Hi all!
We still have no internet access at our house. We believe that our equipment, which has been serving us faithfully for years and years and is borderline obsolete, has sustained water damage. Although we were able to reconnect several times after the connection first died, each time we did so the connection was lost again within 24 hours.
The service we've been using is gradually being phased out, anyway, so rather than continuing to try to repair this equipment, we are looking into other options. There is a local business which offers a wireless internet connection in the city of Gracias. While we aren't located in the city, our home is on a hill which overlooks the city from a few miles away. Since we have line-of-sight to the city, it is possible that we may be able to connect to the internet using this service. The technician is due to visit our house this week, and then we should know what is possible.
We hope that this system will give us a faster connection as well as being less expensive than our current satellite internet. Please be praying that this situation will be resolved soon!
Meanwhile, life goes on, even without internet. Those ministries which are ongoing throughout the year continue - the feeding centers, pastor training school, the Bible book store, etc. A shipment of food is due in port any day now, and there will be travel and paperwork involved in getting the food from the port to us here in Gracias. In addition, the menfolk are putting most of their daily efforts into a major project: planting nine acres of coffee on a section of our property! This is the time of year when the plants have to be set into the ground, and this has been a huge job. We are hopeful that, in time, the profits from the coffee harvests will help pay for the cost of the ministry here. At the moment, we're investing large amounts of time and money into this - we had to bulldoze a road down through the property, for access to the coffee fields, prepare the ground to receive the plants, purchase the plants and hire knowledgeable local men to oversee the planting and care of the young plants, purchase fertilizer and pesticides, etc. Please pray with us that God would bless and reward these efforts!
In family news, after more than a year of trying to arrange for it to happen, this week Boo is
finally having her tonsils taken out! Because the removal of tonsils isn't done often anymore, and because Boo is in her late teens, this isn't considered as simple a surgery as you might expect. We wanted to have this done at the hospital on the north coast, where we know the American doctors and trust the level of care. Getting
to the hospital, and finding the time when we could pull away from the ministry work to take Boo there and stay through her recuperation period was the difficulty.
Meanwhile, however, Boo suffered from nearly continual discomfort. We came up with a plan, but, as is common here, the plan was changed and revised multiple times . . . however this week it is really happening. Boo's tonsils are scheduled to be removed
today!
On Monday afternoon, Boo left home and went to spend the night in Gracias with Russell and Iris (and Russellito). Very early Tuesday she caught the first bus to the city of Santa Rosa de Copan, where she had to transfer to a different bus to travel to the larger city of Sana Pedro Sula. Sending my small, delicate, blonde 18 year old daughter traveling alone, by bus, in Central America, to the city with the highest murder rate in the world, felt like quite an act of faith, I will admit. Boo felt up to the challenge, though, and she is extremely anxious to be rid of her tonsils!
From the huge bus terminal in Sana Pedro Sula she took a taxi to the airport, where she met up with a missionary who works at the hospital in Balfate. He was in the city picking up people at the airport, and he arranged this meeting so that Boo could travel the rest of the way to the hospital in a private vehicle. From the airport, the reminder of the trip would involve about five hours of driving.
Boo will stay at the hospital compound, in the home of missionary friends, during a week of recuperation. The doctors recommended this because there is a slight chance that she could have a serious complication involving post-operative bleeding during the first week after the surgery, and this would be dangerous for her to experience while traveling, or when she has returned to an area where a quick medical response would be unavailable.
Toward the end of the week, Rachel and her husband, Brandy, will travel to the north coast of Honduras from their home in the capital, so that they can accompany Boo on her return trip by bus. This was arranged because of concerns that Boo might not feel well enough after the surgery to travel alone.
To keep this (fairly) short, I've left out so much of the story - the fact that there is a visiting team of Ear, Nose, and Throat doctors at the missionary hospital this week, for instance. This is the type of doctor who would preform this type of surgery in the US, especially in instances where complications would be anticipated. We would have been happy to have the general surgeon at Balfate handle this operation, but because Boo was able to be there this week, she'll be under the care off specialists!
Rachel was planning to travel with Boo both ways on this trip, but Brandy had a scheduled vacation this month, and the exact dates of the vacation weren't tied down until the day the vacation started! This made Rachel's ability to plan her part of the trip particularly difficult! The timing of the visiting team of doctors and the timing of Brandy's vacation (when we finally got that info) didn't fit together well enough to allow Rachel to accompany Boo early this week, which is how it came about that Boo took on the first part of the journey alone.
Please pray with us that the operation will go smoothly, that Boo will be free from the sickness and discomfort that her tonsils were causing, that her recuperation will be complication-free, and that she (and Rachel and Brandy) will have safe travel back home again. Thanks so much!
And thank you SO MUCH for reading to the end of this long, pictureless post! On top of everything else, my laptop keyboard is acting up, and so it took me MUCH longer than usual to type in this post. Before lots of arduous editing, the paragraphs above looked like this:
Boo willl staaya aaat the hsopitall lcompound, in the home o missionary fffriends, dduring aa week kof recuperaation. The codtors recommene thi becauase there i aa sssight chnce tht he coud haaaave a aserious compliction invollving post-operative bleeding during the irt wee ter the surgery, n thi would be dddaanagerous sfor her to experience while travelilngn, or when shse ha returned to an area where a quick mediclala respsonse wouldd be unavaiallable.
I shared that so that you will be appropriately appreciative of my efforts! I'll post again, and let you know how Boo is doing, next time I have internet access! Thanks for praying!
While I'm still struggling with all of that, there are also Twitter (yes, I have a twitter account, but I still don't really know what to do with it) and Google +, and Facetime, and Skype, and Instagram, and . . . 
