Today we stayed home and watched our stake conference from our home stake in Spokane. We got a new stake presidency. The new stake presidency is Stake President-Aaron Howard, 1st Councilor-Darron Woolley, 2nd Councilor-Larry Longhurst. Then we went to the hosptial to visit Elder Gonzalez. He has pneumonia. He messaged me at 1:20am on Friday morning and told me he was coughing so much that it was making him throw up and that he couldn't breath very well. He has been not feeling well for several weeks. He lives in the farthest part of our mission so I told him him that he needed to get on a bus first thing in the morning and come to the hospital in San Pedro. He said he wasn't going to be able to sleep and that there was a bus leaving at 3am. He asked if he could just get on that bus. I said that was fine. He got to Progreso about noon and I went and picked him and his companion, Elder Nailati, up at the bus stop and took them to the hospital in San Pedro. They ended up admitting him and diagnosing him with pneumonia. He was in the hospital until Monday. He got out Monday night and ended up staying at the mission home that night. He and his comp went with the MLC to the temple on Tuesday because neither of them have even gone on their mission yet. Then they took a bus with the MLC to the office and the office elders took them to Progreso and they got a bus all the way back to Trujillo. It makes me so grateful for the simplicity of my life back home. Everything in Honduras is just so hard.
Now for the crazy part of the Sunday. We got a call from the zone leaders (Leland and Stilson) in Progreso right about the time that we got to the hospital that 2 elders in their zone Elder Steinheiser and Elder Barrios had just been in a drive by shooting. They were walking down the street about 1pm going to their lunch appointment. There was a man standing on the side of the street ahead of them about 20 feet. A motorcycle came around the corner and was driving down the street the street the same direction the elders were walking. Right about the time that the elders passed the man on the street, the man on the motorcycle started shooting at the man on the street. Elder Barrios started running the other direction (the opposite direction the motorcycle was going) and managed to turn down a side street and hide. Elder Steinheiser on the other hand, started running in the same direction he was going, which was also the same direction the motorcycle was going, and the same direction that the man who was getting shot at started running. He and the man were running down the road about 2 feet from each other with the motorcylcer chasing them and shooting at them, well not at Elder Steinheiser but very close to him. The man got hit with a bullet and went down on the ground. Elder Steinheiser witnessed all of this and then finally had the sense to run off in another direction and hide in a near by playground. The man was shot a few more times until he was dead and the guy on the motorcycle drove off. Elder Steinheiser was so lucky that he did not get shot by a stray bullet, or on purpose because he is a witness. Elder Barrios, was hiding this whole time and he was just sure that his companion had gotten shot. He was so relieved when he finally found Elder Steinheiser and he was alive. The gangs actually do usually leave the missionaries alone and sometimes even help them. Elder Steinheiser and Elder Barrios told us that just last week a drunk man had been bothering them and kicking and yelling at them in the street. 3 gang members came over and took the man away. They told the missionaries that he (the drunk man) would not be bothering the missionaries again. The missionaries haven't seen the man again. They are pretty sure that the gang members killed the drunk man. We went and picked Elder Barrios and Elder Steinheiser up from the bishops house in Progreso. We brought them back to the mission home. We had to call the church security to figure out what to do. They told us to close the area for at least 6 weeks. Elder Steinheiser and Elder Barrios are just going to work in the office for a week until the next transfer.
