NUESTRO PRESIDENTE ADOPTIVO....Our Adopted President

We have come to love many people on our mission. Along with our fantastic Gomez family, one of the other great mission families that we have met here is Hermana and President Chaverri, President of the other mission in Tegucigalpa. The river divides the city and our respective missions apart. The offices share a floor in our office building, right under the Distribution Center and Church offices for Honduras. We call him our adopted Mission President. The Chaverris are from Costa Rica, where he was just released as a member of the Quorum of Seventy prior to this mission call. Their daughter Maria is living with them in Honduras until January, when she will return to school.



Once a month, we get together with the two mission president families, and three other families here from the States. It started out a couple of years ago as an opportunity for the mission presidents to become more familiar with English. However, now we are the only non-Spanish speaking couple there....so more Spanish is spoken than English. (We are fine with that.) The other couples include the Whitakers (he is at the Embassy here) and the Packs (he teaches at an agricultural college here). More on each of these families later.

About a week ago President Chaverri turned 60. Hermana Chaverri decided that she was going to have a surprise birthday party for him. We had a ball. There were probably about 35 people there. He was so surprised, and we were all totally surprised when a seven piece Mariachi Band showed up. They were unbelievable. We also had a pinata...which let me tell you...these Latinos know how to do pinatas...even the adults were scrambling. I think I ended up with a tootsie roll.

We love these wonderful people. The Chaverri's will be a great memory of Honduras.