Myette.org

Note: A few months ago our website crashed and we lost our email listserve of those who wished to receive updates about our time in Honduras at the Farm of the Child. So failing that I wanted to send out a final update to my whole address book as we finish our time in Honduras and head to Boston for grad school. I will send out an address update once we’re settled in Boston but this will likely be the capstone for our time in Honduras. Enjoy.

Friends-

It’s 4am and my friends just left. What a remarkable statement.

In a few hours I will get one a plane with Erika, Michael and Jacob and fly home to the U.S., with our more son than we left with on July 30, 2004, but our family so much larger. On Saturday night began saying goodbye to that family one by one. Led by the volunteers who are staying on at the Farm we were blessed in a mass to celebrate our departure and treated to skits and songs to celebrate our time at the Farm. We said goodbye to the children, house parents, Franciscan sisters and other members of the Farm community and for the last time on Sunday morning loaded into the landcruisers for the trip to the bus stop.

We’ve spent the last few days in La Ceiba together as a departing volunteer class. Swapping old stories we talked about our worst moments, our most amazing times, the things none of our friends would believe really happened. Staying up in a national park at the home of a friend of the Farm (who lets us use it for free) we swam, hiked to a 300 foot waterfall, white-water kayaked, played cards, cooked together and most importantly took some time to honor and enjoy the relationships we have made over the last two years of living together.

And today, in the predawn darkness filled with snoring, roosters and a humming refrigerator. I can’t quite believe that my friends are gone.

We’ve done some pretty incredible things together. Though it’s sort of ridiculous to sum up 2 years in a bullet point list it makes a pretty good email and some here’s just a few things we’ve done or experienced as a departing volunteers class.

• Discover a 7 foot snake in the boys bathroom of the vol house. 
• Opened a middle school (7-9 grade). 
• Gotten trapped for the night on the wrong side of a river with no food. 
• Proposed and built a Multi-Use Facility for use for the new middle school (ok, in all fairness after 15 months of construction delays it wasn’t quite done when we left but you can’t really blame that on us). 
• Welcomed Jacob into the world. 
• Designed a comprehensive training for the social work department. 
• Had a woman give birth in the back of the landcruiser on the way to the hospital. 
• Developed on a curriculum to help children prevent sexual abuse.
• Watched Michael learn Spanish and go to his first year of PreK (in Spanish)
• Discovered the biological sister of one of our children. He had never met his 10 year old sister and this winter he will get to.
• Got evacuated for a hurricane by the military.
• Survived a year and a half of teaching 5th and 6th grade. 
• Be with Matthew and Andrea as they got engaged and married and with Daniel and Vivian as they walked towards their own wedding day.
• Received a donation of 300 lobster tails.
• Invited Kristel and Beau to be godparents to Jacob and getting to enjoy being compadres with them in the sense of the spanish word which means co-parent.

We have done some amazing things in two and a half years. As we leave Honduras today I am filled with gratitude for the time we have had here in Honduras. I am grateful for the opportunity to serve in some small way. Erika and I have grown so much in our marriage in the last two years and our family has thrived in the warm embrace of the Farm community.

As we leave today we head off to new opportunities to continue our mission of service. I will start grad school at Tufts University in Boston to get my masters in international development. Erika will start job hunting for a social work job and we are excited that my sister Michele will be coming to live with us to take care of Jacob and Michael during the days and explore her options for getting a masters this fall. Here’s a quick rundown of our travel plans as we hit South Florida and Chicago on our way to landing in Boston before Christmas.

• December 6 – Arrive in Florida
• December 13 – Erika and the boys go to Chicago and Michael-John drives to Boston then flies to Chicago (I’ll be in Boston Dec 15-17)
• December 21 the whole family arrives in Medford, MA for our new home.

I will send out a big address update with phone numbers and all in a few weeks, but in the mean time you can jot this down for our address as of December 15th.

On Sunday at breakfast we were 15 Farm volunteers (or perhaps now former Farm volunteers) and by dinner tonight we will be in five different countries. Rachel, Erika, the boys and I will fly home to the states in a few hours to be with our families. Rafael will be in Venezuela, Daniel and Vivian are on their way to Belgium to get married, Becky will be back in Trujillo with her fiancé, Andrea and Matthew will stay here at their home in Ceiba where Matthew teaches at a bilingual school. And Naomi, Beau, Kristel, Nicholas, Lindsey, and Laura will be in Guatemala as they travel for 2 weeks by land up to Mexico City.

I am filled with joy as I think about the Farm mission statement that says, ‘In gratitude for the love of Jesus Christ, we decide to unite ourselves as a community to care for needy children.’ I will miss my friends, but am confident that the community we have built will continue and we will continue to achieve the mission of the Farm for many years to come.

In peace,

Michael-John, Erika, Michael and Jacob

P.S. As always pictures and updates can be found at www.myette.org I will be adding the last photos from Honduras (kayaking!) and starting to update the website in the next few weeks so stay tuned. We would be incredibly grateful for your continued prayers and support of the Farm of the Child and you can check out their newly redesigned website at www.farmofthechild.org