Well, the summer is here, hot days upon us…you know what that means! Yup, cold ones! And no, I don’t mean beer. We don’t happen to live in a beer connoisseur’s country…rum, maybe, but definitely not beer! Honduras though is an interesting place to drink. There are varying views and opinions about it, and you have to know how to be balanced.

While the Bible doesn’t condemn alcohol in itself (notably Psalm 104:15 and 1 Timothy 5:23), and in fact Jesus first miracle was changing water to wine (John chapter 2), it does caution against drunkenness (Ephesians 5:18). Yet there are some churches, notably evangelicals, who look down on any alcohol consumption, and others who don’t seem to mind. Much of the drinking that does go on is in bars that feature billiards as well. (The Bible is silent on the appropriateness of playing pool…) And those places aren’t looked upon with favour by most. In fact the music-blaring establishment across the street from us is one we wouldn’t mind seeing find a new location. Once in a while things get a little out of hand over there, but so far we haven’t been directly affected. Public drunkenness is not a punishable offence here it seems, so there are various men you will see on a Sunday afternoon finding a resting place anywhere from a busy sidewalk to a palm tree in the middle of the highway, or bent over a car hood! So it’s easy to understand why some churchgoers prefer abstinence.

Nevertheless, I picked up a bottle of cheap gin the other day. It cost about $9 US. I was optimistic, but at home I discovered the reason for the low price. No worries, people drink gin and tonics for the tonic anyways, right? I know I do. And you won’t see me coming down with malaria! True story! Tonic water has quinine, an ingredient used to treat or prevent malaria! And now that I’m educating myself via Wikipedia, I see there are several potential side effects… But then again, any sort of natural substance Wikipedia is particularly biased against, rather than being objective. However, a recent Watchtower article prevents me from opining too freely on the matter...

Recently, I also tried a shandy imported from Spain. It was pretty good. And about 2 hours away, in touristy Copan Ruinas, is a German brewpub which has possibly the best beer in Honduras! Now, while alcohol certainly isn’t our focus here, it provides an interesting cultural study in a country where views can be fairly polarized. Also makes one reflect on one’s own language: perhaps in reading the title to this blog you immediately thought of alcohol. With so many kinds of drinks to choose from, why do we in English associate “drinking" with alcohol? Why are we hesitant to say “I have drunk", a perfectly correct grammatical construction, and instead stumble over a cumbersome “I have drinken…drinked…drunken…"?

(My gin and tonic ingredients. On the far right is the shandy. Notice it’s not spelled “damn" with an “N" so it’s assumably a Germanic last name. Perhaps some distant relative of Jean Claude…)

Anyways, musings aside, the week’s happenings have been good. Last week we had the visit of the circuit overseer and his wife. A very kind and loving couple from Mexico. We received a lot of encouragement from them, and hope we reciprocated it. They are here for another week, a pioneer week, to support us in our Bible studies with the deaf, and in locating more. They are staying in the same house as us, but have a separate apartment. (Aside from the main house the owners live in, there are 3 attached apartments.) We have been able to provide some meals, trying to give a bit of a Canadian twist, with Nutella on the pancakes, bacon and eggs and hash browns, and lots of smoothies. I have incurred some mocking by pronouncing “bacon" as if it were a Spanish word (which I swear is how someone said it to me…but maybe it was a setup!) which sounds like it means “large bull"! That would certainly disappoint if I were seeming to promise a lot of steak and merely handed our guests a few measly pieces of pig meat! (Sounds worse, calling it “pig meat", eh?)

We also got to try “posole" (poh-SOH-lay) which is NOT a soup, I’m told, though it has all the characteristics of it. I suppose if I were to call borsch “soup", I’d receive the same reaction. In any case, posole is a souplike concoction consisting shredded chicken meat (or pig meat) cooked in a broth, to which you individually add lettuce, oregano, lemon, hot sauce, chopped onions, and chopped radishes. Then on a large, round tortilla chip bespread with a cream-like butter, you scoop the soupy mix and eat. Quite delicious actually! But it’s not soup. Let’s just make that clear…as it was to me…haha! And it’s not “bacón", it’s “tocino". And it’s not about the gin, it’s about the tonic. And it’s about time I took some preventative medicine, so excuse me, and please pass the quinine.

(Jorge, the deaf brother on the right, recently bought a retro Westphalia van (which conveniently says “Copan" on it) so we could go visit some deaf friends a half hour away. So he and I took little Noé who quickly fell asleep on the bumpy ride. But he woke up and smacked his head for this group selfie!)