¡LOS MILAGROS EXISTEN!

Learning the Language:
I learned some new words this week from the dictionary that I LOVE!!
mañear:  to manage craftily, act with cunning
frescales:  forward kind of person
bienaventuranza:  eternal bliss
escarchar:  to put frosting on
escarcha:  glitter

So me and my comp actually made a language study plan. Six months later and I decided to make a language study plan! Haha!  It’s the best though. I’m sort of a crazy gringa when it comes to my comps learning English. If they are native Spanish speakers it’s one of their responsibilities. I just figure, if as North Americans we're expected to learn Spanish and speak it like 24/7, I think they can study English for an hour a day. I’m working on patience though, that’s my weakness...

Churchy Stuff: 
We had correlation rescheduled because of Valentine’s Day. Everything started out great and I was trying to be more patient and accepting when things started heating up and one of the sisters who will remain unnamed, starting arguing. We just sort of sat there as they started arguing about how there are no leaders at the correlation because there are no refreshments and I’m just there like "we're talking about saving almas (souls) here and the leaders won’t come to meetings because there are no treats?" So that’s a challenge here - the strength of the barrio. Sometimes I just have to force myself to smile and laugh at all the craziness that goes on here ;) But we'll get it worked out. Little funny story, in all the craziness of Sociedad de Socorro (Relief Society) this week, I looked back to see two sisters sharing a baleada in the middle of the class....goodness haha! At the end the president was pushing her baby in a stroller and yelled out "who wants to teach the class next month?!"


I slipped and fell down the mountain one afternoon as we were coming down from visiting the Familia G. in Pueblo Nuevo. My head hurt after and my hand was scratched. The little kids were laughing and the investigator we were going to visit right after was watching from his doorway. The worst part? He won’t even come to church haha. and I’m here like "Man, I’m falling down mountains for you, can you just come to church?"

I gave a talk on the Restoration this week in church that ended up being about missionary work. I assigned myself to use the talk from Elder Ballard about Trusting in the Lord. It turned out great and I prepared it in like 30 minutes! I even took my little watch up to the stand to use since it needed to be 8 minutes and the clock in the chapel doesn’t work ;)

My Valentine's day was uneventful. #missionarylife I went on divisions with the sister training leaders in Piñeda in Porvenir. It was good and I learned a lot but it was nice to get back to my area and my comp :)

Random Experiences:
We were sitting in a cita this week with a member and a less active Sister R. who lives in Bella Vista  when we heard like the typical "voice on an intercom coming from a car". Usually they're selling something like "guineos..." but this time I was super surprised to find out that they actually go around announcing deaths like that. So someone else died. Apparently down the street a little girl killed her grandma. Talk about scary?!

As we were walking past a place where they sell licuados this week I saw this guy drinking one and his fingernails were the longest I’ve ever seen in my life! We're talking like Guinness Book of World Records long! Hermana O. just laughed and laughed.

They burn sugar cane here so that’s sort of annoying when you wear a white shirt and have like black snow fall throughout the day. Lots of smoke though so that’s not too fun.

The water here comes out super nasty, like it looks clear but it smells like yellowstone, aka sulfur and iron or something but you just deal with it and hope the shampoo and soap gets rid of the smell...Everytime we go to the bathroom here we have to pour water from the pila into a big white bucket and lug it to the bathroom to pour into the toilet. It’s a fun life.

Something I’m still having to work on here is my patience with the physical and verbal abuse. The parents just sit there and yell at their kids or threaten them and you’re sitting there trying to talk to them about charity or Jesus Christ and the spirit just isn’t there. I’ve tried to slip in some "Jesus Christ never hit anyone, never yelled..." but it just doesn’t work. So I’ve made the decision that I will never yell at my kids. No matter how angry or frustrated I am. It messes up the family completely.

BAPTISM!

So looking back on these 6 months I realized I only had like 1 baptism...and I didn’t even feel like I helped at all because I wasn’t there from the beginning. I got really sad this week when I remembered that N. is getting baptized along with C. in La Ceiba. I really loved teaching N. and  I was there from the beginning. But it’s more about the fact that he'll be baptized, it would have just been nice to be there. I would rather help the less actives my whole mission though, than baptize someone to then have them turn into a less active in two weeks. So if I was sent on my mission to mainly focus on less actives, then I’ll do it! It’s just hard when you want to have a baptism. I feel like Elder whatshisface in The District when he talked about him and his comp praying and being like "Heavenly Father, can we please just have a baptism?"

Courtesy of CMJosue

P-DAY!!
We went fishing at the river Ulúa today with our district leader, his comp and the zls and the other sisters! It was a lot of fun and it was soo relaxing. We should go fishing every p-day. We obviously didn’t have poles, #wereinhonduras so we used fishing line on empty bottles and some others used chunks of tree branches. It was soo cool! And it worked alright :) It was neat to fish and just sit and relax. 4 hours of silence is pretty much golden. The river was really pretty and we were right under a bridge that was actually blown up with a bomb pretty recently by some people that wanted a different president? Things are never too quiet here in Honduras ;) It was really neat though to be there today because a family of members lives near the river so I took a bunch of pictures. They’re like National Geographic worthy :) It’s so neat to be around the little kids here. They’re usually either nuts or really really quiet and you just look into their big brown eyes and try to imagine how different their lives are from yours. We're all children of God no matter how much money we have, where we're from, what language we speak. It’s one of my favorite things about serving here - the little kids :) They’re little quiet examples of peace.

Sharing Talents:
Based on what I’ve learned from my comps, I think Hermana Despain is described as "crazy, happy, fun, likes things her way and you better believe you'll learn English with her" and “she doesn’t like to talk in the morning...”

So me and Hermana H. have been working on a piano duet in all our spare time which has involved lugging the piano from the church to the house around the corner every weekend. It actually looks pretty hilarious. But it’s been totally worth it! We got asked to play at the multizona this Wednesday in Progresso! And guess what!! Elder Amado is going to be there! I’m nervous since it’s a duet, so if both don’t know their parts really well...its just a disaster. Please pray for us :) We're playing My Heavenly Father Loves Me by Sally Deford. We’ll also play it at changes! I’m so excited!

Los Milagros:
We brought two less active sisters, 11 and 9 years old -  who hadn’t been to church in two years because their dad is divorced and their step mom always asks a ton when they go to church so to not be a problem, the two sisters decided to stop going to church. What poor little girls! So we picked them up and brought them and sat them in between us. Me and O. called them “our girls” :) We picked them up from primary and took them home. They are super pilas, really smart and great little girls. They are such a blessing for us.

Courtesy of WolfPape - The little red vehicle is a mototaxi!

Our last cita for the week was going to be with a less active but when we started we heard voices coming from inside so I felt like we should ask if she wanted to invite the people inside to come out. Two minutes later we found ourselves with 6 references and 6 nuevos. We taught the first lesson and they had great questions! Simple, but great. One asked, "what’s the prayer we're going to give?" We explained about how we would invite them to pray to know if what we taught was true. So he was just clarifying! Then another asked what the word iglesia means for us. I swear I get some really interesting questions here. Nothing like the questions we prepared for in the CCM or in Young Women or anything. The spirit was so strong though and then the sister who is less active told us that we "dar animo a ella" (bring joy/excitement to her) and that she wants to go back to church. She said all that in front of everyone there! Turns out one of the guys that was there was a guy we helped lug a gigantic bag of corn to his house! How cool is that?! Everything was perfect! They were respectful. The spirit was there. We ended the night strong and then her son took us back to our house in his moto taxi :) I LOVE THOSE THINGS. I laugh the whole time we ride in them cuz they are so much fun. We were on cloud nine! It was the best thing :) So let me tell you, milagros are real! You go expecting one thing and end up getting more because the Lord loves us and he watches over his missionaries and everyone else too :)

Love you guys a hundred baleadas ;)

Hermana Despain