Sunday May 28, 2023

What a week this has been.  For sure a highlight was on Thursday when we took this picture and visited this wonderful family.  Manuel Mendoza, the older guy in the white T shirt that says TERRA, and his wife, Martha Lidia, next to him in the pink shirt are awesome members here in Tela.  He is the Elders Quorum President and they have this motorcycle repair business.  They have two sons who work there and they employ I don't know how many other young men in their business.  He is so good to them to help them with a job and to teach them a career.  They do everything from engine repair to tires, paint, electrical and upholstery for the seats. The Elders had a goal of receiving references that day and it was pure inspiration to stop there.  When we got there Manuel had everyone stop what they were working on and come over and listen to a missionary message, which was about the resauration of the Church.  This was about 20 minutes then they all went back to work but the missionaries went around and got everyone's name and phone number and promised to meet with them individually and share more about the church.  While the Elders were doing this, Manuel asked Hermana Chappell and I if we would be their witnesses as they are sealed in the temple in Tegucigalpa when our two Branches go there in June.  We were so surprised that they would ask us to do that with them.  We plan on going with the Branches to the temple and look forward to that experience for several reasons. First just because it will be great to be able to go the temple again.  They do have headphones available to listen in English so that will help Hermana Chappell.  and number 2, another reason we are excited to go is to be with these branch members who are so awesome to go have this temple experience there with them.   It is a huge commitment for them to be able to go to the temple.  It is normally an annual event for them.   Even though the temple is here in the same country, it is a 6 hour bus ride to get there, spend the day there then another 6 hours on the bus to get back.  When the temple is complete in San Pedro Sula that time will be cut in half to a 3 hour bus ride each way.  The average member here really doesn't have any extra money to speak of, with a lot of them really only having the daily needs met on a daily basis, meal to meal with sometimes a question on if there is enough for the next meal or where is that meal going to come from.  We are looking forward to the experience.  I don't know if we will end up going on the bus with them or just driving there on our own.  We already have permission from President Ostler to go so we are looking forward to it.  Although they recently said that it may be moved to July, either way it is coming up soon.  

After English class one day this week we got talking about tongue twisters.   This is one that they have that is is Spanish that they like.   Try saying this five times really fast 😀

This afternoon there was a meeting at the Stake Center in Progresso, an hour and a half bus ride away.  It was the Stake President and also the Temple President and his wife here from Tegucigalpa.  There were 26 of us who went together on this bus after church this morning.  We all packed a lunch and went together.  It was great to hear from the Temple President and his wife.  They encouraged everyone to attend the temple as often as they could and they also encouraged everyone to come and be a volunteer and work there as often as they could.  We are so far away that I think it highly unlikely that anyone from here would go and volunteer there but maybe, there are some very dedicated members here.  It was a good spiritually uplifting day.  The bus ride wasn't really that bad, no AC so warm but the windows were open.  We used to call that 4-60 air conditioning, 4 open windows and 60 mph.  I think today it was more like 10-40 air conditioning.  😅  It has been a great week and a great day.  We are tired and we are glad to be back home.  The landlord lady was kind enough to install a new AC unit in our house this week so we are very cool here now, it makes it so much nicer to have good working AC here.  

We were walking out to the beach the other day and this was one of the flowers in bloom that we passed.  There are so many flowers here, everything from small flowering plants like this to shrubs and trees that are covered in flowers.  I should take more pictures.  I will work on that.