THE STRENGTH OF OUR YOUTH

"Called to Serve Him Heavenly King of Glory, Chosen Heir To Witness For His Name"

All of these fine young men and women accepted "Calls to Serve" on missions to Honduras.  They glow with goodness, energy and love for the people of Honduras.  This is the La Ceiba Zone.  We left Roatan on a one and a half ferry ride over to the mainland, landing in La Ceiba for a Zone Conference.  These fine young men and women were full of enthusiasm and we loved every minute with them.  They had baptized 22 people so far in the month of September and were hoping for 28 total.  We don't do any baptizing, but we are busy reactiving some pretty special members. 



Back Row: Elder Novoa
 Middle Row: Elders Gonzalez, Salcido, Garcia, Barba, Giles, Dever, Jurado, Hafen,
Ward, Breshears,Vega, Baldwin.
Front Row; Mini missionary, Sister Godoy, Elder and Sister John, Sisters Espinoza and Cuyun.

 

We feel like we have been truly blessed to have received special callings in this branch to work with the youth and their leaders.  We visit many families each week to encourage and strengthen them, but our primary calling is to the youth.  We thought you might want to meet them too.



 DANIEL GARAY

Daniel is the first assistant in the priest quorum  and is also one of my piano students.  He was only ordained one month ago.  He is so thrilled to be a priest.  He has stood in on several other priesthood ordinations, and is preparing to go on a mission.   He lives alone with his mother, Aminda, who also serves as the 2nd counselor in the Young Women's organization.  He is an intelligent, capable young man who speaks English quite well.  He goes to school every day from 7:00 - 1:00 p.m. and then immediately goes to his mother's little, tiny pulperia and works until 6:00 p.m. or so. 

DARITZA ZELAYA

Daritza is LaRae's only active Beehive and is one of our favorites.  She is the daughter of the Young Women's president, Zulema Zelaya and past branch president, Rony Zelaya.  They are a sweet family.  She is their only child and was adopted.  They live at the very top of an extremely steep hill and so she is always begging us for a ride home after MIA or church.  She loves to tease and mess around, but we love her, and she loves us - especially LaRae - to death.  She actually even cleaned her room before we came to visit and eat dinner with them.

HAYLIAL FLORES

Haylial (Hayli) is the young woman in the red striped outfit.  The other young woman in this picture is her friend.  Haylial's story is special to us.  She lives with her family in a little home that lies over the water of La Punta bay.  Neither of her parents are members of the church and so when she comes to church it is without them.  Her mother wants to get baptized but first would have to get married to the man she lives with.  Haylial has the potential to be one of the greatest young women in our ward.  She is well liked, and has an outstanding personality.

 

 

           YESENIA PADILLA

"Jesi" as we call her is LaRae's only active Laurel, but she is really active.  She has been called as the president of her class and takes it seriously.  She makes no bones of the fact that she intends to be the first person in her family to break tradition.  They call her the "tradition breaker."  She fully intends to marry in the temple and serve a mission.  She went with us on a missionary discussion the other day.  We were visiting an inactive returned missionary and his live-in girlfriend.  LaRae and I were giving a discussion on the law of chasity.  She interrupted and said, "I want to say something."  Then she said, "I know that I am young, but I am the president of our young women, and I have a testimony of this precept.  My goal is to marry in the temple."  Believe me, her part of the lesson was the best thing that happened there that night.

 

 

Staring from the left:  CHRISTIAN ZEA, OLIVER FLORES, LARITZA SANTOS, DANIEL AGUILAR, ALEJANDRO WEBSTER, and peaking out, JASSIR FLORES

 

CHRISTIAN ZEA was ordained a priest two weeks ago and is excited.  He was able to stand in on the ordination of Alejandro Webster to the office of a teacher last week and was thrilled and humbled by the opportunity.  He lives with his younger brother, Joshua, and his mother on the top floor of a house that is literally on the beach of Gravel Bay.  They are kind of excited right now because a reference they sent to the missionaries of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, ended up in the baptism of her boyfriend who was baptized today and hopes to soon be able to marry his mom in the temple. 

 

OLIVER FLORES is a teacher and is my best piano student.  He actually is my most dependable young man.  When he says that he is going to be somewhere, he is there, and on time.  And believe me, that is RARE here in Roatan.  He never misses a meeting!  He comes from one of the most active families in the ward and has an older brother who showed him an example of serving a mission.  I have great hopes for him.  His goal is to play his first learned hymn in church in one month. Now, remember, he has only been taking lessons for two months, and he doesn't have a piano in his home. 

 

LARITZA SANTOS lives with her sister in Los Fuertes on the top level of a home that is right on the water.  She is such a sweet young woman.  She is the second counselor in the young women's class presidency.  They live about 10 miles from the church, so it costs them about $3.00 in taxi fare to come to church each time, but she rarely misses any of her Saturday piano, seminary and MIA activities and her Sunday meetings.  Money is hard to come by here on the island.  This is quite a sacrifice, believe me.  As you can see, she is also one of my piano students.

 

DANIEL AGUILAR lives with his family not too far away from the church, but a good 20 minute walk.  His father is a gifted artist, but is not a member of the church although he has taken the discussions several times.  The rest of his family is active.  He speaks English nearly fluently and is always ready to help me with my Spanish.  A very sensitive soul, I am seen him tear up several times as we talk about sacred things in our classes.  I truly love this young man!  His family plans on sending him to the United States in about a year to finish his education.

 

ALEJANDRO WEBSTER is one of our favorite stories.  He and his family were recently reactivated and because he was twelve years old we wanted him to get the priesthood.  However, we couldn't find his baptismal records.  So, he got baptized again!  And he is on fire with the spirit!  This fine young man is so dedicated to the gospel that you can't believe it.  Every one in his family speaks nearly perfect English, but he refuses to speak it.  He says that he doesn't like it.

 

  JASSIR FLORES is Oliver's older brother but we don't know much about him because he is always in school on Sundays.  He will be 19 in a couple of months.

 

 

Here is our next project.  This is the Maria Rivas family.  It was their house that we were climbing to in the last blog.  They live miles away from anyone else and can only be reached by driving a mile over a terrible road and then hiking two more miles through the jungle.  In this family I have three members of the Aaronic Priesthood and LaRae has one young Laurel-aged girl. They are willing to come to church, but getting there would require an incredible sacrifice on their part.  They are so typical of so many of our members - good hearts, kind spirits, incredible poverty.  We already love them and feel a desire to do what we can to help them stand-up and be counted as part of the youth of this royal generation.

 

 

AS YOU CAN SEE... WE HAVE A LOT MORE COMING UP!

 

All in all, LaRae has 17 young women on her rolls and I have 22 young men.  

Some are completely on track, others still need some encouragment.

                         But, they are youth of noble birthright, and we love them all.                                        



MISSIONARY WORK IN PARADISE

We have received several blog comments that indicate that you think we are having too much fun down here in Roatan.  Believe me, it's no vacation.  Yes, we live on a mostly undeveloped tropical island, but we don't just lay around on the beach.  We decided to share a step-by-step account of our week so you might get a better understanding of what we do, where we go, and the people we meet.

If you look real hard at this picture you will see a house off in the distance.  This picture was taken after we had already walked more than a mile over this trail to find a little member family.  They had eight children and live completely alone on the top of the mountain.  They offered us sugar cane and water after our hike to meet them and we were glad to receive it.  This was only one of dozens of visits we made this week.  Here is the list.
(2) We met for the first time Bro. Vidotto who is now a 7th Day Adventist, but was once the first Branch President of this branch.  We asked him to fill out a questionaire about the early days of the Church here in Roatan.  He graciously agreed to do it.
(3) We tried to find our little nurse, Kate, but she was sick at home.  LaRae had been so sick last week that she didn't dare get around another sick person, so we just texted her.  No response.
(4) We visted with Olga Fernandez who told LaRae that the reason she didn't get baptized last week was because she didn't want to give up "dancing."  LaRae had a short heart-to-heart with her about how our church not only allows dancing, but we sponsor dances.  That brought a smile to her face.
(5) We dropped in to see Suyapa Lozano who told us that her "investigating" mother got so sick that they had to take her to the hospital in La Ceiba for an electrocardiogram. (Try saying that in Spanish)
(6) Visited with Kensi Losano and found out that she is 14 years old - not 13 like we had believed.  We bought a huge papaya from her for $2.00 and chatted while she nursed her baby.
(7) We made Rice Krispie squares and took them to the new USA family, Louis St. Louis.  He is 1/9th owner of Banana-rama. 
(8) We dropped-in to see Angelica Zelaya and to make a map of where she lived.  We met her completely inactive 16 year old grandson, Russell.  We encouraged him to come back to church.
(9) We quickly visited Jeison Martinez, my 14 year old inactive teacher.  He was washing (in a bucket) but I chatted with him and got him to promise that he'd be in church this Sunday.  He may have agreed just to get rid of me so he could continue bathing.

(10) Spent an hour with Brittany Webster helping her prepare her Sunday School class.  She is teaching an English Sunday School class and has never had any experience doing it before.  She is a bit nervous, but will do a good job.

(11) Stopped by the home of Dominga Gonzalez.  She is the original "pioneer" of this branch.  We enlisted her help with the ward history program that we are involved with right now.  We left with a sack full of bananas and a papaya.  They treat us like angels.                                                                                                   (12) We next visited Naomi Gonzalez and spent a few minutes cooing over her darling twin grandsons.  She watches them every day from morning until night, so her two daughters can work in their little downtown sidewalk store.                                                                                                       (13) We visited with Rony and Zulema Zelaya for an hour.  He has a great knowledge about the ward members.  I asked him to go through the ward records with me to see if we could determine who still lives on the island.  He was the last branch president.           

(14)  We ate dinner with the Zelayas.  They fixed us baleadas.  LaRae and I both got the chance to form and cook our own tortillas.  Mine ended up a bit too burned, but they were still good. We ate by candlelight because this family doesn't have the money to turn on the electricity.  Their daughter, Daritza, is in LaRae's YW class, so they had a blast talking while we were doing the records.  LaRae made her show her that she had cleaned her room.                                                                                                 (15) We telephoned an old American LDS couple who moved down here a year or so ago.  Somehow the elders had met them.  They are from Wyoming and weren't too receptive.  I think they were bothered that somehow the church had found them.  We did offer our help though, because the wife had been sick for a month or so.

(16) We luckily located a new LDS couple that had just moved to Roatan this very day.  He is the former missionary companion of Herbert Fernandez.  They will be a great addition to the branch - he actually holds the priesthood!   Yeah!

(17) We stopped by the home of Johanna Zelaya to ask why she wasn't in church last Sunday.  She said that her little daughter, Naomi, was sick.  There is a lot of sickness going around.

(18) We called the elder's quorum president, Dusty Mitchell, to inform him that he had a new elder coming this next week.  He was thrilled.  We also called to ask about his little sick son, Brigham.

 

 

(19) We walked along this open sewer drain to get to the home of Ana Maria Lopez.  She lives in a little one-room cement bunker with her two daughters and her two grandchildren.  One of the little boys was a cute, happy little boy who didn't have full use of the right side of his body.  They would love to come to church, but it would cost them about $3.00 each to pay for the taxi rides and nobody has that kind of money on this island.  The buses don't run on Sundays.

(20) We drove to the home where Yesi Padilla lives.  She is one of LaRae's young women.  LaRae needed to inform her of the change in YW activity.  Her story is a sad one.  She hasn't been able to afford to go to school, so she is now 17 and in the 3rd grade.  She wants to be an architect and has now moved out of her family home and in with a teacher who is tutoring her.  She is our only Laurel and our class president.                                                                                                           (21) We visited the home of Karina and Lauritza Alaya to ask why they didn't come to church last Sunday.  They told us that Karina's two little children were both sick.  Lauritza is a Mia Maid and is also taking piano lessons.                                                                                                               (22) We spent a full two hours looking for the home of Edgardo Nunez.  He is an elder but hasn't been active for quite awhile.  We drove all the way to the end of a half dozen dirt roads before we finally found it.  He wasn't home, but their lovely daugher, Astrid, was.  She should be another Mia Maid.  She was thrilled that we had dropped by.  She wanted to come to church, but knew that she had to get permission from her mother.  Apparently, her mother is a bit antagonistic, but her father wants to come back to church.  We'll see.  This is one of the very few families in Roatan that are married, hold the priesthood and are all members.

(23) We quickly stopped by to see the Zea family.  Both boys are in my YM group.  Christian is one of my two priests and Joshua is my only active deacon.  However, they hadn't come to church last Sunday.  I gave the priesthood lesson to them that they had missed.  The mother, Karla, told LaRae that her fiancee was going to get baptized this next week.  They are planning on getting married in December.  That was all brand new news to us.

(24) We passed by the home of Joyce Saunders, but she wouldn't come to the door.

(25) We hoped to get a chance to visit with Leticia Cerrano.  Like so many on this island she is the only member in her family.  She wasn't home, but we did have a very pleasant visit with her teenage daughter and invited her out to church.

 

 

(26) This is the home of Jose Brenes, an 82 year old who just accepted a call to be the Sunday School President.  I spent 30 minutes outlining his duties, and copying pages from the Church Handbook of Instructions in order to be able to train him.  Our branch President said it was a "miracle" that he accepted this calling, but we are happy.  One of our biggest points of effort is to get people callings.                                      (27) We spent 45 minutes with Enrique and Sandra Galo.  He is our 2nd counselor, but because of work and lack of support is going to be released in a couple of weeks.  We are very concerned that now he will completely go inactive.  He will be embarrassed.  We teased with them, laughed with them and loved them.                      

(28) I gave a 45 minute private piano lesson to Daniel Garay.  He is progressing quite nicely.  He is learning to play "Thank Thee, Oh, God, for a Prophet."  I will give many more of these lessons this week.

(29) We received news that our renters are going to break their lease, so we called Rodney and asked his advice as to what to do.  We also called Kevin to ask him to fix a couple of problems with the house.  All the Utah kids have been wonderful to help us.  Even though we are far, far away, there are still matters that require our attention and time back home.

(30) We filled our gas tank with 10 gallons of $5.70 per gallon gasoline.

(31) We drove into El Swampo (the Swamp) to search for a couple of new families.  We had a sweet experience in doing this.  Elder Barba was with us.  He told us he was sure that a member family lived in a particular area.  So, we stopped and he asked people if they knew any Mormons.  One little 6 year-old boy pointed to an alley way.  We entered, and sure enough, he not only found a family, it was a family that he had known in his previous area.  The Lord is working with us. We often  go out with the Elders and work this way.                                                                            

                                                                                     

 These two elders, Elder Barba from Mexico, and Elder Dever from Provo are two hard-working elders.  They don't miss an opportunity to share the gospel.  We are proud to work with them.

(32) As darkness sets in, it is more difficult to be out on the streets.  A different element comes out at night, and typically we try to either be in the church or at home.  So, we drove by the home of Maria Eugenia Matute.  She, like 90% of the island, has no husband, an illegitimate child, no income, no hopes of a bright future.  She lives with her non-member mother, who tells us that she has read both the Book of Mormon and the D&C 10 times.  She wants to get baptized, but she too, is living in fornication.  So very, very sad!!

 

This was just Tuesday and Wednesday of this past week.  The other days are similar.  Along with all of these visits we also have to eat, sleep, buy supplies, prepare YW, YM, Seminary, Piano and Teacher Improvement lessons - all of them in Spanish!  We attend weekly PEC and YW presidency meetings.  We plan and attend the mutual activites.  We study our scriptures, give priesthood blessings, are compiling a ward directory that includes pictures of all the members and maps to their homes as there are simply no addresses here on the island, and we talk to everybody that we meet along the way.  We have become friends with the people who live here in our complex and have invited one sweet couple, Doug and Shona McClure, into our home for dinner.  They have been wonderful to have as neighbors.  We train the leaders every chance we get and honestly have learned to love them.  They have a difficult life here in paradise, but they are faithful members of the church.  We are sure that Heavenly Father is pleased with all that they do.

 

Do we live in paradise?  Yes, we think we do.  But, the "paradise" we have found doesn't lie on the white sandy beaches or in the luxurious resorts, but in the impoverished homes and charitable hearts of the people.  We love them with all of our hearts. 

 

Are we having fun? Yes!  But at the end of every day we are hot, sweaty and ... well, the picture says it all.  Our feet may be dirty, but our faces have a smile.

 

 

                          

VISITORS, GUESTS AND TOURISTS

Having an extra bedroom means that we get an occasional visitor - some invited, others who just show up.  We are excited for every one that comes.  (That was a subtle plea for more visitors.)

Elder Rafael E. Castro, recently released Area Seventy, and his sweet wife, Norma, came to the island this past week to be interviewed for a job.  If all goes as we hope, they will soon be full-time members of the Roatan branch.  We were pleased when they accepted our offer to stay in our home.  We had a wonderful time visiting with them and chatting with them about their family.  We took them into Coxen Hole so they could visit with a former friend and ward member - Zulema Zelaya.  He was her first bishop and she was her first institute teacher.  Afterwards, we came back and barbecued some hamburgers, and dined on chips, watermellon and cupcakes - you know, good American food!  The next morning we drove them to the ferry at 6:00 a.m. 

President and Sister Veirs came for the weekend.  We have truly come to love them and enjoy their company.  It was a business trip for him, but a pleasure trip for us and Sister Veirs.  He spent quite a bit of time interviewing prospective elders, those who have lost their priesthood privileges and counseling with our branch president, but we also had time to just relax.


We took them to the iguana farm where they had a good time feeding the iguanas their favorite food -giant elephant ear weeds.  It's like candy to them.  We hated to see them go.  Sister Veirs teased him all weekend long about coming back real soon.  Hopefully, they can make it back before we leave, but he is a very busy man.

We still get a kick out of the iguanas, too.  And the people who run the farm are always glad to see us, because somehow we always seem to end up buying another souvenier at their little shop.



Knowing that President and Sister Veirs were going to be in church Sunday, we (Elder Barba, Elder Dever and us) had made a significant push to try to get as many members in church as possible.  Our attendence typically hovers around the 100 mark, but his week we had 172!  It is a new "world's" record for this branch.  We were all excited.  The Primary children came into the Gospel Doctrine class to sing a song. We had fourteen investigators there that day.  I'm sure the ones that were in this class were impressed with the little children.




























We received a call from President Veirs asking us if we could drive down to Mahogony Bay to pick up the parents of one of his missionaries.  This family, the Heberts from Indiana, had taken a cruise and had come here to bring a package for their missionary son.  We expected a box.  They had brought two 50 pound suitcases full of treats and supplies for their missionary son.  He will DEFINITELY be a popular missionary this week.  They only had four or five hours to spend on the island, so we drove them around to show them Roatan.  They were a sweet, pleasant couple and were very grateful.  They left us a package of M&M's as a thank-you.  Yummy!



Mahogony Bay is a private port owned by Carnival Cruise lines.  It is the cleanest, most Disneyland looking, high-end shops, food court and beach that we have seen on this island.  It is completely locked down except when there is a boat that is in port.  We had never seen it before.  Wow!  We are going to look for an opportunity to get down there again.

By the way, on my last P-day, I went golfing!  It was the prettiest course I've ever golfed.  It is the only golf course on the island.  It is in Pristine Bay.  Because Dustin and Lacie Mitchell live here I was able to get onto the course.  I did my best, but... wow!  This course was hard!  As you can imagine, I put a ball into the drink on this island hole - 170 yards to an island green.  Great fun!  While I was golfing with Dustin, LaRae was teaching Lacie how to decorate cupcakes.

NATURAL BEAUTIES OF ROATAN

 

 

They call them iguanas, and they are natives of this island.  They are illegal to hunt but people kill and eat them here all the time.  As a result a fellow has established an iguana preserve where he maintains  hundreds of iguanas.  They range from little fellows all the way up to over four feet in length.  They are actually pretty tame, but only here on the preserve.  We were allowed to feed them and they loved to have their heads scratched.  The caretaker of the preserve handed LaRae a huge leaf and let her feed them. They basically attacked her.  They wanted that leaf so badly that they crawled all over each other to get it.  These iguanas were everywhere.  You would see them in the trees, inside of the garage at the home, on top of the chicken coop, and everywhere else.  It really was fun to see them.   

 

 

 

 

From the wild looking iguanas we turn to the absolute stunning beauty of Roatan's flowers and fauna.

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

This particular flower ended up being a bunch of spitting beatles.  Gross!  But, beautiful.

Speaking of bugs... get a load of this one.

 

 

This is the conch shell we bought off of a fisherman in a little city called Punta Gorda.  He was willing to sell us his entire day's catch for $35.00 which included a lobster, a couple of crabs, about a dozen parrot fish and three conch shells.  This shell was the biggest and it was the only thing that we wanted.  So, for $5.00 we bought this shell.  He told us that if we put it into the fridge overnight that we would be able to extract the "bug" quite easily the next morning.  Well, it wasn't easy, but eventually we got it out.  It was huge! (Notice the pliers).  The natives make soup out of this, but we didn't.  It took more than an hour to clean the outer shell, but now it has a place of honor in the middle of our table.  It is beautiful.  We didn't have to polish it at all.  This was its natural beauty.

 

 

Can't you almost smell them?

STAYING BUSY

Our mission is somewhat like the Old Testament - a lot of mundane stuff with an occasional burst of excitement.  We stay busy every day, but often we just spin our wheels.  This week wasn't much different. 

MONDAY...  P-day was spent partially with the Elders.  We ate at the Bananarama Resort where one of the owners is a member of the Church.  They allow the missionaries to eat free each Monday.  They are reported to have the best coconut shrimp on the island.  However, neither LaRae nor I ordered that because it exceeded the free $10.00 limit.  "Mancos" is still my middle name.

In the afternoon we had an appointment with a young man and his wife we had hoped we might lead into becoming leaders - Tulio and Saidi Brenes.  We have tried repeatedly to meet with him.  Again, he ditched us.  So often people promise to meet with us, but aren't there when we come.  Too bad.

TUESDAY:
LaRae has been assigned to visit teach three families. One lives in town, the other two live so far away that the only way to visit them is by car.  And... because we have one of the few cars in the branch, they, of course, were assigned to her.  Today we visited one of them - Carolina Padgett and her two daughters, Paula and Denis .  Before we went there we had kept ourselves busy with a couple of missionary discussions and trying to obtain our credit cards.  This was the day for which we had waited.  We finally got our cards, paid $42.00 to get them (and a piano instruction course) out of the customs office and then anxiously drove home.  We called the bank, activated the cards, and then tried for two hours to renew our phone subscription because today was the very last day we had USA phone service.  They never would accept our card.  Can you spell: F-R-U-S-T-R-A-T-I-O-N!!!
After a month of waiting for these cards to arrive, they don't work.  Bless Jennifer's heart, she used her card to give us another month of phone service.  Thanks, sweetheart.

WEDNESDAY:
    Although our cards never did work over the computer, we still had hopes that they would work in the store.  We started this morning by going to the grocery store, carefully selecting a couple of items that we knew we had enough money to cover (We are down to our very last few bucks) and then tried our card.  IT WORKED!!  LaRae gave me a high-5 as we walked out of the store and then drove straight to the other grocery store to stock up.  We bought everything in sight fearing that the card may only last for another moment or two.  Happily it has worked ever since and our pantry is filled to the brim.

That night we had Young Women's presidency meeting where LaRae and Zulema Zelaya met with their new counselor, Aminda Garay and also P.E.C. meeting.  It was a very interesting evening.  Without much notice we found out that they were having a bachelor/bachelorette party for Merlon and Tania Orellana that night.  So, we held our meetings and then divided men and women for some moments of sage wisdom given to the soon to be wed couple. This became almost like a sacrament meeting as hymns were sung, testimonies borne and wisdom shared.  The couple was very gracious and accepting.  We had to leave before the refreshments because we had a late night appointment with Carlos Ocampo.  We are hoping that he will stand up and become a leader.  At least, he was home.

THURSDAY:
Much of this day was spent in the house preparing seminary and priesthood lessons for this weekend, but we did get out and get some work done. I taught a piano lesson and then came home to watch the BYU football game on our big screen TV.  BYU won! 30-6. 

FRIDAY:
LaRae finished up her visiting teaching but because her companion was getting married today at 3:00 she had to go alone.  I waited out in the car while she gave the lesson and chatted and then we headed back to Coxen Hole where she had an appointment with Davinia Flores to teach her how to make cheesecake.   Sister Flores was thrilled to see how easy it was and I am sure that they truly enjoyed the treat that we left them. 

That night we were invited to the wedding banquet of Tania and Merlon Orellana.  This sweet couple have been separated for over a year now.  Tania wanted marriage and after a year of separation he finally came back to church and agreed to marry her.  This evening was a fun affair for all.  You could see how happy they are.  We have seen miracles in this moment coming to pass.  He is "on fire" in the gospel again and we are excited to see him progress.  He was ordained a priest this past Sunday.  We dined on steak and shrimp at Gios - reportedly the best restaurant on the island. 

SATURDAY:
This day is always the busiest and hardest for me.  It started with private piano lessons, then a group piano lesson and then seminary class and finally MIA.  There are a couple of young men who have some talent on the piano and one, in particular, that I believe will be able to play simplified hymns in a couple of months.  The group lessons are fun for them and they are learning a lot about music.

We were supposed to have a baptism day.  Olga Fernandez, the wife of Aaron Fernandez, was supposed to be baptized, but at the last moment backed-out for some reason.  We actually don't know why.  I had started filling the baptismal font just before seminary began and I completely forgot about it.  LaRae was in the office with the Elders and neither of them thought about it either.  Pretty soon the water began to flow over the font and out into the halls.  We had quite a mess trying to clean up all the water.  The young man in the blue shirt - Oliver Flores - had to go swimming to pull the stopper out because the chain broke.   Our Young Men's/Young Women activity was a joint activity with a panel discussion about the respect that should be shown to women.  It was very successful even though one of our panelist couples (we only planned on two) decided not to show up.  The Elders stepped in and covered the subject from the young man's point of view.

SUNDAY:
Our Sundays are very much like yours.  We wake up in the morning, get ready for Church, attend our meetings, go home (or somewhere) for lunch and then go out and visit people.  We don't have family around that we can visit, but we do have people here that love us.  Today we ate at the home of Dustin and Lacie Mitchell.  Afterwards, I took Dusty around to meet some of the prospective elders in his quorum.  We visited five or six.  He is going to do wonders for this little quorum of elders.  We are very grateful to have them here in Roatan. 

This is our opening exercises in Priesthood meeting.  Dustin Mitchell is in front with the purple tie.

Well, that's what we did this week.  We didn't change the world very much, but we tried our best to change it a little.  There is an ebb and flow here in Roatan.  One week there is a positive feeling, and the very next there isn't the same feeling.  But, we are happy and grateful to be here.  Good things are happening.