Mission Trip to Honduras

We were so blessed to get to spend a week in Honduras with Jeff's school doing dental work last week! We were in the city of Valle de Angelos.  It is about 30 minutes from Tegucigalpa, which is where we flew in to.  Come to find out, its one of the most dangerous airports in the world because of the short runway and it is sandwiched between two mountains, so if you don't get up fast enough you will run straight into the mountain!  Luckily, we had no problems.  We stayed in the Adventist Hospital and our clinic was right down the hill from us.  By clinic, I mean the empty building that they put some chairs in.  Since we arrived on the weekend, we got to go to church there! It was such a humbling experience and the speakers were so good. (Jeff was so sweet to translate for me.) I think about 80% of the people came and shook our hands and welcomed us. We also got to go ziplining on the weekend! We had some really funny guides that made it so much fun.  They even let us do some tricks (see pictures below).

During the week, we woke up and ate breakfast at the hospital.  Then we would start at the clinic around 8:30 or 9.  We wanted to start earlier but they wouldn't serve breakfast any earlier because they had a Spanish Bible study in the morning.. Anyway. We had 3 restorative chairs for fillings, 2 chairs for extractions, and then 2 hygienist cleaning teeth on a wooden bench.  Another wife and I assisted and ran the sterilization. Unfortunately the chairs we had didn't go low enough to sit, so we stood all day long in really awkward positions.  Jeff ended up pulling over 40 teeth and did about 20 fillings, not to shabby since before this trip he had only done a filling and no extractions!  It was such a great learning experience for both of us and we felt so good getting to serve the people.  At night we either ate at the hospital or went and tried some local restaurants.  We were so tired at night that we seriously just sat in this lounge area.  Just sat.  Somehow we got like 9 hours of sleep every night and still felt exhausted.  But so worth it!

Friday we packed up all of our equipment and headed to Tegucigalpa.  We stayed in this nice hotel so that we would be close to the airport in the morning.  We got to see the temple being built on our way to the airport!  We had been told all these scary stories about Honduras, but we had no problems at all! We had fun and got to make some great friends and learned a ton!

Apple Picking

This weekend we ventured out to Oak Glen to go apple picking! Our friend Erika has been dying to go and finally convinced everyone to go with her.  It was a really cute farm complete with many types of apples, raspberries, blackberries, knife throwing, archery, and cider making.  It was a very warm day, but we managed to pick a bunch of yummy apples that later made a delicious apple crisp.

Labor Day Weekend

We had quite the long weekend. From what started out as no plans, quickly became full of fun activities.

Saturday we went to Huntington Beach with my friend Elisabeth who was visiting from Missouri! It was so fun seeing a friend from home out here.

So of course we sat on the beach and got caught up.

On Sunday, we went to a baby blessing for Jeff's cousin in Menifee, but after we got home and tried to leave again we found this:

Flat tire! Boooo.

But it gets worse.

Our spare was flat too..

So our Labor Day weekend became very expensive as we had to purchase 2 new tires for Jeff's car.

Monday was better after the tire purchase because we went to Laguna Beach with the Nelsons to explore the real OC.  We went on a 4 mile hike in the hills of Laguna, had lunch at Johnny Rockets, and then hung out at the beach.  The hike was hot, the beach was crowded, and the water was full of seaweed.  Needless to say, we still had a blast playing boche and hanging out with Drew and Erika.  Did I mention this was the 3rd day of the weekend that we hung out with them? The other days were full of food, movies, and games, unfortunately they went undocumented.  See Erika's blog for more pictures: here

Escape from the smog!

I nearly drown from all the seaweed in the water! Yuck!

L.O.V.E.

Bring on the week.

Newport Beach Week

The Johnson clan took a family vacation to Newport Beach in August.  Since Jeff can't miss school, his family came to us! They rented a house on the sand complete with a pool table.  We spent countless hours in the water, playing bocce ball & smash ball, and playing games as a family.  Poor Jeff had to drive back and forth for school, but he still got a lot of quality time with the family before Blake and Brady leave on their missions in October.  Let the pictures speak for themselves.