Hinckley Family Mission Newsletter

Dear Family and Friends,

May the Lord give you His peace.

Since our last newsletter that updated you on our lives up until the beginning of January, we have sent the small updates on Juan Pablo’s surgery as well as Daniel’s tonsillectomy. Just for the sake of telling a good story again, we’ll give an overview of how our end of January and almost all of February went.

Juan Pablo’s surgery was on January 26 in Dallas at the Texas Children’s Hospital. Looking back, everything went better than I expected. I was quite nervous, and though the surgery took longer than I expected, the surgeon and staff were great. They arranged it so that we could take Juan Pablo home that night and gave me great answers when I called in over the next few days. The doctor also let us have the post-op check-up on Monday instead of Thursday and gave us the go ahead that morning with an overall “looks great.” In the time that we stayed around in Dallas, we lived at my Aunt Ann Marie and Uncle Michael’s with their three rambunctious kids. That was wonderful because they helped us keep our minds off Juan Pablo’s scars and healing wounds. Juan Pablo loved being around the kids. We were also able to visit some friends and family in the area.

Now Juan Pablo’s scars are disappearing very nicely. If you want to know the medical terms of what he actually had, the surgery included a look at the bladder with an endoscopy, a pulling together of the lower abdominal muscles with an abdominoplasty, a bit of moving of the scrotum with a scrotoplasty, and a correction of his epispadias. He looks great and is done with surgeries. Now we just hope we can keep him from hurting himself, breaking any bones, or cracking his skull open as he seems to be a most accident-prone child.

Text Box: Juan Pablo pre-surgery: hungry and not happy with this silly thing on his ankle. So the rest of our stay in Texas was supposed to be nice and relaxing as we visited our parents, families, and friends and worked a bit on our rental house in Mason. That changed when Daniel decided to go and have his throat checked out with an Ear, Nose, and Throat Doctor in San Marcos. He had been getting sick quite often since last September, so I agreed that this was a good idea…if only I would have known. The doctor said Daniel’s tonsils were large as silver dollars and looked like Swiss cheese because of the bacteria that lived in them. The only way to get over his getting sick every few weeks was to have a tonsillectomy. So we moved our leaving date back a week and Daniel had his surgery on the first Monday of February. The surgery went well and Daniel was sent home to rest and recuperate. To wrap up a long week into a few sentences, after two trips to the emergency room and the loss of quite a bit of blood, Daniel made it to his check-up on Wednesday, the day before we were supposed to leave. The Dr. said that the spot that had been causing the bleeding was almost fully healed up, so he shouldn’t have anymore bleeding. We moved our flight home to February 21, just to make sure he’d be alright. I got to celebrate my 25^th birthday with my family and I left the next day for Honduras with my two boys pretty much in fine condition. Daniel didn’t fully recover his strength and energy for another week or so. The one moment I will always remember of the whole tonsillectomy happened one evening when Daniel had a bleeding spell while at my mom’s kitchen sink. We were both calm, knowing that this would keep the bleeding from getting any worse. I suppose he tried to find some humor in the situation, because he looked up at me and gave me a big toothy grin with blood clots hanging from his blood stained teeth. Gross, but funny.

Our return to Honduras didn’t show much change, which was good for some things like our house and such, but for the construction, not so good. We had been gone for a month, so I think our expectations, after being in fast-paced U.S., were not realistic for the slow-paced and set-back ridden lifestyle of Third World Comayagua, Honduras. Daniel soon set to work making phone calls and talking to city workers to try to get the black water (sewer) lines put in up to our area. He was also refining plans for the center section of the Casa Guadalupe construction which was slowly getting started. I started back in with my Lunch Bunch and getting the house dust-free once again after our month-long vacancy. Life as usual.

Juan Pablo’s 1^st birthday came up soon after our return. On March 12^th, Juan Pablo looked and acted all of one year…how our little son has grown. We had a little celebration for him with some friends at a hotel pool. He loves the water, which is great because here it is swimming weather practically year-round.

On the 14^th of March, my parents came for a two-week visit. We took the first week to travel around the country (not hard to do in a week since it’s the size of Kentucky). We headed out east to Olancho, a part of the country that is much like the ranching areas of Texas: lots of cattle and a Texan-like pride of being from that region. We actually stayed at a branch of the Catholic University of Honduras in Juticalpa. The campus is beautiful and the priest in charge, who is from the States, is working hard to provide a high quality education program from pre-kindergarten to university. They also have a wonderfully-run school for handicapped children which we visited. In the area we also visited an impressive cave with beautiful stalactites and stalagmites; I was reminded of my 6^th grade field trip to Longhorn Caverns. Ah, those were the days.

From there we headed north to the coast on a dirt road. We were so ready to get to our hotel on the beach after that bumpy 5 ½ hour drive that we could only think how grateful we were that we wouldn’t be going back that way. After recovering from our drive, we decided that the next day we would take a 45 minute boat ride out to some small islands. We snorkeled looking at some amazing coral reef in the lovely aqua blue water with white sand beaches. Then after eating fish on an island inhabited by a Garifuna tribe, we headed back to the mainland trying to beat a storm. Our smooth 45 minute ride out was an hour and some bumpy ride back. Juan Pablo slept the whole way while we tried to keep from turning green or bruising our bottoms too badly. Juan Pablo loved picking up shells and whatever else he could find that had washed up on shore.

After the beach we drove west to very near the Guatemalan border to the colonial town of Copan Ruinas. Copan is the home of one of the largest and most impressive Mayan ruins. We toured the ruins and enjoyed the beautiful scenery and atmosphere while resting at a lovely bed and breakfast. At the end of the week, we headed back to Comayagua where we spent Holy Week.

Holy Week in Comayagua can be described in one word: processions. They have at least one each day and all have a prayerful significance. We attended the most well-know and biggest one on Good Friday. The night before different groups make brightly colored, detailed carpets on the streets in a three or four block radius around the Cathedral/Central Park. One carpet is made for each Station of the Cross and as the stations are prayed that morning with the bishop leading the people, the procession walks across the carpets. We only made it through the fourth station for all the heat and crowds. The friars celebrated a beautiful Triduum with Holy Thursday Passover Meal and Last Supper Mass, Good Friday Veneration of the Cross, Holy Saturday Easter Vigil Mass, and Easter Sunday Resurrection Mass. My parents left right after Mass on Sunday and made it home safely.

The month of April brought many changes for the Catholic Church. After hearing of Pope John Paul II’s failing health, we were soon hearing the friars’ bell toll slow and long for the death of our beloved Holy Father. We attended a Holy Hour of prayer for him led by the bishop in the Cathedral. As we mourned, we reflected on what an important role John Paul II had in our lives especially through all his writings on marriage, family, lay persons’ role in the Church, and the meaning of sexuality. He is certainly a worthy namesake and model for our son.

April 19^th was the day we found out two very important things: “Habemus Papam” and “Habemus Parvulus (Baby).” Cardinal Ratzinger was elected the new pope, taking the name Benedict XVI, and we had a positive pregnancy test. Later in the week we went for our first check-up. The Dr. said all looked well and the ultrasound showed the little beating heart of our 6 ½ week old baby due in December. We are excited about both Benedict and the baby. (If the baby is a boy, do we name him “Benedicto”?) We’ll let you know when we have more info on the baby. I’ve been fine with only a little nausea and extra tiredness.

My first Lunch Bunch in May was a celebration of one of the ladies’ birthday. Her name is Marta and she is a favorite of the friars. She requested chicken legs so Daniel and I made bar-b-que chicken, potato salad, and broccoli. She was quite embarrassed and really didn’t know what to do with all the attention which was probably more than she’s ever received in her life. The next week after the Lunch Bunch, the friars decided to give out chickens. So as the people were leaving they are trying to carry out squawking, flapping, huge birds. I guess it was so funny because most of the people that come to my group are small women and their fairly young children and the hens look enormous next to them. We still wonder if they all managed to get them home without loosing their grip on them.

The 1^st of May is the feast of St. Joseph the Worker as well as the Honduran equivalent of Labor Day. The friars are always looking for ways to evangelized and have a little fun, so they took the Casa Guadalupe construction workers to a huge waterfall two hours away. We went with them and had a lovely day playing at the waterfall. That day is actually one of the busiest days for the park, so we had plenty of company. Daniel and I want to go back when it is less busy and enjoy the river and waterfall some more. Of course, Juan Pablo is game for anything with water. (The picture at top is taken with the waterfall behind.)

Last week another medical mission team came from Light of the World Medical Missions in Florida. The surgical team had two plastic surgeons and a urological surgeon. We don’t help much with the missions…the team from Florida, as well as the San Benito Jose Medical Center staff, the friars, a large team of local youth volunteers led by the Missioners of Christ take care of it all. So the only significance it has for us is that we get to see some of the regulars that come down for most or all the missions and I had the week off from preparing food for the Lunch Bunch since my serving area was used for housing people who came from far off to be treated at the mission.

Text Box: The welder’s truck could only be pulled out by the backhoe after the 5 joists weighing 1500 lbs. a piece were unloaded. May and June are not only months for mangos here; they are also the beginning of the rainy season. We had a lovely taste of the raining season this past week when a tropical storm blew our way and gave us rain for two days. This wouldn’t be so bad if we had paved roads everywhere. But with dirt roads, lots of rain makes lots of mud. One of the friars pulled 4 vehicles out of the mud in the span of 2 days. Two of the vehicles were their own 4 wheel drive trucks. We decided that during these days of extreme muddiness, we wouldn’t take our puny little junk car out. Most especially since earlier in the month, after a slight rain, our car left Daniel stranded four times in four days in various parts of town and the neighborhood as he was running errands for the construction. One of our neighbors is selling their car for $4,000 and we are seriously considering buying it. Of course, we’d love any help we can get monetarily. We figured that we would use it while we’re here and when we move back to Texas, we can donate it to one of several worthy groups here that could also really use it.

We hope you’ve enjoyed our rather detailed, long update. We would love hearing updates on each of you. As always, we remember all our friends and family back in the States in our prayers and we ask you for your prayers for us.

Yours in Christ,

The Hinckleys