Merrill & Colleen's Honduran Adventure

 Sunday Nov 26, 2023 We celebrated a birthday this week for David, who turned 15 this past week, the taller boy in the white t-shirt.  He is the only member of the church in his family, but his grandmother is Doris who is a member of many years.  We are hoping and working with his mother and other brother and sister who one day will become members as well, just not yet.  They are great people.  We got the cake in a local bakery and met the Hermana missionaries there and had a little surprise birthday party for him.  It was a great experience.  Their mom and dad are separated,  and he is currently unemployed, so as a single mom she works very hard to provide for their 3 children.  They are very well behaved and she is very good and what she does, as difficult as it is for a single mother.  She is a very strong woman, mother.   We went on our first Taxi ride this week.  We had to take the car in to San Pedro Sula for it's ma...

  Sunday Nov 19, 2023 We had the primary program in our sacrament meeting today and they all posed for a picture after the meeting. They did so great, it was really nice.  They have been practicing every Saturday afternoon for about 5 weeks, and after the program today one of the mothers said that this makes all that effort and sacrifice getting them to practice every week worth it.  One Saturday evening after the practice we had 11 people in the care to take them all home.  11 people in the Nissan Kicks,  We would probably not do that in Utah. We played a game counting off how many were in the car, the children had a lot of fun staying in order trying to get the count correct, needless to say we had to start over many times to get to 11 successfully! What an adventure we are having.  It has been challenging but so worth it to hear them present their talks and sing the primary songs today.  Colleen was so touched by the songs. The primary songs are the...

 Sunday November 12, 2023 The winter is well underway here in Honduras, look at how green and pretty it is here in winter. 😆 They say that November and December are the winter months here.  When we got here last year in the middle of January obviously we had just come from winter in Utah where it had been snowing and we didn't have any winter clothes, they were all packed away and we were dressed for Honduras.  When we got here it seemed pretty warm to us but they were all saying that the weather was nice and cool.  It did get steadily warmer though, until probably about April, then it just stayed HOT until about October then it did seem to get a little cooler.  I think that this past week there was actually one day that I didn't sweat at all the entire day.  That was very odd, but nice.  There hasn't been as much rain this week as last week but almost every day there is a storm that rolls through, keeping everything wet, and cooler, it is raining out...

 Sunday Nov 5, 2023 If feeding missionaries gets you points in heaven, Hermana Chappell certainly has a lot of heaven points.  We had 5 over for lunch today after Stake Conference.  President Ostler and the two AP's stopped by plus we had the two Elders from here over.  Hermana Ostler is in Salt Lake to meet their new granddaughter for a week so she wasn't here but it was good to have them here.  She had a pork roast and baked potatoes and corn on the cob plus cookies for desert.  They all ate like they were starving.  These young men and women can sure put away the food.  The Gringo's like the american style food that we have here at our house.  Elder Lazo and Elder Pardo probably didn't quite like it in the same way we do because it is our style cooking rather that what they might have in their country but they are always hungry and eat everything placed on the table.  It was a great day.  Stake conference was in Progreso this wee...