I love Hurricane Season

It is currently raining. Or still raining, I should say. It's been stormy weather for like a week. Right now the rain is just pouring down. We got back from walking to the store about 5 minutes ago and as soon as we got in the house, it got sooooo much worse. I don't think we will be walking to meeting tonight. Hmm, wonder if we can hitch a ride with the CO...

On the bright side, we finally got to use the rain jackets we bought specifically for coming here. And it is a LOT cooler. I thought we missed the wet season, but hurricane season brings some nice storms. At least it doesn't bring hurricanes.

So last weekend was incredibly awesome. We took the direct bus to Progreso, which is a small, quiet town. It was really easy to navigate, so we didn't actually need to get there 2 days early. Our hotel had air conditioning though, so it was totally worth it.

Here is a picture of the direct bus. See the nice comfy seats?

We went to the supermercado to pick up some supplies, and they had the coolest stuff there. Of course there were more fruits and veggies we didn't recognize, so I made Zach take a picture of those. Then I watched Food Network at the hotel and found out the weird purple thing was chinese eggplant and it didn't seem so exciting anymore. But you get to see pictures of some other things we discovered anyway.

This is a package of banana leaves. I wanted to buy them but had no idea how to use them.

This is the super exciting soda we found.

 The Special Assembly day was really good. We already went in November, so I got more out of it this time around. Every English congregation in the country came, and the attendance was 179. Definitely the smallest assembly we will ever go to. There was one person baptized, and the talk was directed right at him. Very personalized, which was cool, but I hope he isn't shy. The brother's name is Darren and he is in the Roatan congregation. We didn't actually get to meet him, but we know all about him now.

We did meet some other friends from the Roatan congregation. It was pretty funny, we met in the morning, went out to dinner together and now we have a place to stay when we take our trip to Roatan. I love how you can make friends so quickly in Jehovah's organization.

The Hoopers

The Singletons

Monday we went to Tela to get our visas. We didn't have any problems, but it was a little nerve wracking. We didn't speak much Spanish, the official didn't speak any English, and he was asking us questions. When he wasn't asking questions, he was very quiet and carefully examining every bit of information we provided. At one point, he asked our purpose in visiting the country. I had heard stories of people who said they were coming into a country to preach and got denied entry so I was a little paranoid when Zach replied that we were Testigos de Jehova. I shouldn't have been worried though, the official got all excited and started telling us about other people who were Witnesses who came to see him, and did we know the couple from Finlandia? 

We decided to take the chicken bus back to La Ceiba from Tela, which was another fun experience. The difference between the direct bus and the chicken bus is amazing. That extra 100 lempira for the nice bus really makes a difference.The chicken bus was seriously broken, seats weren't attached to the floor anymore, the windshield was completely smashed but still holding together, and they started the engine by reaching under the bumper and twisting wires together. And of course, there was the rain. I'm pretty sure the driver couldn't see out the window a couple times, but that didn't stop him from passing other cars on the road and driving like a madman around the corners. Thankfully, he had a guy hanging out the door to see for him.

The best part of the ride was definitely the clowns. That's right, our bus came with entertainment. The clowns were actually on both buses with us, so maybe they were stalking us around Tela, I don't know. They were very helpful though, they shouted out the window at every bus stop to let everyone know where the bus was headed. Their act probably would have been more interesting if we understood Spanish, but it seemed to be like an Abbot and Costello sort of deal, and it was pretty entertaining. The second part of our trip, the bus was fairly empty so the clown in blue sat down by Zach and they talked for a while. 

Actually I lied. I just remembered the best part of the trip. I wasn't able to get a picture, but at one point, the guy who collects the money on the bus was talking to us and he was showing us how a seat was broken, and a HUGE spider climbed out of it. So we got to watch the guy running around trying to kill the spider with a stick used to hold the windows up. He didn't succeed, so it was kinda freaky knowing at any moment the spider was going to be climbing up my leg. Thankfully, we didn't see it again.

This week we have the CO visit. I think they are staying in the room next door, but I haven't seen them today so I don't really know. We have lunch with them tomorrow, which should be nice. Service this week should be interesting, the weather forecast calls for thunderstorms and flooding all week. Enh, it's an excuse to take taxis and wear our ponchos. 

Well, that's all for now. It's almost time for Jeopardy.