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 maintenance, oil change etc.  It is new enough that is still under warranty so the oil changes have to be in the dealership there. So in the past there has always been someone from the office that could come and get us and take us back to the mission office,  but their car is in the shop right now for repairs and it just didn't work out for anyone to come get us.  President and Hermana Ostler were returning from a training in Guatemala so they were unavailable as well. So we got a taxi to take us to a store where we wanted to get some things. Then we got a text from President Ostler and he said that they needed to go their as well to get some things and they were on their way home from the airport so we met them there.  We then went with them back to their house then after the car was ready they took us back to get it.  We then spent that night at their house and went to the zone conference in Progresso.  We were able to say our goodbyes to several missionaries who have completed their missions and will soon be returning home.  

It is always so hard to say goodby to those that we grow to love and then they go home.  Mostly it is those who serve here with us in Tela but Hermana Chappell has the opportunity to get to know a lot of the other missionaries if they have health issues and so she gets to know some of them quite well. 

This Elder spent several days in the hospital because he had Dengue.  He looks pretty good in this picture, I don't think he was as sick as the one was who was in the hospital a couple of weeks ago, but he did spend several days their recovering.  This particular Elder, Elder Pinada was the district leader here when we arrived, he is also returning home in two weeks, because he has been here two years now.  He is doing much better now.  

This past week was Thanksgiving.  Not here in Honduras, because there is no such thing here, but we, being the gringos that we are, had to celebrate Thanksgiving.  Hermana Chappell was as busy as can be, making all kinds of wonderful traditional Thanksgiving treats.  We had turkey, mashed potatoes and dressing, gravy, yams, with melted marshmallows on top, cranberries, green beans, rolls, and the very best was the apple pie and the pumpkin pie.  She made the gluten free pie crusts and the pies, all from scratch like they say.  It was so very good.  We were going to have the dinner with our district which is us, two Elders, one gringo and one from Peru, and the two hermana's, which are from Guatemala and the other is from Mexico.  So it was really only us and the one gringo missionary who were most excited about the traditional Thanksgiving food.  But the others were anxious to try them.  The yams, or sweet potatoes were new for all of them and they didn't eat very much of them, the same with the pumpkin pie.  It was a new food for all of them and it was different enough that they didn't care for them all that much. For us gringos it was all so wonderful.  Hermana Chappell said that the pie crusts were awful but I thought they were wonderful.  I wish we had a picture of the pies with Colleen because she worked so hard to fix them but we didn't take a picture of them we just ate them.  I am so grateful to her for what she does to make the day so very special.  She also invited our two zone leaders who are both gringos who are in Progresso, an hour and a half away, so she didn't really expect them to accept and come here for Thanksgiving dinner, but guess what??? Of course they would come over to Tela to have Thanksgiving dinner with the Chappells, so there were 8 of us at the last minute.  But it all worked out, it sure looked like a small turkey for 8 people, it was a turkey breast, but I feel like even though sometimes the young missionaries eat like a horse, the food is always sufficient their is always enough.  I know that it is like the feeding of the 5,000, when the Lord fed them all with five loaves and three fish, there was enough and to spare.  It was like that for our dinner,  even though Colleen had fixed what I felt was a lot of food, they can sure put it away, and it turned out wonderful.  

It really was a great day of giving thanks.  We normally have our English class on Thursdays from 10 to 11 am, for that day we did not have class but I asked everyone to write a small paragraph of what they were thankful for and I wrote in the instructions that it could be in spanish or english.  We had so many responses from so many missionaries. It was so wonderful to read their expressions of thanks.  Those who did not speak English used google translate and all the messages were in English.  It made me more thankful as I read the things that they wrote.  When we were at Todd and Chelsea's two years ago for Thanksgiving they had invited two Elders to join them, as tradition, we were all asked to share what we were thankful for, I remember one of the missionaries who was from Texas said, "I am thankful for guns",   I thought, what?  That is what you are thankful for?  Oh well, I do not know him or anything about him but I was a bit disappointed in his response.  These in this group message were all so very sincere and heartfelt.  I really enjoyed reading them.  I wish there were a way I could save all of them but I have no idea how I would do that.  The memory I suppose will be what I will take away from that experience.  

The two Hermana's that are here now are both so wonderful, even though they don't speak a lot of English and Hermana Chappell doesn't speak a lot of spanish, they can communicate pretty well and they do what needs to get done.  It is such an awesome experience to be here with them.  Elder Borders shared a couple of pictures with us today that I thought were very cool.  Most of the missionaries here in Honduras are in cities where there is a real church which has a baptismal font in the building, but there are some areas out in more remote areas where they do not have a church nearby so they meet at someone's home and the baptism's are out in a river somewhere nearby.