Air Plane Rides Into Utila...

Utila is an island about 30 miles off the northern coast of Honduras just north of a city called La Ceiba. When traveling between this island and mainland Honduras, we would always travel by air. At the time, as far as I knew, there was only one charter company operating a service between La Ceiba and Utila and so, over time, we got to know one of the pilots very well. So well, in fact, that he would let us take turns flying in the seat next to him so we could watch him fly the airplane and get a pilot's eye view of the trip. It was a lot of fun.

Please, Don't Take My Bike...

Choluteca was the first area I served in that was big enough to need a bike. Getting a bike really opened things up for us and allowed us to reach a much larger audience than would have otherwise been possible. A person can cover three to four times as much ground on a bicycle than they can on foot so we were able to both schedule more appointments because we would spend less time in between getting to them and to expand the range of our visits to places too far away to be considered without a bike. We loved our bicycles because they made our work easier and more productive. And, let's face it, they're fun to ride and filled with the memories and nostalgia of youth.

Take Care When Choosing On Which Side of the Road You Walk...

The third area in which I served in the mission field was a place called Choluteca. It was in southern Honduras and was so hot that it was called El Horno, or, The Oven in English. It was just a few miles north of Nicaragua. And, as it turned out, I was transferred there during the hottest time of the year. I remember it being so hot at night that even turning on a fan was uncomfortable and it felt like someone was holding a hair dryer in front of me as I tried to get some sleep. Air conditioning? There was none.

My Second Companion and the Dog at the Fence...

Four months after arriving in Honduras my first companion was transferred to a new area and I was given someone new to work with. Transfers in the mission field were always a bit awkward at first because by the time they occurred, if things had gone well, you would have been with your previous companion long enough to either learn to really like him or, at the very least, to know him well enough that you could make any accommodations required by whatever peculiarities he may possess to make the day go by smoothly and amicably. He, of course, all the while is doing the same for you.

Christmas With My Cousin Mary...

Mary, although she was my cousin, was always very old to me. When I was a small child, she was already part way into her sixties because we were separated by several generations. My father had developed a passion for genealogy and was, therefore, able to inform me that Mary was my double first cousin three times removed.

My First Week of College...

When I was eighteen, and had just graduated from High School, as most people do at that time in their life, I began thinking seriously about what came next. It's not that I had never considered such things before that time, but milestones like graduation seem to imprint a sense of urgency on thoughts like these which previously, at least for me at that young age, had seemed to exist only somewhere in the far distant future.

First Impressions...

I remember the first day of my mission vividly. In hindsight, there was nothing about that day which could not have been predicted by any average thoughtful person who anticipated what someone in similar circumstances might experience. But for someone like myself, who was totally without any experiences even remotely like those thrust upon me and into which I was totally immersed, and therefore, without any reference from the past to fall back on or from which I might get my bearings, find some context, or from which I might glean a little insight, it was truly a shocking experience.