Wednesday, October 14, 2015 -- Month #7 - Week #35 - Day #240 - Santa Cruz de Yojoa

Divisions with the Hnas Lideres Entrenadores! Things went well, they came late so we didn't have quite as many lessons as we wanted, but good day overall. I finally went with Hna Archila for the first and last time, as she's finishing the mission on the 28th with Hna Robles. So we'll see who's the new companion of Hna Estracuy (the nurse now) and who'll be the new companion of Hna Delgadillo. Changes are coming!

Really wasn't that exciting of a day, to be honest, just went around and did our stuff. Got rained on, but that's becoming a normal occurrence.

Tuesday, October 13, 2015 -- Month #7 - Week #35 - Day #239 - Santa Cruz de Yojoa

Tuesday! Went to Potrerillos, received some palabritas de amor from E Olivas, came home, made a fantabulous lunch, went and contacted up a storm for 3 hours, and then went to the church so that I could play piano and help teach the newly formed ward choir how to sing some hymns.

We're really tired and hungry from so much walking. And we were informed out of the blue that the Hermanas Lideres Entrenadores are gonna come and do divisions with us tomorrow. Suprise!

I had a cool experience as we were going back to Santa Cruz in the bus, as earlier E Olivas had given us some counsel about different aspects of missionary work, and how a lot of times just saying hi and asking how people are doing as you contact helps to start everything off right and helps them feel good and more interested. So on the bus, good little missionary that I am, started talking to the gentleman next to me, and after everything he made the comment that he was happy that I had said hi and asked how we were. He had received a good impression of us and was willing for us to come visit him and his family. It was actually a pretty neat little experience. So there's some blessings for being obedient!

As we were eating lunch today we watched the Restoration video (20 min version) and part of "The Testaments" in Spanish, and we got to the part where Kohor starts talking to Jacob, and the voice is obviously different in Spanish because it's a different person doing the voice-over, a lot more friendly and normal than the actual actor's voice. But I wanted to show Hna Escobar how creepy his voice really is, so we stopped it, switched over to English, fast-forwarded until the part again, played, and we both freaked out over his voice. It sounds like how dirty feels and looks. Ugh. Hna Escobar's eyes went wide and she got the shivers. Then we switched back into Spanish and were fine.

I also made a quesillo and red bean tortilla folded in half for part of my dinner tonight, and was quite pleased with myself. I have no idea what you would call it, but it was good. And I had some bell pepper and finished up my little bottle of banana-flavored soda. 

And a very common phrase that we're encountered:

"Hola, hermanita, que tal? Como esta?"

"Pues, aqui, mirando/viendo-las."

Which translates to us asking how someone's doing and them answering that they're there, looking at us. Kinda an interesting response, a little bit hard to make a comment somehow connected to the subject of us standing in front of them. Anyways, just wanted to let y'all know that we get that a lot.

And a list of some of the churches that we've encountered so far in our areas of Santa Cruz, there's quite a few, and we somehow manage to find new ones every few days. And there's even more in the parts where the elderes are at. Just something to think about.

- La Cosecha

- La Sala Evangelica

- La Iglesia de Dios, Hermandad Cristiana

- El Templo de Sinai (La Asamblea de Dios)

- Alfa y Omega

- Los Adventistas del Septimo Dia

- La Iglesia de Jesus, el Verdadero Dios

- La Iglesia del Dios de la Biblia

- La Iglesia Biblica Bautista Independiente

- El Ministerio Iglesia de Jesucristo: Alfa y Omega

- El Ministerio Internacional: La Arca del Pacto del Vino y Aceite Nuevo (they've got their own apostle and a prophetess as well...they're husband and wife and lead the church)

- La Iglesia de Cristo

- La Iglesia Luterana Monte Getsemani

- Congregacion Evangelica Centroamericana: Genesaret (their sign also has the words "Mas vosotros sois linaje escogido")

- Los Testigos de Jehova (their sign out front says "El Salon del Reino de los Testigos de Jehova")

- La Iglesia Livertando a los Cautibos

- La Iglesia Catolica

- La Iglesia Evangelica Filadelfia

- MAAM (El Ministerio Apostolico Avance Misionero)

- La Luz del Mundo (an Evangelical church)

- La Iglesia Evangelica Reformada

- La Iglesia Shaddai

- La Iglesia Fuente Luminosa Centroamericana

- La Iglesia de Cristo Ebenezer

- La Iglesia Bautista

And a Jewish denomination that I didn't quite catch the name of, but they meet in SPS, so the member have to travel quite a bit to get there.

Quite the list, huh? And we somehow keep finding new churches all the time. Amazing how we have so many religions all in just one little town. "But we all worship the same God, right? So the path doesn't matter" ...umm, don't think so!

Monday, October 12, 2015 -- Month #7 - Week #34 - Day #238 - Santa Cruz de Yojoa

Pday! We stayed home and washed clothes for 3 hours, cleaned house, wrote some letters, and painted our toes. Then we went and wrote our homies (hi homies!), bought a bunch of food for the week, got ourselves ready again at home, and visited Lolita and then had dinner with la familia Flores. And came back home, planned for tomorrow, took a normal shower (as our pila/house water came back! Whoohoo!) and hopped into bed.

Big events of today: I painted my toesies a beautiful, sparkly, raspberry jam sort of color, with some nail polish I found in a store a few weeks back and had been wanting to try out, which is part of the reason I'm painting my toes again. So that was awesome, I was really happy with my sparkly raspberry toes!

We also bought a flyswatter (matamoscas, or "fly-killer"), por fin!  So now we're killing 8-10 flies a day that decide they want to live in our house and land on us and eat our food. No more! Die flies, die! So we have some fun adventures as we're jumping around, swatting a plethora of flies. Good times.

And all the music everywhere today was of the usual bachata-reggaeton-pop mix, but there was a whole lot of 80's classic rock thrown in there, so I was jamming on that. Made me think of my Dad, and all the times he's in the computer room or the garage, doing his stuff, playing his songs at full volume. I miss him.

But yeah, good day, actually went by really fast. But we're ready to get back into gear for another week! Only have this and another week left before cambios again.  

[Excerpt from a personal email to the Madre:]

"That's awesome that y'all are ponderizing, praying and getting spiritually fed even before seminary. Very good start to the day. As missionaries, we start each day with 2 hours of studying the scriptures, General Conference talks, Church manuals, Liahonas, Preach My Gospel, and other materials individually and as a companionship.

I am developing an unshakable testimony of this Church. It is of Christ, and He has given us, as missionaries, the authority and calling to teach about it. There is power in knowledge, and the Spirit is the Teacher of all things. The plan of God is perfect for us. We are His children, and He loves us. He knows us personally and wants us to be happy. We have families to help us learn and grow, and the prophets guide us today as they have done in ancient times. Christ established His Church upon the pillars of prophets, apostles, priesthood power, revelation, and the scriptures. Due to the wickedness of the world, this great light was taken from the earth for a time, but God called again to a worthy young man to prepare himself to be an instrument in the hands of the Lord to restore the gospel in its fullness. We have the same organization of the true Church of Jesus Christ, and we enjoy great blessings.

These are the principles of the first lesson we teach to people, and they pretty much reject it all and have no interest when we teach. They do not listen, and they do not understand. So that is sad. It really is. But I am all the more grateful to know that my family is trying to do what is right and am happy to know that you guys are being blessed and becoming stronger as a family. That brings me a lot of comfort. Keep on keeping on!"  :)

Sunday, October 11, 2015 -- Month #7 - Week #34 - Day #237 - Santa Cruz de Yojoa

Today was good, we finally had some people come to church with us! So we were pretty thrilled. Today was Fast and Testimony Meeting, which can be a little tricky when you bring investigators for the first time, but it turned out pretty well, I think.

Companionship study time

And guess who the bishop called on while announcing the program to play all the hymns for the meeting without warning? Me! Yay! I haven't played piano in over a year and didn't remember the hymns, so I just played the melody, but it didn't really matter as no one sang on key or with the melody. I will say that I had been practicing #204 in Spanish for a special musical number with the other missionaries, so I got that one down pat, but I was not anticipating playing everything else. But, it went over fairly well, I asked to have advance warning in the future so I could practice what will be sung a few times beforehand. Literally no one here knows how to play piano, let alone read music. Not a single person. Just me. Crazy.

We've also entered into some sort of season that feels like a Texas autumn, everyone says we're in winter right now. But everyday I keep feeling like I'm back home in the fall, kinda interesting. Absolutely nothing looks the same or sounds the same, but if you close your eyes, it feels like I'm back home. Weird!

Hna Escobar told me this morning that I was talking in my sleep in Spanish again, but really clearly like I was awake, so that was funny. This time I guess I was getting to know someone in my dreams as I asked how they were doing, and how was their family. My poor little brain!

And today was the day of visits to little old ladies, so that was kinda sweet and special. We visited Esperanza, and she said that no one had come and visited with her these past few days, so that was actually kinda sad. And her husband and her daughter are out of town right now, so she was missing him and her mother, and her daughter...so we were happy that we could spend some time with her and talk and share stories. She's an awesome lady, we'll have to visit her more often.

We also dropped by Noemy, who actually reminds me a lot of my mom, so I always like going and talking with her. Her family is going through some stuff, so that's been hard on her. But she's a tough little cookie, and is a total sweetheart and works in the temple in Tegus. She also always gives us snacks or food, this time we got some tiny little pears and apples, and some bread and cookies, so we brought those home and had a little dinner as we weren't terribly hungry tonight.

On the way back home, we passed by one of the numerous churches here, and they people were all literally shouting and screaming "hallelujah" and random Bible passages and everything, it actually made us a little scared for a minute. People have interesting ways of worshiping.

Saturday, October 10, 2015 -- Month #7 - Week #34 - Day #236 - Santa Cruz de Yojoa

Sooo we didn't follow any of our previous plans, basically, so that was fun. We were also supposed to have a member accompany us, but that didn't work out, either. At least it didn't rain too much on us this afternoon, or it would have been a total chick-flick movie day. Had some lessons, met some more people who were not interested in anything, and hiked around all over creation.

This morning as we were getting ready for this blessed day, Hna Escobar taught me how to curl my eyelashes with a shppoon (I know I spelled that wrong, but it made me laugh, so I'll keep it in as it is, the correct spelling is indeed "spoon") so that was fun to try out. It's the same principle as when you curl ribbon with scissors. You hold the edge of a metal spoon against the base of your eyelashes on the upper side of the upper eyelid, with the pad of your thumb on the underside. Grasp the eyelashes between the spoon and thumb, and slide the spoon along the eyelash while keeping contact with your thumb. Results in a more rounded curl than with an eyelash curler, and seems to last longer as well, so that was really cool to learn!

I also gave Hna Escobar a haircut, or rather trimmed up her ends as they were all dry and she didn't like them. So that was another first, and I'm proud to say that it turned out quite well. After spending years watching your hair being cut, you tend to pick up on at least the basics of trimming. So once you get in the groove it actually goes along very smoothly. Part, cut, trim, layer, part, cut, trim, layer...

And I saw my car! Well, it was a car of the same make and model as mine, but a dark steel color, not my light silver, and obviously the plates are different and there is no reason why my car would be in Honduras. But that made me really excited to see something so similar from home. I miss driving on real roads.

We are also in the time of oranges, so we ate a lot of oranges today! They're really good, much better than they ones we have back home. Super juicy, and sweet even though the peels are mostly green.

Friday, October 9, 2015 -- Month #7 - Week #34 - Day #235 - Santa Cruz de Yojoa

Today we hula-hooped!  I haven't done that in forever! We were in Las Flores again, and met a group of kiddos playing with their hula hoops and we joined in. Turns out that I'm a bit out of practice, as I dropped my hoop twice. And I'm a little bigger than I used to be, so the hoop was too small. But we enjoyed ourselves, and we were all laughing and having a good time. I like having little happy moments like that.

We also found a pulperia called "Cristo Vive" so that was new. Usually they're called by the owner's name or someone in the family. People seemed to be obsessed with Jesus, but don't really feel like going to His Church. Figure that one out for me, please.

Hna Escobar also started calling me Mower Power to help her remember how to say my last name correctly, so that was kinda neat, reminded me of when my mom and I would joke around. And it also helped people back home say Mower correctly as well.

And, Pres, my Zone Leader, and the member who drives us around in the moto-taxi think I'm latina on the phone, so that's another bright spot. We always greet people and start talking in Spanish on the phone, as a good 99.99% of people are native Spanish speakers here, but usually when we call the ZL's number it's E Hess, and I'm usually the one talking, so we switch back into English after the initial greeting and confusion. Pretty funny, actually.

Thursday, October 8, 2015 -- Month #7 - Week #34 - Day #234 - Santa Cruz de Yojoa

Today we went to the velorio (pre-funeral service) for the mother of Esperanza during our Weekly Planning time, so we'll have to find time another day to figure all that fun planning stuff out. Flexibility, right?

Esperanza's mother was named Carmenza, and it turns out that she was one of the first members of the Church when it was still a branch up in SPS. Before there was a temple in Tegus, she would go all the way up to Mesa, Arizona to attend the temple, which was a 2 week round trip in bus. Very good lady.

We shared some mole with the elderes, they they liked it a lot!

We also had Coordinacion Misional today, FINALLY, as it was canceled last week. We started 2 hours late, but at least we had it. We basically macheted everyone (means we chewed them out) and explained that we don't have progressing investigators and we need more support from the members of the ward to work in our area...everyone just kinda looked shocked that I could speak so fast and so seriously, as Hna Escobar and I were honestly getting a little ticked off with everything. And the elderes in Yojoa are even worse off as they are a lot farther away from the main cluster of members than us, as in they have to go in bus for about 20 mins to get to Santa Cruz, and another 20 mins to get to the church building. Poor guys. Things just are a bit rough in this zone.

Oh, and random fact to finish up, Wendy was going to direct the hymns for the velorio, but you need to be in a skirt for that, and she came in jeans, so we literally ran all the way to our house, grabbed a skirt of mine that would fit her, and ran all the way back to the church, a little over a mile, round trip I think, just in time for her to change and lead the opening hymn. We were a little bit out of breath and I got all pink, but we were able to help out with that and support Esperanza.