Tegucigalpa Honduras Temple

The First Presidency announced a temple for Honduras' largest and capital city of Tegucigalpa in a letter dated June 9, 2006. The Honduran members received the news at the hand of Central America Area President Spencer V. Jones of the Seventy, who was visiting the country on June 18. The Tegucigalpa Honduras Temple is Honduras' first. Area members, who have had to travel 12 hours to the Guatemala City Guatemala Temple, are delighted with the news, as temple trips come at a great cost for many. The First Presidency added its confidence that "this will be a blessing to the many faithful saints in this and surrounding areas who have had to travel long distances to enjoy the blessings of the temple.

 

Wendy's Baptism

July 16th letter

Hey Everyone,

We got changes Wednesday. I have a new companion here in Valencia. His name
is Elder Hernandez, he´s from Mexico and he has 6 months. He doesn´t know
any English which will force me to work on my Spanish, which I didn´t think
that I needed until he became my companion. But he also wants to learn
English so I´m going to have to help him out a little with his studies.

Last week there was a Hermana (a sister missionary) that was leaving the mission, 
and she had done everything in the mission that she had wanted except have a
musical devotional. So she organized it and we had it. It was a very spiritual
experience to see the other missionaries get up and share their musical talents.

While I was at the devotional I got to see the elders that are now serving in my first
area. I got to talking to them about my converts so here is the update.
Senaida is still living with her member boyfriend. They have no plans of
getting married.  But they are both still going to church.
Onny and Dariela, have apparently gone inactive.
Allan is active when he is in town.
Vanessa continues to go to church as far as I understood.
Armando had been sober for a year, and then apparently started drinking again.
Alejandra is still going strong. Her mom, Rosmary, still goes with her although
she can not get baptized because her boyfriend doesn't want to get married.
Some sad stuff.

Thursday we had interviews with President at the stake center. My companion
and I were scheduled last so we showed up at 12:20 for our 12:30 interviews
and there were still 4 Elders in front of us. At 1:00 it was our turn and then president
told us that he had another meeting so we would go with him and wait. We went to
the mission office and waited until 2:00 when his meeting actually started, and
then it went on and on and on until 5:30 when we finally got in. It was so boring
because we were just stuck in the mission office waiting. And then as always my
interview took about 5 to 10 minutes. I could have just emailed him all that on Pday.

Carlos is still being difficult. I don´t think that he really wants to get baptized, but
he won´t admit that he doesn´t want to. We passed by Friday night and committed
him to go to church, we passed by his house Sunday morning and he wasn´t there,
and he never showed up to church.

Saturday we met with an investigator that Elder Harrington and I had given
up on. She was as tough as ever, the funny thing is she admitted in the
lesson that she knew that the bible was incomplete, but she would not
accept that there are any other books that are the word of God. It was
super frustrating!

It´s pretty cool, we have a pioneer of Honduras living in our ward. She was
I think the 9th person in Honduras to be baptized. She has a alot of stories to tell.
I´m sure there are more that we haven´t gotten around to meeting yet.

That´s it for this week.

Elder Stone

May 28th letter

Hey Everyone,

So we have hit the last week of the change.  (They are every 6 weeks.)  These last 6 weeks with Elder Harrington have flown by, I can´t believe how much time has passed.  Since we haven´t had too much success we could see that one of us gets transferred this  Wednesday. We´ll find out about that Tuesday. But I also wouldn´t be surprised if we had another change together. There are going to be a lot of changes in this zone.  One of the zone leaders finishes his mission, and so do three district leaders, and I think there are one or two others as well. There is a huge group leaving the mission and there will be a lot of changes.

We really only have one investigator that is progressing well.  His name is Carlos, he has been dating a member for 9 years, and she said if he wanted to get married he had to be baptized.  So we found him, talked to him, and found out that he wants to be baptized and he is almost ready . He only needs to go to church with us a couple of times.  We have a baptismal date for the 16th of June, hopefully all turns out well with that and hopefully both Elder Harrington and I will be here to see it all go through.

The members still realize that we need help so we´ve received some referrals from them.  Not many of them have been very positive, but we still have some on the way.  But the beauty of the referrals is that the investigator immediately has a friend in the church.

Thanks for all your love and support,

Elder Stone

May 21st letter

Hey Everyone,

Well I have to say that the last couple of weeks have probably been some of the hardest weeks of the mission. We are not having a ton of success, the work is moving slowly. It seems odd to me that me and Elder Harrington were paired together as a companionship, because neither of us are that great at spanish, and we both have less than a year in the mission.

We do have one piece of exciting news. We got a referral from a member and it turns out this guy wants to marry a member. The catch is the member said he needs to be baptized first. He has already received all the lessons from other missionaries and he wants to be baptized.  So the only thing is we have to get him to church.  Last week was Mothers Day so he went to visit his mom. Yesterday he went to Danli, I´m not sure why. So if we can just get him to church he´ll be ready for baptism.

Tuesday we had a Zone Conference with Elder Falabella of the 70.  He did kind of a Q & A, and he would expound and expound and expound on his answers.  But the thing I took most out of it was he talked about the success of the missionaries from the Book of Mormon. We know that some baptized thousands.  Then we read some verses in Alma where it talks about how Ammon used his converts to convert others. So we just need to focus on working with members more. We have been working with them but I realized how important they are.  Yesterday there were two members that walked up to us at church and told us that they have a referral for us. That was really exciting.  These members really do want to help.  We just need to give them the opportunity.

Yesterday I felt kind of bad, we were sitting in Preisthood meeting and our teacher never showed up.  Now in the old days (if you are a teenager) your saying "Awesome no class today." and take off... or at least that is what me and a bunch of other young men would be thinking.  But as a missionary I was sitting there and getting really nervous and anxious.  There were about 10 grown men in the class and not one of them wanted to take charge.  I thought that it was going to be thrown on to us, but the members know we have enough as is so none of them bothered asking us go up.  After about 10 minutes of just talking someone finally stood up and started leading a discussion.  I felt kind of bad for not stepping up, but I don´t feel like I have the ability yet to just choose a subject and give a lesson on the spot to Priesthood holders. That goes to show where I have room for improvement.

Thanks for all the support, your prayers are felt.

Elder Stone

May 14th letter

So just a quick note for this week, let me begin by sharing a funny story that happened to me...  It was either this week or last week, we went to contact a referral from someone in the ward. The custom to greet people is a kiss on the cheek. So the member kissed the investigator and passed into the house.  Then it was my turn and she went in to kiss me on the cheek.  I had no idea what to do... so I took a step back and stuck out my hand.  But she went in a little more. So I leaned back a little more. Turns out I just ended up giving her an awkward hand shake and as I passed I said, "we do it a little differently".  Well at the end of the lesson my comp tried to apologize for me cause he felt like it was a big deal, and I don´t think that she understood, because she started talking about something completely different.

President & Sister Hernandez, Elder Lopez and me

Home Sweet Home

Mission Pictures

                         

Onny and Dariela, two of my converts

  Michelle and Christa, granddaughters of our cook