As with every story.....

Well friends, our journey in Roatan has come to an end.  It was such a great experience, and we made so many friends along the way.  It was hard to say goodbye to everyone.  Our adoptive family, the Welcomes, took us out to dinner on Friday night and then on Saturday there was a party on the beach for us.  Both times I forgot my camera though, so I have no pictures of that.  Then today at the airport, 2 service groups showed up to say goodbye and see us off.  We were touched.  It is just so wonderful how you can go to a foreign land, meet strangers from all walks of life, and become great friends with them because of the uniting bond you have.  You really get to experience the worldwide brotherhood that we have that is like nothing else.  We learned much from this trip, and have renewed zeal for serving Jehovah and are excited to take many more trips like this in the future.  And to experience the preaching work here was a real blessing too.  I have been having wonderful studies with Gloria.  She is just taking in everything that she is learning and absorbing it.  We are just now studying chap. 3 in the teach book, and I was asking her something about living on a paradise earth instead of heaven, and she went off on this big explanation about how that's what the bible says is going to happen and only 144,000 are going to heaven.... I just started laughing.  She has already read and studied most of the book.  I feel like I don't even need to study it with her, she already gets it and believes it.  It's so crazy!  We were very sad to part ways, but I am not abandoning her.  She is actually leaving for the States soon too.  She wants to come back (she is from the States) in August so she can go to school to be a nurse.  So we are going to Skype for our studies in the meantime and a sister is going to stop and see her, and then when she moves back to the States I will get her in contact with our brothers wherever she ends up.  She is planning either Boston or New York, so hopefully I will be able to see her again sometime! 

Well, I hope everyone enjoyed our journey with us, and I am glad I could share it with you!  Your friends that roasted in Roatan:)

Manny and Justin matched Dixie perfectly!  We had to get a photo.



 

 

A trip to El Progreso

Our trip to El Progreso for the assembly was exciting. We are glad to be back on the island though. Our trip started last Saturday at 6am. We met at the port to catch the ferry over to the mainland. It is about 1 1/2 ride. I was worried about being a little seasick, but it was fine. Actually the bus ride after that was worse! We caught our bus right outside the ferry port. Then we started our journey of about 3 1/2 hours to El Progreso . And our bus driver was crazy! He drove very fast, the bus was swaying all over and he would pass like 3 cars at a time when there was oncoming traffic. I think we had Jehovah's spirit with us. The road we traveled was mostly county looking, the houses were more spread out than here in Roatan. There were just little stores and local restaurants scattered along the road. Our crazy bus driver would slam on his brakes and stop about every half hour at one of these places and have his helper run out and get him things. One time it was for a local juice slushie. We sat there and watched the guy make them for him. Another time for food, and so on. Then one of the times he slammed on the brakes, he got up and ran off the bus. We thought, ok this time he's probably running behind a tree or something. But then we looked out the window, and he was laying on the road under the bus apparently trying to fix something. Yikes! And worse yet, he fixed whatever it was with some dirty rags! Then the rest of the trip he drove a bit slower, thankfully. (gee, I wonder why?) We finally arrived at our hotel unharmed. It was called Hotel Casa blanca. It was actually a pretty decent place, looked like an old tuscan villa on the outside.

Some kids in the congregation

 

This is inside the ferry.  Sorry I didn't get an outside photo of it.

 

Justin snoozing on the ferry ride

The scary bus

 

Our capable bus driver

Our assembly was the next morning. The building that it was held in was actually right across from our hotel, so we could just walk there in the morning which was great. It was at a college, and the room we rented was the auditorium they use for graduations and so forth. It was very nice and worked perfectly for an assembly hall. The program was very good. We had a guest speaker from the Mexico Branch. He was a great speaker. We met him after the program and he knew the couple that we had went to see in Belize (they are at the Mexico Branch now), in fact he works with April. Small world. After the program almost all of our group went to a mall nearby to eat and watch movies at the theater. The mall had a food court with BK and Pizza Hut and some others. Yay. We were really at the mercy of everyone else the whole time we were on the trip and just trailed along with anyone who would take us. Because we didn't want to go anywhere ourselves, seeing as we barely know enough Spanish to order ourselves food at a restaurant (we even needed help with that the one time). So, even though it was a fun experience and the assembly program was good, we didn't like being on the mainland. Just felt to uncomfortable. Some of the scenery was very pretty though... Big sharp pointed mountains. I wish I could have gotten some pictures of them.

At our hotel

Where the assembly was.  We met on the top floor, right hand side.

 

Inside the assembly hall

Justin helped with the stage duties

outside Hotel Casa Blanca

On the way home, they say the ferry ride is always worse because you are going against the waves. Well, it was definitely true! That boat was getting tossed all over the place. And I was horribly sick! I don't want to ever get on another boat again at this point. It was that bad. I was hoping that once I got back on solid ground, I would feel better after a few hours. But I didn't. I stayed sick for days! And then it turned into a head cold. So I am still not feeling well yet, a week later. Well, I'm sure many of you have heard by now, that we are planning on coming home sooner than we originally planned.  Actually, we are leaving Roatan a week from today. We are sad to go, but excited to come home for awhile and rest up and regroup. We're not sure what our next adventure will be. I am planning on making 1 final post before we leave, so check back. Adios!

 

The Gloria from Jehovah

I am posting this one especially for Heather. She sent me "hate mail" complaining about my lack of blogging. So this one's for you girl... Our studies have all kinda been fizzling out since we came back, and we are a little disappointed about it. But I got one new one from Jana. She was having trouble getting the girl and knew I was up in the East end more often, so she turned her over to me. Her name is Gloria, she is 21. And ever since the first time I was there, she has been an amazing study! I have never studied with anyone quite as sincere and truly interested as her. She asks so many questions and really cares about the answers. She has been reading the bible on her own, and asking me questions from what she's reading. Like she asked what "enmity" was. Which I thought was cool that she picked out on her own, one of the most important scriptures in the bible, and had questions about it. She has started coming to the meetings for the last 2 weeks, and has answered many times for the Watchtower study. She has already started making some changes in her life, like not going to parties and hanging with the wrong crowd. She said her mother has noted a difference in her, she isn't getting into arguments with her anymore. And she just truly loves studying. We have been studying twice a week. But this has all just begun for the past 3 weeks!!! Crazy right? She has already been asking about what steps she needs to take to get baptized. It almost seems a little to good to be true. But we will just see what happens with Gloria. When we were in Belize there was a gal that started studying and came into the truth within about 6-8 months, so I know it does happen sometimes. Maybe it is just the right time for her, for Jehovah to draw her!

On Thursday, in the morning we had a territory in Oak Ridge that included the Oak Ridge Key, a little island that is separated from the mainland by just a 30-40 foot waterway. It is only accessible by boat or foot via a little walking bridge. There is only about 20 houses on it. It was so cool out there! It was all sand. There was a little pathway that wound along the sea side of the island to take you to all the houses. It was so pretty, you almost forgot you were in 100 degree heat, cause there was a nice breeze coming off the ocean. But then the sad reality, when we were done and crossed back over the bridge, hit us hard! Like when your baking in the summer, and you're already hot and sweating, but then you open the oven door... bam! That's about how it felt. And Justin parked up at the top of this big hill. But then we went to Gloria's and sat on her porch and she put a fan on us. Then we felt much better!

Looking at the canal and the mainland

Cooling down in some hot ocean water!

You can't tell, but the water is up to my ankles

Well, we are leaving for the mainland of Honduras early tomorrow morning. It is our Special Assembly Day. So we are getting all packed. We will be back on Monday. So hopefully we live to give another post!

Now we're Roastinnnn

Well, we have been back for a little over a week now, and it is getting toasty down here. We miss home now, more than before we left. I think our visit wasn't quite long enough. Oh well, we are gonna try to keep going for a little while and see how long we make it down here before we get too homesick and burnt to a crisp! It was nice to see all our friends and family for a little while though. Thanks everybody, for being so encouraging and faithful readers of our journey. I'll try to do the best I can at keeping you up to date...

When we arrived last Saturday, we were going through the very low key security at the "Roatan International Airport", and the man running the scan on bags wanted to look in Justin's big duffel he was carrying. It of course had an amplifier in it, that we were bringing for the hall in Oak Ridge. Their karaoke style stereo had blown out before we left, and they had been going without sound for about a month. So, the man opens up the box and sees what it is and is like, "Oh.." and he is trying to figure out what to do. I'm not sure if he felt he had to get it out and inspect it, or just trying to figure out what to charge us for duty tax, or what. But he was confused, just looking at it. Fortunately though, another man came up to him, saw us, saw what we had, and asked us if it was for iglesia (church). Yes, it is! He must have seen David Thomson, dressed in service clothes, waiting for us and drew the connection. So he told the other man to let us go through. Awesome! Great timing buddy, thanks a lot.

 

We are back in the grove of things now, just trying to sift through our studies and see which ones are more serious and possibly will make progress. It is hard to do, because people here are very friendly and like to talk and make friends with you, but not necessarily super interested in the truth. So our goal for the next month or two is to work hard with the ones that do seem more serious and see where they go. Our meetings have been very slim at Oak Ridge, last week we had 9 and yesterday we had 11. I think we had 4 from the territory both weeks. Thankfully David & Jana have decided to come out every week with us, which really helps. They are leaving for a month in June though, so I don't know what we are gonna do without them. We'll see:) So that's all for now. Enjoy your spring weather!!! And think of us Roastin down here....

 

Leaving for service in the morning.... already HOT HOT HOT

Doesn't Justin look happy? :D

One of the Martinez girls wrote this.... they love to write on our car

 

A most sacred night

Hey everybody! I'm finally putting an update on here. They say time flies when you're havin fun... I guess we must be havin fun, cause weeks fly by quickly. I am always thinking I need get on and post to the blog... but then till I actually have some free time, I'm tired and it sounds like to much thinking, so I keep putting it off. I know everyone has been watching for something new posted though. So today we're just hangin at the house and I'm actually getting around to it.

The memorial went very well for the island in general. For our little group, we were a little disappointed. We only had 22 in attendance. Some weeks for the Sunday meeting we have more than that, but I don't think most people we invited seemed to think much of it, so it was only our faithful studies that have been attending the meetings each week that came. Also it was a very rainy ugly night, and there was a big football game on as well (or what we call soccer) So Satan had some good tricks up his sleeve. But like I said, overall for the island there was a lot. In Coxen Hole English there was 120, so that makes the total for English 142! And there are only about 48 publishers total. Now we do still have some visitors here too though, so all those extras weren't all from the territory, but most were. That's pretty good, right? In Oak Ridge, we were 50/50. There were 11 Witnesses, and 11 from the territory. In Oak Ridge, for the Spanish and then Miskito they had a total of 98 for the two. And I don't know the totals from the other Spanish groups. I would really like to have a total for the whole island to post, but I just couldn't get my hands on the info yet. Last year I think the total was above 600.

So this is the season for many to leave and go home. The snow birds as we have been calling them. Brother Thompson calls it the mass exodus. In total, we will have lost 9 and then there is another couple that left in January and won't be back until mid June. So with 48 publishers, it will be down to 37 for awhile. And then there's not many vacation visitors either. So it will be seeming quiet and empty around here. And Justin and I will be feeling even more lonely up in Oak Ridge, because all the ones that would come up and support the group up there, have left, or are leaving, so it will be interesting to see how the meetings go. Since brother King left, Justin is now the Watchtower conductor. He's hoping he won't be the speaker every week too! For now there have been enough visitors still trickling by, that he hasn't had to give too many talks yet. But I think that will change very soon. There is a couple that is here until May 2nd and they have been coming up East every week to the meeting which is awesome. They will even be here for the 2 weeks we will be gone, which will be nice since there really isn't anyone else going up East. And they even offered to pick up our studies for the meeting, cool!

We did our first real "touristy" type thing this past Monday. A sister organized for a group of us to go out on one of those boat snorkeling trip things for a very good price. We went to a couple different spots to snorkel, and they took us to this really cool little island for lunch. It was pretty small, maybe 50 feet by 300 feet. But it was packed full of little grass roof huts. Yes people lived there. But is was in the middle of the ocean and far away from Roatan and still pretty far from the mainland too. It was crazy, I think the coolest little island I have ever seen. I can't imagine living there though, it would probably get really boring, but it was neat to see. So anyhow, we walk up to this one hut, where the lady feeds groups that stop here, and she had a meal all ready for us... A whole fish-eyes, teeth and all, beans and rice and fried plantain. It was really good. It was a really fun day, and the scenery was awesome. We passed a whole bunch of little tiny islands that would be perfect for one house.... I think I have my first place planned out for the new system:) So that has been our excitement lately. Well, we will be seeing everybody real soon, and are looking forward to it very much.