested our field in the night. So much for that effort. You can’t keep anything here without sitting on it like a hen.


The last container of donated food has yet to arrive. Actually, it has been marked as abandoned by the port authority. The shipping agency gave up and dumped it on me to deal with. This container was suppose to be different (ie less headaches). The new shipping agency in the USA promised to handle all issues and deliver it to our door. OK great!...Not. They gave up this week and it is now my problem. But only after they made a really big mess. as high as $9000 worth port storage fees, fines and all. Welcome to Honduras. This is not the fault of ministering Saints in the USA that collect, store and arrange the shipping, but rather false promises from a shipping agency that found Honduras is rough team to play against and just quit midgame after getting a foul. Now the ministries in the USA get hurt as well as us. And we are left holding the game ball and all the debt that goes with it. Not sure how this will work. Need lots of prayer. I contacted our regular shipping lawyer and asked her to look into it yesterday. It is costing near 100 per day right now to sit and it is not even got to customs where our normal headaches begin. I believe we may have lost this container, I see no way to right this ship“ment”. Not sure how it will affect our name on future shipment either. But I am told even if it is abandoned there will be charges and fees that remain against any future shipment (As much as $4000) and put us in a high risk category with the Secretary of Finance for our nonprofit ministry corporation papers, which potentially affects our visas. And today as I write this I received an email from a collection agency demanding the storage fees for the port. Near $3000 and climbing and in Honduras a judge can confiscate your property until the debt it paid. It is a mess from any angle. So basically, I am going to owe thousands of dollars on a shipment I may not receive, that was donated for free distribution, and feeding of children placed with us by the state? One needs much more income than we have to stay ahead of the headaches Honduras produces. Need Lots of Prayer and a hand of providential intervention.

On another note. We started paperwork to officially adopt 7 of the children. Not a USA side adoption but a Honduran one. It gives the children a sense of belonging (very important for these 7) as well as opens up the possibility to travel with them and maybe visit a few churches in the future. Some colleges stateside accept missionary’s children for free as well. It is something that has been on my heart for a while. Each one has asked me or Lisa in the past if we would please become their real mom and dad. Each time was a heartbreaking moment. Not sure who needs it more us or them. When I went to child services to turn in the papers they were excited. Asking about the kids and how Lisa was doing. They then told us about budget cuts and all the ministries and homes that that failed inspection and they could no longer sending children to…then came “the question” Can you and Lisa take 5 more?…. Uh uh …So we might end up with 5 more children. Where is that word “no” in the vocabulary when you need it…Oh well. Plus I asked about a baby girl because pastor Augusto wants to adopt as well.

ok now to explain the monkeys. I had asked someone about monkeys as pets a couple of years ago, kinda half hearted. (Our family had one in Alaska when I was little.) Note to self… don’t make half hearted statements in Honduras because they might come to pass. Someone was moving and needed someone to take their monkeys right away and our name came up…hmm. So now we have 2 monkeys to add to our “zoo”. They have escaped from our leftover fencing and pvc cage several times and gone into the mountain swinging from the tops of trees with kids chasing them. Only to return when it was calm and they were hungry. And of course the first time is 10 minutes before church. Most of our kids take off after them and then the church kids do to… made for a rather short jr church class… busy chasing monkeys. Gotta be a sermon illustration in this somewhere. Still hard to catch though, little marshmallows worked the best. … Kids named them Tarzan and Jane. I dont know about this one. Where is that word again umm “kno”, uh noe, uh nnnnn…Gonna have to practice it so it comes out in time. A late no is the same and a yes I think. Anyway need prayer on many fronts. Had another church lower our support as well… Welcome to the spiritual front lines in Honduras
Unworthy servant to a worthy Saviour,
Barry Ritchie