Capítulo 37 - We can see the country of Nicaragua, the island of Amapala, and the country of El Salvador in one sight!

What a week. That's all I got to say about this one haha. Tuesday was spent saying goodbye to all of the members and investigators in Obrera. Then Wednesday we woke up at 2 so we could take the 6 hour bus ride to Tegucigalpa for the changes meeting, then I took the same bus, all the way back to Choluteca, and spent the night with Elders in Choluteca. Then Thursday, we went to district meeting, and after district meeting, a few elders and I went all the way back to Tegucigalpa to take out our residency. We got there late on thursday night, and Friday morning, we went to the migration center, and officially became residents of Honduras. After that, we took another super long bus ride, back to Choluteca, and stayed the night in the same elders' house. 

  Then bright and early saturday morning, my new companion and I left for good old Guapinol. We took like 3 different buses, and finally got to our area at 2 in the afternoon. When we first entered the area, I was really curious why all of the houses were lifted up by wooden stilts. like, almost all of the houses were not touching the ground. well, that curiousity went away when the ocean flooded our area at hightide. Luckily, we have a few pathways made of tires that we can use during hightide to get around.

   The area is in the middle of nowhere. However, we can see The country of Nicaragua, the island of Amapala, and the country of El Salvador in one sight. It's a difficult area, but I kinda like it. Once I got over the fact that the air literally smells like fish, the area got a little better.

We eat fish...A LOT of fish.... I hate fish... all there is, is fish. Fish normal, fish soup, fried fish, fish with rice, fish with lime, and sometimes we eat shrimp on lucky occasions. Its great though, I love the area. 

  My new companion is Elder Farias, he's 21 years old, and from Ecuador. The schooling is a bit different in ecuador, because he apparently graduated high school at 15 and has been studying medicine for the last 5 years to be a pediatric doctor.

  Church here is really different too. We, the misisonaries, are church down here. We have one small room to have church, and our branch presidency is inactive. we conduct sacrament meeting, direct the music, run to go close the door, before we bless and pass the sacrament to all 12 members that showed up this week. After the both of us gave talks, we ended sacrament meeting, and started our sunday school class, that we also taught, in the same room. After sunday school, everyone just left... Then my comp told me that we normally dont even make it to the second hour of church, and the fact that we got to teach sunday school was good, because, well... there were stll a few members.

  Then monday, president wanted to have interviews with the zone, so he moved p-day to tuesday, but then he wanted to have zone conference on tuesday too, so he moved our p-day to today, Wednesday.

That's all for this week.

Capítulo 36 - "Nephi 3:7... Challenge accepted"

Well, changes (Transfers?) are coming this wednesday, and everyone has been anticipating them. We all knew that Hermana Contreras was going to leave, because well... she's completed her year and a half. So, we threw a little surprise party for her as a district. But when it came time for the party, it sort of turned into a goodbye for everyone, because we got the call telling us that practically all of us are leaving except my companion.

   Anyways, we were decorating the room, with ballons, and party stuff that I dont remember the names of in english. We were just sitting there, harmlessly filling up balloons, when out of nowhere a series of loud bangs go off. We look over to see that all of the balloons we were filling were popping because of the heat down here. We would fill them up, and 30 seconds later, they would heat up and pop. So... out of options, we decorated the room with very uninflated balloons haha.

  These past few weeks, my companion and I have found the perfect method to work with less actives, and bring their non-member family members to church. We've started helping young women work on their personal progresses to gain their medallion, and the duty to God with the young men. Lets just say, sometimes the apostacy down here works in your favor, because we were told that if we helped the young women earn their medallion, we also get young women medallions! haha

  As far as where Im going for my new area, is another story. I got a call saying that I'll be headed for the area "Guapinol" on Wednesday. The new area is THAT area that everyone prays they dont get sent to. This is how every conversation goes now- them-"Hey, where are you going?" me-"Gaupinol" them- "...oh...goodluck....I'll keep you in my prayers..." (note for mom- It's not a dangerous area) it's just an area with absolutely nothing, like ABSOLUTELY nothing. They say it's challenging, I say "nephi 3:7... Challenge accepted"

That's all for this week, we'll see how things go next week.

Capítulo 35 -This week, we had a lot of really cool things happen

This week as really great. We weren't able to find as many new investigators as we have been, but we have been able to see the beginnings of the fruits of our labors. with the 60 something new investigators we found last month, we've started talking about baptism with them, and we'll have quite a bit of baptisms coming up in the future here. The sad part is that I dont know if Im going to be here to see it all happen, but Im not here for me, Im here for them. so whether or not im there, i'll be happy just knowing that they've truly accepted and come to the knowledge that this is the church of Christ.

  This week, we had a lot of really cool things happen. One, my companion had his 23rd birthday, and someone actually gave us cake! like, it wasn't as good as my mom's ice cream cake, but it was still good, and free, so that made my companion happy haha.

  The following day, we had interveiws with president. This new president knows his doctrine like the back of his hand. He did something new, he told us the day before to study a chapter of the book of mormon, and during the interveiws, the whole zone sat in a circle and analized the chapter. Then after putting in our input, president started to explain everything we didnt explain, and it was crazy how much this guy knows.

  The crazy part about it, is the before recieving the message to study this chapter, we had actually left the chapter for a family of investigators to read. They aren't super difficult investogators, but they had a lot of doubts. We went back to visit them, and they told us they forgot to read. So, we decided to sit there and read the chapter with them, and we analized it like we did with president. After reading the chapter, the mom tells us "okay, Im ready, this is true" (but in spanish) she told us that she hadnt really read the book of mormon before, and that was the first time. always keep in mind the power of this book. Then right after finishing the lesson, we got hit by some tropical storm, hurricane type thing, and lightning struck right next to the house we were in, and the power was out the rest of the day. 

 

  Also this week, we were able to fix, or at least help with a little bit of apostacy down here in the branch. It's honestly crazy, the apostacy, down here. Last week, we were in sunday school. the theme was about the word of wisdom. And these members were talking about how we can't drink spicy drinks, then the other said,"no it means we can't drink hot drinks, like warm milk, you have to wait for it to cool down" then someone else said " we can drink coffee if we make it ourselves, or we can crush up the coffee beans and put it on bread" then another says " we can smoke and drink, but only during parties, like, not excessively" Elder Martinez and I just looked at eachother and died of laughter. of course later we got up and well...helped out a bit haha. Then they told us that the missionaries, us, have more authority than the qourum of the 70... let's just say, it was an interesting sunday.

That's all for this week.

Capìtulo 34 - We had a good ol' baptism this week

Okay, I finally got the pictures with the pig baby haha. This week, we were finding as many new investigators as we possibly could. Just this week, we found 20 new investigators, and of those 20, 7 actually came to church on sunday! It was amazing! çthe work has been going really well down here, and the english classes are really helping with both the investigators, and the members.

  Alright... so just a little note before going on with this story. Down here, my observation is that clothes are optional up to about the age of 8. So, everywhere we go, there are all this little naked babies running around all the time, and everyone just treats it like nothing.

  Okay, now the story. We had just found a new family of three this week, and they were super positive, so we taught them about the restoration of the gospel. During our lesson, this little naked 2 year old baby comes running around us (We were outside). Of course, down here that's normal, so we just ignored it and moved on with the lesson. Then this little girl ran in the middle of the little circle we had while teaching, and squats down right there to stay for a good while. Near the end of the lesson, she runs away... and well, she left us a little surprise right there... Id say I was surprised, but I wasn't., stuff like that happens way too often hahaha

  We had a good ol' baptism this week. During the baptism there was a huge tropical storm, and the power went out right after the baptism ended. and right after changing out of my wet clothes, my companion broke the lid thingy to drain the water, and I had to jump in again to fix it. It took forever, and I got all wet all over again, but it was fine, because we had to leave in the pouring rain anyways.  

  Sorry, that's all I got time for today!