Sunday, September 13, 2015 -- Month #6 - Week #30 - Day #209 - Santa Cruz de Yojoa

(Note: upon re-reading this entry I realized I wrote "Subday" instead of "Sunday" but I have decided to leave the error as it made me smile, made me think of submarines.)

Subday! (Sunday) This was probably actually one of my best Subdays so far...we found our people! Whoohoo! Had a lesson almost every hour, it was awesome. Oh, it's good to have some light before entering another tunnel.

In church today we had a surprise visit from a member of the Seventy, so E Pocock and I were a little concerned about speaking, but he left after the Sacrament was passed. We then gave our talks and everything went as normal. I talked about charity and love and stuff, and how the members can develop this love and find small ways to share the gospel, without fear: E Pocock talked about retention of new members. And we didn't have to give the class later that day, so that was nice. It's fallen without notice on the missionaries the past few Sundays.

In other news, it rained at 4:00 pm in the afternoon until around 6:00 pm or so, then it just kinda sprinkled. As we walked around with our umbrellas our feet and legs (skirts and slips as well, I love layers!) got pretty wet. I was just glad that it wasn't like one of the storms in SPS where the rain came sideways and everything got wet, even our faces under the umbrellas got wet. It rained pretty hard today, but maintained a mostly vertical fashion of arrival.

We're visiting a recent convert named Guadalupe that has a little baby boy of about a year, and he's so cute! He has 5 little teeth coming in, and started walking a few weeks ago. It's so fun to see him do his little marching-step-walk as he figures out how to be better coordinated in his motor skills, but he's coming along very nicely. He's always laughing and smiling and gazing about the world with his enormous brown eyes. Wonderful little kiddo.

One of the members with a mototaxi that gives us rides sometimes makes about 28,000 lemps a month, or about $1,400. And that's a lot of money over here. His wife runs a pulperia and makes around 1,600 lemps, or about $80. Things in the states are really expensive, if you think about it. 

Funny story from this week: we were in a bus heading over to Potrerillos, and we had to pull over to a gas station to refill. As we were waiting, I saw that someone had brought a TV box with a picture of a butterfly, which somehow reminded me of when we raised butterflies when I was little.

Monarch Butterfly

I asked Hna Rosas if she knew anything about raising butterflies, to which she said that she didn't. So I started telling all about how one day my dad came home from work and surprised us with a plastic container full of leaves and caterpillars, and he explained that we were gonna raise some butterflies. So my little sister and I got a bigger habitat and placed the caterpillars inside, and changed out the leaves every day, and sometimes just sat there watching the caterpillars munching leaf after leaf after leaf, and how they grew and walked around.

Butterfly Habitat

And, after a few weeks, they started hanging upside down on the lid of the container, curled up partway, and then somehow they were covered in a chrysalis. A short time after that, the chrysalis had become clear, and you could see the butterfly inside.

Chrysalises

We had been studying up on butterflies, and we knew that they tend to emerge from their chrysalis in the early morning, so everyday as soon as we woke up (when you're little, you tend to wake up early all the time) we would go and check on our butterflies. One morning we checked, and there was some kind of liquid on the floor of the habitat, and it looked like blood, so we thought the butterflies had died!

The red liquid is meconium...just waste material from the emerging butterfly

That was kind of upsetting, until we realized that one was actually in process of emerging, so we watched as it worked itself out of the chrysalis and clung on upside down to let it's wings dry and straighten out. In the meantime, several others came out of their chrysalises, and we determined that they were ok and not bleeding, as we had previously thought. In the first little bit when they start opening and closing their wings, the butterflies would walk across our hands and noses, before being strong enough to fly.

Lyndsey - 3 years old

Andrea - 7 years old

The joys of butterflies!

So that was pretty neat to "hold" our butterflies that morning. We also had a whole row of azalea bushes in our backyard, so we were able to release our butterflies outside and most of them visited our flower bushes for the following few weeks. So that was really neat. A few years later we did a butterfly unit in 5th grade where we studied monarch butterflies in detail, and raised some as a class. And another few times at home with some caterpillars we found in the greenbelt behind our house.

So that was neat to share all that with Hna Rosas, and some of the other passengers were also listening, as an older gentleman started smiling and laughing a few times as I was describing our little-kid emotions about our butterflies and demonstrating how they formed their chrysalises and everything. I'm a very good story-teller, apparently, as he enjoyed hearing about how to raise butterflies and everything. I learned how to say caterpillar and chrysalis in Spanish, so I thought that was some pretty helpful vocab to have on hand in case I get asked to speak in a seminar of butterfly-raising. Gotta be prepared, right?

I also had arroz y leche (rice and milk) for the first time here, I have never had rice pudding before, but I imagine it's something similar? You cook some white rice, and then boil it again with whole milk, sugar, and what tasted like cinnamon and cloves?  It was delicious.

And, just thought I'd let ya know, we haven't had water in pila since last Monday...kinda felt like the end of the world! It normally comes every 3 three days, and on Thursday it was only a sputtering little trickle for a few minutes, the same thing happened today. So we're on super water saver mode until we can talk to the land lady tomorrow, and maybe we'll have to borrow water from Hna Esperanza (the member we were living with previously) as the water never goes out over there and she's offered to other people to lend water before. So we'll see. I consider one of my biggest accomplishments in life is showering with just 2 gallons of water! That's about a third of what we normally use to bathe, I think so I'm pretty proud of myself. You gotta get everything wet, and then shampoo your hair, soap up your body and everything, scrub your face, (basically everything is covered with soap at this point) then rinse everything off. That's it. Somehow it takes longer than a normal shower, maybe because you're a lot more careful and focused on pouring the water a little bit at a time. Anyways, that's my big news for now, keep y'all posted on how we're gonna get our water back...maybe we gotta do a rain dance or something.

Saturday, September 12, 2015 -- Month #6 - Week #30 - Day #208 - Santa Cruz de Yojoa

Today was good, we finally found one of the inactive families we were looking for and they're really awesome people. So we'll keep working with them, the dad was Elder's Quorum President, and the mom was a counselor in the Young Women's organization. They are actually references from a contact we made from Wednesday, so that was cool. The directions to get to their house weren't very good, so we spent a good 20-30 minutes trying to find them, but we did, finally, so everyone was happy about that.

Santa Cruz

More outside shots in Santa Cruz

Our Zone Leaders had a baptism today, so that was exciting. I got to give a surprise talk about baptism (not a big deal, we talk about that all the time. Actually, most of the things we give talks about we talk about all the time. That sentence made a ton of sense. Sorry.) Apparently everyone forgot to bring towels, so Hna Rosas and I had to go solutionize that problem, and we were successful in the end. The Ward Mission Leader told us an hour before the service that he couldn't come, as he was working. And the sister that was supposed to talk about the Holy Ghost fell asleep at home and woke up just a few minutes before the service was supposed to start, so a recently returned missionary gave that talk with about 15 minute's notice. Poor Elder Roldan was stressed out of his mind. But, everything went surprisingly quite smoothly, actually, and the lady was baptized. There's always, always, always opposition on a baptism day. Always. Drives me crazy.

Opposition

On Saturdays we have dinner at the house of Hna Betty, who is wonderful, and she has a pet dog named Oso (Bear) that is a "special". It's a little fluff-ball sort of dog, with pointy ears, and honey-colored fur that sticks straight out. He has brown eyes that look a little bit too alert, but go cross-eyed sometimes, and his tongue is always sticking out the side of his mouth. Walks kinda funny, and likes to follow you around. Really sweet dog, though, haven't heard him bark or growl or anything. Just kinda trots around the house, living his dog life. 

So yeah. Gotta get my talk finished up for tomorrow in Church, I'm speaking with Elder Pocock, and our Ward Mission Leader. And we might possibly give the Gospel Principles class if he isn't able to stay. Ha saber.

Friday, September 11, 2015 -- Month #6 - Week #30 - Day #207 - Santa Cruz de Yojoa

Today on a lot of the TVs were broadcasts about 9-11, which made me a little bit more serious throughout the day. My salutations and condolences to those who lost family members and friends.

Actually found most of our people today, so that was really nice. We just keep doing our thing over here in Santa Cruz...we meet a lot of people, and a lot of inactive members actually, too, but most people don't accept or drop off after 1 or 2 lessons. That can get a bit discouraging, but we keep at it everyday. Coming up on 7 months in a week, crazy to think I've been doing this for that long. Go missions!

In other news, we met up with a lady that apparently had never lied, stolen, acted up to her parents, or committed any other kind of sin, so she's pretty much perfect. But, she is still willing to be baptized. Problem is, she thinks that Joseph Smith is the son of Jesus Christ, which he most definitely is not, so we got some work to do with her. Good lady, her husband supposedly hasn't drank for about 2 months now, so that's superb (a lot of people tend to walk around drunk at 10:00 am and all day and all afternoon and all night, actually...we have lots of drunk friends...good times. Kids, do your homework, and don't do stupid things, please).

A lot of people are missing some or all of their teeth and have had broken bones set wrong, so this other lady's ankle is all swollen-looking and the leg doesn't look right because the bones healed wrong. She can still walk, but now she's 80-something, so it's the little-old-lady-walk. Sweet woman, I like her, problem is that her brother drinks every third day or something like that since he was a young teenager. Couldn't understand a word he said. He cried a lot during the lesson.

I also supposedly was here 7 years ago in case you didn't know...we met another wonderful person today that swore up and down that I was here 7 years ago with some other gringitos, walking around the streets of Honduras, preaching the Word. Although 7 years ago my family had moved to Florida and I was in school, not Central America. They discovered that I really do have teleporting abilities, guys! I was trying to keep that a secret.

Anyways, overall good day, it was warmer than usual as well, so that made it harder on Hna Rosas, but we were fine. We got our trusty umbrellas! Except that makes everyone get us confused with the Jehovah's Witnesses, and they start asking us why we aren't wearing socks (as I'm wearing my fantabulous sandals and Hna Rosas in her flats) and other assorted questions. The elderes never use umbrellas for the sun, by the way, but I think it's a decent idea, just gotta explain a little bit more to everyone you meet. Makes for good conversation, at least.

A little group of ants carrying a piece of Cheeto, I think. I swept them
outside so they could enjoy their snack before Hna Rosas saw them.

Thursday, September 10, 2015 -- Month #6 - Week #30 - Day #206 - Santa Cruz de Yojoa

Hermana Rosas, Hermana Archila (Sister Training Leader), Hermana Mower

Hermana Rosas, Hermana Delgadillo (Sister Training Leader),
and Hermana Mower

Divisions again! I went with Hna Delgadillo, Hna Rosas went with Hna Archila. Good day, Hna Delgadillo and I did a lot of work, so we're happy about that. We did an incredible amount of contacting, which is something that I always need to work on, so I was grateful for that. There's so little people in the street compared to SPS, that you seriously gotta take whatever opportunity you can find. So I'll try to be better with that. But we actually were able to find most of our people for once, so that was really good. I also didn't get lost, as we're not in a grid system, so that was wonderful. Hna Delgadillo also served here about 4 months ago, so she knew the names of places and such. So that was very helpful.

A marshmallow treat as a gift from the Sister Training Leaders!

Pretty much exhausted, as we somehow always stay up late when we have divisions, so I'm quite tired. Your body can get so set on its schedule, and when you're a little bit off on the times you mess everything up. I've gotten to where I can wake myself up at 6:15 am, and again at 6:30 am, I always get sleepy from 3:00 - 5:00 pm, and sleep promptly at 10:30 pm. Literally clockwork.

Wednesday, September 9, 2015 -- Month #6 - Week #30 - Day #205 - Santa Cruz de Yojoa

Today I heard the Speckled Frog tune from some commercial as we were walking around, and I totally remembered the song! In English, of course, so I started singing along and all that, and Hna Rosas made the comment, "You sound like that when you talk in your sleep sometimes."  So that was an interesting factoid for the day. I didn't realize that I sing about 5 little speckled frogs sitting on a hollow log in my dreams. Whoops.

We also met a guy as we were walking along the side of the road to a cita that was confused as to why there was a "negrita y una blanquita, y las dos son misioneras," or a dark one and a light one and they're both missionaries, in reference to Hna Rosas and I. It's mind boggling, I know, but it is quite possible. We try not to blow people's minds too much on a regular basis. The me speaking Spanish part really helps that, as you might imagine.

Companions!  Hna Rosas and Hna Mower

Today I heard what Spanish with a French accent sounded like, it sounds a lot like English with a French accent. We went to a lunch appointment and the TV show "Bubble Guppies" was on, and the lobster character was in charge of a theatrical production and is of French origin, and since we all speak Spanish down here, naturally he spoke Spanish with a French accent. To be honest, I was fascinated by this strange combination as I ate my fish and clam soup (I think that's what it was. There were bits from a whole array of marine creatures in there). I will also admit that I'm not a huge fan of clams. I'll have to put them on the list with the chicken livers. Sorry clam-lovers.

But, highlight of the day: I figured out what Sunbeams are! Rayitos de Sol!!! Isn't that the neatest little name?  Literally means "little rays of sun". That made me incredibly happy today to have finally figured that one out.

We were visiting a house and I thought the sun coming through all the smoke from the comal made it look pretty neat. Hna Rosas thought it looked like the First Vision. You can also see some of the plenitude of roosters and hens we have in Honduras, and the log in the upper left corner houses bees for honey. Also lots of banana trees here.

In Primary, the Valiants are Valientes, in Young Womens the Beehives are Abejitas (little bees), Mia Maids are Damitas (little ladies) and the Laurels are Laureles (laurels). In Young Mens, we got the Diaconos (deacons), Maestros (teachers), and the Presbiteros (priests). So I'm filling in some of the gaps, that's why I was so excited with the Sunbeams discovery. 
I want to be a little ray of sunshine!

Little ray of sunshine!!

So we taught a few lessons, walked around a lot, and it rained again right as we got home. Good day.

Tuesday, September 8, 2015 -- Month #6 - Week #30 - Day #204 - Santa Cruz de Yojoa

Today was good, hopped on our bus to head to District Meeting, we had a surprise visit from Pres and Hna Dester! Yay! I flipped back into nurse companion mode to help Hna Dester translate a message to Hna Robles over into Spanish, so that was kinda fun again to be back in the health loop and help Hna Dester out. I also conducted the District Meeting (got notified on the bus ride over that I was to pick who would do what and all that, yay for delegation!) and Hna Dester complimented me and said that she could never just get up and rattle off all that in Spanish. She's so sweet and truly sincere, I just love her. And she makes some seriously awesome cookie bar thingies when we have interviews with Pres, I've gotta ask her for the recipe. Good stuff, those cookie bars, remind me so much of home.

And all our plans fell through, so we did some contacting, almost getting lost a few times as we explored some more parts of our area, although I think we won't return to some of them for some time, there's a few interesting people living there. Anyways, every single person we contacted had already (supposedly, we're not quite sure...people tend to lie a lot) talked to missionaries, they're actually almost never home, it's a miracle that we found them that day, and that they aren't willing / able / have enough money to go to church with us on Sunday. Really nice people, but completely disinterested and noncommittal.That's pretty much what we meet up with when we contact, anywhere you go in Honduras. Pretty awesome. Or they start answering everything with, "Well, we all worship the same God, right? We are the Church, not the four walls of a building. What's in our heart matters. It's the same God, just lots of different flocks."  As if that's the go-to answer for all the questions of the universe.  I'm not sure how much looking around in the rough it takes to find that happy diamond, but I would imagine that it is a lot. But when you do find a diamond, it is something to be truly treasured and taken care of, as in my experience diamonds are sort of a rare commodity here, literally and figuratively.

So all that made for an interesting day. It also rained really hard in the afternoon, but the power stayed on, though, so that was truly fantastic. And we listened to "Living on a Prayer" by Journey on the bus ride back to Santa Cruz, so that attained the level of epic for the day.

Monday, September 7, 2015 -- Month #6 - Week #29 - Day #203 - Santa Cruz de Yojoa

Pday! Whoohoo! Washed clothes for an hour and a half, cleaned the house, got my stuff together, wrote a bunch of letters to peeps, and went and did some more tests for my salud, as we're still not quite sure what makes my tummy hurt. We then went and wrote our families and bought some food and things that we needed...I'm out of body wash, and it simply doesn't exist here. Mentira, it exists, but it's Dove brand, in a little 10 oz bottle, and costs about 300 lemps. So I figured I could get by with liquid hand soap at 40 lemps?  I'll keep you posted if I develop a rash or start turning green or something weird. I'd hate to turn into a swamp monster with only 6 months in the mission.

Anyways, as we were in the internet cafe E Hess somehow found these Addiction Recovery Program videos that the Church just put out about a week ago, and they are amazing. They are incredibly powerful and moving, and I honestly cried, E Hess and E Pocock just sat in their chairs, dumbfounded. They're really good.

You gotta search in YouTube: Mormon Channel Addiction Recovery Program Step 1 to get to the beginning, and I would encourage you to go watch some, but they deal with some very serious addictions, so be careful with kiddos. I haven't had to deal with addictions like these people, but it made it all the more real to hear and see their stories and understand a little bit more, especially with our investigators that are having difficulties. And each step is part of the repentance process, which everyone needs. Amazing how the gospel works.

So we went to have dinner with the stake president and his family as we usually do on Mondays, and we saw that he had his laptop (a rare laptop sighting in the Honduran bush!) on the table and seemed to be searching for church videos about something. I thought, "I should probably share these videos we just found with him, he could probably use them to help someone", as he's the stake president. So after dinner we started talking about them and he pulled them up and we watched the first one (we discovered that there's Spanish subtitles! Yeah!) and afterwards he sat there for a few seconds, and asked, "Hna Mower, why did you share this with me?"  And I explained that I felt the Spirit while watching them and felt that I needed to share them with him so that he could help people, and that they were a wonderful tool to use and maybe I couldn't use it very well, but he could. He then sat there for another few seconds, and then he looked up and said, "I've been preparing a message for the training meeting with all the bishops here. One of the key points is that of honesty. I've been looking all over today for a video that would help illustrate the importance of this quality to the bishops and how to cultivate it and use it when dealing with issues in their wards. I think this is the perfect demonstration for this purpose. I thank you for sharing these with me." So that was pretty neat. When ideas like that pop in your head, you just gotta roll with them, as they are for the benefit of many other people. So cool! 

One of the guys from the videos also shared an African proverb along the lines of "If there's no demon within, the demons outside can do no harm" and I think that is totally true. We all have demons, big and little, but if we choose to get them out and don't allow them to return (true repentance) then we are protected and are able to have the Holy Ghost dwell with us. Take out the weakening bad, fill the space with the fortifying good, and you're able to resist whatever outside forces push on you. It's like the talk by Sister Cheryl A. Esplin in this past April General Conference titled, "Filling Our Homes with Light and Truth". Makes a lot of sense! I love the gospel, you guys.

And, funny side note, there was a really big ant (not a sonpopo, but something like their half-cousin, twice removed, perhaps) crawling around the countertop by the sink, and I decided to smoosh it, but my hands were full with my little bag of churros (chips from the pulperia, the equivalent of a Salvadorean tienda) so I raised up my leg and with some well-aimed strikes dispatched the intruder with my trusty sandal-clad foot of justice. It was awesome. I think it scared Hna Rosas a little bit though, she couldn't understand how I could get my leg so high or why the manner of kicking was so effective, and I explained that I had taken self-defense before (I'm not a karate master, but some things still stuck in my head), and it's best to get the job done as quickly and effectively as possible.

She nodded her head and sat there thinking for a minute. "Yup, I'm glad to have you as a companion. You can take care of all the bad guys, right?" And we laughed. So that was kinda funny. But it is nice not to feel totally powerless in the midst of all the craziness here. At the very least I can kick decently well. The purpose is to avoid, incapacitate, and escape as quickly as possible. So you don't go deliberately seeking dangerous stuff and challenging to duels, either. That's stupid and unnecessary. It's serious, and there's some honestly scary stuff that happens here. Just gotta be careful and listen to the Holy Ghost. But yeah, Hna Rosas and I get along well, she's really happy that I can smoosh ants, it makes her laugh.