One year down, one to go, in Grad school that is.
After a summer home in Honduras we are back in Pittsburgh, PA diving into year 2/2 for Kaleb’s Master’s degree in International Development. Two semesters to go and looking at graduation in the spring of 2020. We are both working daily with Heart to Honduras, raising a little family, running a little business (de Palo Products) and keeping up with classes and studies. We still love our apartment and life here in Oakland.
Our summer in Honduras was intense for a few reasons, but it was wonderful to be back home. Since our last update from Honduras, things got very interesting before our return to the US. We were able to visit all of our CoHI communities as a family - including spending the night in Lomas del Aguila (family camp out on the floor of the clinic!) We celebrated 10 years of marriage!!! Stacey and Kaleb dealt with some serious illness - with one (and possibly both) of them falling prey to the Dengue Fever outbreak that has been ravaging Honduras this year more than usual. The political unrest limited our ability to move freely in the country, except to and from work, for a while. It was stressful from several angles, but are grateful for God's provision in spite of the issues. We continue to grow in our trust of Him for our safety and health.
In addition, Kaleb and Otto (Honduran HTH Coworker) organized and led HTH’s first ever birding group - observing 200 species in only 5 days in dry oak scrub, high cloud forest, and lakeside marshes - without traveling more than an hour from our home. You can see the week’s photos and read more here in this full birding update.
FAMILY
Alida (5) loves being physically active, interacting with people, going places, having people over and is as inquisitive as ever. Due to the transient nature of our life right now we opted to not put her into a Kindergarten this school year. But, she has started year 3 of intentional learning at home. She loves nature, activity, play based learning and is reading, even to her little sister now!
Eliana (2) is sensitive and expressive, talking like crazy. She was called a “parrot” all summer as she constantly repeated anything anyone said as practice and engagement. She loves to keep up with big sister at parks and imaginative play together. She is hardly ever seen without a stuffed animal under her arm, usually a cat.
Our pet bunny, Gary, and their stuffed animals have to hold the place of their many live animals and friends they left again at home in Honduras.
Some have asked us if our girls are bilingual? The answer is yes, very much so. While in Honduras, we are literally the only 2 people that speak to them in English. While in the States, we speak to them in Spanish while we are alone with them to keep the practice going. They understand both languages with ease and speak very well for their respective ages. If a Spanish speaker speaks to them in Spanish, they will respond in kind. Same for English. Many Hondurans reminded us this summer that the girls speak Spanish even better than Kaleb and I. We know and couldn’t be happier. Their minds and tongues have developed very differently than ours did as kids and has produced some wonderful cognitive and social skills that we pray continue to develop and will serve them the rest of their lives. In addition to being bilingual they are multicultural. Just one example is that the US is a direct culture in communication and Honduras/Latin America is an indirect culture. Because a significant portion of their lives is spent in Honduras WITH Hondurans, it has been interesting seeing Latin American indirect culture manifest itself in the way our daughters interact with others, how they phrase things or approach a situation. We have the challenge as parents to be aware and facilitate this beautiful, but many times confusing blessing.
Kaleb has another full slate of classes in his work towards a Master's degree in International Development at the University of Pittsburgh, that is proving to be a lot of reading and heavy assignments but also are already serving us well in our work with Heart to Honduras. This semester, in addition to our work with Heart to Honduras, Kaleb is taking classes in...
Latin American Social and Public Policy: This comprehensive research seminar helps us understand the current diversity of public and social policies that exist in Latin America. How does Bolivia view indigenous groups? How does Peru deal with water resources? What does Costa Rica do about health care? What does Nicaragua’s education system look like? What can we do to combat corruption in Guatemala? In this class, we deal with these topics and many more. Kaleb’s specific focus during his semester-long research is focused on emerging trends of Latin American legislation that restricts the operational freedom of international NGOs (such as HTH) and local civil society groups (such as those that we work with).
Human Rights: Politics and Practice: International Human Rights law is incredibly influential in Honduras - one of the few laws that is actually respected when its power is invoked. Since we have only worked on the edge of human rights issues, Kaleb decided to take this class in order to better understand how to leverage its potential to help HTH push for regional change. Thus far, his research and coursework in the class has focused on the right to political participation.
Management of Non-Profit Organizations: Taught by Pitt’s Director of the Johnson Institute for Responsible Leadership, this class has been incredibly encouraging to us. The class focuses on using strategic management techniques to ensure that an organization does not fall prey to “mission drift” in order to stay financially afloat, but instead to focus on and pursue wholeheartedly its mission and vision. This practical class is providing incredibly useful information on a week-to-week basis.
Latin American Politics: By far Kaleb’s most difficult class, this PhD-level political science seminar covers a remarkable breath and depth of political concepts that uniquely affect Latin America. Though the load is heavy, it is providing a great deal of insight into the forces that have shaped the political sphere of Honduras, Central America, and Latin America in general. This class is helping us to better grasp the complexities of Honduras’s turbulent political environment that has such a dramatic effect on our work.
Our work with Heart to Honduras continues as we both engage daily. We continue to develop the Communities of Holistic Impact(CoHi) curriculum that includes monthly workshops full of presentations, participation and practical applications. In addition to community activities, challenges and follow up. The program has continued to experience remarkable results, if you can, take a minute to check out the most recent CoHI Update Here. Reading the CoHi update helps you understand what Kaleb and Stacey really "do."
In addition to our work with community development that we have been doing for 8 years and now CoHI, we also work regularly with the organization at large. We are privileged to work with a very talented, bilingual, experienced and competent staff both stateside and in HN. An example of something we have been working on developing this past month are what we are calling “readiness indicators.” These will help us continue to know how and when it is healthy to transfer more and more responsibility to the Honduran staff. Those of you that have known us from the beginning know that we have always had the goal of working ourselves out of a job. Pieces of that have already happened and some are well on their way. As we take on new initiatives we train and pass off old responsibilities. The Stateside and Honduran organizations are also in that process. Many transitions have already taken place but, many more are to come. It is not that the HtH stateside entity will disappear but as in all healthy development, it should be changing and it is ok if it looks a bit different in 10 years than it does now. A great phrase to describe this process coined by the Chalmers Center in their book is, “From Dependency to Dignity” we truly believe Heart to Honduras has and continues to take steps on this hard and uncommon road.
At the end of July we had a joint staff retreat combining our stateside and Honduran Heart to Honduras staff. It was a great time of reflection together. Our department was asked to share two of our CoHi presentations: How to Protect Healthy Development and Conflict Resolution as sessions during the retreat. Our Honduran director asked us to work with our entire staff as these concepts we work with in the communities are topics very much needed within our staff as well.
The last night before our return flight from Honduras to Pittsburgh on August 8th we had a very interesting experience as a family. Something that left us just staring at each other saying, “wow, that was something we have only dreamed would happen.”
We were in the middle of bathing and getting our kids ready for bed (which seems to be a favorite time for neighbors to drop by) and the local Las Lomitas CoHi commission showed up on our front porch. They were just getting out of a meeting together and wanted to come by together to “despedirnos” (say goodbye). They came in TOGETHER, unified, wishing us well on our trip back to the States. They all piled in and sat in all the available seating we have (plastic chairs and a hammock). After offering them a cold drink and slipping our girls into bed, we sat and just listened.
Their proud faces shared their successes and their happy hands placed papers before us that held ledgers (from their own fundraising) and record of expenditures for their Genesis project - a school fence - a project that was theirs from concept, to planning, to funding, to completion, and now for the final step - accountability to their neighbors. After we visited for a while listening to their huge accomplishments this year, they stood up to leave, then unexpectedly circled around us and they prayed for us, our family, Kaleb’s studies and our return trip to the States. What a blessing this visit was. We spend years unable to see fruit of labor and often wonder or question. We felt that God gave us that moment as encouragement for our wavering souls.
To us, and Heart to Honduras, this moment is success. It represents more than we can communicate in written word to you. It is integrity, transparency, healthy relationships, collaboration, asset-based community development, capacity creation, identity in Christ, and human dignity. They are the exact core values of HtH. It is an example of how the mission of HtH (to foster thriving Honduran communities by developing the gifts and capacities of visionary, engaged, local leaders) is fulfilled.
How you can pray:
- Pray for Kaleb's classes and studies
- Pray for our marriage, our daughters, and wisdom for our family as we walk this road of international life and parenting.
- Pray for the three communities and their leaders we work with in CoHi: Las Lomitas, Lomas del Aguila, and Caliche.
- Pray that our little family business de Palo would pick up sales over the next few months(the Holidays) to be able to provide more local employment back home in Las Lomitas.
- Pray for the country of Honduras as things like dengue fever, political unrest, and employment issues continue to plague the country every day.
- Pray for Heart to Honduras and Corazon Para Honduras(Honduran side) and that we together would pursue and protect healthy development and have healthy conflict resolution.
- Pray for the chains of oppression to be broken. Freedom from additions, relationships restored, the love and power of Christ known.
- Pray for financial provision for Heart to Honduras operational budget which includes salaries for staff like us!
As many of you saw we ran a “Summer giving Challenge” this summer to attempt to increase the number of monthly financial supporters for us to continue in this holistic development role with Heart to Honduras. We are thankful for the 3 that responded, though we fell short of our goal(10), we are thankful for our generous and faithful supporters! As always, if you, or someone you know would like to be a vital part in the work you read about in our updates or on the HTH website, please join us by giving below!
Over the years, so many difficult and amazing changes have been made within HTH, and we can honestly say it is a credible ministry doing amazing, true, holistic development work in the name of Jesus. We would love to see more people engaging with it as a whole. Would you join us?
WHO WE ARE:
Kaleb and Stacey Eldridge - Our shared passion for the people around us and around the world and our common faith in Christ led us to marriage in June of 2009. In 2010, Heart to Honduras offered us the opportunity to step into a full-time International Community Development role. In 2011 we left our full-time teaching and tech-writing jobs in order to move to Honduras and have been there ever since. Why? Our faith leads us to the understanding that we cannot just view people as only souls (to be saved) or only bodies (to be fixed or provided for), but as whole people.
We are all in poverty - mentally, physically, environmentally, emotionally, financially, spiritually – not one of us escapes the grasp of oppression and suffering. We believe that only through hope in Christ can we ever fully escape this vicious cycle. As holistic beings, our response to poverty must also be holistic. We can no longer just engage the world in only church, only poverty alleviation efforts, only counseling, only microbusiness, only education, only medical work, or only environmental advocacy, but work to bring all these elements into one holistic model that ministers to unique needs in each individual or community. This understanding leads us to live intentional lives that focus around relationship with God, ourselves, our environment, and others.