Thursday, February 18, 2010
We are back! The flight to Teguci was uneventful , plenty of empty seats but not what you’d call empty. Wheeler and I had an empty seat between us. It seemed unreal to finally be on the plane to Honduras WITH Wheeler! For those of you who haven’t seen him recently, he ( very reluctantly and with a bad attitude!) uses a cane and walks with a slight limp. Other than that you would never know he gave us all such a scare. When the plane landed at TGU the flight attendant welcomed us to Tegucigalpa and “especially Wheeler Conkling!” As we deplaned, I think every single member of the ground crew was squeezed into the jet bridge to see the miracle on legs and the ground crew chief, Daniel met us in the terminal! Everyone was so pleased to see him.
Suzy, Lucy, and David met us along with Howard from Vermont (blue bus driving Howard!) who had just arrived on Continental. Hunter and Meagan – our driver and amigo Jose was there with the van too! We arrived at Erika’s to great fanfare as Andrea and Erika ran to meet us (and by us I mean Wheeler!) Maria was still in school and Danilo (drum roll please) is AT WORK!!! He finally has a job working in security for Pepe’s administration. Thanks be to God! Andrea is lovely as ever, studying hard as I write this for her medical school studies. Maria, in 6th grade, has shot up and is so grown up, as sweet as ever.
Suzy brought Mari, Sallie, Elsa, and Lucy by. What can I say except they are just as precious as ever. Grandpa Wheeler told Lucy that he had brought her a dress. Well, naturally she had to have it right then. Grandpa Wheeler, of course, complied and pulled out a beautiful white dress with pink decorations and a matching pink sweater. She was in 7th heaven, especially when Mari told her it is a princess dress!
Two pieces of news – Joey and I are freezing! (well, chilly) It is chilly here today. I doubt it will last so those of you packing for the Saturday travel, don’t radically change your wardrobe but do bring a jacket. The other cool thing is I now have a Honduran cell phone! It is really inexpensive to call the US from a cell phone here. The phone cost less than $20 and you buy minutes for it. I really needed a way to call my father every day which is why I got it. I think it will be a real convenience too with our team in different places. And it is red! Love it.
Joey and I are sharing Erika and Danilo’s room and have saved a bed for you, Marilyn. It is a huge room! There are two other rooms in the family house for us to use (I propose the house be the girls house) and 4 bedrooms off the courtyard. Erika and family are staying upstairs in a make shift room. They are so happy we are here and can’t wait for the rest of the team to arrive.
It is 5:30 pm, dinner is at 7 but the aroma of Wheeler’s favorite pork chop dinner is torturing me. The internet is down today so I hope to send this tomorrow morning. We plan on going to SBV tomorrow afternoon after we pick up Anne and Margot from the airport.
By the way, we experienced a first tonight. I suppose our (my) reputation is well-known enough that the shopping began last night when the shop came to us! One of the vendors from Valle, who makes beautiful and intricate wood products like the Noah’s Ark cross, brought by several boxes of items for us to look at. Not telling how much he left with…
It is so wonderful to be here. Already I feel the stress flowing out of my body being replaced by a peaceful joy. My prayer is that all of you can find that same peaceful joy wherever you are.
