Merrill & Colleen's Honduran Adventure

  Sunday July 30, 2023 What a week it has been.  Colleen has had such a bad back ache ever since we got here and it has just gotten worse with time.  We bought a memory foam mattress topper back in March, and put on the bed, which is not terrible but not wonderful either, it helped but not a lot.  So her back pain which extends down her right leg and makes her feel terrible has just gotten worse the whole time we are here.  After talking with Dr. Chappell who is in Lima Peru with his wife Julie, they are serving as the Area Medical Dr. for several missions in South America, but he has been our family Dr for years, so whenever we have concerns he is always so great to help us.  So he recommended that we get an MRI and see exactly what is going on.  So we got an appointment with a Dr. in San Pedro Sula to see if he could help us with the back pain and leg pain.  We didn't tell him that this is what we wanted but after talking with him he recommended...

 Sunday July 23, 2023 We had our multi Zone Conference this week in Progreso, the one where there are three zones that get together and President and Hermana Ostler and the Assistants come and it is a big training session on how to be better missionaries.  They are always good and they are once between every transfer which is every 6 weeks.   The Hermana's here in our district bought new dresses to match each other and they asked the rest of us to wear something yellow so we are a matching district. It is fun to be around these "Kids",  they are awesome but still very young.  They have these conferences in the cultural hall of a church where they set up tables and so we are seated at these tables.  They ask the missionaries to be there early so they can have some study time there, we normally do not get there as early as they ask the young missionaries to be there so when we get there there are two spots left open and we set by whoever it is at that ta...

 Sunday July 16, 2023 We went to Tegucigalpa this past week to attend the temple. It is a 5 hour drive in our car each way.  We left here on Tuesday morning and attended a session that evening.  We stayed at the patron housing which is right next to the temple, then attended another session on Wednesday morning then drove back here.  From here we drive to Progreso which is a drive we do quite often, then from there we went basicly south on a road we had never been on before so we got to see a lot of new country.  There are a lot of very steep mountains in this country.  There are two steep windy mountain passes that you go up and down then across then up and down to get to Tegucigalpa,  which is the capital city of Honduras.  From the temple which is up quite high on the mountainside you can look out over the city which fills the valley and is up the mountainside all around.  The temple grounds are so pretty and peaceful, like it is at all te...

  Sunday July 9, 2023 Hermana Chappell spends so much time communicating with the missionaries day and night.  I took this picture the other day in the afternoon while she was trying to keep up with everything.  She usually just communicates with them through messages, once in a while by video phone call, and quite often by regular phone calls.  We were awakened this morning at 5:45  by a sick Elder.  If the missionary has to go the the Hospital or to see a Dr.  she has to get all the information about what is going on with him or her and put it all in a file and send it to the insurance company which is in Texas.  Then around an hour later the insurance company  sends her an email with a letter of promise of payment which the sick elder or hermana takes with them as an email on their phone to see the Dr or to visit the ER.   Then after the Dr visit, the missionary is supposed to take a picture of all the information they receive, a...

  Sunday July 2, 2023 I feel like these two pictures capture Honduras very well.  There are beautiful areas that are so pretty.  The ocean is close and we drive by this area almost every day.  It is one of the many beautiful places nearby here in Tela.  In the second picture it shows the economic state of some of the poor people here.  If you look close you can see the small colt next to the white horse.  It is not uncommon at all to see these horse drawn carts hauling all kinds of things around town.  Even when we go to San Pedro Sula in the streets there are horse drawn carts on the roads.  When traffic gets very slow you know that there is a horse drawn cart going down the road so everyone has to pass them and then traffic picks up again.  It is one of the many challenges while driving here.  We had the wonderful opportunity this past week to have a baptism here in the Branch.  We added two new children to the primary. ...