Sunday Oct 22, 2023

Happy Birthday Hermana Chappell last Monday.  There is a nice little Italian restaurant here in Tela where we went out to dinner Monday night.  This picture is of Colleen on her birthday.  This is a big one for her, she is now 65 years old, she never thought that she would reach that age.  I am so glad that she is still here with us.  She was able to visit with Todd and his family and also Meggan and Janise as well as most of her family as well.  For lunch the missionaries came over and we had pizza and birthday cake.  They brought a candy gift over for her and we had a great time.  

The Hermanas, who are both from Guatemala, sang a happy birthday song to Hermana Chappell which is a traditional birthday song from their tradition.  We have a little video of them singing but I can't get it to upload on to the blog. The missionaries all love Hermana Chappell and she loves them.  It has been a great week.  It started raining on Monday afternoon and oh my goodness, we have moved into the cooler rainy season here.  It rained hard for a long time then it was a slower steady rain after that for the rest of the day and into the night.  I don't know when it stopped but it really made things cooler here.  It was a great birthday present for Hermana Chappell because it has stayed rainy and cool all week.  The roads are a muddy mess out in "La Quince", which is where several of the members live, it is a muddy trip to go out there but we do it anyway.  There is always a little bit of a competition going on about who has the best district, we always say of course that ours is the best but others always say the same.  Another district in Progreso took this picture and sent this to Hermana Chappell for her birthday with the caption Happy birthday sister Chappell from the best district in the mission.  

A rainy day/week has been nice in a way because it is so much cooler.  The high temps now are low to mid 80s and the nights are in the low 70s.  It is amazing how that feels cool, and a lot of the people now are wearing jackets or sweaters.  I am not sure how much cooler it will get but by the middle of January it starts to warm up again, at least that was our experience here last year in January when we first got here.  It was cooler at first but only got hotter as time went on.  It seems like April May and June were the hottest months.  It rains a lot less here on average that what I expected.  Although it has been raining lately, there were months where there was no rain, which I did not expect being here in the tropics on the coast.  

We went out to visit a family from the Branch who lives right on the beach.  They are fun to visit with and are a little ways out from Tela.  She has a business where she makes different products from coconut oil.  I don't know how she does it but It is fun for Colleen to look through the things she has.  She is from Roatan, an island closeby and she takes the things she makes and sells them over there.  

We had a rather sad experience this week when we had to take a sister missionary to the mission office on Friday because she was returning home to take care of some repentance issues, from there we took her to the airport to fly home.  At the same time there was an Elder that was also returning home to take care of repentance issues as well.  The new missionaries had just arrived, and the day before the missionaries finishing up their mission had just gone home.  They were so busy in the office that we helped with some things that we are not ordinarily helping with but I am glad we were there. Especially for the Sister missionary that went home.  It was good for her to have Hermana Chappell to help her through that difficult experience.  The good thing is that this particular missionary speaks English quite well so they talked and Colleen was able to help her to feel a little more at ease about the whole situation. 

This past week on Thursday it was transfer day, there was one Elder and one Hermana that left our district and so we have two new missionaries here.  We will take a picture of our new district this next week and post it next time.  Elder Lazo just arrived here to begin his mission this week on Friday.  He is from Huancayo Peru, the same city where Clever is from.  The city is at 10,700 feet elevation, which is crazy to think that they have cities that high in the mountains of Peru.  Living at that elevation the weather even in the summer is not hot.  I asked him if he had any shirts with short sleeves, he said no, why?  Uh, because you just stepped into a whole new world from the world you left behind.  He is a very polite quiet young man.  The Hermana is from Mexico near Tampico, a coastal city on the caribbean side of the country.   She said that they live about 10 minutes from the beach in Mexico so the climate here is very similar to how it is at her home.  She has been here in Honduras on her mission for 4 months. 

Every transfer the missionaries who are going home have a the opportunity to share a testimony in a mission wide zoom call meeting.  It is always a wonderful experience to listen to them as they share their final thoughts and feelings as they end their mission.  Elder Castro on the right of this picture is an Elder we have come to know a bit here.  He is from Panama and is such a kind, mature, responsible, young man.  Colleen calls him and old soul,  he is so mature and caring.  It is interesting as we get to know these young men and women to see that everyone is different and each one is special in their own way.  What a blessing we have to be able to get to know these young missionaries as they devote this time to serving the Lord and coming closer to Him as they serve here.