Monday, April 20, 2015 -- Week #9 - Day #63 - San Pedro Sula

11:55 am

Pday! We had study time and cleaned our house, now it's laundry time! That always takes a few hours to do...it takes a long time if you don't have a washer and dryer.

In personal study I was reading in Doctrine and Covenants 84 about missionary work. This past week has been a bit rough on myself and Hna Robles, and we had a good companionship talk last night to help get ourselves back on track and encouraged and comforted and focused on this next week of work we have ahead of us.

But yeah, D&C 84 has some nice verses in it, I especially like 36-38, 46-48, 61-64, the first half of 76, 79-80, 83, 85, 87-the first line of 89, first half of 116, and 119-120.

There is no reason to be fearful to speak the truth. And we know the principles of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to be true. We know the scriptures are the words of God to His children on this earth. We know the Book of Mormon to be a book of precious scripture revealed through the power of God. We know God is our Heavenly Father, the Creator of our spirits, and He loves us. We know that families can be eternal. When we pray, we talk to our Father, and He hears us, and responds to us. We have joy and peace in this life because of these truths, and it would behoove us to help others around us come to know these things are true as well and be happy with us.

Now, the way we go about doing that can be a little uncomfortable and daunting, but it really needn't be. And there will always be opposition in one form or another, that is one of the natural laws of God. But we can still live the Gospel in word, thought, and deed, and the fact that you simply extended an invitation and concisely explained why something is important to you is doing that work. It's what I do all day long, inviting and explaining to people about these truths...except it's in Spanish and a slight bit more involved, but the principles of this great and mighty work are the same. I am a representative of the Lord Jesus Christ, set apart with power and authority to preach His Gospel to His children in Honduras for 18 months. But from the moment we come to a knowledge of truth of the Gospel we will never stop being witnesses of Him. Pretty neat, huh? And should we ask for and stay worthy of the presence of the Holy Ghost, a member of the Godhead, to help us in our efforts, there will be joyous success. So cool!

10:15 pm

So Hna Robles is pretty excited, there's gonna be a temple dedicated in Peru in June, and President Monson is going to dedicate it, so that's pretty neat. It's fun to hear news from our loved ones and how things are going in our home countries...thank goodness for internet! We are blessed, indeed.

Trujillo Peru Temple

But, funny side note, I don't know how bad my Spanish sounds in comparison to how it would sound if I were learning English, but it's always fun to hear the people here try to sound out English words, especially my name, usually comes out along the lines of "Mauri," "Mow-rah," or "Moh-where."  My favorite English word of the day was "awkward" with Hna Robles, it came out sort of like "eahk-wehrd," like how Hno Garcia said it. Languages are funny!

After laundry, we had lunch at Burger King because we had coupons for it, and then bought food for the week, and came home and taught a lesson and had a FHE with a wonderful family and watched "Together Forever" with them, pretty neat little video, I encourage you to watch it! It's always interesting how people pick up on different things, we all shared something that caught our attention, and it was a good little FHE, got 2 references and had some delicious orange juice.

But it's great when we're walking around the downtown city part of SPS, every few minutes some guy will pass by and comment "Que bonita son," "Quiere casarme tus ojos," "Que linda son" etc, etc...basically saying how we're so pretty and they want to marry us...that's what ya get! Haven't had much whistling (I really hate that, so that's good) but I have had a few kisses in my direction and some wandering eyes, ugh. You kinda get used to being looked at here, people don't really have bubbles. If you're different, you get looked at.  Different mentality than the States, we are so individual and don't want to get in another's business and there are so many different kinds of people it doesn't matter. But to be 1 of the 70-90 or something white people in this mission, you get looked at a lot. So that's a bit different.

Also almost all the taxis listen to Jesus music, or I think it's some kind of Evangelical televangelist thing, which is kinda funny.