Sunday, June 7, 2015 -- Week #16 - Day #111 - San Pedro Sula

7:20 am

Happy Birthday, Lyndsey!  I love you!

Sweetest Sisters!

Today was Fast Sunday, but it's been cloudy the past few days, so it was a lot easier on my body this time around.  Although I do have to say that I'm still quite attached to my water bottle.

Today was good, we have 3 definites and a tentative 4th baptism planned for this Saturday, so we've been working with those investigators and getting things coordinated for all that, fun stuff. Hopefully everything goes smoothly, but as always, there's opposition, but also, as always, it turns out in the end. Yay!

News from Honduras, when people like you, they give you food. It's normal to offer a drink (usually Coke or Pepsi) when someone visits, but you know they actually like talking to you and want you to come back when they start feeding you, so we're starting to see that with some of our investigators, so that's encouraging. Last night we had 3 baleadas each from this one family we're teaching, they were soooo good. I gotta make baleadas for you guys when I come home, they're some of my favorite food here.

The family of the 3 baleadas, they're super awesome and live in one
of the nicest houses I've been in. Jenny 2, me, Gabi, Hna Robles,
Jenny 1 (their grandmother) and the back view of their Chihuahua, Mia.

In way of food, I tried mango verde (unripe mango) for the first time at another investigator's house. You're supposed to eat it with salt and pepper, and I actually liked the taste quite well, there was just the slight problem of that unripe fruit makes your tummy feel a little funny afterwards. So I think I'll stick to the consumption of normal, ripe mango for the time being, but mango verde is pretty good, too, every once in a while.

In the Avenida Junior, there's this marching band thing that practices almost everyday, I'm not quite sure what they're for or who they are, but they're really neat. I imagine there's about 40-50 people that participate. There's drums, xylophones, cymbals, shouting, and dancing around, pretty neat to watch and listen to as we're walking around.

Saturday, June 6, 2015 -- Week #16 - Day #110 - San Pedro Sula

10:15 pm

Today I ran into a tree branch and I think it knocked off my earring, so I'll have to buy some new ones on Pday, whoops. I was checking our agenda for who we were going to visit next and we walked by these overgrown bush-tree things, and my face met wood. That was surprising! But I'm ok, just lost my pearl earring.

We're visiting a family that has a 2 month-old male puppy, and another that has a 3 month-old female puppy, and both like to climb around and chew on my backpack and shoes. They're the cutest little things, still kinda walk around funny with their little tails wiggling, but each time we visit they seem to be a little bit bigger. Crazy how fast they grow. So hopefully I'll be around a little longer and can watch them get bigger!  They're named Bruno and Burbuja (Bubble) respectively.

With the rapiditos here, they follow routes throughout the city, and usually we use Ruta 4 to get to Central and the stores and stuff, but for normal everyday use, we are regular users of the Ruta 11...our legs! One of the favorite sayings in the mission, and one we tell ourselves all the time as we're walking around.

Funny experience of the week: we were teaching these 3 kiddos (they're getting baptized next Saturday!) and talking about how much God loves them and knows them personally, and I reached over and smacked a mosquito on Hna Robles's leg, without warning. Everyone busted up laughing, as the whole scene was quite funny. Hna Robles: "What part did you like the most about what you just read?" Guisell: "Well, I liked the part the God loves me a lot." Hna Robles: "Yes, Guisell, that is really important. God is our loving Father in Heaven, and He wants us to be happy, so He-" --SMACK-- Me: "...helps us get rid of mosquitoes." Gotta love teaching outside in Honduras.

And on a more spiritual note, I'm helping Hna Robles translate "Stronger" by the Nashville Tribute Band, and we were going over phrases and stuff, and we started talking about "to face" something, and I explained that it's used to say "to face your fears," "to meet them head-on," and that got me thinking that that is such a neat little set of words: To face something, head-on.  As in, you choose to turn and stand in front of something, with all your focus and might, with the intention on staying in your place no matter what the other thing does. Actually pretty neat, if you think about it, Hna Robles really liked the concept.

Friday, June 5, 2015 -- Week #16 - Day #109 - San Pedro Sula

7:50 am

Guess what I made for breakfast? French toast! It was a little different than normal since we don't have any cinnamon or vanilla or powdered sugar, so I just made it with milk, egg, bread, and dotted some canned frosting on top, actually turned out pretty good. On to study time!

My French Toast!

9:05 pm

Today was interesting, lots of emotional ups and downs. Most of our visits ended up being with less-active members of the Church. It just made me so sad that these are wonderful, good people that in one way or another, got lost. Most of them don't want to come back until they get their lives back in order, but now is actually the time they need to come to church the most, and they don't understand that. Hna Robles was explaining that a lot of the time people fall away is because of pride, whether they have too much of it or it was hurt in the past somehow.

And it rained this evening, started at 7:00 pm and is still continuing, so that's pretty neat, it's gonna be very humid tomorrow, which is not quite so neat. I like the sound of rain, especially at night.

And this morning we bought a broom! A beautiful, red, fluffy, brand new broom! We don't have to use our little piddly half-broom anymore to sweep our house. We're ecstatic.

Our beautiful new broom! I used it for the first time today to clean our floors, worked quite nicely!

And it's pretty funny how the promise of "the Lord will place people in your path to hear the Gospel" is fulfilled...there are literally people sitting in the curbs and at the corners as we're walking around that we can contact. So the finding people part is easy, just gotta go talk to them and get a date to return and an address to return to. And sometimes, we can't find them again, and sometimes we do. But at least we did our part and presented the opportunity and offered the invitation. Keep on keeping on.

Side note on the French toast happening of this morning, the fun thing in Honduras is that you have to wash everything before you eat it, so I got to wash my eggs before cracking and using them. It's kinda fun to wash a eggs, just be careful you don't drop them!

And we bought some treats to gift David with as his birthday was yesterday, so now I have 1 lempira. I think we'll wait until Monday when I can withdraw my money and pay back Hna Robles (I owe her about 800 lemps now). The prophet's counsel is to be debt-free, right?

Today was good, just another day in the land of Honduras. We're ticking down the days to the last couple of weeks in this cambio, crazy!

Thursday, June 4, 2015 -- Week #16 - Day #108 - San Pedro Sula

10:21 pm

Today was good, taught some lessons, talked to some people, did some good work. Highlights of the morning were corn flakes and maple syrup for bfast (I was feeling like consuming exorbitant amounts of sugar) and Weekly Planning, the which is held every Thursday and we plan goals and people to focus on for the next week.

In other news, we are again eating from Hna Fidelina, but we can't eat at the house with the elders because of the new rules, so we get to bring our lunch home in fancy styrofoam to go boxes and eat at our table and watch church videos, actually pretty neat. She charges 35 lemps each meal, so around $1.50 or something, I think, pretty cheap, considering. 

And, sad news, my black pen died today! But I bought a pack of new pens the other week, so we're all good. But I liked my old pen a lot, I used the same kind all throughout high school and into college, the 4 pack Acroball fine-tip ballpoint, white body with orange, purple, green and blue colored grips and plastic parts near the clicky part. They were good little pens, and served me well all these years.

And we had the coolest sky ever this evening, after the sun set it turned this super deep turquoise and cobalt blue, with the rippled clouds reflecting a gray blue, so it looked like we were under the ocean with the crashing waves frozen in time above us. Made me feel really calm and like I was swimming again...that was really neat.

And it was David's birthday today, he turned 8 years old. And he's getting baptized on Saturday! He's still determined to have E Comin baptize him, so hopefully we can get everything planned and coordinated in a day and a half. Yay for impromptuness!

In other random news, Hna Robles wants a pastry with pineapple filling, and I want tomato soup. Go figure.

Wednesday, June 3, 2015 -- Week #16 - Day #107 - San Pedro Sula

10:15 pm

It's the third day in the month of June, wow. Hey, Lyndsey's birthday is on Sunday! Yay!

Today was good, we found a snow cone place while we were walking around and got ourselves some snow cones of exceedingly bright colors: Hna Robles of electric blue (bubblegum) and radiant orange (peach), mine of neon green (lime) and fluorescent pink (strawberry), so don't be surprised if we die from cancer from all the colors of the rainbow that by right should not exist. But they were delicious, had sweetened condensed milk on top. Sorry I don't have a picture, as we were in the street and there were lots of people around, and as we all know very well, we don't have our cameras out and about in public.  So just try to imagine our fabulous snow cones and how much we enjoyed them.

Also, I forgot the proper greeting when I called the taxi to pick us up this morning (had an appointment in the hospital) and so the poor guy on the other end answered to a very confused me saying "Halo, buenaaaaas.......manana? Oh, buenos dias, es cierto!" So that made Hna Robles laugh, it was a fun start to the morning. Got confused because "manana" is morning or tomorrow, depending on context, and "dias" is day, but you use "buenas dias" like "good morning" and so I was a little confused and blanked for a minute because my brain was still waking up. Spanish is a little trickier in the early morning, Hna Robles is always laughing and correcting me, by about 10:00 am or 11:00 am or so I'm back to normal. But today we both were way more tired than usual, we took a 5 min nap during study time this morning (don't tell Pres!) and rested a little bit after we finished eating lunch. But in the afternoon we felt better, so that was good. Walked around a lot.

Found some cool quotes today:

"La vida no se trata de esperar a que pasa la torment...se trata de aprender a bailar bajo la lluvia."

"La fe es el poder. La obediencia es el precio. El amor es el motivo. El Espiritu es la clave. Cristo es la razon." -President Gordon B. Hinckley

Tuesday, June 2, 2015 -- Week #16 - Day #106 - San Pedro Sula

9:37 pm

Hey, good news! I found a lemp in my backpack this morning as I was going through it, so now I have 7 lempiras to work with! I think we'll run by an ATM tomorrow so I'm not a sad little moneyless person.

Today was good, better than yesterday, so I'm happy about that. Had District Meeting, E Lyon checked over our Area Book, went and met Pres and Hna Dester for lunch and to talk about mission health stuff as there's some recent events that need to be addressed on the mission level, then taught some wonderful lessons and met some fabulous new people to teach. Quite a day. And it also sprinkled a few times today and had some righteous clouds that blocked most of the sun, so that was also awesome.

Hna Robles received a plethora of calls from the missionaries this afternoon, among which an elder whacked his head on an A/C unit in a doctor's office and needed stitches, and another got his finger bitten by a Capuchin monkey.

Also, Hna Robles and I have made it a joke when someone says "es cierto," as we always remember the sarcasm of E Lyon the other Pday... always good to have a little laugh. And since it's an exceptionally common phrase, there's many opportunities to laugh.

And I think the Smurfs are called Pintufos here, we visited a family and the Smurfs were on the cover of one of the children's notebooks with "Los Pintufos" written below them. I will investigate this topic further.

But yeah, overall good day, had some guava and pineapple juice and a PBJ for dinner, gonna hop in the shower and get into bed! 

Monday, June 1, 2015 -- Week #15 - Day #105 - San Pedro Sula

10:18 pm

Today was a day of supreme gringo-ness...I don't know where my mind was today, but I basically forgot how to function correctly over here in Honduras. Almost walked into traffic a multitude of times, knocked over a display, almost tripped on the escalator, forgot how to order my lunch in Spanish, and also forgot the PIN to my debit card and E Markus wouldn't be in the office until later, so I currently have about 6 lemps on me. And all our citas fell through, so we ended up visiting Carlos and Karina. And I was really thirsty all today and had a slight headache. 

But, we did celebrate E Lyon's birthday, so we went over to the house of Hna Fidelina (the matriarch of the family we moved the other day) and had some cake to celebrate the advent of our district leader. E Comin pushed E Lyon's face in the cake, and he got a lovely frosting beard. Although it was actually something like Cool Whip, as they don't use frosting here. Interesting. But still delicious!

Also, I finally learned what a.m. and p.m. mean: ante-meridian and post-meridian, as in the division of the day's time in the middle. Pretty neat.

And I think I accidentally flushed our pet gecko down the toilet...I feel really bad. That would be a horrible death. I was cleaning the bathroom for Pday this morning and I guess he didn't like me scrubbing around everything else in the bathroom (as that's his usual living area) and sought refuge in the toilet, but then I finished up everything else and did the toilet last, and flushed all the soap and stuff from cleaning it, and he came scrambling around the bowl and fell back into the spray of water and disappeared. So that made me a little sad this morning. Hna Robles jokingly said that now we adhere to the guidelines in our Missionary Handbook of not having pets of any kind, but she's also a little sad that he's gone. Poor little guy.

And during lunch they played what I think was a remix of "This Is How We Roll" by Florida Georgia Line, and it was so weird. You can't turn Country into Pop or whatever it was. Just ain't right.

So today was really weird, lots of strange things happening. Hopefully tomorrow makes more sense.