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.