Fist Fights In Paradise, and God's Strange Ways...

One of the areas I served in during my mission was a very small island named Utila just off the northern coast of Honduras. Although small, it was one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. When I was there it was picture post card perfect. We used to walk out on the pier which went out into the ocean for hundreds of feet and would dangle our feet in the ocean as we ate our lunch. And there was this bridge which crossed a little finger of water that stretched inward into the interior of the island where we could watch sharks and rays as they glided past under foot. We even saw a school of flying fish which must have made a wrong turn somewhere because they no sooner entered the bay than they turned themselves about and headed back out into open waters.

The Day I killed My Grandpa...

My father married, for his day, very late in life. It's not that he didn't believe in the institution of marriage, he wanted to get married and start a family and believed that families were divinely instituted of God. Unlike our own times, the belief that marriage was good and brought with it happiness was not a belief that was uncommon in his day and my father's desire to get married was very much like those of most other men at that time...and yet, he waited despite his deep desires to get married.

An Uninvited Guest...

I guess Utila was the area in my mission that was most abundant in the creepy crawly sorts of things most people instinctively avoid. There were the sand flies which were a sort of biting fly which became a constant nuisance at the beach whenever the winds ceased and there was a calm on the island, but I'm not talking about this type of creature. The types of critters I'm talking about now are the stuff of nightmares for most people.

The Path To Hell Is Paved In Cement...

When missionaries from our church first arrived in Utila they found five churches, five different denominations, all of them Christian. There were also five bars on the island and the bars were always filled with people every day. The churches only had people come on Sundays and even then not so much as the bars. So, there was some fierce competition for converts between the denominations.

Ah, Parasites...

Parasites are a fact of life. We all entertain them hosting their existence mostly without any knowledge of that fact. The reason for our ignorant bliss relies on the fact that our bodies have become accustomed to hosting the parasites common to the areas in which we live. This all changes whenever a person travels to a foreign country because the parasites indigenous to these new areas make themselves forcefully apparent to whomever is unlucky enough to ingest them. So, while we were in Honduras, we were schooled in the ways of these parasites and learned how to avoid the unfortunate consequences that they could impose on our health and our work.