Yes, I do know that I’m behind just a tad bit! :)
Mission life has been unrelenting, task after task, the past months since we landed here in San Pedro Sula.
…It’s like you’re invited to a wonderful church meeting, and you go, it’s a fantastic meeting, but after the meeting is over, instead of going home and chilling and sitting in your hot tub and reading a book, which is what I did in my past life, you get in your car and drive to ANOTHER church meeting across town, and start the all over again.
…And every day seems like you have a choice, I can either keep up-to-date on emails, phone calls and whatsapp messages, along with paperwork, logistics, and planning, or I can work with the missionaries in meetings, interviews, or in the field, but not both, there just aren’t enough hours!
Traveling to Honduras we had to say good-bye to Katie and Kyden (her fiancee) at the airport drop off, and then Garret at the gate for his flight. He flew the same day, at about the same time, from SLC back to Spokane to begin Home MTC the following week.
On June 26th, we landed in Honduras. The trip from SLC was uneventful, we spent the night in Atlanta, we were lucky enough to get to see a missionary buddy, Jared Justice and his wife Claudia. (Elder & Sister Justice have already served a 6 month Senior Mission to the El Salvador San Salvador West Mission, and our planning to come down and serve with us in Honduras in 2027, we can’t wait!)
We were met at the San Pedro Sula Airport by President Ostler and Sister Ostler, the outgoing Mission Leaders, and the 2 missionaries serving as “Assistants to the President” or abbreviated as “APs”.
Surreal, as it’s finally “real”, we’re in Honduras, and meeting missionaries in person. I can only imagine how it felt for the Ostlers, to be at the end of their journey! I know that when it happens, it will be a wonderfully confusing day for Emily and I as well.
The first thing everyone notices after landing in San Pedro Sula is the humidity and the never-ending heat :) It’s generally about 90F, with extremely high humidity, making it stifling. It’s generally thought of as among the hottest places in Central America, on par with Panama City, Panama. Much, much hotter than the highlands of Guatemala or San Jose, Costa Rica, all of which are at a much higher elevation.
We headed to the Mission Office, about 10 minutes away. It’s housed in the wing of a Stake Center (A meetinghouse that has offices and space for the local Stake, a unit that’s above the Ward or Branch level, and usually has 4-8 wards or branches.)
We had a wonderful afternoon getting to know the office missionaries, and wow, they had gone all out! They gave us a signed basketball, Honduras jerseys with our names on them, bought a cake, and brought us fresh baleadas!
(Baleadas are the main dish of Honduras, a flour tortilla with refried beans, salty cheese, scrambled eggs and sour cream.)
We spent the rest of the first day with the Ostlers, asking lots of questions, getting a tour of the Mission Office and Mission Home, and a trip to the Grocery Store.
…That night we had a Mission-wide Zoom call with all the missionaries, and introduced ourselves and our family… The missionaries all joined the Zoom, and were all really excited. Zoom calls of this sort can be a little chaotic, but are always fun. Tanner, Katie and Garret were able to be on the Zoom call and do their own introductions, in Spanish.
A couple of funny things happened… At the start of the call, Katie was just stunned about how weird all of this was, that her Mom and Dad were now Mission Leaders, in Central America, the same part of the world that she had recently returned from as a missionary in Panama… So at the beginning of the call, not knowing she was not muted, she blurted out, “This is SOOO WEIRD, I can believe they are doing this!”... I was translating later on in the call for Emily, and translating is tough, it’s even tougher when you are presiding and conducting the meeting. At one point, I got languages flipped, and Emily said a few paragraphs in English, and instead of translating and saying them in Spanish, I just recapped them in English 🙂
Having the Ostlers precede us in this mission is something I’ll be forever grateful for! They left with everything very organized, efficient, and planned for the future. In fact, President Ostler left us with a day by day itinerary for our first 6 weeks or so! From the day we landed, until the end of July, we had things plugged in, so we could get through the first transfer cycle in the mission, and not miss anything important! We love the Ostlers, they are amazing!
Elder Tosca, Elder Paredes, Elder Dayton, Elder Wheeler, Hermana Christensen, President Christensen, Elder Milla, Elder Jorgensen, Elder Leland, Elder Carreto, Elder Choc
The next day, we got started on a “Mission Tour”, where we traveled quite a bit for multiple days, to meet all the missionaries in person. The change of Mission Leaders is huge in the lives of missionaries, so they are all excited to meet us in person, and to get to work. We first started with meetings in San Pedro Sula, and then a few days later drove to La Ceiba, 5 hours, and then on to Olanchito, about 9 hours away from San Pedro Sula by car!
La Paz Zone (our first day!)
Planeta Zone (our first day!)
We got to meet with the Medina family in our first few days in the country. President Medina has served as a Stake President here in Satellite Stake for 9 years, and then had served as a Mission Presidency Counselor with President Ostler for just a few months. I called both President Medina and the other counselor, President Zavala, to serve with us again.
Christensens and the Medina Family
Our residence here in San Pedro Sula, is what’s called, the “Mission Home”. It’s really, really nice. Hands down, nicest part of San Pedro Sula, the most secure, and also has tons of nice restaurants and services nearby. We live on the 14th floor, and our balcony has about 270 degree view, and overlooks downtown, and we see the spire of the Temple!
First P-Day w/ Missionaries, Overlooking San Pedro Sula
…In comparison to where our missionaries usually live, it’s kind of like on the TV Show “Survivor”, where the teams that win a challenge get to go to a resort to recoup their energy. 🙂 We have 3 pools, a slide, mini-golf, foosball, ping-pong, soccer field, tennis court, and a basketball court! (The pools are off limits to the missionaries, due to safety concerns they don’t swim or do dangerous activities or sports on the mission.)
The Elders and Sisters that are in leadership positions, meet in a meeting called, “Mission Leadership Council”, which is about 28 missionaries, as we normally have 2 Assistants to the President, 20 Zone Leaders, and 6 Sister Leaders.
…I tell you all of this to summarize that they LOVE to come to our house on P-day, so we end up doing that quite a bit. We host them for 5-6 hours, make them breakfast or lunch, and talk and hang out with them as they play sports, call their families, or relax.
Then, on Tuesday morning we take the Mission Leadership Council to the Temple, so here’s our first time at the Temple with everyone:
On Wednesday, July 2nd, after a few whirlwind days of Zone Conferences, interviews, first Sunday at church, P-day with the missionaries and then the Temple and our Mission Leadership Council Meeting on Tuesday, it was time to rest… Wait, nope.
We left on our 1st, of many, road trips. We took the APs with us, and drove to La Masica, did 4 interviews, and continued on to the port town of La Ceiba, the 3rd largest city in Honduras. We have 2 zones and stake there, and a lot of missionaries.
We stayed at Hotel Quinta Real, which is right downtown and super convenient to the chapels and locations we need to get to in La Ceiba.
Beach in front of the Hotel Quinta Real Hotel in La Ceiba
We did another meeting and set of interviews in La Ceiba and then drove another 4 hours, so like 9 hours in total, from civilization in San Pedro Sula, to Olanchito.
We got our first chance to work with our missionaries in the field while we were in La Ceiba, Sister Christensen went with Sister Pritchett and Sister Tucker, and I went out with Elder Milla and Elder Jaco.
Hermanas Tucker, Pritchett & Christensen
President Christensen, Friend we Taught, Elder Milla, Elder Jacofsa
Missionaries have a half-day free per week, called "Preparation Day”, of “P-Day” to do laundry, write or call home, do errands, and play sports. Generally the missionary's day is Monday. For us, we kind of try to do it on Satuday, with varying levels of success. 🙁
One of our first P-Days was July 7th, our 30th wedding anniversary, so we hiked up to the Coca Cola sign in the city.
After being the country for about 2 weeks, doing a big drive around the mission and interviewing and meeting all the missionaries face to face, it was time to do “cambios” or transfers process! Emily previously wrote a great description of the whole process:
“Every 6 weeks, some missionaries go home, some new missionaries come to the mission, and some missionaries get new companions, or new areas to work in. The process is called transfers (or cambios) in Spanish. We are losing 10 missionaries and getting 7. The AP's came to our home and we spent the entire day today prayerfully trying to figure out the best place for all the missionaries to serve. We read letters from the Zone leaders (we have 10 zones and each zone has 2 leaders over it) about their recommendations for the missionaries in their zones. We read the Hermana Leaders letters about their recommendations about the sisters they lead. We shared the information that we learned about them from the interviews that we did at the zone conferences. The AP's shared what they knew about the missionaries from working with them and doing exchanges with them. Information leads to inspiration. And then we started making changes. The transfer board is now digital so we had it on our TV screen and could drag and drop the missionaries into new areas, with new companions. It took the whole day, but we got most of it done. We are all going to keep looking it over, and pray about it to make sure the decisions we made are the best for each missionary.”
President, Hermana, Elder Milla, Elder Paredes
President, Elder Milla, Elder Paredes Overlooking Green San Pedro Sula
