Week One in Tela--Nov 30, 2015

This is probably the first week I don’t need to say it was a crazy week, but plenty of awesome stuff happened.  We did exchanges in a trio with Elder Wilks this last week—he’s my grandpa  and Zone Leader right now.   He’s super awesome.  Like,” I need to hang out with him after my mission” awesome.   He trained Nunez, making him my grandpa, and since Nunez had a son so early (me) he wants a great grandson--which means I need to train someone before he leaves.  He’s got 1 year left, so we’ll see what happens. 

Elder Wilks modeling the green shorts

Nunez LOVED the color green, and when we were leaving he begged me to give him that pair of green shorts.  I didn’t ‘cause they’re my faves, but I had Wilks wear them when he stayed at our house.  I sent the pics to Nunez,  just to bug my dad.  Haha!

 The important part of those pictures is the color of my tie and pants!  The kid’s name is Cristian.  He’s nine and super cool.  His mom is a member but his dad isn’t—a really cool part about the baptism was how supportive his family is.  It’s a huge decision, and they were acting like he just chose to become president.  The baptism was one of, if not the, coolest experience of my life.  We were both a little nervous as we changed in the bathroom, but it went perfectly.  I got all the words and his name right, and it was just fantastic.  That morning as we were cleaning and filing the baptismal font, my companion looked at me and said, well I’m leading the meeting, so I’m a little busy, do you want to baptize Cristian?  I freaked out a little, and while we were waiting for the font to fill up I was pacing around (you know how I do) and practicing the baptismal words.  His full name is Cristian Daniel Galdamez Medina.  Not easy to pronounce Daniel in Spanish.  Then we brought Cristian his clothes, went to get mine, and met at the church.  There was only like 16 people there, but it was super cool.  It’s pretty amazing how fast you develop a bond with someone when you’re about to baptize them.  The whole thing was just perfect.  Worth every hour of trudging around in the mud and rain of Honduras.  J

For Thanksgiving we went out and bought a pizza.  It was super expensive but soooooo worth it.  Then that night we made pudding from a present for my comp that he opened early.  Totally worth it.  It was perfect.

I’m getting the hang of the area, but it’s huge—way bigger than the last one.  It was two districts that were just combined.  Super huge.  One part of it is a national park, and it’s just jungle, but there’s people that live out there.  Next week I’ll send pictures of it.  It’s crazy, just like a movie.

The teaching pool is kind of small.  We don’t have a ton of investigators.  The people here are super strictly Catholic or Jehovah Witness and that makes lessons easy, but hard.  The easy part is point like we have a Heavenly Father who loves us, and anything you can prove with the Bible—they accept immediately.  But other information, like the Book of Mormon or latter day prophets are harder.  The good news is with the size of our area, we go contacting a ton.  We see at least 8 new people every day and 2 or 3 become new investigators.  So our numbers are going up pretty fast.  This area we are in is a branch of about 70 people.  My last area was a ward.  This area and La Ceiba are similar, but for some reason there are more white people that grew up and live here.  And a couple of tourists.  You can always tell the difference between local and visiting white people.  I’m not sure why, and not to be rude, but part of it is if you live in Honduras, you’re dirty.  Just a deep third world dirtiness.

I’m pretty sure almost every zone has some coastal areas, most of our mission is close to the coast.  I also found out this week, our mission doesn’t actually cover the city of San Pedro Sula at all.  There’s one area out of all of them that’s close, but we don’t have any missionaries in the city.

We don’t have a cook or a laundry lady in this area.  We buy lunch in central every day, and I try to do a little laundry every night.  We have a little pila and a washing board—so that’s been fun. 

It looks like we will be doing the Christmas call from the church through Skype.  And we won’t open any of the presents till Christmas.  My companion got a little excited and opened one, but the rest are intact.  And I gave some of the gifts to Nunez, because I know his family is poor and not members and he’s not expecting a single letter for Christmas. 

Elder Queme (keh meh) is awesome.  He’s been great.  He is the district leader, so we’ve been super obedient and therefore super successful. 

It’s funny, remember when we found out the rain here is called the Rain of Fear?  Well it turns out that’s like a common phrase—so right now is trabajo de miedo, or Work of Fear,  Basically it means a large amount or impressive amount of something.  So Rain of Fear, Work or Fear, Contacting of Fear.  It’s great! 

This week the people beneath us forgot to pay their electric bill.  We lost power, which is normal, but didn’t have it back by the end of the day, which is not normal.  We went outside and found out the power company had come by and cut our cables.  Seems a little impulsive, but whatever.  We have power now, but it was a rough couple of days, because without power, we don’t have water. 

Something I’ve noticed this week—every day, when times were tough were tough or frustrating, something happens, after hours of walking and contacting and struggling a little to talk, something awesome happens.  Like yesterday—we were walking when it started to rain.  We were a solid 10 minutes from our next appointment, so I was a little bummed.  But just then a little tour bus thing pulled over.  The guy shouted that he knew we were missionaries and asked us if we wanted a ride.  We said we didn’t have money, but he didn’t care.  We got in and he drove us to the next appointment.  While w were driving we found out he wasn’t a member, and wasn’t interested in the church, but he loved all missionaries.  We also found out he was heading the exact opposite of where we needed to go, but refused to tell us and drove us all the way to drop us off.  It was amazing.  Stuff like that happens only when we’ve been working hard all day.  And I’m super glad I realized that correlation. Sometime we need to look at things that are happening, and ask why God made it work out that way.  We can learn a lot about our habits and if He is happy with our decisions. 

This week we also met a group of tourist/hitch hikers.  They walked up to us to ask for directions, hoping that I spoke English.  It was a super fun conversation, and I realized how incredibly fast I’ve picked up this language.  They were from Estonia and Italy, and were walking all over Honduras as a cool cultural experience.  They had already done that same thing in most of Europe.  How awesome is that?

Well I’m running out of time, but I love you guys sooooo much.  Have an awesome Christmas, and please know I feel and appreciate your support every day.

PS.  I just got a group of like 7 letters from all families.  The dates ranged from Sep 15 to Nov 4, so the mail is apparently a little strange.  Thanks to everyone for their letters.  I love them so much!  It honestly makes every day easier because I feel your prayers every day.  And I love that feeling.   It’s really helping me to be the best possible missionary.  I love you guys!!  Thank you!

Some pasta we cooked