UPDATE:
This is what my home.php file looks like:
<?php
$tpl = new template;
$tpl -> Load("!theme/{$GLOBALS["THEME"]}/templates/home.tpl");
$tpl -> GetObjects();
require_once("home/www/sitename/blog/wp-config.php");
$recentPosts = recent_posts();
$recentComments = get_recent_comments();
$tpl -> AssignArray(array('recent.posts' => '$recentPosts'));
$tpl -> AssignArray(array('recent.comments' => '$recentComments'))
$tpl-> CleanZones();
$tpl -> Flush();
?>
And inside my home.tpl file, I have, in two different divs, {recent.posts} and {recent.comments}
On the page, the recent_posts and recent_comments appear before all the content and in the div where I placed {recent.posts}, appears $recentPosts and {recent.comments} appears $recentComments.
I tried it without the ' ' around $recentPosts and $recentComments, but nothing came out.
Hope you can figure this out. Thanks for your help!