Sunday, May 15, 2016 -- Month #14 - Week #65 - Day #454 - El Dorado, La Entrada, Copan

Guess who came on a surprise visit to our branch? President Dester! I got surprised when we rounded the corner to enter the church doors and all of a sudden we saw Pres. Dester standing there talking to a lady. And then he greeted us and told us he had cookies for us from Hna Dester. We had our meeting like normal and I played piano and everything and we listened to Pres. Dester share his thoughts towards the end of the meeting. And he also gave us our cookies in a secret hand-off. He's funny about little things like that...REALLY didn't want anyone else to know that we had cookies!

But we did all the fun Church stuff like normal and we had lunch and headed out to work. Found some more fun people. And that was our day!

And Hna Cruz and I exploring all over the place on Sunday,
trying to find people that want to repent and be baptized.

There's always random fires because people burn trash.
We always smell like we went camping by the end of the day.

We found a cashew tree along the way 
(the owners of the tree didn't like us).

In our adventures we went down the equivalent of 3 stories of rock and steps.

But I was thrilled because when we were home making our small dinner, I made mashed potatoes with sage! Momma sent me a whole bunch of spices that we use at home in my last package, so I've been adding them here and there when we cook in our house. And it was so weird to taste something from home again! It's because no one uses spices here like we do back home. So that made me really happy. Thanks, Momma!

And we also had another run in with a drunk (that happens on nearly a daily basis, I think) but this one was friendly and gave us fist bumps because I'm American, so that was a first. Since I'm white, everyone says I'm American, which is true, but I'm also North American, Hna Cruz is South American, and everyone in Honduras is Central American...so we're all Americans, technically (I learned that in the CCM and it's stuck with me all this time). But anyways, that was a fun little experience. We always let our latino DL know what happens, and he laughs at all our crazy adventures because I'm white. Good times.

Me looking out across the mountain!

Hna's Cruz & Mower - Got our shiny on!

But we're excited for Pday tomorrow! Hna Erickson (the nurse) is gonna come down from SPS and go look around La Entrada for clinics and labs so we don't have to go all the way to SPS if we have a health problem. So we gotta help her navigate around our area. Even down in Copan I'm still involved in health stuff!

Saturday, May 14, 2016 -- Month #14 - Week #65 - Day #453 - El Dorado, La Entrada, Copan

I made breakfast!

Did a bunch more lessons in the morning, and went over to Hna Aide for lunch! And we tried a plant called kilete for the first time. Interesting taste, sort of like chamomile tea with lots of honey. Except it's a fuzzy leaf that's really juicy and it had a sort of bitter taste to it as well. Anyways, that was interesting. We drank Coke, like normal, and had rice and beans and tuna noodles (the 2nd time in my life I've eaten tuna) and talked about life and everything. I love that lady.

And we ran by some more people to visit them, but they didn't want to, so we went and helped set up for the last of these activities and participated in that. And practiced piano again. And that was our day.

But we got to play with Monse! She's the little 3 year-old daughter of Gualdina, the one that calls us the gemelas (twins). And she was telling us all about this guy that lives in a tree and eats seeds, and how butterflies sing. She's probably my favorite child in all of El Dorado. She always dances around and gives us lots of hugs and sits and talks to us. Little cutie.

Hna Cruz hanging out with Montserrat (our favorite little friend!)

But, missionary-wise, we've been struggling with people not praying lately. Like, more than usual. Which is annoying because you know who messes up things like that, darn it.

Anyways, we heard the new excuse that someone couldn't pray because they didn't have a Bible in their house. I don't really see the connection between not having a Bible in your possession and not having the ability to pray. But apparently that was an issue with someone and they refused to pray. Other common reasons:

- they don't go to church

- they only know the Lord's Prayer

- we pray differently

- the missionaries should always pray because we have the Word of God

- they're embarrassed

- they only pray in silence 

- the gringa should pray because they want to hear me speak Spanish (very common)

- the new companion should pray because they're new (that always happens the first half of     a change in a new area)

- they don't know anything about God

- they don't feel like it

- they want to have really long prayers

- they want to have really short prayers

- they don't know how to pray

- they only pray in school

- they have to go grocery shopping

- they just don't feel like it

Those are just some common things that people say. And we've come up with a response to every one of them, believe me, but we still have a battle of wills every single time we teach someone.

Friday, May 13, 2016 -- Month #14 - Week #65 - Day #452 - El Dorado, La Entrada, Copan

So I'm walking around with allergies because there was a ridiculous amount of smoke flying around all of yesterday so that aggravated something in my system and it freaked out. So now I can't breathe, have a runny nose, and am sneezing. Hna Cruz as well. But I popped an Alavert and am going to bed early, so hopefully that should help the situation.

This morning we did a whole bunch of contacting, implementing the DoorBuster approach once again, and we got some lessons in! Whoo! So that was good. Found some interesting people, as always. This one lady sounded like she was challenging us to come visit her, which was a little odd, but not too unusual, and another lady whose husband (if they're actually married) won't let her go to any church, and also another lady that really liked our message but doesn't want to put a date for us to come back again, better if we give her our number and she'll call us when she feels like it. Yeah. But we still got our lessons in! That made us happy.

We then ate our lunch of fried chicken and French fries because Hna Brenda is on the temple trip to Tegus right now, so she wasn't there to make us lunch. And a random guy came around asking for money with a fake story (VERY common occurrence. Everyone's always asking everyone for money, and they're pushy about it, too) but we called his bluff and decided not to give him our money and then he got all mad and said a bunch of silly things and went away. Yup. But we wished him a nice day and invited him to Church.

And then we kept on meeting with people and it started raining, so we sought shelter with Angie, one of the recent converts we're visiting (she's 1 of the 3 only active recent converts of the 12 that have been baptized in the past 2 years here) and we love her and haven't seen her in a while, so we went and visited with her.

We made mole!

Ta-da!

And we also had the activity as part of the Semana de la Familia, which went well. Didn't start on time, but Cesia and her 2 younger sisters that the elderes baptized came! We were very happy about that. And she's still pregnant, poor girl. Roning wasn't able to come, but we're happy that they did.

And we also found another church in all our trekking around: Ministerio Arbol de Vida. Once again, I am surprised at the many names of churches that appear out of nowhere. These people got creativity!

Light in the Sky

Thursday, May 12, 2016 -- Month #14 - Week #65 - Day #451 - El Dorado, La Entrada, Copan

Just a heads up: all the water we store in those 50 gallon water barrels at home will be used for EVERYTHING during the Apocalypse. Washing clothes and dishes and bathing and also drinking. So there you go. Make sure you've got sufficient water storage!

But the water came back normally now and we have a full pila, so don't worry about us.

Today was a good day, also very tiring because we had another set of stuff we had to help the branch with for the activity tomorrow night. And we had Coordinacion with Wilmer, so that was good. And I practiced piano. And did a little bit of missionary work. Fun day.

But we did have a surprise in our lunch today! Hna Ana gave us cashew fruit juice. Awesome, right? I can add it to my interesting foods list. It's called maranon in Spanish, and the fruit has the taste of nance, apple, and maraschino cherry flavoring mixed all together with little fruit bits floating around. It definitely surprised Hna Cruz and I when we tried it. But we drank it all and thanked Hna Ana for the wonderful lunch (we also ate tacos flautas, like taquitos, but the big version, with shredded raw cabbage and tomato on top).

Wednesday, May 11, 2016 -- Month #14 - Week #65 - Day #450 - El Dorado, La Entrada, Copan

Today was also a crazy day and I'm exhausted. We did some contacting in the morning and found a bunch of interesting people. We came to one house where the gate was open and a drunk guy (we didn't know he was drunk right at first) sitting on the porch, looking very confused. We asked him what his name was and if he worked there or if anyone was home, and he mumbled a bunch of nonsense and turned around, laid down, and went to sleep right in front of us. So that made us laugh, honestly, just because that's what happens here, and we went trying to find some different people to teach. We had a fun morning.

Then we had lunch and got back to our house, and we discovered that Hna Cruz really likes the Swedish Fish candy!

That was randomly awesome. Thanks, family! It's always nice to have candy from the States because the only things I've been able to find are Skittles and Snickers. And some Hershey chocolate bars but those aren't yummy because they're just wax and are only good drizzled on top of Texas sheet cake. So there. We enjoyed my little bag of Swedish Fish and I helped Hna Cruz with some more words in English.

And we visited some more people and shared the Restored Gospel...always a good thing to do. Listened to a bunch of interesting people say a bunch of interesting things, and then headed back to the church to attend the Open House event that we were helping to prepare last night. It turned out well, and some friends of members came! So we got to know them and everything. Overall a good day.

And, more good news, the water came again! We're getting back onto a more regular schedule again, so that's reassuring. But, bad news, nobody in the mission has folletos of the Restoration because they haven't come to Tegucigalpa so the mission office can't send us any in the Ruta. So we're getting pretty creative in our contacts...lots of interesting starter questions or using folletos of other lessons. For example, contacting with the Word of Wisdom is a good life skill to have. Samuel, start practicing! Haha!  

And apparently the medication Tiamina will cure you of headaches, stomachaches, joint paint, insomnia, itchiness, bladder infections, and is an important vitamin. None of that is true, but that's what a doctor apparently said to a guy we talked to today. Except Tiamina is for repelling mosquitos. I took it for that in Santa Cruz. I love the creativity we've got down here.

(Alright, tiamina is Thiamine, which is vitamin B1, so it is a vitamin. I stand corrected. But people still don't know what they're talking about here.)

Tuesday, May 10, 2016 -- Month #14 - Week #65 - Day #449 - El Dorado, La Entrada, Copan

Today...we basically lived in the church building. We were literally there from 8:00 am to 8:00 pm. Pilas, right?

We came and opened the doors at 8:00 am so we could get everything set up and figured out (I learned all about how to operate overhead sound systems and find the hidden keys to get to the lock boxes (the hidden keys was one of the scripture mastery cards that you slip between the door and the lock...I felt like a ninja!) with the digital piano pedal and power cord and find the podium mic and get the slideshow screen down and help E Markus understand that the porton (gate) clicker was on the OTHER set of keys, not the ones in his hand (we were working with about 3 sets of keys at this point) and everything and run back and forth...) and we received all the missionaries in the zone and got ourselves all settled! Whew!

And enjoyed our conference, and gave our workshop, and had lunch, and listened some more to President Dester who shared some thoughts about the nature of God and what we can learn from just a few verses of the First Vision, and we shared our testimonies.

Us with the Desters! I had my Mother's Day shirt on again.

Hna Dester also gave us a lovely gift! She gave us a new copy of the Book of Mormon and an image of Christ, with a lovely little yellow bow. So that was nice! I love Hna Dester and I'll miss her. And we took a whole bunch of pictures after everything, and we got a new fan! It's been really hot in the night this past while and it's been a little hard to sleep. So we asked for a big, new fan and we got it! We're thrilled and can't wait to try it out tonight.

And the little gift that Hna Dester gave us!

And we finally got everyone packed up and out and heading back to their areas, and everything put away and closed up, and by then it was about 3:30 pm, so we waited a little bit for Pres. Montes (our Branch President) to come to the church to take care of his many keys, we ran back to the house to drop off our giant fan box and everything, and then we came back to the church to help everyone in the branch get ready for the week's activities of la Semana de la Familia. We got put in charge of cutting out letters and calming down a bunch of stressed-out people. Which was interesting. So we did that for a while. And then I needed to practice piano at that point, because I am back on piano playing duty (but I'm happier because it's a beautiful, new Kawai digital piano that has hymns prerecorded! And has a sustain pedal and the keys are weighted...WAY better than the little plastic Yamaha keyboard thing that I couldn't play for the life of me) so I got to play around for 2 hours with that. And that pretty much was our day. Not very much in the way of preaching the gospel, but we did get strengthened and encouraged and prepared for this crazy week that's gonna be happening. We sort of do everything last minute and then start about 1.5 hours after the time we say we'll start, but that's just how we roll here. So we kinda gotta roll with it! But if anything, we're helping our little branch figure themselves out and we're developing the Christ-like attribute of patience and the talent of bright ideas. We're also very handy with scissors, if I do say so myself!

Our giant fan!

Monday, May 09, 2016 -- Month #14 - Week #64 - Day #448 - El Dorado, La Entrada, Copan

Pday! And we stayed home again to do a bunch of chores and clothes washing. So that was fun and relaxing. We also added some more questions to our lechuga preguntona for the FHE we'll be doing today.

So we did all that and bought food, wrote our families (hi family!), and did some visits. Today we went and met with Cesia and Roning, and as we were explaining about the hymns again, we found out that he had thought that the names of the SATB parts were names of singers, like Soprano, 2 Chains, Tenor, Beyonce...we all had a good laugh about that. Cesia is still pregnant...and very tired of being so. If Fabian isn't born in these next few days she'll go up to SPS or down to Santa Rosa and get induced. So we're hoping all goes well with that!

And apparently in the news some young person had killed his brother over a hamburger. There's always lots of weird stuff that comes out in the news. There was also a debate over where they should have a new cemetery and that stirred up a huge fuss. A saber.

But we're also getting ready for our Zone Conference with President Dester tomorrow! We ran through all the hoops to get the master keys today so we can open the building and the bunker and office in case of anything crazy. And we're also preparing a capacitacion about receiving revelation through prayer as part of being HLE's. The ZL's and AP's are taking other workshops topics having to do with receiving revelation as well. So that should be good. And it was insightful as we're having lots of difficulties with our short-lived investigators and prayer. We learned a few things that we'll try to work on, so we were happy with our assignment. You always tend to learn a lot when you have to teach something.