Saturday, May 9, 2015 -- Week #12 - Day #82 - San Pedro Sula

9:50 pm

Today was kinda crazy, too. We spent all morning in the hospital, going back and forth between the buildings to get to the labs and different citas, so I think I got my leg workout for the day, pucha. But we did some contacting while we were at it, so that was nice.

We got back to our area after lunch and had some visits, met some awesome people, gonna baptize everyone. Not really, but I think we have had the blessing of getting to know many people who are happy to accept the Gospel and visit with us. Always blessings here, in spite of so much ridiculous that happens in the meanwhile.

Also, today we had the baptism of Gladis, one of the investigators of E Santiago and Comin, so there's always opposition in that, makes for a very interesting time of how many things can go wrong. But it all worked out, as it always does, thank goodness.

But tomorrow is Mother's Day and we get to go to church!  Yay! Tomorrow should be good.

Bought some baby bananas...so cute!

Friday, May 8, 2015 -- Week #12 - Day #81 - San Pedro Sula

10:15 pm

Today was kinda crazy. Good, but crazy. We had to go to the hospital to get the results for the elder that fell down the wet stairs a few weeks ago, turns out that he has some fractures in his lower vertebrae. We gotta go buy an immobilizer belt/brace thing for him to use, and also a few urgent citas tomorrow morning, and buy medicine for the missionaries also. 

But we got to work our area today, got some lessons in and talked to some really neat people, so that was wonderful. Except our night was cut short as our elders called and asked us to come administer a vaccine to one of their less actives they're visiting, as they don't know anyone who can give shots. So we ran for 20 minutes in the rain to the elder's area, arriving all wet, and Hna Robles gave the shot to a guy who has chikungunya with a 106 degree fever. And then walked all the way back to the house. And planned and had a snack and answered a plethora of phone calls, and got ready for bed. So this has been the most interesting night I've had so far, I think.

Thursday, May 7, 2015 -- Week #12 - Day #80 - San Pedro Sula

10:02 pm

Today was a lot of hospitaling and officing, finished my papers this morning and then got another stack to finish up tonight and in the morning as well...I'm seeing why this week is crazy for the medics. Silly missionaries.

Over here, they jokingly call weak people "fresas" or strawberries, the equivalent of when we say someone's a pansy. So that's kinda fun to call people strawberries because they're so fragile and require a lot of care.

Among today's enfermos (sick people), we had a missionary with a diaphragmatic hernia, so that was interesting, but it's minor enough that unless they do any heavy lifting, they should be fine until they finish their mission next week. And also a missionary with a "sun allergy," or rather, a sensitivity to light in their eyes that's causing some problems, so when they go out walking around they have to use an umbrella or wear sunglasses. It's really quite amazing the range of medical issues we encounter here. I thought the most amusing so far was the sun allergy...never heard of that one before.

E Markus gave me a Spanish / English medical dictionary

Pretty hilarious to read through, at least for me!  :)

Also, in one of our actual lessons tonight, the family had a beautiful black cat that took a liking to me in about 4 seconds and ended up on my lap. I rubbed his head and he started purring, and pushed his head into my hand...guess he likes his head getting scratched. He actually reminded me a lot of Toothless from "How to Train Your Dragon," even had the same calm green eyes. Pretty neat.

A lot of people here have a pet of some sort, usually a dog or cat or bird, haven't seen any fish. A good 85% of the dogs that people have are little, which I'm not really a fan of. I've only seen a few medium-large sized dogs. And there is almost at least 1 dog barking, always, no matter where you go. Sometimes a whole group of them along the street all find something interesting, and they'll all bark and whine at the same time for a minute or two, weird. But our neighbor has 2 little tiny dogs, both Chihuahua mixes, so that's a delight.  One's mixed with Terrier, and the other with what appears to be Rottweiler, I think, so I have no idea how that happened, exactly.  But the part-Terrier one is constantly yapping and growling and barking at you whenever you set foot outside of your house, and the other one jumps up on you and is extremely energetic and will run inside our house when we open the door for anything...it's also been determined that I can't use the hammock if they're outside.  And they both fight all the time and defend their "territory" with vigor. I think I'll have my fill of little dogs by the time I get home.

Chispa and Toto... the landlady's Chihuahua mixes that are crazy!

Today was good, lots of running around to citas... we still do contacting in the hospitals and as we're walking around and with the taxis, so that's good. Poor Hna Robles is always embarrassed about our datos, so I talked to E Santiago again tonight to report how things are going. So we're all good over here in paradise. It didn't feel too crazy hot today, so that was nice, too, had a breeze going most of the day.

Wednesday, May 6, 2015 -- Week #12 - Day #79 - San Pedro Sula

9:36 pm

Today was a day of hospitaling and officing...had 3 lessons today! Whoo! Poor Hna Robles is taking the brunt of the mental trauma of the "weeks before and after changes craziness," I just kinda follow along behind her and pick up the paperwork trail and relay messages between her and Hna Dester. Good times. At least this experience lets me meet a lot of the missionaries here, so that's kinda neat.

We went out to lunch today as we were out and about for so long, and we went to a Guatemalan place called Tacontento as a recommendation from the office crew and I got chicken enchiladas with the spicy red sauce, and learned about a different kind of spicy than I'm used to. This one is definitely bearable, but it feels tight and needly, not really a burning so much as a stinging, so that was interesting to discover. Hna Robles didn't dare touch my plate, sweet girl. She got the enchiladas with the non-spicy green sauce.

In other news from Honduras, tattoos aren't very prevalent, I can count on 1 hand the number of people with tattoos I've seen. So that's a nice change from the States. And also, I haven't heard swearing in a while, either, most likely because I don't know many swear words in Spanish. But all the same that's nice, too.

The latin calendar goes day-month-year, and also start the week on Monday, so that was fun in the beginning of my paperwork adventure to switch from the latin dates for birthdays and on the receipts to the gringo way for filling out the insurance forms, I like it when there's a date that's for 04-04-2015 or 06-06-1995...makes it easier on my brain!

Tuesday, May 5, 2015 -- Week #12 - Day #78 - San Pedro Sula

9:15 pm

Today we had district meeting, and then were in the hospital until about 6:00 pm, so we had a lesson and dropped off some copies of the Book of Mormon to a family of investigators, quite the successful day. Hna Robles feels so bad that our numbers get really low sometimes, but I always remind her that we've been in the hospital for the past 4 hours, not teaching lessons. I'm not too upset about the numbers, and sweet Hna Robles really liked the counsel to see these people as children of God and not as statistics for us to fulfill, that has helped her out a lot as we have limited teaching. But in the end, we're just doing our jobs and helping people out, spiritually or physically.

Also, we can listen to songs that Hna Robles has downloaded on the nurse smartphone, and I discovered that Alex Boye does a rendition of "How Great Thou Art" that I quite enjoy...I'm always reminded of his music video of "Royals," I think, and he has a Christmas wreath on his head...Lyndsey will understand what I'm talking about. Good times, my friend. Go look him up if you haven't heard of him, he's wonderful.

And I got my glorious package from home!!

AAAAAAAANNNNDDDD I finally got my family's package! Happy Day! There was a week delay in my receiving it, but Hna Robles and I opened it together (after walking 20 minutes back to our house from the church building we have district meeting in) and were quite happy to share some Skittles and Lindt chocolate and look at my new journal and the booklet of photos of me and my family, and get all girly about my new shirts and skirts and sparkly gel pens (I find that short sleeved knit tops are much more comfortable in this climate than long-sleeved collared shirts, by the way, I can get away with the later when it's rainy and not 106 degrees outside!) and all my other little presents...so we had a joyous mini party this afternoon. Thank you so much, family! I love getting my little love notes every week, I'm definitely the marvel of the missionaries in my zone...they sometimes just get 2 or 3 letters their whole mission and I get a lot more than that every Tuesday...whoops.

Thanks again, my wonderful family!

Also, random fact, I slipped about 3 or 4 times today, no idea why, mostly on leaves or pebbles or wet tiles in our bathroom...I almost never slip, and today I almost fell a lot. Strange. Maybe my equilibrium is off today or something? Anyway, made for an exciting day, to say the least, Hna Robles almost started holding my hand so I didn't wind up on the ground. 

And weather news from SPS: the sun is back, so we lost our delightful cloud cover from the past little while. Quite warm today, but I don't think it felt like quite as hot as it did the other week when we hit 104-6 or so...so that was nice, at least.

And we get to start tomorrow off with a hospital and then office visit at 10:30 am, but after lunch we should be able to work our area.  An elder fell down some wet stairs the other week and landed on his back and still has back pain, so we're taking him in for some further testing. (See? The slipping thing is serious!) The crazy thing is that it takes like 4-5 hours, depending on route used and traffic, for them to get to SPS where the hospitals are (which is why the nurse is assigned to areas in the immediate area)...so they're staying at the Mission Secretary's house tonight and will go back to the hospital in the morning, and then back to their area in the afternoon. It can take a lot of coordination and time to get medical attention when you're in the really far areas...I imagine Momma's glad I'm in the city. But it's all good, the worst I've had so far are some bug bites and a hangnail...and I took care of both by myself. Hurrah for self-sufficiency at its finest!

Gonna head to bed here and get some wonderful sleep. Woke myself up the other night with my talking in Spanish, can't remember exactly what I was saying, probably was something about our lessons...my poor little brain!

Monday, May 4, 2015 -- Week #11 - Day #77 - San Pedro Sula

Hna Archila, Lopez, Dominguez, Robles, me!

9:54 pm

Today was Pday! Yay! Today ran a little differently as we had to leave early to get over to Castanos and have some internet time, and there meet up with Hnas Lopez and Archila, and Hna Dominguez (local ward member) drove us all over to the beach in Puerto Cortes, and we had seafood for lunch, and drove back to Castanos, and got ourselves back to our area of Smith, and had some appointments and taught some lessons and got ourselves back home. So it was quite the eventful day, I had to do some emails on the nurse smartphone, so that was really weird to use after what feels like a very long time, made me think about my phone from back home...I wonder what the technology is gonna be like when I get back to the United States of America. Weird!

We had some Texas clouds!

We got to visit Chivana Beach, up north by the Gulf...very beautiful!

And don't worry, we didn't go swimming or touch the water or anything, and we got permission from Pres. Dester to go on the trip. We kept all our clothes and shoes on and just walked around on the sand and rocks and took a plenitude of pictures and enjoyed the wonderful breeze. But it was incredibly enjoyable all the same. Quite beautiful to see the water again with the palm trees and sun and sand and all that fun stuff, made me happy to see water again, I miss swimming in the pools and lakes back home. And we only have 1 more Pday before changes! Crazy!

And it turns out I was somewhat mistaken in defining "caracol" as sea snail, it's actually conch, I found out for certain today, which I guess in a way is kinda like a giant sea snail. So I have eaten conch quite a few times since I've been here, hurrah for me. It's not too bad, I can't quite yet say it's my favorite thing in the world to eat, but it's definitely edible. Also for lunch we had tiny little palm-sized crabs (note to Mom, Joe's is absolutely stupendous in their crab...and they have somewhat bigger portion sizes) and a hand-sized lobster, and the caracol as previously mentioned, a bunch of little shrimps, and one of the best fillets of fish I've had in a very long time. And also some lettuce and cucumber, beans and rice, and some tostones, which is a piece of green plantain cooked until softened and then smooshed flat into a disk shape and fried until crispy, one of my favorite things to eat so far. So that was a delicious lunch. Cost a lot, 350 lps ($17.50) a plate but 2 people could comfortably eat from it, so it was more like $8.75 a person. Still pricy, nonetheless, but it was very yummy.

Sunday, May 3, 2015 -- Week #11 - Day #76 - San Pedro Sula

10:04 pm

We had a Sunday! Whoohoo! Today was really good, Halsey and Isaac were confirmed and received the Priesthood, so that was wonderful, and Brayan was a lot better behaved today (we took Nolvin and Brayan to church again, they're the two kiddos whose mother works all the time).

Lessons went well, and I learned that tajaditas and salsa are quite delicious, not a spicy salsa, but a really yummy-tasting one that I quite enjoyed. So that was wonderful to snack on. The people here will often give you a drink and a snack when you visit, so we usually have something in our tummies during the day.

The later half of Alma 26:12 and also verses 15-16 are pretty wonderful, I like them a lot in light of missionary work.

And funny story, during companionship prayer tonight, Hna Robles just started praying, and then second-guessed herself of whose turn it was, so in the middle of her sentence she said "...ah, esperame, Padre" (uh, wait for me, Father), squinted her eyes over to me and we quickly consulted and agreed that it was indeed her turn to pray. So then she was like "ah, ok Padre, lo siento por la interrupcion, vamos a orar otra vez" (ok Father, sorry for the interruption, we will pray again) and we continued praying. She's so cute. Also she sneezes like 4 or 5 times in a row, really tiny, quick little sneezes, and then wiggles her nose and I look over and laugh. We have some good times together.

So yeah, I'll talk more about the baptism and stuff later, time for bed!