The power went out this morning so we couldn’t write but we figured it out and I'll just write a quick bit to you guys :) Just so y'all know I don’t have changes, but my comp is obviously dying (finishing her mission) so we'll go to the changes meeting! Finally....feels like forever since we were invited to the fiesta ;) But it's nice to know that I'll be here at least another change. Word on the street is 20 new gringos are coming and only 2 gringas. So that should be exciting! Lots of fun things going on!
But I'll just share a few things about this week.
To start off, I tried ceviche for the first time this week! That was pretty cool. It was pretty much just shrimp with chimole. We were talking with some past investigators when a guy came up on his bike selling it from a cooler, straight from a cooler! I started asking him about it and he just put some in my hand and I tried it. It was pretty good.
We had a great noche de hogar with a family of recent converts. For a long time we needed to teach them the law of chastity and all that so we came up with a great lesson plan and used different Mormon Messages. We used the one about the girl that makes all the modest dresses, the one about "knowing the limits" and then we finished up with the "Come unto Christ" video. It was really great. They were occasionally irreverent but we did what we could. In the end the mom and the son were tearing up and it was really powerful.
I bought leopard pants this week :) I have no idea if they’re even considered cool anymore but I love them!
So normally I'm like an energizer bunny with our datos and getting citas and finding nuevos...sometimes I get pretty stressed out, but we found a new one afternoon. We asked him for references and all the sudden we had 7 references...from just one cita! It was such a miracle!
So not only are there iguanas on the roof, there are rats. Talk about nasty. We've been checking on the little cats we rescued from the Centroamericana and two of them died :( But one is still living and is doing great!
Saturday we went and visited N__ S__ J___ because my companion wanted to say goodbye to some people there, being that it was one of her first areas. We had permission and everything. It's so so cool to travel in that direction because from the bridge, you can see all the buildings of S__ P____ :) It’s the bridge that goes over the river U___, they say it’s the river Sidom in the Book of Mormon...who knows. It was neat to see other parts of the mission and it’s good practice to walk around a different area, you get pretty comfy with your companion and your area, so it’s good. But then in the afternoon we came back to help decorate for a baby shower the Relief Society was doing for a sister, but they didn’t show up for a long time so we left to go visit a recent convert. When we got back to the church building the baby shower was being all set up but hardly anyone was there! We were waiting with the other missionaries to start English classes, but the ladies in charge grabbed us and told us to join them since no one was there! And they grabbed the Elders too! So that was good to give some support and it was a lot of fun. Baby showers are a big thing here...and they happen like all the time. But it was funny because towards the end they started giving little speeches of agradecimiento...the President of the Relief Society was like "We would like to thank the Relief Society for being here...and the Elders too". They had a great time playing toilet paper games and participating in the other games, it was a success and it seemed like the sister felt great about all the support!
N___ told us in reference to this whole process of conversion, the other day when we were visiting him, "Ustedes me trajeron el cambio....me dieron el momento". He's such a nice old man with lots of kind words :)
I was verbally attacked by a monja (nun). I KNOW RIGHT?! There we were all innocently walking to a cita after our p-day like good little missionaries at like 6:15 when this truck pulls up along side us and this old gringa starts talking in Spanish. She started off yelling and asking if we were Testigos de Jehovah and after we calmly told her "no" she was still asking a bunch of questions. She was like "es peligrisísimo que andan aquí en la noche, son testigos?! Cuánto tiempo tienen aquí en Honduras?!" And I'm thinking, "Ok, if this is a dangerous area, why would we start to give you all this information?" So I just replied, "Por ahí," and she's like "Como por ahi". So really the whole thing was really frustrated and I could feel my adrenaline running and that’s just never good. We thought everything was fine, then the next morning I was out running and my companion was with the dog when I heard, "¿Son Mormones??" and I knew it was the monja! So I stopped running (I never do that, I always keep track of how many laps I've done) and ran back to my companion and the lady...she started saying a bunch of junk and started to say that I'm not a missionary and that I'm here for boys, that I'm not humble, that "todo el mundo" is talking about us and started to say that she felt bad for my companion because I'm a bad influence...So that really hurt to have someone tell me, to my face that I'm not a missionary. But I knew she wasn’t right so I just told her, "You know what? We know who we are, I am a missionary...so thank you". So with her still trying to say junk I just started walking away, my heart pounding super fast but a little hurt. Words are powerful. So that’s why I chose to choose my words carefully and say what I knew to be true. She still watches us and keeps bugging us and telling me to not be surprised if I end up dead, and to follow the law...but we know we're doing what’s right and so does the Lord. And our leaders know about what happened so we're doing all right. It wasn’t quite mashed potatoes in the neck like the experience of the sister missionary in Europe, but it was a few little pins of hurtful words to my heart. But I know I am a missionary and I know I'm doing what’s right :)
LOVE,
Hermana Despain (la chele)
