We got to meet with President Klein afterwards because Hermana U. wanted to talk to him and President wanted to talk to me. He really just thanked me for the work I was doing and talked about how Hermana U. "just adores me" and wants to be "just like me" and I as like, seriously?! but something that he said really struck me. He was like, "one of the gifts you have, is confidence" and I was just sitting there like, "uh president? are you talking to me?" So that was really interesting to hear, that from his perspective, I have confidence. President was like "You’re just a jewel in the mission." And that really helped me, because I don’t want him to ever see my name and think, "Oh goodness, Hermana Despain, she has so many issues what am I ever going to do with her". One of my ZL's today Elder C. asked if there are any other sisters who are already training from me and Hna. U.'s original group and we realized that I'm the only one...talk about pressure! They had lists up on the walls at the zone conference of all the missionaries in the mission and where they’re at and who they’re with and what their like "title" is or whatever and mine said "TR" so I guess I’m officially training! President asked me what I’m feeling, as comp mayor (senior companion) and I was like "honestly, its great, we love our companionship and we get along so well its not even funny". Like we have our days and everything but this companionship is really a blessing. The night before the conference Hermana B. and Hermana L. came and stayed with us from La Lima so Hermana B. could present some Nursing/ health info to all the missionaries and she did an amazing job! So it was soo cool, but I had 3/4 of my comps in my whole mission staying with me! It was the coolest thing! We all had a ton of fun and it was great to catch up and see how everyone is doing. One of President Klein's daughters will be getting married in the Tegucigalpa temple in December so he won’t be here for Christmas and I guess they always do like a huge Christmas activity here, so we'll see what we do! But since they won’t be here, at the end of the conference, we got to hear him and his wife testify about the real meaning of Christmas and everything. We sang “I Believe in Christ” in English and y'all, I can never get through the last verse where it says "so come what may" but this time around, I couldn’t even sing the entire song, it was so powerful, and to be able to sing in English was such a pleasure. And to hear all the Latinos singing in English, that really brought the spirit. Hermana Klein had a slide show of pics of the Savior that she had scroll through as we sang it and it was all so beautiful. I can’t wait for Christmas. It will be amazing, even though I won’t be with family and it won’t even be like 75 degrees here, but I’ll just curl up next to the open fridge and listen to Christmas music or something :) I’ll do what I can. I got my two Christmas packages this week and I still haven’t opened them yet, so I’m super excited for that :)
1. My comp asked if I was a ballerina....she pointed out my waist and asked if I was a ballerina and I was like say what?? what waist? Maybe my wearing pink, lipless, and my hair in a bun gave her the idea? ! haha but it was funny :)
2. My comp also asked if I was like an athletic trainer like the second day after changes, and guess why she asked that?! cuz of my super impressive jumping jacks haha she was like "what are you doing?" and I was like, "jumping jacks??" so as I was explaining to her what to do, she asked if I was a trainer and I laughed so hard :)
3. We started running out of lesson two folletos (plan de salvación) a few weeks ago and we had to be super careful about the people we gave them to and really pay attention to the spirit to know if the people were really interested. One night as we were planning on our balcony we just busted up laughing when we realized that neither of us felt that we should give one to one of our investigators cuz she was like so focused on the fact that she had a migraine (which was actually pretty sad) and we know she’s like a die hard Catholic that we were both like, "ella no va a progresar..." life gets tough here when you start running out of folletos! but never fear, we asked for more in the ruta and we are folleto rich now!!!
4. When we were with the familia A., they asked how far I live from the beach back in North Carolina and I’m so used to saying like either "18 months for how long the mission is, 3 meses for how long I’ve been in the mission, or 2 meses for how long I’ve been in Honduras, cuz they always love to ask, idk why". So they asked how far I live from the beach and I told them I lived "3 years from the beach" and then I realized what I’d said and we all laughed really hard :)
5. We were teaching Victor, Fernando, Luis and Óscar, these 11, 12 and 13 year old boys up in Lomas one day and randomly, this horse comes out of nowhere and I was ilke "mirave! un caballero!" So I definitely said, "look, a gentleman!" fun stuff.
6. I thought about having "licuado lunes" cuz it sounded cool, then I decided mejor no, we're cutting down on our sugar/fat intake...
7. We were watching the district videos for our 12 semanas and as we were watching them, we were of course distracted by how clean and pretty and nice the apartments were and I yelled out, "tienen un horno?!" cuz all we have is like a mini stove and a microwave, but we laughed for a good long while :)
8. as we were planning one night, we were both so exhausted we were just like zombies planning what we would verificar and ensenar and comprometer. we started getting baptismal challenge happy cuz we weren’t having too much success so U. was like "vamos a desafiar a todos! y vamos a pelear!" cuz one of our investigators is inactive and is now a pastor in his church so all he wants to fight. it was just a funny momento.
9. Hermanas should have glitter name tags. sounds good to me :)
10. One of our investigators is named Javier and he plays soccer professionally and he'll be moving to the USA pretty soon but every time we ask how he's doing, he never forgets to say "mejor que ustedes" (better than you). So we say that to each other sometimes and it gets us cracking up. He’s a good guy though, he knows the Book of Mormon is true but he's a super strong evangelico and just won’t progress and won’t come to church, but we won’t give up!
11. I asked U. how many people she graduated with and she said like 40 people and I was like "How long was your graduation, like 5 minutes?!" It’s always interesting to talk to people about their past lives, like Elder A. who is like the most legit cowboy from Idaho you'll ever meet. It’s incredible! Elder N. was getting so excited today talking to him, it was like talking to a true American haha.
12. Me and U. established the fact that we both love the show pretty Little liars and I freaked out when she asked me if I knew the show. we had blast talking about who we liked from it and all that and what we thought. so much fun to make connections :)
13. one of our investigators whose name is natividad is a crackup. he's this like 55 year old creeper who never wears a shirt and openly told s he likes to watch women walk by in the Street so naturally we felt super uncomfortable but I totally "machete"d him, which basically means like I just told him like it was with scripture Reading. U. said he got mad at me but I couldn’t tell. at the end of the lesson and after the prayer , it went like this "y cuando podemos regresar? que dia es mejor?" "oh cualquier dia, cualquier hora" "ok, mañana a las cuatro?" "oh no puedo, voy a trabajar" "este es la razón porque yo pregunté su horario!" haha it was hilarious.
14. Hermana U. is learning English! she’s doing a great job and its fun to work with her, she's got a real desire to learn! she’s good at practicing the pronunciation. she wanted to learn the Word "regarding" and as we were saying it, I realized its like "wingardium" from Harry potter, so I explained that reference and there we were hiking up to Lomas and we're both like "wingardium!!" "regarding!" It’s hard to teach the pronunciation but it’s a great learning experience for both the teacher and the student!
15. One day we were teaching this super old lady with a beard and I guess the wind blew cuz she saw my knee for like two seconds and then proceeded to like lift my skirt up and was like "que blanca su rodilla" haha I totally freaked out! I was like ""woman what are you touching me for?!" why she felt the need to point out the fact that my knee was white, I will never know, but hey, I laughed!
16. Had the papaya licuado, (tastes like vomit!)
17. I tried legit yucca after making bread the other week, it tasted like super bland, soft potatoes.
18. We were walking in la Vascula last week when I looked over at some trash and what did my little eyes behold?! a Target bag!!!!!!! I was like "Hermana?!?!?!" then I almost cried and realized that it was the trash of the Hermana who's husband lives in the states so it all made sense :) I talked to the sister about it later and we had a good laugh and connected with our love for Target :)
19. Alice, one of our less actives who is a real piece of work told us she wants to be a psychologist. Hna U and I just looked at each other and smiled. Man we have gotten so good at knowing each other's thoughts just by looking at each other. we're such a beastly companionship, I love it. But yeah Alice talks for hours when we visit her, no matter what we do to try and move the like 5 minute message we have for her along, she just talks and talks. She has a lot of issues and lots of insecurities. Turns out they moved without telling us. its amazing, here people can move in an afternoon and no one will know cuz they just don’t have much to move.20. I heard the movie "Mickey y las habichuelas" playing from a house last week, it was like music to my ears...then I started singing the song the giant sings and it totally brought back memories :)
So in case you all didn’t know, I missed my sister’s wedding this week, but I did what I could do celebrate. we bought cake from the gas station and I liked drowned myself in flowers and pictures and music. We took pictures and everything. then that night I kept looking at my watch to know what time the reception was happening but to make it not so painful, I bought a thing of strawberry ice cream. Let’s just say I only meant to eat like a couple spoon fulls, but since the tears wouldn’t come, I ended up eating the whole thin, but never fear, we run everyday :) It sounds like everything with the wedding was practically perfect in every way and I know that I’m meant to be where I’m at :) I feel blessed to be where I’m at, with what I’m doing. That day was rough though and it was pouring rain and no one was home or listening to us but then with one kid we challenged him to be baptized within like 45 seconds and he accepted! Miracles do happen and they happen all the time, we just have to look for them :)
My camera said "lens error"one day and wouldn’t turn off and on and I was stressing out so much! I decided to let it chill out so a couple hours later I prayed and prayed of course as I was in the bathroom that my camera would be fixed if that was the Lords will. Felt sort of weird to be praying for something that was pretty much broken, but I prayed anyways. And guess what, a miracle happened! My camera worked! It was as if nothing had ever happened! So I guess this could be compared to how we can really pray for anything, even the things that seem broken, whether it’s an object, or a person or even if our hopes seem broken or our hearts are broken. nothing is ever really "lost" or "gone" or “broken” :)
We definitely had some challenges this week, like being called "Spreaders of Satan's Word and anti Christs..." And I'm just sitting there like, how can people think that, we're two like 19 and 21 year old girls just bopping around, smiling and telling people about Christ and how much happier their lives can be, how can they think we would be spreaders of Satan?? But people will think what they will.
Its also rough when you find one of your super pilas investigators drinking with his buddies in the street while you're trying to set up a time to meet with him, or when you have a pesadilla (nightmare) about a mime that's running around killing people....or when you go to pick up a member so she can go to lessons with you and it turns out she hasn't been taking the sacrament for a while because of some past sins or when it seems like all you do is listen to people complain or gossip and all you get to say is like 3 sentences of doctrine and promise blessings. The dad of the girl who used to be a member who is now less active and choosing a super bad life was trying to tell us all about Buddha and was talking badly about Joseph Smith and I was super upset, I didn't know everything he was saying but I felt the spirit really strongly and all I could do was testify. I was just like "Hermano, I don't know a lot about Buddha, but I do know about Christ and we're missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints" and he just sort of stood there. The misión is hard and sometimes it feels like the first day all over again and you think the end will never come and then you realize that "satanas procura destruir" so of course he would attack missionaries. We're the only hope for some people! I love testifying to people. Sometimes I go hours of not being able to understand people because they talk for so long about the most random things, but in the end I've realized that testifying and promising blessings can be the most powerful thing. Missionary work is incredible and sometimes I wonder how members of the church can stay active without having served missions because it just strengthens your testimony and your drive to continue to follow Christ by an infinite degree, but I guess some people are just that good that they don't need to serve and see the sadness that can be brought to people's lives when they don't choose the right. It's heartbreaking to look into some people's eyes for more than just 3 seconds and feel the sadness and emptiness that they're experiencing, but it just makes me that much more grateful for the light that is in our lives as members of this true church. At the end of the day, if all I've done is bear my testimony and just one person has really payed attention, then it's worth all the frustration and sadness. I have such a testimony of this work. The church is so genius and this week I was like man everything always makes sense with whatever we do with the church and I was like, wait I know why, it's because it's all direction from God, of course it's genius :) So just remember, nothing is ever truly broken, and there is always light, there is always hope :)
Oh, anyone have any ideas on what to do for 4 days in a tiny
apartment? Yeah we'll be on lock down this weekend because of the
elections, we're having to stay in our apartments and we're not allowed
to open the door at all. I didn't want to scare anyone but some prayers
of protection would be much appreciated :) You should've seen little Hermana Despain with her pink bow in her hair freaking out at the zone
meeting when we found out we were needing to be on lockdown haha. But
the lord will watch out for us and if we need to evacuate, we'll do it. President wants us to all have money in case we need to leave the
country because apparently a guerra could break out because of the
elections. One of the presidents is a ladrón and i guess he sells drugs
and is just super bad so like 3/4 candidates could cause a war, but
we'll just have to see! I'm excited to get some time to study. I'll let
you all know how it goes! Please pray for us! Love you all. Have an
amazing week :)
Love,
Hermana Despain
