Home sweet home!

Arriving into the United States last night in Texas I wanted to salute the flag and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. I am proud to be an American and love my country. I also feel blessed to have had the opportunity to travel to these countries, learning about the culture and the people, seeing the poverty and poor conditions of some areas. Regardless of the tough situations there were smiles everywhere and friendly voices saying, "Hola" or "Buenos Dias". I finally have a understanding of what LDS missionaries experience when they serve. For those serving in foreign language speaking missions they can't help but learn the language because they are surrounded by it. For all missionaries in general I can see why they come to love the people so much. At the customs office last night as we were waiting for the plane to get fuel SRC was talking to the customs officials. They had been asking him questions about the trip, etc. The female customs officer summed it up beautifully. She said, "Everyone is good. Everyone has good inside of them but it is because of circumstances, life situations that causes them to do bad things." I agree with that!

Early on in my training for this role, Kara told me, when arriving at an event, to quickly identify my team. In four of the countries, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Honduras, and Nicaragua I had a great team. Manuel has been given the assignment to help me with whatever I needed. As we continued to work together in each country Manuel began to anticipate what I would need before I event asked for it. Plus, he was a very valuable translator even though he is still grasping the English language himself. I cannot tell you how much all of this mean to me and my confidence in the AV techs or SRCs route out of the meeting room, etc. For example, yesterday I was sitting right by the speakers and sitting that close it was LOUD. Manuel came over to the table and told him about the volume...it wasn't a problem for the attendees because they were sitting out further in the room. After a couple of minutes Manuel walked out of the room. He was back in about 15 minutes with a set of ear plugs. He had remembered seeing ear plugs in a bag of toiletries in our hotel rooms. Talk about problem solving. It was hard to drive away from the hotel yesterday and say good bye. This is a picture of me and Manuel.

Darla sent me these highlights about the trip:

In the past 15 days

You have traveled 27,382 miles(24,900 circumference of the earth);
Counting the USA and fuel stops, you have been in 9 countries and 13 cities;
You have done at least 18 presentations;
Met with 2 or 3 presidents of countries;
Interviewed at least 5 times.

Wow! Below are a few pictures that highlight the trip.

The pilots were so great! SRC and I were commeting on this as we were driving home last night. We did not worry about the plane or the pilots once on this trip. We knew that everytime we arrived at the airport to leave the pilots would be there. It was a great feeling. Plus, they were fun and easy to like.

OOPS! This oxygen mask hatch kept falling open. It really isn't a big deal but trying to get the masks back in the hatch was almost enough to make you swear. I am sure Andrew and Ryan (pilots) had a couple of moments when that is exactly what they wanted to do. Try shoving these masks back into that small box in a tight, cramped space with hot and humid temperatures. I noticed last night that the hatch was taped closed. No worries this was not the only hatch with oxygen masks.

I really don't know what it is with me and cows. I am fascinated by them. The one on the left is Andrews cow, Fluffy. Can you seen their toupees?







I have many more pictures that I could share but the size of this blog would be too huge if I posted all of them. Enjoy!