THANK YOU, FESITRAHN

We want to share pictures of the wonderful people in the Fesitrahn Ward.  We have spent the last month with them and they have accepted us into their Ward and hearts so quickly.  We have learned so much from them.  We came down here expecting to be their teachers but have found that we have been the students instead.  For example: testimony meetings.  Even before the counselor turned the meeting over to the members and was still testifying, they came up to the stand in families.  Entire families came up together, mothers, fathers, grandparents and children.  This continued for the whole meeting.  There was never a awkward silence, there was no telling jokes, stories or discourses.  They all bore pure and simple testimonies and then sat down.  The spirit was so strong in that meeting.

 This is the Victor and Jenny Hernandez Family.  They live just down the block from us and had us to dinner.  One of the things they taught us was generosity and acceptance.  They removed their home phone and gave it to us to use to call our children.  They are such a giving and generous people.  They didn't know if we would like Hondurian food so they served us plantanes, black beans, tamales a salad and then....Pizza Hut Pizza.  They called it a Gringo Hondurian dinner!  We loved it! And we love them.

    

We learned that age doesn't matter when it comes to serving in the church, only a willing heart.  This little sister is 13 years old and leads the music in Sacrament Meeting.  The bishopric member that is conducting will just call someone out of the audience and ask them to lead the music and pray.  And they do. I even got to do it once.  Wayne has been playing the piano in Sacrament Meeting each week as no one plays.  But there are young children that are taking lessons so that one day they will have piano players. 

 This sweet sister is Sylvia Cuellar, the best little Gospel Doctrine teacher!  She comes so prepared and really teaches the gospel well.  Her children are just darling and we love her little boy, Iker.

Here we are with Sister Rodriguez from Nicaragua and Sister Smith from the US.  They are assigned to the Fesitrahn Ward and the Branch that meets in this building. This is the Stake Center.  We attended their baptism of a husband and wife with two little girls.  Wayne got to be a wittness and I gave the opening prayer. This was the week we moved into our apartment and hadn't even attended church yet.  This is also the building that we gave our talks in the Stake Youth Conference the following week.

These little children have stolen our hearts.  Little Sara who is asleep on her mom's shoulder has the biggest brown eyes and dimpled smile.  We felt so bad she fell asleep before we could get her picture. The children love to shake our hands and listen to our gringo spanish! 

This is the Jose and Mercedez Hernandez Family.  He is the Bishop of the Fesitrahn Ward and they are both doctors.  Sara and Andrea are their two daughters and Bernardo was gone playing at the church when we came to take their picture.  We learned more from this family than anyone else.  He was kicked out of his family when he joined the church at the age of 18.  He was called on a Mission and was sent right back to his home town of San Pedro Sula.  While there he baptized his mother, sister and most of his cousins.  After his mission he went back to medical school, met his wife and baptized her.  But this is the lesson that we learned:  when they decided to marry she was not a member of the church.  He told her he would only marry in the Temple!  So after she joined the church, they waited one full year to marry in the Guatemala Temple.  He said he refused to take the chance of having a child born out of the covenant, which was a good thing because their first child passed away.  We are grateful for the lessons we learned while in Fesitrahn.  We love these sweet, humble and kind hearted people.         

THEY DON'T ONLY GROW PAPAYA HERE

We decided to go with the Elders in the Mission Office on a P-day adventure.About 40 miles from where we live in a little town called Villanueva they have a well known Crocodile Farm.  It was started a few years back and they are trying to start up an import-export business but by law they have to have 15,000 crocodiles before they can begin harvesting them.  Until then, they are breeding and feeding them until they reach their goal.  They think it will take a couple more years. I wouldn't recommend taking a dip in this pond!




























The largest crocodile that they have is maybe 14 feet long.  They say that so long as they are well fed they really don't care if you are around.  When it is time to feed them the keeper walks in and slaps a stick on the water and they all crawl into the pond and they throw the meat into the water at the edge of the pond, because crocodiles don't like their food to be dirty!!!!



They have thousands of little baby
crocodiles in these cement holding ponds.  They leave them here until they get about 3 feet long.  I love the little albino crocodile!  We even got a chance to hold one.

On this crocodile farm they also had about 6 lions and a jaguar that they had rescued from a circus. They would let you get so close to the lion cages that you could touch them if you dared, so Wayne scratched ones back that was leaning against the bars of his cage.  Not me though....They feed all of these animals horse meat, and the vultures were all around in the trees waiting for their turn!

TOTO.....I DON'T THINK WE'RE IN KANSAS ANYMORE!

Life is pretty similar here, except for a few things.  And we thought we would record some of them before we get too used to them.  For example:  SECURITY.

This is one of our beautiful chapels here in the San Pedro Sula area.  Each chapel has walls, fences and gates that are constantly locked.  If you could see the surrounding area you would see a dirt road, and tin huts.  These chapels stand out as a beacon to all.  The members are so proud of their building.

Every home is surrounded by some sort of a wall or fence.  On top of these walls you find barbed wire, glass, electric fences or metal shards. 


                POVERTY

Another one of the great differences is the great poverty.  As you drive down the street you can look to the left and seen big beautiful homes behind security gates and walls.  And then look to the right and see those who have nothing.  They live along the river banks, where they bathe, do their laundry and everything else.  You can see some have taken electricity from the poles to light one bulb in their shacks.

Other things are similar to what we have but they just go about it differently....     

                                

CONSTRUCTION

Every bucket of cement is mixed on the ground and then carried up one 5-gallon bucket at a time.  Wooden scaffolding probably saves most of the workers from injury.  The most visible difference to us is the complete lack of any new construction.  It doesn't appear that they use rebar.  We think that a good earthquake would wipe it all out.

COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS 

Hundreds of wires hang from the telephone poles.  Huge rolls of extra wire are hung from most every pole for a reserve... we guess.  We even saw a man with an aluminum ladder leaning against the wires for support as he added yet another line.  We wonder if Shan could figure out which line goes where.

                        CEMETARY                                                                                   MORE WIRES



This particular garbage truck caught our eye, as there is a man sitting in the bucket and many bags of garbage on the top!  And have you ever wondered where all your used computer screens ended up?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But there are many things that remind us of HOME.  For example:  OUR LOCAL WENDY'S!

 

COPAN - ONLY LARAE WOULD GET SICK HERE!

Our very first P-day was spent with President and Sister Veirs and their visiting friends to go see the ruins of Copan.  These ruins date back to 400 AD and were some of the best preserved ruins in the world.  Each succeeding ruler would build another temple on top of the previous one.  So in some cases there are four ruins on top of one another that they know of. 


























    It's a three hour drive over winding, mountainous roads to get here.  They are aware of hundreds of additional ruins that have yet to be excavated.  This civilization consisted of eleven different rulers until they just all of a sudden disappeared.  They say that they think the people simply ate themselves out of house and home and had polluted the water so badly that they couldn't live there anymore.
 

Below is the ball court. This picture
is taken from the vantage point of
the king. 






















There were these carved heads everywhere.  In our opinion these are aliens!  We couldn't believe how well preserved the carvings were.  However the best carvings of all were found inside of one of the ruins.  Only 18 years ago they found a passage way that led to the center of one of the ruins.. Inside they found near perfect carvings of all kinds of things.  They were all inside of a temple that was inside of the temple.  Because of the fragile state of the actual temple they have left it undisturbed but recreated it inside of their museum.  Some of the actual carvings are in the museum while others remain inside of the temple.  The original temple was found paint intact.  Amazing!

Can you tell what these carvings are?  They told us that the bat was sacred to these people and the other carving is of a man's head with a bird on top of his head with a fish in its mouth.  So incredibly perserved!!

     Well, amidst all of this beauty what else did we see?  We saw LaRae sitting with her head in her hands. She was so sick all the night before and became so dehydrated in the heat that she was weak at the knees.  But a quick bottle of cold water and she was back on her feet!!!

AH.....THE COMFORTS OF HOME

Only the richest of Hondurians can live in such spacious and comfortable quarters.  We have all the necessities of life - water, air, heat and protection!  Of course we can't drink the water and only the cold water taps are connected (seriously).  The air moves freely through our house because the doors are not air tight and we use three fans constantly!  The heat comes free, 24/7.  For protection......we have bars on the windows, high voltage wires atop of our 6" solid cement walls and the whole front of our house is caged in.  The outside gate of our compound has armed guards.

We are blessed to have a DOUBLE burner hot plate, a 3'x2' refrigerator, and a five gallon jug of clean water.  We have two forks, two spoons and one knife and a lovely assortment of dishes and a BLENDER.  So you see, we have everything we really need.

Our pantry is nicely stocked with peanut butter and jelly, corn and a few cup of soups.  The little plastic container holds salt to try and keep out the humidity.  Things like bread or cookies have to be stored in the fridge in order to keep them from going soggy.  Basically, it's like living in Hilo, Hawaii, except it's about 40 degrees hotter.
     Laundry has never been a favorite chore, but here it's downright difficult.  LaRae has two choices:either do it on the cement scrubboard outside or in the sink or the shower.  She chose the latter. 

All of our floors are tile.  The walls are all bare because it is so hard to hammer a nail into the cement that no one does it.  This is our front room - notice the nice sheet curtains. The nicest feature of the house is our driveway and covered garage.  It's tiled.  The gates are electronic and provide security.  This is also the coolest place in our house and so we sit here when it's just too hot to go into the house. This also serves as the place we hang our laundry to dry.  Typically it takes about three hours to dry our shirts.  If LaRae hangs them just right they don't have to be ironed.  She is happy about that.

Our bathroom is nice.  The shower was cold until we installed a portable heater to the shower head.  Notice the mirror that LaRae is using to do hair and makeup. I also think our bathroom cabinet is nice, don't you?  When we shower the humidity in the house escalates to the point it becomes unbearable, so we just keep the door shut and the window open all the time. 


We actually live in a very nice part of town.  Everyone tells us - especially the taxi drivers - that this is one of the most "tranquilo" areas in town.  We have to agree.  We are awakened every morning to the sound of fruit venders and water salesmen honking their horns or ringing their bells to get people to come out and buy their wares.  We even have an ice cream cart that comes around each afternoon.  We haven't purchased anything except a pineapple and a cucumber so far.  By the way, the pineapple cost $1.00.

BASICALLY, THE ONLY THING YOU CAN'T SEE IN THESE PICTURES IS

THE SWEAT RUNNING OFF OF OUR BODIES.

OUR JOURNEY HAS BEGUN

Our first stop was to stay at the mission home for two nights.   President Ron and JoAnn Veirs picked us up at the airport Saturday night and treated us to dinner at Baleadas (a local favorite) and a comfortable room in their lovely home.  They were gracious hosts.  They have now been here for two years and are loved by all of their missionaries. 

The San Pedro Sula Mission Home is a lovely three story home situated in a small gated and guarded community surrounded by unbelievable poverty.

On Monday morning President Veirs took us to our new home to drop off our luggage on the way to the office.  The Mission Office is situated on the third floor of an office building in downtown San Pedro Sula.  It is the nicest area of town that we have yet to see.  Half a block away there is a Mall that would compare with any Mall in Utah.

One big difference that we have noticed is that all

of the buildings have armed guards.  This is 

Donaldo, our office building guard!  And these are our

doormen and the office building receptionist.

This is the front desk of the Mission Office.  Elder Bailey is in charge of all of the supplies and

Elder Ramos is the financial clerk.  The office is completely under the supervision of young 19-21 year old young missionaries.  They do an amazing job.  Their hardest job yet will be to train us how to do their job.  The hardest part will be that we have to learn how to do it all in Spanish.

                   THE MISSION OFFICE
Three cubicles on the left, the mission president's office is on the right.  A tiny kitchen, bathroom and two supply rooms are in the back.

MTC HERE WE COME

Here we are ready to head to the MTC!  Everything we will use for the next two years is in these bags.  We were allowed two fifty pound bags and one carry on each.  I hope it will do!

We have done everything we can think of doing.  We have fixed the roof and every leak we could find, to painted the outside and cleaned the carpets.  Not to mention hauling three loads of soil pep and weeding all of the flowers.  We are hoping the new fruit trees will be larger when we get back.  Now we are just waiting for Alan and family to pick us up. 

Here we are at the MTC!  We finally made it!

Now we have a picture of us in front the the MTC's famous map....just like all of our boys!

The MTC was a sweet spiritual experience.  There were 45 senior couples with us, going all over the world.  We spent most of our time in classes being taught how to teach and commit people for baptism.  We had spanish tutoring each evening.  The food was great and lasting friendships were made.  It was wonderful to stay with Dad and visit with family each evening before retiring.  We will be leaving for Honduras on Saturday, June 2, 2012, at 4:00 a.m.