Hey everyone,

There was an earthquake here a week or two ago, but neither me nor
Elder Flores knew about it until we were talking with some members in
the branch. Apparently we slept right through it.

There have been sightings of a Boa down the street from us. We luckily
have not seen it yet, but from the sound of it, it´s a pretty big one.
So let´s hope we never run into it, especially not at night when we
can´t see it.

I saw a burned Book of Mormon in the road a week of go. I think that
is one of the saddest things I´ve ever seen. They are literally
burning up their chance in this life.

Our District President told us that the Temple in Tegucigalpa will not
be dedicated until November or December, so we´ve still got about a
year to wait. But they´ve already got the Angel Moroni up so it´s only
the interior they have to do now.

We had divisinos with the zone leaders. I went to the Villa with Elder
Villatoro. Right before lights out he got a call and got minichanged.
So we have a new zone leader, and I still haven´t met him.

Margarita is the aunt of Onny and we have been teaching her. She
accepted a baptismal date, so we are going to be working with her a
lot more.

Our other investigators lack progress. Ana won´t get married because
her boyfriend lives in Mexico and visits her every once in a while,
but she won´t dump him either. Victor relapsed with his alcohol, plus
is ¨wife¨ doesn´t want to officially be his wife even though they´ve
lived together for 14 years.

We're trying to find new investigators that have potential to progress.

Thanks for the support!
Elder Stone

Hey everyone!  So there is a lot to catch up on.

Elder Chapman and I went on divisions recently and a random lady approached
us and first asked if we were some sort of doctors, because we´re both
white guys wearing white shirts, I don´t know. But then we told her we are
missionaries and she asked us to pray for her daughters to return to her
from the US and from Tegucigalpa. So we talked to her for awhile,
and tried to convince her to go to her house to pray. But she wouldn´t
have any of that, she wanted it right there in the middle of the street.
After about 5 minutes, with no success in moving from the street,
we decided to have the prayer there and then, luckily I don't think that
anyone noticed us.  It was funny how insistent she was.

In Zamorano there is a college, and every once in awhile there is a random
North American when we go there for Pdays. It is so fun to hear english
from everyday people ha. But I still need to work on approaching people that
speak english. For some reason I feel more comfortable trying to contact
in Spanish ha.
The people here wear a lot of clothing with english writing and sometimes
it turns out to be pretty funny. I saw a guy wearing a hat that said "The
Place for WOMEN to Work and Shop".  I´ve also seen a couple of  girls basketball
camp tshirts that guys have been wearing.

The people in my area are really nice. I hear at least one person a day say
¨God bless you¨ even though they don´t want anything to do with the mormons
they´re still really nice to us.  One time we were contacting a house, right when
the lady opened the door, she just said "no"  and started shutting the door in our
faces. Elder Lopez tried really hard to just talk with her about anything but she
wouldn´t listen to any of it. It was pretty funny, maybe you just had to be there!
Last week we were having a zone conference and some drunk walked into the
chapel talking about how we´re all equal and children of God. Apparently he
is pretty famous in Zamorano for interrupting church meetings
.
Finally I got to eat something unique, PIG SKIN SOUP. It wasn´t too bad either.
Everything is great!  I love the mission and I love being a Mormon!

Elder Stone

We had transfers this week! I´m still in Ojo de Agua, but I have a new
companion. His name is Elder Flores, he has 20 months in the mission.
He´s from El Salvador, and he was converted a year before he came out
on the mission. I think it will be great to have his perspective as a
missionary, because he already knows what it is like to be an
investigator. He has a lot of ideas, I hope they help out this area.

So we are low on progressing investigators. Everybody is willing to
listen, but nobody really seems interested in changing anything in
their lives. They´ve got their church a couple houses away, it
preaches about the same god, so why not go there.

Victor seems really motivated and interested, but we´ve been teaching
him for almost 4 weeks now and he hasn´t been to church once.
Ana has been to church twice, but she is never home, so we never have
the opportunity to teach her. But we did challenge her to be baptized
and she seems hesitant, so we are going to focus on her doubts.

Today we´re in Zamorano and we played soccer on a mini caged field. Of
the three months I´ve been here and have been playing soccer, today I got
my first goal.  Needless to say, I´m not very good at soccer yet.  But it´s
still fun.

That´s all for this week!
Elder Stone

We had interviews with President Hernandez this week. He came to Ojo
de Agua and we spent a good chunk of the morning there. It was kind of
funny because the first interview of the day took at least an hour.
Then almost every one after that was about 10 minutes or less. Plus a
blow to my confidence, at the end of our interview he had me close
with a pray and as I was nearing the end I said "We give thee thanks
for thy son Jesus Christ" and President said "Amen" when really I was
going to say "and his atonement" but I guess I finished my prayer.

Yesterday I had to give my third talk in the Branch. I hate to give talks
in English, and now they want me to do it in Spanish. Plus they
tell me to take up 20 minutes.  I mean I know if I write it all out and
use the internet I can do it in English, but I neither have the
time nor the resources here, so they turn out to be 10 minutes tops.

We just started teaching the neighbor of Allan and Vanessa.  I kid you
not, he looks just like the Latin version of the old man from the movie "UP".
I really want to send pictures.  It is truly funny, and Elder Lopez and I laugh
about it almost every time we visit.

Thats all for this week, thanks for all the support.

Elder Stone

Hey Everyone!

This week I may have had the coolest baptism that I will have all my
mission. Allan and Vanessa were baptized Saturday. Not only did we
baptize a family, but we did it in a river! It was cool, Allan said he wanted
to follow more of the example of Christ. So Elder Lopez baptized Allan
and I baptized Vanessa. I´m still not very good at explaining the
procedure, so after stumbling through the prayer I was lowering her in, but
she didn´t close her mouth and started laughing, so right before I put
her under I had to stop. So we had to do it again, but the second time
the prayer went well and I lowered her into the water with her mouth
closed ha. It was also cool because we planned for 25 people and
exactly 25 came! Usually they only get about 8 at the baptisms, but
with the river being closer than driving all the way to the Villa SF
it was easier for everyone to attend.

We do have another perspective family. Victor is the father and he
seems really positive, but it´s really hard to get him to church. He
always says that he will attend, but he hasn´t the past two weeks.
His son, Ariel, comes everyone once in awhile with his member grandparents.
The problem with that is that his grandparents are less active members.
It will take some work. We´re always searching for families.

Nothing else this week.

Love ya!

Elder Stone

This week has been really interesting. I have visited almost the entire
zone and half of it this week alone. Tuesday I went on divisions to
Yuscaron for a couple of hours. That was a pretty cool experience, it looks
like a cool little town, but the attendence at church on the 25th was 7,
including the President and the two missionaries. On Thursday I went to the
Villa of San Francisco. Again the town seems like it would be pretty cool.
And then Friday I went to Zamorano. I don't care for it much, except they
do have a university there, so there are people from all over, including
some from the US.

Other than those exchanges nothing really happened this week. We received several
referals Saturday and Sunday but have yet to contact them. We have been
looking for families still. It's really hard because no one bothers to get
married. When we do find a family, then it will be so much better to teach them,
because they will support each other and are more likely to remain active.
I think we are going to start focusing on part member families.
Yesterday we had 71 members at church! That is the most we' ve had since
I've been here.  Plus one member brought her nonmember husband and another
her nonmember boyfriend. We are going to try to contact them and see if
we can help them out. This week is short.

Thanks for the support! Love ya!
Elder Stone

Happy New Years!

Happy New Years!

So this was a pretty interesting week. We are a couple of Mormon
Missionaries living in the rental home of an Episcopalian Pastor with
Evangelical neighbors. Every once in a while all the branches of the
Evangelical churches of Ojo de Agua get together and have some sort of
Stake Conference or something. And it turned out that this week our
neighbors got to host it. It is really interesting to listen to the
way they worship, but to each their own. The bad part of this is
that they didn't start until 8 at night and didn't end until about
Midnight. Needless to say we did not sleep very well.
Then the following day was New Years Eve. We started the next day as
usual, but when the night came we visited some members and we
celebrated up until 9:00 ish and then went home. I celebrated the new
year falling asleep around 10:30 ish and waking up at Midnight to the
thousands of firecrackers and fireworks going off in Ojo de Agua.
Boy I love our neighbors!
We had our dinner of the new year in the branch this week. We had a
really good turn out, too bad they basically only come for the food.
But we met about 3 new investigators which was really cool. I hope
that we will be able to continue meeting with them.
This week we also met a member of 16 years that has been
inactive for about 15 years. It's one of those sad situations where
once the missionaries left she didn't really have any support so she
just stopped going. But she was super welcoming and very nice and we
are going to see if we can help her get back to church.
Allan and Vanessa are still progressing. They both accepted the
baptismal date of January 14th, so hopefully all goes well and we are
able to help them in their eternal progression. We spent part of New
Years Eve with them, and we still continually visit them almost every
day.
Even though yesterday was New Years Day we had a decent turn out for
church, granted we started 20 minutes late because at 9 we had about 7
members including us two missionaries and the branch president. But we
turned out to have about 38 members, a couple of less actives came and
we had 5 investigators.
That's it for this week!

Elder Stone