Capítulo 16 -"So where are you from?"

Another week down out here in Honduras. This last week Honduras and the USA played in soccer. Of course I doubt anyone in the states really cared, but down here they went crazy. Every single person was out wearing their Honduras jersey and the Honduras pride was at an all time high. Then some members called me the next morning telling me that Honduras lost 6-0, and told me to tell everyone that asked that I was from Costa Rica, just for safety reasons. That's exactly what I did, and I didn't have any problems with that haha.

  Out of nowhere the following morning, this guy that i've never seen in my life comes up to me and asks, in english, "so where are you from?" I was thinking whether or not to say Costa Rica when my companion recognized him as a member, just really inactive, I mean really inactive. After that he took us to his house and we talked and we told him where we were from, he introduced us to his non-member nephew, we taught him one of the lessons, then things got... well, interesting. Throughout the lesson he had been drinking, just excessively and so by the end he was drunker than drunk. He started just giving my companion and I things. He gave us some coins from different countries, some antique plates, a little texas flag, and he tried to give me his laptop haha. Then he started asking me questions about President Trump, like every person out here, then out of nowhere he starts asking about Putin from Russia. Then he was dead set on the fact that i was a Russain spy sent here to spy on him haha. He started talking, in what i assume was Russian, then he'd ask if i understood him. He tried to get me to use the laptop and take a test to prove i wasn't a spy. I really can't explain it very well, but the whole time he was making dolphin noises and i couldn't stop laughing. He walked away to go get more things to give to my companion and i and we just ran out there door and didn't look back.

  That same day we went to go set up for a baptism. We started filling up the font and we noticed that the water level was dropping. We looked around to see what was going on and we found the problem was with the drain plug. My campanion was so sure he knew how to fix it, I look over at him and he's rolling up his sleeves  I was about to tell him how to fix it the easy way, but I noticed he was about to jump in, so I sat down and enjoyed the show. To my delight, he just jumps in practically belly flopping, just to find out that it was a much simpler fix than he thought haha. All is well out here in the great country of Honduras.

Capítulo 15 - Humility just hits you like a brick wall out here

    Well this week we had zone conference on Tuesday, which is super nice to see everyone, but it also means that we didn't have district meeting on Friday. So It was a long time from Tuesday to Monday, we normally have district meeting Friday to break up the week. So, to make things a little easier, Elder Anderson and I went on divisions Friday.

   Humility just hits you like a brick wall out here. On divisions, we went to the house of one of his investigators. Then a few minutes later this man just walks in. First thing I notice about this guy is that he was super happy. Out of habit, I shook his hand and asked how he's doing. Then he makes hand gestures to me saying that he's deaf and doesn't speak. For like 20 minutes we communicated solely through hand gestures and facial expressions. That guy made me laugh so hard, and he was like the happiest and nicest guy you'll ever meet. Just goes to show that we don't need so much to be happy, we choose to be happy.

   Then literally our next appointment was the complete opposite. We went to go eat at a member's house in his area. He warned me before we went, that the lady that is about to give us food is a very successful professional chef. And just... yeah, that was... that was an amazing meal haha. They gave us gigantic subs that were toasted, coca-cola, american chips,M&M's, peanuts, watermelon,and anything I could have ever wanted to eat haha. believe me, it doesn't sound like a good combination, but it was amazing.

  The spanish is coming along, I can teach about the church, I don't have a problem there, but just talking to people is where I struggle a bit, but it's coming along. Just a few hiccups this week, like conjugating a verb wrong, calling myself attractive by accident, accidently telling a girl I loved her. Nothing too bad.

  Then to end the week, sunday night, my companion and I had a long talk with some parents for like an hour and walked out with a signature giving us permission to baptized their son.  So yeah, wasn't too bad of a week.

Jancarlos can get baptized!

Full Catracho

Messi

Capítulo 14 - "Tangalo"

This week was a pretty great week for missionary work out in Honduras. I'm not sure why, but it seems like people are finally willing to hear what we have to say. My companion and I worked super hard this week and found 18 new investigators! We've never had numbers like that before, so it felt really good.

  Everyone has been doing really well with not spending a ton of money, so as a zone we went to McDonald's, and the strangest thing happened. Elder Mantaipule and I were sitting down about to dig into our beautiful "american" food, when I notice someone outside just frantically running around. He looks at us, and just in a full sprint, the guy runs inside, right to our table. And in the most out of breathe, scared voice, he repeatedly asks if we were from the USA, in english, just over and over. So we tell the guy yes and he just starts going off. He tells us that he's from korea and that he has a relative serving his mission here. Then he says " you guys have P-day on Monday, right? we said yes, then he says " see i know everything about the missionaries, i know everything!" then two military men come up to us and just took him away. Still confused about it to this day haha.

  Anyways, my companion and i were doing divisions with the Elders in an area called the Kennedy (Every single person in Honduras loves President JFK so they named a city after him) and with one of the elders from that area, we went to go eat baleadas at a member's house, bless their souls haha. anyways, we were talking about our favorite foods from back home, and with a thought of rememberance i told them that just about every day I would eat a peanutbutter sandwich. Then with a smirk on their faces, the disappeared. They returned with a gigantic jar of AMERICAN peanut butter, and said "Tangalo" (Have it). I literally almost passed out from excitement.

That's all for this week.

Capìtulo 13 - "bruh, you asked the wrong missionary"

Well this week we had stake conference. All of the missionaries in my zone were invited to a session on Saturday that started at 3. We all showed up, and the Area Seventy of Central America was there. The session was about missionary work and was more of a devotional than anything else. Anyways, it was the kind of thing were Elder Duncan (the area seventy) was walking around and talking about how we can imrpove as missionaries. The whole stake was there, and the whole thing was in spanish. I was just kinda chillin in my seat, having been zoned out for the last 20 minutes minding my own business because its Spanish, when Elder Duncan just starts asking me a question. He goes, all in spanish of course, "Elder... Case, What's the difference between teaching an investigator in their house, and the house of a member?" while he was asking the question, I was handed a microphone, and i just gave him a look that said "bruh, you asked the wrong missionary. I've been out here for 6 weeks." then he just gave me a look in the middle of his question that said "bruh, I know you don't know spanish, just say something!" haha Then, having somehow understood the question I responded perfectly! score one for Elder Case.

  Then after the Sunday session of the conference, we were walking back to our area. Some drunk guys came up to us and were like "you're from the States aren't you?" then my idiot self said "yup, I'm from California" then I really don't even know what happened next they just said a few things and started hugging me, saying "you know more than me, you know more than me" just over and over. all I was thinking was that I was starving and I had no food, and it was sunday so I couldn't buy anything. Then I think they started to try to push me over, I really didn't know what was going on haha. Then they realized that they couldn't push me over, and they started apologizing and they gave us a bunch of candy. like, a bunch, they just filled all of our pockets and our hands with candy and walked away. so all was well with my stomache haha.

That's all for this week.

My companion turned 19 on Thursday

A typical ant out here. these things are huge!