My Second Week

    So we had some baptismal dates, but Karrina is moving to the city for a month so we've postponed her date, and her brother Alex and sister Cintia and not ready so we've postponed their's too. Nestor is still on track for the 26th- the hardest thing with him is that he is used to smoking 10 cigarettes a day, but the last two days he's been down to 1, so I really hope he can keep it up and eventually quit. And we need to keep him attending church. Plus there is a sister in the ward, Hermana Zenaida, who is very active but is not a member because she was living with her boyfriend, but now he is in jail so we are scheduled for the 26th. She just needs to get rid of his posessions before the branch president will allow it.
    And then we've got about 5 other investigators. Hna Zenaida's daughter Isis- we need to get her to attend and teach her the lessons, but she seems willing to listen. Hna Ruth- we had to postpone her date too, she just never feels ready- hopefully we'll be able to change that. Hna Amanda's daughter, Onny; she already believes so we just have to challenge her. Hna Lucy is getting married in December, so hopefully we'll be able to teach and convert her husband. Finally Freddy, he's pretty cool, and he seems to believe what we teach, but never follows our commitments, except he reads the B of M and seems to like it and believe it, just not consistently. So we'll see how this all goes this week.
    We are really hesitant with our baptisms, though, because our ward consists of about 160 members but only 60 are active. So we are making sure that all of our new converts have very strong testimonies in this church. President Hernandez (President of the Mission) is coming down here tomorrow to do the baptismal interviews. I hope that he feels they are ready, and I hope their testimonies are strong.
    We were challenged to read the Book of Mormon before Christmas, so maybe you should try it too.
     The people here love their music and tv. It is always turned on and usually pretty loud. We go to a sister's house for most of our meals, and they always have some stupid soap opera on. I mean we thought tv polluted the minds of the Americans it so much worse here, especially when it comes to the material of the soap operas. Plus, little kids are watching it so they think all the stuff on it is fine.
     I'm not very good about writing about things so if you have specific questions be sure to ask and I'll do my best to answer them when I get them.
    Not too much else is going on. Because we have so many inactive members, we going on divisions with the branch president and another ward member on Sundays and Wednesdays, so these members get pretty
regular visits. So hopefully we'll be able to bump up the attendance.

Answers to Questions

There is only me and Elder Lopez in our apartment

We usually just walk where we are. I've taken two taxis, but that's pretty rare. And we take a bus twice a week for playing soccer and district meetings.

No rain so far. It's really hot/humid, and I hear this is a good time of year, too. I'll adjust sooner or later.

The roads in my area are only made of dirt and rocks. Lots of hills.

There are I think about 3000 people in my area or so and about 162 are members and about 60 are active.

The Branch President, President Beto, is only 24. He just got home from his mission two years ago. I hear one day the members love you and the next day they hate you, I haven't seen that so far.

The language just depends on the part of the day. Sometimes I can understand about everything that is going on and then sometimes I can't understand a thing to save my life. It's been getting frustrating the last couple of days because it feels like everybody expects me to know more. Except Elder Lopez, he is very encouraging.

Elder Lopez still does most of the teaching, he'll give time to me to add on or bear my testimony.

We are very fortunate in our house. We do have indoor plumming, the sink gets no water pressure though, and our shower is only cold water. ha And we've got lights.

We pay a lady in the ward to wash our clothes for us. And another cooks most of our lunch and dinners, which mostly consist of eggs and beans and some pork product. Still haven't quite adjusted to the food yet.

Only siestas we get are Pday, some time in between 2 and 6 or so.. ha

First Week in Honduras

Wow where should I begin?

  So in the the SL airport right before we boarded the plane we started talking to a guy, who is currently inactive but served a mission and still says it was the two best years of his life. I don't get how someone can do that. Serve, go inactive, and still say it was the best?In the Atlanta airport we were all beat. So most of us just slept for a couple hours. One of the elders started talking to some guys. Eventually he waved me and Elder Quevedo over, the funny thing about Elder Quevedo is that his grew up in Quebec Canada, and both his parents are from Peru. So he grew up speaking Spanish in his home. Then spoke French to most of the people and studied it throughout high school and then learned English in College and from watching Friends.. What is it with people watching Friends and learning English? Anyway we talked to the two guys from Honduras Ariel and Luis. Ariel was cool and I talked to him for awhile with my very broken Spanish. And he gave my first Limpira haha. So they study music, and I guess have a band.

  Flying above Central America I couldn't see a thing because there were so many clouds. The landing was a little trouble some, but we made it with no problems. President Hernandez was there with open arms to hug each of us. We dropped our stuff off at the mission home and went to get some lunch. That's probably the last time I'll get chicken ribs and shrimp in one meal in Honduras ha. Then we went back to the mission home and caught up on some sleep, and most of us didn't wake up until 8 PM and we found dinner waiting on the table.

  Tuesday we hung out at the mission home for the first day. It is really nice. There is a basketball hoop, a ping pong table, and a swimming pool, unfortunately we're still missionaries so we didn't get to swim. Then we went to the mission office, where we had orientation and then went on splits with the zone leaders. I went with Elder Adams, I think he's from layton. We went to visit a couple of his investigators to set up appointments but weren't able to have a lesson. One of his investigators though speaks really good english so that was cool haha. and I had my first real Honduran meal, eggs and ham, with beans and tortillas. Wednesday we got our companions. My trainor is Elder Lopez. He's from Mexico, but while on the mission he has learned quite a bit of english. so we speak a lot of spanglish. he is really cool, he's been out 20 months now. 

  We are serving in the Valle Verde zone in Ojo de Agua. We have 5 progressing investigators. and 4 with baptismal dates. Alex, Karrina, and Cintia are all siblings. They are going to get baptized on November 19th as long as everything goes right. Ruth is going to be baptized December 3rd. I'm really excited about her because she came to an activity we had Friday night and to church. And Nestor. His family are all members except him. We just started teaching him, but he came to church. He doesn't seem totally committed to it all because he'd rather play soccer than go to church. We'll see, because we taught him about the sabbath day and committed him to keep it holy.

  Everything is great. This really is a whole other spanish haha.

That's it for now.

Elder Stone