Wednesday, September 30, 2015 -- Month #7 - Week #33 - Day #226 - Santa Cruz de Yojoa

Conversation of the day: "So, hermana, after hearing us teach this lesson about the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ, is there anyone in your family or a friend that we could visit as well?"  "Uhm, no, actually, everyone I know goes to church."  Love it.

We also had a visit with a lady that supposedly had learned everything about the gospel from the previous set of missionaries in this area, and was ready for baptism (but isn't willing to get married) and everything, and just wants us to come and read the Bible with her. However, she had the burning question of why you can't find the names of the Book of Mormon prophets in the Bible. Yup, she knows everything.

Today was good, lots of walking, lots of teaching, lots of people who didn't quite understand what we were saying, I guess, so that was fun.  I'm getting to know Hna Escobar more, and she has some crazy stories! But she's a good little nut, I hope we're together for another change.

We found bamboo!

Really big stuff, Hna Escobar had never seen bamboo
before and was very surprised!

But, some awesome news! Our water came back! Whoohoo! So we filled our pila back up and can take a normal shower now!  (as normal as our showers are here...) Yay! The house water is back, except the toilet doesn't want to work, so we have to pour water in to flush it. We fill up some of the buckets we keep in the bathroom for pila showers and pour that in, but it's nice because we can fill it up from our shower spigot, instead of hauling water in from the pila outside. Not that I shun exercise, but it's nice to have a break once in a while!

Today we had the opportunity to try anise avocados, which are these little avocados that taste like black licorice. Weird, right? But I liked them pretty well, everyone else thought they were too strange. They are definitely different, I wonder how the genetics of the plant were changed to produce the anise-tasting chemicals in the fruit. Someone with technology back home has gotta look that up for me, please!

I also just remembered the "Pictures of Christ" series that Mark Mabry produced, there's some pretty cool images if you want to check it out. I was going to show them to Hna Escobar on Monday, but ran out of time and forgot, whoops. One of my favorites is when Jesus is walking on the water,and when the Twelve ate the fish with Him on the beach. It feels good just to look at the pictures and think about the stories of Jesus, helps you calm down and refocus on your life and why we are here.

Tuesday, September 29, 2015 -- Month #7 - Week #33 - Day #225 - Santa Cruz de Yojoa

District Meeting and got some stuff from the Ruta, including a whole bunch more pamphlets and some letters from home (thanks for all my letters and updates, Mom!) and hopped back on the bus to go home. Went and did some visits, so that was fun. Normal day.

Our water went out yesterday, and it's stayed out, so guess who took a 2 gallon splash shower? This girl! I'm getting really good at this. The pila and the house water aren't cooperating right now, so we're back on water saver mode. Really fun.

Fun fact: all 5 of the gringa hermanas wear sandals, 3 of us from Teva brand, good stuff. They are a life saver with all the rocks and they're just fun to have to walk around.

Texas flag!!! Hna Escobar likes it because it's colorful,
and Guatemalans like colorful things!

Amalia (the Stake President's mom that lives next door) made us cocoa
and toast because it was rainy... she's awesome!

Monday, September 28, 2015 -- Month #7 - Week #32 - Day #224 - Santa Cruz de Yojoa

Pday! Yay! Went and played soccer with the elderes over on the church court and went and ate lunch together. Pretty fun, I watched and recorded and took pics and everything, as I honestly feel a little uncomfortable playing soccer as I have no idea of spatial strategy nor can kick a soccer ball. But I'm really good at sideline cheering! So everyone was happy.

Hna Escobar and I before heading out to play futbol with the elderes for Pday.

After shopping and writing and everything, we went over and visited Guadalupe, and then went over to a FHE / bday party for Wendy as she turned 17 today! Yay! Feliz cumple! Got some cake and Coke and we all enjoyed ourselves.

Happy Birthday to Wendy!

Sunday, September 27, 2015 -- Month #7 - Week #32 - Day #223 - Santa Cruz de Yojoa

Church! Whoohoo! None of our investigators came! Even more awesome! Not really, I'm being totally sarcastic. People just really don't feel like going to church, which is a little frustrating. I feel like Sister Voyles from The District videos..."Just come to church!!"

We also ended up teaching lessons to completely different people than those we had planned for as no one was home or were busy, so that was fun. Nothing much else happened today, just a normal Sunday.

I figured out how bananas happen! Happy Day!!!!
Weird little plants, but really neat.

Some more awesome cloud shots in Honduras 

Saturday, September 26, 2015 -- Month #7 - Week #32 - Day #222 - Santa Cruz de Yojoa

Good day, it rained a whole lot.

In the morning we went over to visit Noemy again, as she's awesome, and we encountered her and the girl who helps in the house all in a tizzy with Camila and Sebastian running all over the place crazy. So Hna Escobar and I played with the kiddos as Noemy cooked lunch and the girl finished washing some clothes. So Hna Escobar braided Camila's hair while I played cars with Sebastian, and then we all played with this play sand and made castles and crabs and shells, so that was super fun. And then we got to eat lunch with them all, so that was also pretty awesome. I love Noemy, she's just so good. She also works in the temple over in Tegus, so some of my CCM district might have seen her when they are able to go to the temple. I miss going! 18 months is hard enough, I think 2 years would be even harder.

From there we went and helped Sandra clean the chapel, as the other 2 sisters that were assigned with her couldn't come, so we got to do some service there. I'm really good at wiping down the benches and mopping classroom floors.

We then went over to Las Flores in bus (our area is seriously ginormous...) and did some more contacting. It started raining while we were there, and we sought refuge under a sheet metal roof for a while. But, good news, we got 5 REALLY HUGE lemons! Whoohoo!

We found a tree with these GINORMOUS lemons, so I climbed up it a few feet to reach these huge yellow beauties...we'll be feasting tonight! :P

The people said that they're limes, but they're actually lemons. Normally lemons don't exist here, so I was actually quite surprised. So there was this super long contacting story that I'll leave out, but we finally ended up getting permission to take some lemons. Problem is, they were all kinda hard to reach, due to a lovely barbed wire fence. So, I stood on Hna Escobar's knee and pulled myself partway up the tree and hung on with my arms, with my other foot against the tree and wire. That way I could reach a branch, twist off some lemons, and toss them to Hna Escobar, after which I hopped down from the tree totally fine. We got pretty much completely wet from the rain, but we were laughing the whole time and we got some crazy giant lemons out of it.

It actually got a little cold with all the rain, so I put on my sweater! Crazy!

So we continued on our way home, changed clothes in the house, and went to the church to watch the General Women's Session, which was wonderful. I listened in Spanish, and understood everything. When the hymns were sung in English just Hna Escobar and I sang, as she really wants to learn English and I already know it.

Also, fun fact, somehow all our contacts today were members of the church of the 7th Day Adventists, so that was interesting. Good people, very firm in their beliefs, just was odd that they were all over the place (and yes, I know that today is Saturday and is also the 7th day of the week, which is their day of worship, thank you for pointing that out).

More shots of Honduras

And, funny story of the day: Hna Escobar was reading the pamphlet about the Restoration in English to practice the words out loud, and she ran across a few that were unfamiliar to her. When that happened, she stopped, asked me what the word was, corrected herself, and continued reading. Sometimes she would look over in the Spanish version, or make a good guess of what the word was and ask me to verify. The later happened when she ran across the word "apply" in the English pamphlet and asked me (in Spanish) how you would say "aplicar" (apply) in English as that was what she thought the word was, and I responded that it was "apli-CAR" with a very gringo accent. In my head it made sense, as apply and aplicar are the same idea now, but it was really funny at the time. I then corrected myself and affirmed that she was right to assign aplicar to apply. Gotta love learning languages, right? I'm finding that it is hard to pray out loud in English, last Thursday I gave the closing prayer in Coordinacion Misional, and they wanted me to give it in English. Hard to force your brain back to using the old neuron trails after a while. Makes for funny stories!

Friday, September 25, 2015 -- Month #7 - Week #32 - Day #221 - Santa Cruz de Yojoa

Today was good, I finally figured out after 7 months that the Jamaica drink is something like hibiscus tea...learn something new everyday! But it makes sense why I like it, as I like hibiscus tea as well. Although the stuff here tastes a little more like grape juice to me.  But it's all good, I like it.

Also learned that the "hang loose" sign (thumb and pinky sticking out of fist and shake) is actually bad here, as it means you're going to kill the person you do it to. So that was interesting.

And that every time the English Bible says "Lord" in the Old Testament, in Spanish it says "Jehovah", which is also a very valid title, but it's just kinda weird to see it so much. There's a lot of things that are different here.

But other than that, we had a good day, went and contacted up a storm as we're still slowly building progressing investigators. Lots of walking and talking.

Lastly, people always pass by in the streets, yelling out their services or what they're selling (happened a lot more in SPS). So there was one guy that was going around "saquen la basura!" or take/bring out the trash, so that actually reminded me of the guy in Monty Python that was yelling "bring out your dead!". Made me smile.

Thursday, September 24, 2015 -- Month #7 - Week #32 - Day #220 - Santa Cruz de Yojoa

Weekly planning! Also visited Noemy and got fed lunch, went to the church for Coordinacion Misional, waited there for an hour, called our ward Mission Leader, he said he forgot but he'll be there right away, so we had our meeting, had a lesson, and had dinner with the Bishop's family. Good day overall.

I learned an easy way to make yummy rice from Noemy:

Tada! Gonna make rice like that from now on, good stuff.

Quote from Hna Escobar today: "Vamos a ganar la confianza necesaria." Or that we will win the confidence necessary to work with people here. We need to establish a relationship, but we're not here to be people's friends and talk with them all afternoon long, we're here to teach.  I like her, we're very happy together!

I've also been learning a few random words in Kaqchiquel, a native dialect from Guatemala, so I'm pretty excited about that. We have a ton of chapins and gringos in our zone, in our district each gringo is paired with a guatemalteco, and we all get along really well. 

So I know how to say:

horse - quiej "kegh"

death - ixcamich "eesh-kah-meek"

thank you - matio´x "mah-tee-oh-sh"

I love you - n´te wajo "nn-teh-wah-hoh"

I am a missionary - ajchiquib na´tat "agh-chee-keeb-nah-tahtgh"

Still a bit iffy on the proper rendering into the English alphabet, but I included how you would say all that if you sounded it out. Pretty neat, huh?

I also gave myself a haircut (nobody freak out, please!) and trimmed off an inch of my ends after my shower, so I feel a lot better about myself now. It's been 7 months without a haircut, and I didn't really feel like dropping 80-100 lemps and trying to explain exactly what I wanted in Spanish. So I just got to work parting my hair a million ways and snipping for about 10 minutes, and it turned out beautifully. Freaked poor Hna Escobar out when she saw me holding scissors to my hair, but she relaxed when I explained that I actually wasn't completely crazy. So now my dead, dry ends are off, I'm happy, and 100 lemps richer.

A common expression (most common among the elders, as they think it's funny to say, they're total boys) is "alacran!" which literally is saying "scorpion"...you use it like "whoah!" or "wow!" But they like to exaggerate it and say it deep in their throats: "AGHLA-cran!"  Total goofballs. Then the hermanas all make jokes about them and imitate what they say, so we're all just sitting around saying "alacran!" over and over, and it's actually quite funny. Gotta love the mission!