Welcome to our Information Update.
If you are a regular visitor to our web site please continue to forgive us for not updating this more frequently but life is increasingly busy.
If you are visiting us for the first time then welcome to you.
In either case we hope you enjoy this update.
What has happened since our last update?
Liz’s has fully recovered from her little adventure that many of you already know about. She is now off one of the 3 medications she was put on and has just started to reduce the second. We are looking forward to seeing her free of medication again.
We have recently had the oportunity to go back to Scotland for a wee visit. This was a great time where we attended the wedding of our older son Simon and his now wife Jackie. It was a great day and everything went wonderfully well. The wedding service was exceptional and feedback from many people was good, with more than one person saying it was the nicest wedding service they had ever attended. James, the guy leading the service, spoke well and intimately to Simon and Jackie and that made it very personal. Everything went well for the rest of the day too with a great meal at the Clachnacudden Football Club, a good disco and good and plentiful food at the evening reception. Liz and I would like to offer our thanks to everyone who helped make this great day special for everyone involved. All your help and generosity is greatly appreciated.
We also saw our first grandchild being born but let Uncle Samuel introduce you to her. Katelyn Elizabeth is my first niece and my mum and dad’s first grand-daughter. She was born on 5th June at 6lb 9oz and is the most gorgeous baby in the world, and that’s not just my opinion. (Its mum, dad, Simon and Jackie’s too.) She did give us a bit of a fright though when she started being very sick and losing weight. This meant she had to have an operation for a knot in her stomach, (Pyloric Stenosis - for those of you who care about these things.) This happened the day before we left but we are very grateful to the medical and nursing staff at Raigmore Hospital, Inverness for their speedy diagnosis and their quick intervention. We are pleased to report that Katelyn has made a full recovery and is currently eating so much she’ll soon be the same shape as my dad.
Simon & Jackie are doing well and settling into their new lives. They are very young, settling into a temporary new home and knowing they will have to do that again soon, they are getting used to living together as husband and wife and they are starting off with a new baby, (by the way did I tell you how gorgeous Katelyn is). That is a huge amount of changes in anyone’s lives. So please keep them in your thoughts and prayers and continue to offer help and support as you are able. We are so pleased by the way many of you have been there for Simon & Jackie, please keep it up. We are also proud of Simon & Jackie in the way they have handled all these changes in their lives and pursue a good quality of life together.
It looks as though the building of the house we will live in at Balfate will be delayed for a few months until the finances are all in place and we identify a replacement family for our current job as host family. The effect of this will be that we will be staying in La Ceiba a little longer than we anticipated but this should enable us to study Spanish a while longer. Iain will also get involved in getting the legal documents and administration in place for the future development of the orphanage.
We are now trying to plan what to do next regarding Samuel’s education. This is really testing us just to know what the best option for us all is. We will be home schooling him once we move out from the city but we are considering whether to just start it now or put him back in school for another couple of terms. Also whether or not to put him back to the same school as last year or move to another school. Its a difficult decision.
We all continue to learn Spanish, and while it's really difficult we are actually enjoying it. We have also made some classic mistakes which I would not want to committ to print.
Things have moved forward and back and forward with our residency application. Out criminal records which had been lost for 8 months eventually turned up. However they were back in the Honduran Embassy in London. We got them sent them back out to Honduras again and our application was submitted just before we left for Scotland. However, it was immediately rejected, because the criminal records were not signed by the issuing authority, or alternatively legalised by our own foriegn and commonwealth office. We had them sent all the way back to us in Scotland and Iain went by overnight train to London only to find the Foriegn and Commonwealth office refused to legalise them without them being signed by the issuing authority. They (Disclosure Scotland) however refused to sign them as it is a computer generated form and no-one has the authority to sign the form. This leaves us pretty well trapped in a UK generated " Catch 22" situation that neither authority are willing to move from. Thankfully the Honduran Consulate used his initiative and legalised the documents for us. We subsequently brought them back with us and our application has this week been re-submitted and we now await the outcome.
Our truck has been running pretty well with just the usual maintainence issues.
We continue to have lots of people staying with us. Those of you who know us well, know that we always enjoy this and feel really blessed that we have a job doing something we enjoy so much.
What Can You Do?
If you have a faith, you can pray for us and ask God to continue to show us His favour. Thank Him for His faithfulness to us.
You can write to us in La Ceiba. Details are on the contact page as is our new phone number and e-mail address. We are also on MSN so you could try to contact us through that. Please try to remember that we are between 6 & 7 hours behind UK time depending on if you are on BST or GMT.
You can support us financially either by offering regular giving or by one-off gifts. Details of how to do this are on the Contacts page.
You can tell others about our adventures and encourage them to get involved too.
Finally, we would like to thank all of our supporters and our sponsors.
We hope you enjoyed reading our news, and you’ll visit it again. Remember you can leave a message for us on our guest book.
Iain, Liz & Samuel.