Sunday January 28, 2024

We went out to Miami Beach which is west from Tela this week, it is a really nice beach with very few people out there, somewhat remote with a few scattered houses along the dirt road.  There was very little traffic on the road but I feel like it was a safe place to go,  I sure hope so because I want to go out there again.  Here is one of the more rough looking houses along the way.  

It is a kind of a jungle on the way out there and we saw our first live wild monkeys.  It was fun to actually see them jumping around in the trees, from branch to branch and around the trunks, they are very agile as they run and jump around.  There were smaller young ones as well as larger older ones.  They were somewhat curious, but mostly liked to go farther away and hide.  It was hard to get a very good picture too because they run around so much, they didn't ever really sit still.  It is hard to find the one in this first picture but he is up there in the branches.  The other picture I got from google, which is the type of monkey that these were, but a great picture.  It was fun to sit and watch them for a few minutes.  

Along the road there were a couple of wild banana trees, with small bananas on them.  There must be a lot of bananas around here but I haven't seen them other than by La Lima there are some huge banana plantations.  I am sure there a more than that but I don't know where.   I didn't realize that they had such a big red blossom thing on the end of the stem where the bananas are.  

After the last transfers, Elder Borders was transferred out and Elder Nielson is here now as our District Leader with Elder Lazo.  We got a picture by what they call the hammock bridge which is where the Hermanas have to go quite often to visit members and to meet new people.  

We also had a branch young men and young women activity at the church yesterday afternoon.  They played basketball for a while then they switched over to soccer, which is their thing here, they love soccer, which for them is "Futbol".  They played for a quite a while.  We incorporated that in with the seminary opening social, and getting everyone signed up for another year.  The school year here begins this week on Feb 1, and runs through the end of November.  

Aarón has dengue and so he is in a local hospital,  (Very Scary).  He has had a very high fever for two days now.  Today the fever is gone and he is feeling a bit better.  They hope that he can go home later today.  We gave him a blessing and I felt like he will be better soon.  Dengue is a virus that is transferred by a mosquito bite.  We use a lot of Off here,  I hope we can get through the next 5 months without getting the Dengue.  We have been so blessed so far,  Colleen hasn't really had a lot of mosquito bites but they seem to like my blood, even if I have Off on.  The good thing is that we aren't out in the wild outdoors all that much and here in the house we see them occasionally but not really that often.  

We also gave Colleen a blessing today after lunch today, she has been feeling so sick this past few days.  More than anything it is her stomach that hurts so bad almost all the time but it is worse after eating.  She has some pills that help sometimes but the pain is always there.  Elder Nielson gave the blessing and he told her in the blessing that she has helped so many missionaries to be able to feel better while they are here on the mission and that she would be able to receive the same blessing to be able to feel better.   I hope she can get feeling better soon, she has not been really well this whole time but she keeps on going always.  I hope that she can get over what she has now and get feeling better and stronger soon.