Who Ever Heard of a Tropical Depression?

[from October 28, 2017]

Hey family, so this week was kinda one of the crazier ones I´ve had- and I think it´ll be one of the craziest ones I think I´ll ever have. Sorry this email´s gonna be pretty self centered this week- I don´t have a lot of time, and I want to say a ton!

So Sunday President Carlisle came to our church meeting. I confirmed Antony (the 16 year old who got baptized last week) and then we went to eat lunch and go do some visits. The zone leaders got kinda mad at my companion and I because we didn´t go to the choir practice for the zone conference, but it was ok, Elder Santillana didn´t get too mad at me, he knows I don´t really like singing. Pretty normal day actually.

Mondays are always super busy, I was running around all day doing crazy stuff for president. He basically gave me the schedule of everything that´s gonna happen for a long time in the mission. One thing we have to get ready for is that a 70 is gonna visit our mission, which will be cool. But yeah, Mondays are P-day for every other missionary so we get lots of phone calls and emails on Monday.

Tuesday was zone conference- we ended up singing haha. It was pretty good. One new rule that´s gonna be kinda hard to follow is that we have to get haircuts in church clothes. I might just start to convince another Elder in the house to cut my hair.

Wednesday was the beggining of crazyness. We woke up like normal and it was raining super hard outside. So we went to the office and it was all normal. Then we got a phone call from the AP´s that the river was probably and was entering/going to enter lots of homes. So we went back and yeah the river was super high. The stick that says how high the water is was under water. We put on some helping hands t shirts and started helping people put all their stuff in garbage bags so it wouldn´t get wet. Then we got a phone call from the nurse and said the same sister missionary who had an asthma attack before had another one and needed to be taken to the hospital. So we rushed over there (all 4 of us secretaries, we left the assistants in the Lima). While we were with them in the hospital the Ap´s called us and said that yeah, the river overflowed. So we tried to get back, but the water was making it really hard to drive and it was coming to a point where we didn´t think we were gonna be able to get home safely. So we turned around and went back to San Pedro where it was all good pretty much. At this point everybody in Lima was calling asking what to do. We told all the elders to go to our house (which is two stories) and all the sisters to go to one of the apartments where they live on the second floor. In a couple houses the water got in. So we were just in the office . President was in a Zone conference in Progreso and he got back to San Pedro around 6 o´clock at night. He came into the office and we talked with him about what to do. About that time the AP´s called again to tell us that water was really high and had gotten into the house. So we told them to move everybody to the Zone leaders house in la Planeta. It would be cramped, but maybe a little safer. We were planning on sleeping on the floor in the office, but President invited us to come stay in his house that night. Pretty crazy, because as far as I know, nobody else has ever stayed the night in President´s house. While we were there he had us calling all the missionaries (mostly in the Lima) to make sure they were all safe. We also had a little problem with some missionaries who were in the process of travelling getting stuck in a bus in Ceiba. It rained over there really bad too and they ended up closing the roads east of San Pedro completely during the night. They just had to sleep the night in the bus and wait, because there was no safe way for them to sleep in a missionaries house. So pretty crazy stuff. We didn´t have any clothes or anything but it was kinda cool to sleep in President´s house.

Thursday morning we woke up and headed straight back to the office and President had me write the letter. We basically spent the morning answering phone calls and telling missionaries what to do. In that time it stopped raining and we were able to get back into the lima. It was pretty bad. Lots of flooding and at times, we thought we weren´t gonna be able to make it back. We saw some people walking in neck high water pulling a plastic garbage can with their stuff in it behind them. Cars were 100% underwater. People were putting up stick and tarps to make houses in dry parts of town. It was pretty crazy. There were goverment lines of probably 200 people waiting to get food. So we starting helping distribute stuff and we basically did that all day.

Computer Selfie

Friday we went to the office in the morning and then we just came home and started visiting again. We made sure that Sofia got her baptism interview so she could get baptized. Then we just helped an older lady get her house back in shape. She didn´t have a lot to begin with- but when something like this happens... So then we filled up the baptismal font for the baptism today and cleaned the chapel so it´ll look good. We also went looking for somebody with a white skirt because the one we had was way too big. So we went to a member family´s house and got the skirt. One important thing to remember is that they had pink eye.

Today I woke up with pink eye. Gosh dangit. So I called the nurse and bought some drops. The good thing is that I got it now that things have calmed down a little bit. And it´s only in one eye... we´ll try to keep it that way. Maybe I´ll squint while we take baptism photos today hahah. We just went to eat and now we´re emailing. We are all pretty tired from this week.

Baptism of Sofia

The funny thing about all this is that this was a tropical depression or basically nothing huge. Nobody´s ever heard of a tropical depression. Honduras isn´t super well prepared for things like this.

Anyways guys, happy Diwali. Launch a firework for me.
Elder Stoddard