Capítulo 55 - We did a "cuchumbo"

This week, we have been invited to eat so many times. It all started with an innocent family night with the office and President and Hermana Chase, where we ate dinner and did some scripture study and a fun little game. Then once we had all the new missionaries come in this week, we ate dinner with them again, and got to study a little bit with President again.

  Also, the next day when we were running around, making sure that everything went smoothly with getting the news out to their areas, we were offered breakfast. and these are not small meals that we are talking about haha this is food that I haven't eaten in over a year either. 

  Also, last night, we did a "cuchumbo" which is what they call a gift exchange in Honduras. All 6 of us in the office drew names the other day, and gave eachother gifts, just in case someone didn't have a gift from their families.

  Also this week, our Stake President has been super happy with how we've been making friends with everyone in the ward, strengthening it, bringing new people to church, and most importnantly, the baptisms. SO... he invited us to eat too. And that was not cheap at all. Down here in Honduras, there is this really nice Hotel called "The Marriott" and he paid for us to eat a breakfast buffet there. We went today, and I do not want to eat for the next three days becuase of how much we ate. It was sooo good though.

Capítulo 54 "You guys are never going to have to work harder than you're about to today."

Well, I thought this week we would be able to get out to the area and out of the office, as opposed to the last week. On Saturday night we got a call out of nowhere telling us that one of the Hermanas in the south would be going home on Tuesday morning, so I was stuck buying plane tickets and making arrangments for her to leave. On Sunday we drove the 4 hour drive to the south and 4 hour drive back to Tegucigalpa the same night. On Monday, we arranged even more things, and had a Family Night with President and Hermana Chase. Tuesday we sent her home. The craziness was over... or so we thought.

  Wednesday was looking good, we had gone to get a few things, and we were on our way back to the office when I got a call from President saying "You guys are never going to have to work harder than you're about to today." Now imagine this...Changes. Every 6 weeks we have "changes" where all the missionaries that have completed their 2 years\ 18 months go home, and everyone gets changed around the mission accordingly, baised on how much time you have in an area or whatever it may be. Anyways, lets focus on the part where missionaries go home. Next week, we have changes in the mission, However, President Chase told us that all the misisonaries going home the following week, needed to go home the following day. As in, it was Wednesday when I got the call, and they needed to go home THAT Thursday.

  That's when the craziness started. We rushed back to the office, and President was there to give a little bit more of intruction. Our job was to take a 6 week process (the process to send missionaries home takes a long time) and turn it into a matter of hours. I had to make some very important calls to some very important people in Salt Lake  and Guatemala to change plans and get everything ready. We had to do some divisions, so I stayed with Elder Cuevas in the office making a million phone calls, buying plane tickets, and calling stake presidents of every missionary going home, while my companion went with Elder Marcellino running around Honduras doing his best to find some way through the laws to send everyone home legally. We rushed to bring all 10 of the missionaries together, and President himself went all the way to the south to get some of the missionaries going home from down there, to help us out.

  Thursday we were in the airport since 4 in the morning to 6:30 at night, just because of such short notice, those were the only plane tickets I could get for all of them to get back home. Then Friday in itself was insane. So yeah... You could say it was a pretty calm week.

Capítulo 53 - I hit my ONE YEAR MARK!

What a week! Everything is back to normal now with our schedule now. It was a progressive process. We started the week in the house all day, then monday, they let us out till 3 o'clock, then on wednesday we were allowed to leave until 5, and then friday, they let us out until 7, and as of today, hours are all back to normal.  

  Even though we were allowed to leave the house, there was something going on, and president called us saying that we couldn't go to the office nor the area, so we had divisions in the area of the other office elders. When we were out there, we met a family, and there was this little 6 year old girl that reminded me so much of a little boy that I met in Guapinol, and it was like the best thing ever. Sadly I didn't have my camera to take pictures, but just imagine a 6 year old girl that looked 3, and was absolutely crazy. It was amazing.

  Also, this week, I hit my ONE YEAR MARK! We celebrated equally as with Elder Cuevas. Except my piñata was that of Darth Vader. I also bought a sparkling cider that I found in an american store called "la colonia". I also burned one of my shirts.

  It was a fun week, but the missionary work hasn't been going very well. With the curfew we've been having, and working in the office, we haven't been working visiting people in 2 weeks. We might have to start from the beginning, but at least now we already have the confidence of the members. We'll see what happens. One year down, one to go.

Capítulo 52 - 8 elders, 5 days, 1 house. you could imagine the craziness

Well this has been a week to not be forgotten. On Thursday this week we got an email from the area 70 telling all the misisonaries to go to there houses and stay there until further notice. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were spent in the house. Now it is monday, and they have let us come out for a little bit.

  The Ap's were planning divisions with the zone leaders in the south, and it's a really long story, but they all ended up spending these 5 days in our house. 8 elders, 5 days, 1 house. you could imagine the craziness that was going on.  We weren´t allowed to leave the house at all, not even to buy food, so we created an awesome food system chain with all of the stake presidents in the entire misison to bring food and supplies to every missionary. The system has not failed us, and we are doing great. honestly, if you have heard anything, just forget it, and know that the missionaries down here are all safe.

   Sorry, I don't have much time to write, more next week.

Capítulo 51- Presidential elections coming up

This week started out with a bad attendance at sacrament meeting. With the presidential elections coming up (tomorrow) almost nobody is home, and nobody wants to come to church either. Good thing, well sort of a good thing, is that right after church, Elder Alvarado and I headed for a very long trip to the south with the AP's. We got down there sunday night, stayed the night in some missionaries' house. In the morning we prepared the zone conference, and repeated the cycle the next day for another zone conference the following day. We didn't get back to our house until Tuesday at 11 o'clock at night.

    Once we got back to working in our area, we made up the lost time by working like crazy. In our efforts for finding people, we made a deal with a group of people to come to church with us if we went with them. So...we went. It was actually really cool. The leader pastor guy dude let us introduce ourselves to everyone, and gave us about 15 minutes to "give them the work of God" (in his own words) I asked my companion if we should teach the restoration and we decided that it would be a little excessive to teach the restoration as invited guests in another church. So we did a little "Face to face with Elder Alvarado and Elder Case" Basically just having them ask us questions. It was super cool to answer their very interesting questions. We ended up going for about 35 minutes, but the leader pastor guy dude was the one asking most questions, so we decided to keep going.

    Also this week we've sent a few missionaries home. By "this week" I mean, Today. And by "today" I mean, at 3 in the morning we had to leave to the airport. However the entire week we have been acting as lawyers fighting the law to be able to send the missionaries home,  because they had a few problems legally with leaving the country (not because they did anything bad, but because one of them lost their passport and a bunch of other problems). One moment everything was good, I bought the plane tickets and we were set to go, the next, everything fell apart and I rescheduled the plane tickets. Then everything came together, and at the last moment (the night before) everything fell apart again. Basically we went to the airport, at 3 in the morning, not even knowing if they were going to be able to get on the plane. once we got there, we called in one of our lawyers and fought a good old battle of the law right there in the airport at 4 in the morning. In the end, we won, and the misisonaries got on their planes.

   Right as they were getting on, we were about to walk to the car to go back home, and a group of anti-mormons came up to us. Them not knowing spanish, and me being the only one to speak english, means that I was one to talk to them. I wasn't going to argue with them... but it was a long stressful week, and I was tired, and they started to bring up some arguing topics. So I just let them have it. I may have destroyed their anti-faith (which I feel should be a good thing). Then we walked away, and they were left speachless. I'm really curious to see what happened after we left, but I guess we'll never know.

Capítulo 50 - It looked like the piñata was flying

 Well of the baptisms we had planned, we had 4 of them follow through. the baptism was awesome and we even bought some donuts for everyone that came to the baptism. The following day, Sunday, We had the confirmations too. This Sunday was AMAZING we had the 4 confirmations and a sacrament attendance of over 150 people!! Members kept coming up to Elder Alvarado and I saying "we have a great team here, you two are some of the best missionaries that this ward has seen." It honestly took us by shock, but we were very happy with how everything turned out. This ward is getting back to where it needs to be.

  This week, Elder Cuevas hit his one year mark in the mission. So a member from his ward made him a little piñata that looked like a missionary. We took that piñata home, filled it with whatever candy/packaged foods we could find. We tied it up in a way that it could move around in all sorts of directions, and it looked like the piñata was flying. It was super fun. After we all took turns, we lit it on fire, and then it looked like a flying ball of fire. It was super cool and super funny. the pictures turned out really cool too.

  We've been working as much as we can with the members here trying to get them motivated to fulfill their callings and also help us out in the missionary work. We've been starting a really good system, and everyone seems to be very excited about the work, and the other baptism we have today really shows the ward that we mean business. They weren't very excited to have 2 "office Elders" in the ward, but they've repented of their prior thoughts towards us, and we really do make a good team here.

Capitulo 49 - We have 6 baptisms today

This was a very long week. We had a lot of stuff to do, and not a lot of time to do it. We had changes in the mission (I think they're called transfers in the states?) Anyways, our missiona president had a huge mission president seminar in panama, and had to leave Tuesday, so we had changes on monday. The difficult part is that we had to recieve the new misisonaries, have the meeting for them, change all the missionaries around, and send the missionaries going home to their airplanes. Normally a 3 day job, but we did it in a matter of hours. It was a very stressful day haha.

   We've had to do a lot of driving, and has the "executive secretary" I have to be the driver because im "in charge" of the cars. So here in honduras, there are people everywhere. One of my first times driving I was sitting at a stop light, and everyone started yelling and I had no idea what was happening, and out of nowhere the dirties water gets splattered over the entire windsheild as some random guy started washing my window. I almost died of a heart attack. I had no idea what to do, and then they started laughing and put on the windsheild wipers to tell the guy no... and that happens every light that we ever stop at. There's just a mob of people waiting for you so they can make you windows dirtier than they started so that you pay them to clean it.

  This p-day...isn't really p-day haha. It's our p-day, but we've been busy this whole time because we have 6 baptisms today. Let's hope they all go through and get baptized. The work is going great!

Capítulo 48 - We won't let this legend of a ward die

Wow, it's been about 6 weeks, and it's already time to have changes. This week has been super crazy busy with the planning of the new people coming in, and the old people going home. Let's just say that it took a lot of very sleepless nights to figure it out, but we've been doing a lot better. one day, I had some extra time and so I mapped out how everything was going to go for the people going home, their divisions, their temple trip, their family night with president, their final interviews, and just everything. We are all getting super stressed, but the drawing helps haha.

Also, on Halloween we had bought some watermelons, and we carved them as if they were pumpkins, just because it's almost impossible to find a pumkin here. It was actually a lot more fun than I thought it was going to be, and worked super well haha.

Even though we were super busy with the office, Elder Alvarado and I still squeezed some time in to get out to our area and teach some poeple. When we were out there, we found the awesomest family ever! That day we had been thinking of a few things we can do to be little bit more efficient in the work with the little time we have, and so we created a little 10 question survey to use, and we tested it out with them, and it went perfectly! We came to visit them a second time, and answered just about all of their doubts about the church. after the third visit, they're all ready for baptism, except the dad. They've all excepted baptism, but the dad is still a little doubtful. We'll see what happens when they come to church this sunday.

Speaking about church. This last week was so very dead. None of us had to speak but it was just super sad to see this ward only have an attendance of 45 people. Especially because this ward is the largest ward in all of honduras and the first efforts of the church in all of honduras. The church in honduras started here, and it's just sad to see what it's become. Anyways, we're really getting to work on that, and we won't let this legend of a ward die.

Halloween 

the watermelon we carved 

Office life 

Capítulo 47 - The Temple was so very perfect

This was a good week. We started off the by taking all of the missionaries and investigators of the stake to the Temple. It was an amazing experience for everyone. The Temple was so very perfect, and it was night time, so the night lights looked amazing. The spirit was so strong and then out of the nowhere, 4 doves were flying around the statue of Moroni. After the trip, we were talking to a few investigators, and one of them told me that her husband told her that he had talked to missionaries before when they lived in a different city, but he had never felt the spirit like he does when he talks to us, and when he was at the Temple. The goal here is a Temple sealing for them, and I really think we can get that for them.

  Also this week, we held the first ever Danli zone conference. Normally we have it here in the main building of the Mission, but this time we went all the way out there. We were a little bit behind schedule, so lets just say, things got really fun on those mountain like road haha.

  This week we tried to do some work in an area that hasn't been very attended lately. It's called El Cerrito. It's literally a hill and it has a gigantic flag of honduras on the top. Anyways, this hill is straight dirt, and well we're getting hit by some tropical storm thing "Selma" well, we haven't gotten hit yet, that will happen later today, but we've been getting hit by the outter parts of it. Anyways, there has been a lot of rain recently, and it turned that hill into a mud bowl. We went up there and we were slipping and falling as we tried to find these people. We came back to the house completely drenched in mud, but it was totally worth it, because we found so many people haha.

Capítulo 46 - I've been eating with a fork for like the past 3 weeks

 This was a very busy week, but somehow it flew by. It started off by getting a call saturday night from the bishop in our ward asking me to give a talk. Normally i'd be upset for such a short notice, but I've been giving talks that i've prepared as my name was being called up to the pulpit. So the night before notice was nice. They had me speak on the missionary work, so I took the time to talk about the importance of members in the missionary work, and also focus on the youth that are coming to the missionary age. It was super cool, because right after my talk, and I mean the middle of sacrament meeting, a member came up to me and gave me a referral.

  Also this week, we had our zone conference. So after setting everything up and getting everything ready, I got to sit down and participate in my zone conference. At least for the first little bit. President had me set up a meeting with him and another missionary in the mission, they walked out of his office, the missionary went back to his area, and President told me to buy him a plane ticket and send him home tomorrow. So after like an hour of this zone conference, Elder Alvarado and I took this missionary all around Honduras cancelling his residency and taking him to the airport. It was an interesting day haha.

  Then to end the week, Elder Alvarado and I took a road trip with the AP's to the south to set up the zone conference for the zones in the south. I miss that place so much. When we got down there, we all did divisions with the zone leaders. We went to go eat with a family down there, and they gave me a plate of eggs and beans, and tortillas, and we ate it with our hands, I honestly felt normal, I've been eating with a fork for like the past 3 weeks, and it's just too much effort haha.

  The next day, we had the zone conference, packed up and came back to the city. We didnt get back until 11 o'clock last night, and weren't able to get in bed until 11:30. President knew that would happen, so he sent me a text saying we could sleep in the next day haha.

Quick trip to the Temple before going to the South

Capítulo 45 - We went to their house and ate like AMERICANS

Well this week started off on a strange note. We went to go visit an investigator that has been investigating the church for over 8 months, named Raul. After a very spiritual part of the lesson with this guy, He looks at us dead in the eyes and says "I had an appointment today." and we were thinking like how cool is that, he was going to be meeting with a few members or something. Then he started yelling and said.. "With a woman... and I was going to fornicate!! But not anymore!!!" I honestly had no idea what to say to the guy... Elder Alvarado and I just looked at eachother and tried our best to hold back our laughter. Especially because in spanish it sounds a lot funnier, and this is a 75 year old man who literally can't walk, and he was shouting with the raspiest old man's voice.

  Sundays here are also a little weird too. especially because this is supposed to be a super strong ward, but ever since they divided the ward, the church attendance has dropped to about 50 people. Then we were sitting there all nice and early with our investigators in the from, when the mission president's wife walks in. Turns out that I go to the same ward as my mission president, even though he doesn't come, because he is always going to stake/district/branch conferences around the mission, Hermana chase still comes. And it was even more awkward when they lady saying the opening prayer threw us under the bus for something that's not our fault, when she asked God to help us do our job to bring people to the church because we havent been doing good enough apparently. hahaha

  Then, things got really cool when we had a family home evening with the mission president and his wife last night. It was AMAZING! We went to their house and ate like AMERICANS. Then we all pulled out our scriptures and had a great scripture study together. It was all halloween themed, and it was just super cool.

FHE and good food at the Mission Presidents home! 

Elder Cuevas is the nephew of several members in a ward, in my stake back home 

Capítulo 44- It's like a missionary Christmas

This week was a very long week, but at the same time, a great week. It all started off with General Cenference. I really cant explain it, but General Conference out here is one of the greatest things there are, it's like a missionary Christmas. Weeks before the coference starts, we're all talking about it in anticipation, and as it gets closer, we get more and more excited. This conference was AMAZING. However, it was sad that President Monson wasnt able to make it, and also hearing about Elder Hales.

  As part of my new responsibilies, I travel around the mission going from conference to conference with the mission president. This week, we had a conference down in the south, so we packed up the truck, president took his own car, and we went with the AP's for a road trip down to the south. It's like a good 5 hour drive, but it was so fun. Just being able to drive on some mountain roads, listening to our church music, and just talking was a lot more fun than I thought it would be. 

  Apart from the work we do in the office, we also have responsibilities to work as normal missionaries every day. President did some weird stuff with us here in this area, and the companionships. So in my position, they have the old elder teach the new elder for a few weeks before leaving, and they're normally companions. However, president sent another person in the office and made him comps with my comp, but then put me with someone else in the office. We're honestly still confused about the whole companion situation, so we just all say we're companions. haha

  Even though we dont get as much time as normal as normal missionaries, we've been getting a lot of work done. The other day I went to go contacting with Elder Alvarado (Costa Rica) and we found so many awesome new investigators, and we had some very powerful lessons. After one of our lessons, we had our new investigator pray. After her prayer, she started crying, and told us that she's never felt like that before, and that she knows it's true. It was a very powerful moment, and it really lifted our spirits that day.

Capítulo 43- I LITERALLY DROVE A TRUCK.... IN HONDURAS!

Wow... it honestly feels like it's been a month from the last time I wrote, even though right now is Friday, and I literally just wrote 5 days ago. After writing last week, we spent our p-day a little differently. The other week, I was talking to a few kids in Guapinol, and we had gotten to the topic of pizza, and they told me that they had never tried pizza in their lives. There isnt anyway to get pizza anywhere near Guapinol, so we felt really bad, went to Choluteca, bought a few boxes of pizza, and brought it back to the kids in Guapinol. Seeing their faces as they first saw that pizza, made it all worth it.

  Then the next day, we stayed the night in Choluteca so we could get up at 2 in the morning and get on a bus to Tegucigalpa. Literally the moment I got off that bus, I got rushed by like 10 people telling me what I had to do, and within a 2 second period, someone took my bags off the bus, I ran to get the truck keys, and I drove a missionary to the airport to send him home. I LITERALLY DROVE A TRUCK.... IN HONDURAS! And to the airport! It was the craziest thing ever. 

  Since that moment, Ive been insanely busy with everything. As the executive secretary of the mission, Im also the secretary of the mission president, and believe me, that man is a busy man, and I make his schedule.  Its insane what we do here. Yesterday we sent 7 misisonaries to the airport, did their paperwork, and sent them off. At the same time there were 2 missionaries that were coming home, with flowers, and their family, and everything. It was just like... wow... I still have 14 months before I go home haha.  

  Then every night we go home to our mansion of a house that we share as 6 elders! Im honestly having like reverse culture shock here. Like we'll go to get food, and I honestly cant eat with a fork... it's just weird. And like, the water that I shower with... I can see through it! like the water isnt brown and black anymore. I havent taken any picture of the house yet, but ill send them next week. Just imagine it for now... we have a spiral staircase!

We also live, and help out the other elders in the office... including ELDER CUEVAS!!!! We literally sleep in the same room, and that guy is so funny!!

Capítulo 42 -The members where saying that Guapinol was crying, because I was leaving

Well this week was a little saddening. We had just gotten out of a lesson, confirming all of our baptisms for next week, when we got a call from President Chase.  He told me that I would be leaving Guapinol and heading over to Tegucigalpa, because he needed me to be the Executive secretary of the mission. So only having one Transfer in my beloved town in the middle of nowhere, im leaving.

 It might be the dreaded area of the mission, but Im really going to miss it. I really didnt want to leave, but this is what the Lords wants of me, therefore I will go and do. Right after the phone call, it started to rain, and it started to rain hard. And it hasnt stopped raining ever since. The members where saying that Guapinol was crying because I was leaving. That just made me even more sad.

  My last sunday was a success! We've been doing activities, and visiting a lot of the members do get the to come back to church. This Sunday we had almost 60 people in church! it was insane! and we even had the ENTIRE branch presidency. From my first sunday with 12 people in church, to my last Sunday with almost 60, was an amazing difference, and a good way to end my time here.

  My next area wont be as crazy, we wont be killing iguanas and chopping down coconut trees, we wont be eating shrimp whole (legs, tail, and shell) or eating chicken feet, but there's always a reason for everything, so I'll be looking for those reasons in this next area with my new assignment. 

  Speaking of chicken feet...Have you ever tried to eat a chickens foot? like, not the leg, but the foot. Who even takes a look at a chicken and says "Im gonna eat that foot" let me just give you a heads up and tell you, dont eat it. Because between ripping off the skin and sucking out the tendons, there isnt much to it, and it doesnt taste good haha.