Sick Days

It's been really slow around here. We've been sick for the past week, which really made giving my talk on Wednesday fun. I felt like I was going to pass out on stage, but it went well enough.

The thing with being sick, is you really just miss home. I would love to be back in Colorado, in my own bed, with the air conditioning on full blast. Alas, that is not to be. So what to do? I'm currently looking at hotels in the city, trying to find one with comfortable beds and a/c and a bath tub. I really, really miss water pressure and hot water. I don't know if checking into a hotel would actually help us get better, but it's fun to dream.

We have our special assembly day in El Progreso in May. It's about a 2-3 hour trip by bus, but we don't know which bus we're supposed to take. That's actually going to be a really busy time for us, Sunday we have the assembly, Monday we have to go to Tela to get our passports stamped so we can stay in the country, and then we have the Circuit Overseer visit starting Tuesday.

I think we need a vacation.

Speaking of, does anyone want to hang out in Roatan with us in June for a week? Get in some sun, some service and some beach time? Just saying- it could be fun...If you were wanting to come visit, that would be a good time cause Roatan has better beaches than Ceiba. 

Ok, off to bed. 

Lazy Day

For those of you who were wondering, No I did not get any sleep the other night. O well.

Today is a lazy day. We went out in service, went food shopping and got home before noon. I haven't done a thing since. Ok, that's not actually true, but considering that it's only 2:15, today is dragging by. It's been really hard; Ijust had to sit out on the hammock and study my Watchtower while the clothes washer handled my dirty clothes. I have yet to tackle the pela, and today will not be the day I attempt it. One day I will sit there and scrub my clothes on the washboard for the fun of it, but I haven't done it for two months, and I see no reason to start now. I hear it works wonders though...

Here's a picture of my view right now. You can see the edge of the hammock, and if you look past the phone wires, there's actually a pretty nice view of the mountain.

I know most of you are going to wonder why I posted a picture of my foot, but I'm actually pretty excited about it. If you look closely, you can see that it is now 3 or 4 different shades of tan, and there's this nice diagonal white strip right below my toes. This lovely zebra pattern comes courtesy of all the different shoes I've worn out in service. It matches the tan on my back and shoulders.

It FINALLY rained the past few days, after hearing from weather.com that it was supposed to rain every day the past week. It started raining in the middle of the night, which meant waking up to sprinkles coming in the window and hitting my face. That was a little weird. On the bright side, it's actually been a little cooler. Or we're just getting used to the heat. Hopefully it's both. (Grandma- if you're reading this, wish for snow.)

So....update- I just tried using the pela for about twelve seconds. Managed to put a hole in my shirt. Don't think I'll be doing that again...

Ok, nap time!

Nighttime in Honduras

Nighttime in Honduras comes early.The sun is gone long before 7, and most smart people are at home by that time. However, not everyone shares this same view, and cars can be found all over the city until about 11, which is really when you want to be home by.
There really isn't a lot to do at night, there are a few restaurants in town and there is the Zona Viva, where the clubbing and drugs happen, but that isn't really our thing, so we stay home most nights.
For safety's sake, it seems the friends don't often get together at night to hang out, since it means someone will have to walk home in a bad area. The taxis during the day are your friends, the taxis at night, they have no friends. So it's best to have a brother's number to call for a ride if you go out too late.

Most the noises you hear at night are fairly common, cars, birds, dogs and cats fighting, but its that occasional sudden firework(at least, you hope it's a firework) that gets you up and looking out the windows. Mostly it's just hard to sleep if you're not from a city with noises.
 But morning comes early and if you don't get your sleep now, you may not get it at all. Because this is Honduras, life must go on, and that means the man selling plaintains or God knows what else will be yelling as he rides down the street trying to drum up business at 6:00 am. I'd hit the snooze button, but it doesn't affect them.

And shortly after the not so nice wake up call, it is in fact time to get up, time to get ready for another day of "predicating" as the non-Witness gringos call it.

So as it is 9:15, and somewhat quiet, I'm gonna see if I can go to sleep now. Let you know how this works out tomorrow.

Obvious Observation

So it turns out, in this Central American, Spanish speaking country, the English congregation is considered a foreign language congregation. I think a part of me knew that, but it didn't really sink in until meeting last Wednesday. So that was my "DUH" moment for the week.

We are definitely learning the city better and learning to communicate easier. My service bag broke so we had to take it to a taller (tie-air) for repairs. We found some material to fix it, found a shop out in service, argued with them about what we wanted, found out we bought the wrong material and convinced them to repair it anyway- all in Spanish. I even know how to get back to the shop to pick up my bag.


Here's an exciting picture for y'all. The frogs here are humongous, bigger than a hand. This one was outside our house one night. Usually when you see them, they are squished out on the road, which makes them look even bigger. I think they might be poisonous, but when Zach touched this one, he didn't die. So you know, that's good.

This is a horse in the Kingdom Hall parking lot. We didn't take the picture so I can't tell you anything about it.  Zach thinks it was there to help with the cleaning of the Hall, since we don't have a lawn mower.

Ok, we got meeting early in the AM, so that's all for now! Night folks!

Beautiful Day

Today we did service right next to the beach. The water looked so beautiful, and the breeze coming off the ocean was so refreshing. It is just an absolutely beautiful day to be in Honduras.

Here are some random pictures we've taken over the past few weeks.

Dianne at the Pupuseria on the beach

Cacao pod- this is what chocolate is made from. The white part is slimy and surrounds the brown cocoa bean

Disinfecting the produce we picked up at the local market

The view from our front door

We ran into this friendly fellow out in service. He was hiding under a van but came out just long enough to pose for a picture.

Playing cards with friends

The local swimming hole

Zach preaching in the jail. Kinda stands out, doesn't he?

Memorial and other unrelated news

Here's some photos of the Memorial and our day today.
We had 34 in attendance at our memorial. There were 5 visitors.

This is Sister Woodrow, she and her husband live in the building next to us.

 Kate and Samara

 The Campbell Family (Jenny, Seth, Glen and Gavin) with Jenny's study Dulce.

Here are some pictures from today.
This is a carrot we got from the supermarket. It's huge and probably weighs about 2 lbs. All the fruit and veggies here are really big. We saw a papaya the size of a watermelon- no joke. I was going to buy it, then I remembered I don't like papaya that much.

Zach has a habit of picking up every centavo he finds in the street, and has quite the collection. He counted out how much he has today and made these two piles. The one on the left is .93 USD, on the right is 17.75 Lempira. Guess which one is worth more....

Trick question. It's the same amount.

We booked our flight home today, we are staying here the full 120 days allowed. I had to recount the days a couple times to make sure we weren't going to overstay and get in trouble. I was a little worried, because the flights home using my miles were either in the beginning of July- which is really soon- or the end of August- past when our 6 months is up- but thankfully we found a flight that will work and we won't have to be deported. I'm a big fan of not being deported. 

That is all.

Quick Story

So just a funny little story for everyone before we go to the Memorial tonight.

Witnesses are really well known here. A lot of people will just stop you and ask if you're a Witness, and some ask for magazines. The other day, we caught a cab to go home. After we told the driver the general area we wanted to go to, he asked if we were Testigos de Jehova. When we told him yes, he started driving without us having to give him directions. He drove us straight to the missionary home. Thankfully, we live right down the street from there. So we started telling him where we actually live, and it was as if he knew that too- we didn't have to finish giving him directions. This isn't the first time this has happened.

So, apparently, all the Witnesses who speak English live at the missionary home, or the Sallis compound. And everyone seems to know that. It's a little weird.

Ok, that is all. Hopefully I'll have pictures of the Memorial to post.

Service

Here are some photos from service the past couple of days. This can give you a little bit of an idea what the area looks like.

  The building in the background is the soccer stadium. The stadium is in the middle of the city, sorta...We can hear the games from our house sometimes.

This is Zach and Bro Woodrow doing a house across the street from us. You can see how they have to stop at the gate and yell towards the house from there.

This is my favorite picture. It reminds me of the new Watchtower covers, how they have a scene from out in service. This is Wes inviting a young woman to the Memorial.

We had two cute experiences today. At one house, we asked a group of kids for the woman there who spoke english. They disappeared and did not come back out for several minutes so we went to leave. As we were doing so, the kids started yelling for us to come back. Two of them had grabbed a blanket as a cloak and one was standing on the other's shoulders to pretend they were taller, like an adult. As they tried to open their gate and come show us, they fell backwards. Everyone was ok, but it was really funny.

Then we were walking to another territory by the beach, and we passed a family walking along to go to the beach. All of a sudden, I feel someone grab me at my waist. Their little girl- probably no more than 5- had run up behind me and was hugging me. It was quite the shock at first, but everyone had a good laugh about it and we went our separate ways. We picked up our friends at their house and continued on our way when we ran into the family again, This time the little girl ran up and gave Kate a hug. I don't know why she was hugging us, I think she was just really excited to see white people, because we do get strange reactions from little kids pretty often. But this one was the best, it totally made my day.

Pictures of Tela

Tela is a beach town... actually, a lot of towns here are on the beach. But in Tela, you can go in the water, which seems to be a rare-ish thing here.

We took the local bus out there. This is Jenny and her son Gavin from somewhere in Canada.

It was a beautiful day when we went, the beach wasn't crowded at all.

This is the group at lunch right on the beach. You can see how red my back is- I got burned sooooo bad.

 Dianne ordered a seafood soup, but it came with a few interesting surprises- whole animals. In the first picture is a crab, and the second picture is a fish lying amongst the plaintains. She said the soup was good, but It looks a little funky to me.

All in all, it was a pretty nice day. But that bus ride is killer! Next time, We're taking the direct bus.

At Long Last- Pictures

We finally got pictures uploaded to our computer! I will be adding pictures in a couple different posts so you can see everything you missed.

To start- ziplining!

This is me and Lindsey from Toronto in the back of the truck riding to the ziplining place. I'll let you decide if we were safe in the bed with no seatbelts.

 This is the whole group that went. The two in front are Lindsey's mom and grandma, and yes, both of them actually went on the zipline. The others on the left are Wes and Kate from Pennysylvania and Dianne from New York. The other two faces should be familiar, but maybe we've been gone long enough that you've forgotten what we look like.

View from midway point up the mountain, you can't really tell but there is an island behind our heads

Zach getting ready for his first ride. Does he look nervous?

If you look closely at the middle of this shot, you will see Dianne going through the trees. Yes, it was that high up.

This is one of the hot springs pools. It was simply awful, you go sit in the hot springs, then get a massage and a mud bath, and soak in the springs again. I think I could get used to that.

 This is Wes and Kate doing their best Flinstones impression after the mud bath.

More photos to follow!

Exciting News!

Howdy Y'all! I am writing to you from our brand new computer that we just got a couple hours ago. I feel like we waited sooooooo long!
We walked over to the missionary home to pick it up, and the brother asked us if we needed a ride. Zach replied "O we're just gonna walk home." The brother goes "Isn't that what caused this problem in the first place?" O yeah. So we took a taxi home, and got the computer in safely. I feel relieved now. It's not going anywhere.

The other good news- the Subway in the mall is finally open! It was like a taste of home for a few brief moments. I think we may be eating there a lot.

We have gotten a good response to the memorial campaign. We currently have the territory right downtown where all the businesses are, and there are a lot of english speakers. I was surprised. Even the ones who don't speak english are interested though, so we give out a lot of invites. I had a really good conversation with a security guard at a store, at least, I think it was a good conversation. It was entirely in spanish and I have no idea what either of us said, but I'm pretty sure he is going to go to the Memorial now. Very few people tell us "no," most say "sure, I'll try to come." That's nice to hear.

Some of our friends are starting to leave to go back home, It's very sad. In about a month, there will be only 15 people or so left in the congregation. So we need people to visit us, and help us in the territory- there's so much of it!

Pictures will be coming soon!