Welcome To The Jungle!
Well, I am here. I am definitely in Honduras haha!
My companion is Elder Martinez from Ecuador. He is super awesome and is a great missionary. He works great with the members and we get along well.
Let me tell you all about my trip to Honduras. So I got up early Tuesday morning around 2 AM to leave for the airport. It was hard to say good bye to Elder Darling because we got along so well. Anyways, we got to airport and all was well and we arrived in Honduras around 9 am. We were all welcomed by the APs and the president and his wife. We got to the church and they began to assign us to our trainers and our areas. Elder Somerville (the elder from the LA airport) is going to Roatan! How crazy! Elder Hancock is going to Mezapa which is a dangerous and poor area. Then I got assigned to La Ceiba! Ceiba is one of the larger cities on the coast of Honduras. My companion is Elder Martinez from Ecuador. He is super awesome and is a great missionary. He works great with the members and we get along well. La Ceiba has the only Walmart in the whole mission. A Wendy's, a Burger King, a KFC, and a Dunkin Donuts. I am blessed. The showers are cold and the nights are hot but I am getting used to it. The people are great. They love talking to me because I am white. We are just about a 15 minute walk from the beach. It is pretty nice. It is one of the richer areas and is not as dangerous as San Pedro. It is hot and it has rained just once here. I usually come home either soaked in sweat or in rain haha. The people are very nice. There is a lot of work to be done. We have a ward of just 40 people which is crazy. Apparently there used to be a lot more but there are a ton of people who are inactive. We are opening this area so we don't know very much about anything so we have been asking a lot of questions to the bishop. I eat pretty well. Baleadas are what everybody eats here. It is basically a tortilla with eggs, beans and sometimes meat. They aren't anything special but I like them. Also with every meal we have a mountain of fried platanos which just taste like french fries and I like them. There are animals everywhere. Horses, pigs, and dogs. So many dogs. It makes me so sad to see all the dogs here. There are hundreds of dogs just wandering the streets and then everybody has a guard dog. The guard dogs are simply chained to a gate their whole life and they feed it a little food and water to keep it alive. It makes me miss Hondo. But I know that Hondo has the best family in the world. I have already had to throw some rocks at a couple of dogs to scare them off. My companion and I get along well. It is just kind of hard to relate because in Ecuador they don't have the same movies or games or things to do as the US. Plus he doesn't speak any English so it is hard to express something the way I want to haha. But he is very helpful and likes to work hard. He knows all the ins and outs of how things work with the people so it is nice to have him around. But that is all I can think of right now. Let me tell you about Planeta! That is the area I was in for one night before the transfer.
Let me tell you all about my trip to Honduras. So I got up early Tuesday morning around 2 AM to leave for the airport. It was hard to say good bye to Elder Darling because we got along so well. Anyways, we got to airport and all was well and we arrived in Honduras around 9 am. We were all welcomed by the APs and the president and his wife. We got to the church and they began to assign us to our trainers and our areas. Elder Somerville (the elder from the LA airport) is going to Roatan! How crazy! Elder Hancock is going to Mezapa which is a dangerous and poor area. Then I got assigned to La Ceiba! Ceiba is one of the larger cities on the coast of Honduras. My companion is Elder Martinez from Ecuador. He is super awesome and is a great missionary. He works great with the members and we get along well. La Ceiba has the only Walmart in the whole mission. A Wendy's, a Burger King, a KFC, and a Dunkin Donuts. I am blessed. The showers are cold and the nights are hot but I am getting used to it. The people are great. They love talking to me because I am white. We are just about a 15 minute walk from the beach. It is pretty nice. It is one of the richer areas and is not as dangerous as San Pedro. It is hot and it has rained just once here. I usually come home either soaked in sweat or in rain haha. The people are very nice. There is a lot of work to be done. We have a ward of just 40 people which is crazy. Apparently there used to be a lot more but there are a ton of people who are inactive. We are opening this area so we don't know very much about anything so we have been asking a lot of questions to the bishop. I eat pretty well. Baleadas are what everybody eats here. It is basically a tortilla with eggs, beans and sometimes meat. They aren't anything special but I like them. Also with every meal we have a mountain of fried platanos which just taste like french fries and I like them. There are animals everywhere. Horses, pigs, and dogs. So many dogs. It makes me so sad to see all the dogs here. There are hundreds of dogs just wandering the streets and then everybody has a guard dog. The guard dogs are simply chained to a gate their whole life and they feed it a little food and water to keep it alive. It makes me miss Hondo. But I know that Hondo has the best family in the world. I have already had to throw some rocks at a couple of dogs to scare them off. My companion and I get along well. It is just kind of hard to relate because in Ecuador they don't have the same movies or games or things to do as the US. Plus he doesn't speak any English so it is hard to express something the way I want to haha. But he is very helpful and likes to work hard. He knows all the ins and outs of how things work with the people so it is nice to have him around. But that is all I can think of right now. Let me tell you about Planeta! That is the area I was in for one night before the transfer.
Planeta is a very very poor area. I wish I took pictures but I didn't have my camera yet. But everybody lived in these tiny little shacks with a bed and a sink. It was so sad. Apparently that area is as poor as it gets. And my area is about as nice as it gets except for Roatan. We walked on dirt roads and took the craziest buses in the world. I didn't understand a thing that was going on that day. I was just going along for the ride haha. When we finally went to the house it was still boiling hot. I was so stressed and a little scared. It was kinda of a rough night. I woke up and showered with a bucket of cold water and we got on the bus. But now it was nice to see how blessed I am to be starting out here in Ceiba. When I eventually go back to a place like Planeta I will be ready haha.
I already had my first baptism which is great! A young boy named Jose decided to be baptized just as I arrived. Cant wait to have more! He is the son of a family that has been inactive for about 15 years. The sisters before us met with the rest of the family and they have started coming back to church. Just after the transfer he agreed to be baptized. We are working on getting the family back to regular church attendance.
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| Our bedroom |
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| Elder Martinez and Elder Gessell |
I love you all!
Elder Gessell
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