Bruce and Linda Hanson - Honduras

The night before we arrived in the Miskita region of Honduras I dreamed of my dear high school friend Larinda. 
In junior high and high school Larinda spent many overnights at my house, was in the same high school plays as I
was, played in the clarinet section with me in band (me on the bass clarinet and Larinda on the contra-bass so
we sat side by side) and accompanied me on Project ECO trips to Macgregor, Iowa where we studied spiders
and leaves and talked late into the night about boys and our futures and yes, even our faith.

She was maid of honor in my wedding, an honor I was too immature to know should have belonged to my sister,
and is partially responsible for my deciding that the church had something to offer when I was at a point in my life
where I was ready to ditch the whole religion thing.  God sometimes puts people in our paths like that - people
with such a deep and confident faith that you say to yourself, "I want some of what she's got" and then you go out
and look for it.  Larinda indeed had that kind of faith, and although our particular theologies were radically different,
she had a peace and assurance about the presence of God in her life that was contagious.  I went out and looked for it,
and some thirty-five years later am starting to feel some of that same peace and assurance that she discovered so early.  

Larinda died of cancer when she was only 38, leaving behind her husband and two young boys, Owen and Seth.  I
never got to know them well and have lost contact with them but trust that since they are the children of Larinda and
Roger that they also have a deep and confident faith.  I wonder if they are also boys that love God's creation as much as
Larinda did.  Because that's the other thing about Larinda.  She loved the outdoors.  She enticed me to go ice skating
when it was so cold that I only wanted to sit in front of a fire with a warm sweater on eating toasted marshmallows and
sipping hot chocolate.  She convinced me it would be fun to bike to the Ledges State Park; 12-15 miles from our house,
when I thought driving there would be a lot less complicated.  She got me involved in a project at the high school
investigating water quality of the Iowa River which meant periodically traipsing through the woods collecting water
samples, come snow, rain, sleet or heat.  We spent many an afternoon on the prairie behind Ames High School walking,
talking, looking at flowers and birds, and it was here that Tina, Carol, Larinda and I came up with our "Indian names"
and our secret club, a club of women that the movie the Ya-Ya Sisterhood reminds me so much of.  Running Fingers,
Babbling Brook, and Pattering Heart are the three I can remember.

So in the dream, I dreamed that Larinda was with us in our trip to the Miskita, smiling and speaking Spanish to the
people there (as far as I know she never studied Spanish, but in the mysterious ways of dreams she was fluent), happy
as could be to do bible study with a different people in a different place, sweating and swatting mosquitoes.  I sat there
as she led the study, realizing how much I missed her and promised to tell her so when she finished.  That was all, a bible
study in Spanish with Larinda and me and Bruce and the others that were going with us on the trip, but I woke up smiling.
I then realized that I had been feeling a bit nervous about the trip; if my 50 year old body was up to it, if we would be
safe in a part of Honduras known for drug trafficking, what the sleeping, and housing and eating accommodations would
be like, but then after the dream I felt calm. 

After the trip was over I realized that Larinda would have loved everything about it:  the faithful people who make church
under the stilts of their raised homes while seated in hammocks, the boat rides through the jungle, lakes and rivers and
lagoons and the Caribbean with a backdrop of mountains, hearing the a capella harmonic version of Beautiful Words of
Life in native Miskitia, the walks along the beach and yes, bible study with a part of God's family in one the most remote
portions of Honduras.

Some will make nothing of this dream, but I believe it was perhaps one of those moments where God breaks in with a
whispered suggestion of God's presence.   Am I making too much of a mere dream to think that Larinda, the one who
encouraged me to go boldly into nature, to embrace and enjoy new experiences in the outdoors, accompanied us on this
trip?  William Willimon calls  these moments "hints of transcendence" or a "whisper of providence."  I know that God
showed God's self to me in a dream of a friend now gone from this earth, a dream that then accompanied me on the
trip in a powerful way, stirring memories of a long-ago friendship, and inviting me to embrace the experience with the
peaceful assurance that all was well. 

The Hansons
Bruce, Linda, Seth and Kesia