January 10, 2008

Today is Field Council meeting day. Which means all the missionaries, the director of missions for the General Baptists, and the assistant director spend all day talking about where we are, what we want to do for the upcoming year, and problems that need addressing. This is just what Cindy loves – all day meetings. It was long but it wasn’t too bad. There was a lot of laughing and joking inter-mixed with some very serious discussions.

We all then went out for supper in San Pedro Sula. On our way to the restaurant in a little town called El Porvenir we saw a large crowd gathered on the side of the street and traffic was down to one lane. As we got closer we noticed the police were there and they had yellow tape blocking a portion of the street. When got around the police car we saw what all the commotion was about. A man had been killed in the street and the police had roped off the body and covered it with tree branches. Although you could still see the man’s legs and feet sticking out. In Honduras if someone dies and you touch the body then you are responsible to pay for the funeral costs. This apparently holds true even for the police. When someone dies the police come, rope off the body, cover it with tree branches and try to locate a next of kin to come remove the body. Our teammate told us we will see this fairly regularly. That’s definitely different from the culture where we grew up.

Tonight when we got back Cindy got online and was reading her emails. She read Martha’s email and it made her cry and Andi’s email and it made her laugh. She read Andi’s email only to find out she is currently interviewing applicants to replace me as her BFF. She emailed her that they must sign a non-compete clause for when she’s back in the states. Then she read Gretchen’s email so she can stay in touch with her hospital world.