"Will you be baptized...?...¿A qué hora?"

We had a pretty typical week here with a few muertos and people that don't believe in God and buying bread from a Garífuna! So yeah it was a pretty exciting week!

But yes we bought bread from a Garífuna one day this week! They are usually from Tela, they have super super dark colored skin and really good people, but check out what their language sounds like, it’s nuts. Keep in mind I had to listen to that language being shouted one night from about 6 to 10 one time on the way back to Ceiba from San Pedro....but when we saw the lady with the big tub balanced on her head we literally started running to her. The bread they make is so good. they usually sell pan de coco or pan dulce or pan de guineo. I bought pan de guineo :) So good!

But like the title says, for the first time we had people respond to the baptismal challenge like that, we asked "Will you follow the example of Jesus Christ and be baptized for someone holding that priesthood?" and usually what follows is..."Bueno es que no siento preparada...ya me fui bautisada..." or something to that effect. But! twice this week we had people ask us, "......a que hora?" and even though both of their baptismal dates fell because they didn’t come to church when we called and passed by for them early Sunday morning, it makes me think, we should be more like that. Instead of making excuses and feeling inadequate, instead say "Ok!...or what time...or what more can I do?" I also thought about the law of consecration this week as we were watching the John Tanner video with a family. We thought they hadn’t gotten much out of it since they live up in the hills and they are very quiet and they don’t typically respond very much. But! the dad responded to our questions about what they understood and he explained everything so well. I was so impressed! People are always surprising us! That’s what I love about the mission. Everything is so similar, the same every day and then BAM! someone surprises you and sometimes you can even surprise yourself :) But we really should give everything we have, but most importantly our time to the Lord because he gives us literally everything.

For the first time in my mission I talked to someone that doesn’t believe in God. Whenever we choose to start out a lesson asking people if they believe in God they’re always like "Claro que si" because usually everyone does...and we've gotten pretty used to that here too. But we met with a joven who's name is David who is 16. Who’s a really sweet, shy sort of timid kid and we were talking with him just trying to get him to be calm when we were asking him a few things and he was like getting really nervous and literally shaking and my heart just went out to him! I was like "Poor guy, what’s going on?" as we went on he was like "Well, it’s a little complicated...es que....I don’t believe in God..." and it was just like" oh right.....wait, what? really?" I felt like I was in an Asian mission or something. It was like "Uh, haven’t experienced this in the mission before..." and its like "how do you teach God is our loving Heavenly Father if they don’t know and understand that Heavenly Father lives and loves us? So that was really good practice and lots of depending on the Spirit. But really I just wanted to hug him and be like "It’s all going to be ok, Heavenly Father lives and he’s your father and he loves you and wants you to be so so happy" But we had to try the hardest we could to transmit all that through our words and the Spirit. And I was just praying that my companion would be patient and loving through the cita. I was so grateful for his complete honesty though. It was really special. He didn’t do a lot of talking but we expressed to him the evidence that we do have and how we know that God does live. It just helped me be grateful for the knowledge I do have that God lives. Even as a missionary I’ve realized that sometimes it’s hard to feel the love He has. It’s like you can see it everywhere but sometimes I really do just ask myself, does He really love me? But a better question would be, do I love Him?

I've noticed that the stars of Santa Rita are just gorgeous. Granted they’re the same stars everyone sees around the world pretty much but here we are so close to the mountains that the nights that I look up after a long days of sweaty, dusty work, I just stop and my jaw drops and I’m just like " Hermana! look at the stars!" God exists. He is there. He loves us. This week I got a little freaked out and wondered if I really have learned what I need to here on the mission even though I still have time...but I was talking to a sister and I was like if I haven’t learned anything....I've at least learned to put God first. Then I had sort of a palm to the face moment and I was like "OH.....if we put Him first, everything else makes sense and we want to be obedient, we want to be happy, we want to try harder and we want to live the gospel". So maybe that is the most important lesson I can learn on a mission, even if I don’t happen to learn all the hard core doctrine I possibly can, I still have the rest of my life to still learn it and apply it...but if we put God first, everything else falls into place.

We were walking to visit a member yesterday in Pueblo Nuevo when we heard these shots and usually they’re cohetes but I asked my comp if they were disparos (gun shots) and she was like "nah, cohetes..." Yeah, turns out like ten minutes later of sharing a Mormon Message with this member her grandkid comes in the door and whispers something to her and she cries out "¿Qué?!" Turns out I was right and the sounds we heard were gun shots and that a drug lord had been shot 8 times around the corner from where we were walking and we put two and two together and figured that the truck that had the people in it that had shot the man, had driven past us....so just little bit of a heart attack for us this week. But within hours everyone in Santa Rita found out, from our area into the other areas and the story was actually always the same. But just pray for our safety here in Honduras like I pray for your safety too! I love hearing people in our lessons pray for the families of the missionaries. It is the sweetest thing, so not only are we praying for you all, the Hondurans are too :) The church is true, the Lord loves his missionaries and we are blessed and watched over. Have a fabulous week and to all the missionaries - Work your heart out!  :)

Con amor,

Hermana Despain