MU student returns home safely from Honduras
Sunday, July 12, 2009 | 12:01 a.m. CDT
BY David Goldstein, Columbia Missourian

COLUMBIA — As soon as Tyler Shields walked off the plane, his mother screamed and gave him a big hug. 

It was an emotional reunion for the MU senior and his parents on Thursday evening, with Shields returning to the United States after being stuck in Honduras amid a government coup. 

“I breathed a sigh of relief when he finally got back,” his father, Mark Shields, said.

In an attempt to block Honduran President Manuel Zelaya from returning to the country, interim government officials closed the country’s main airport last week, leaving Shields to find an alternative departure route.

Shields, who was in Honduras for six months on a mission trip, said he was calm at first but started to get unnerved as the week wore on.
Continue reading MU student returns home safely from Honduras

Student stranded by unrest
Coup prolongs his Honduras mission.

By T.J. Greaney
Tuesday, July 7, 2009

University of Missouri student Tyler Shields poses with Luz in a recent image
from Honduras, where a government-closed airport has stranded Shields,
who has spent six months doing mission work with HIV-positive patients.

If everything had gone according to plan, Tyler Shields would be home by now. Last week, the University of Missouri senior was scheduled to complete a six-month mission to Honduras.

Based in the southern river city of Choluteca, Shields has been helping run a clinic for malnourished children, working with AIDS victims and teaching English and history at a bilingual school. He said it’s been a life-changing experience.

“You really completely forget that you are working with people with HIV, AIDS or children that are malnourished,” he wrote in an e-mail to the Tribune. “They become just another person to you, and I believe that’s the point. We are trying to destroy a huge stigma that exists in this country.”
Continue reading Student stranded by unrest