Let us be wise.

So today was fabulous :)

We have pretty great P-days now. We wake up, I exercise, we clean, shower, and then wait for it....we study! I was reading in Mosiah 29 this morning and I found a phrase that I just love. "Let us be wise". It's from Mosiah 29:10. But I especially like that it says, "Let us be wise and look forward to these things". So when times are hard in the mission, and all the citas (appointments) fall through and we get rejected like crazy, I'll just be wise and look forward...maybe that was taken out of context, but it’s a gorgeous phrase of esperanza (hope) :) I also thought about how they always talk about the proud people wearing "costly apparel" and I thought about how they probably did that, because they felt they didn’t have anything of worth on the inside, so they felt that they needed to impress, with something of worth on the outside...just thinking.

Yesterday was a really rough Sunday. It was just awful to say the least! Our dinner appointment fell through and that seemed to be the only thing keeping us going throughout the day! Haha....feed the missionaries, it helps them survive awful Sundays when way too much craziness goes on during church...There were people charging their phones from the outlet at the base of the pulpit in the front, singing like we were at a funeral, giving of the sacrament at the sacrament table to someone who walked in late, and a sister totally kicked me out of my spot from playing the piano. Now with the sacrament I have become so numb to certain things that I turned to my comp and was like "Uh....puede hacer esto???" (Can he do that?) And she just looked at me with big eyes and I was like "Yeah, I didn’t think so..." But we ended the day teaching N___ and that is always great :) But before him we taught a niño that is going to get baptized like next week. It is always such a relief to teach kids. They’re so clear and humble and cute! His name is Y______ :)

This weekend we're having a Relief Society activity of manualidades or like making crafts! So we gave out the invitations we made, that felt great :) And they want me to teach them how to make a "postre". So I might teach how to make brownies. But the Relief Society is great here. It's tiny as usual but Sunday we had like almost 20 sisters! Usually we have like 7 including us! Asistencia (attendance) is still like 76 in the ward though....

But one of the recent converts was asking a bunch of questions about fasting during gospel principles trying to "catch" the elders and it was one of those moments when I just wanted to pull a "thou child of Hell" on her. But instead, out of all the 30 people that were present in that class, who has the guts to stand up to her? N___!! He's the best! He's an angel and I swear he is just heaven sent. If you can't tell from the pictures, he's a really timid sort of old man who is very quiet. But he raised his voice and was like "Si lo haga con fe....con fe..." and all that. She was trying to ask if fasting was a commandment and saying that we were all sayin’ that it was, but that it was voluntary, and saying that no one understood her. Honestly, when the Elders explained it all to her, she wasn’t listening. So what do we learn? LISTEN. If we ask questions that we really want to know the answer - we listen. But it got to the point where non-members in the class were speaking up and trying to quiet her down and answer her questions. It was crazy! Two jóvenes (kids) of the obispado (bishopric) were asked to be in there by their dads, and they ended up standing up in the back. It was getting crazy! One of the jóvenes was very direct with her and was like "We know we have a living prophet...did you know that? We know he receives revelation...." And he just went to town and told her how it was. It was great!  I was thinking "There's a future missionary!" So honestly? It was great. So great.

One morning I was showering like normal when I felt something crawling on my foot so of course I reacted super quick and flung my flip flop across the bathroom (really not that far honestly its like the size of a closet) and I realized a cockroach was crawling on my foot....it's like, "excuse me?!" It was gross. Cockroaches are nasty.

I got an amazing package from my even more amazing sister this week. It was full of fun things to give away and share and things to keep :) My family got the tiny package I had sent so it was just a fun week of packages all around!

Just have to give a shout out to a sister in our ward. Her name is G_____  and she is the mother of 2. One of her kids has special needs because she got dengue when she was pregnant with him so he was born with those needs. He's so funny though, and usually he's really happy and loves to sing in church with everyone else. But why the shout out? We stop by this ladies house in the afternoon and ask her if she can come to a cita with us that maybe wasn’t so fija, (set) or ask if someone can come to her house to be taught. Normally? Sometimes when we ask members for help we hear a lot of excuses or complaints. But what does G______ do? She smiles, stops whatever she's doing and says sure! It's amazing! She helps us so much. We do make calls before but so many things are so wishy washy here that you just never know where the people are going to be or if they’ll be in their houses. So she saves us so often. Did I mention we had 41 lessons this week? We're killin’ it! As our district leader said :) I love working with my companion. She is so happy and positive and is always like "Pero si podemos Hermana....ánimo!" She's the best. We work really hard and it feels great. We should have a baptism in like 2 weeks I think...and maybe 2 others the next weekend since one of the fechas (dates) fell through.

A new companion brings new ideas and it's been really good. We asked for a list of members from the bishop and we started looking for the less actives in the mornings when it's hard to find new people to teach. We colored all the names in our area and then went to work. Not gonna lie, I was less than excited because after being here for 2 changes it was like "Okay, sure we can do that...doubt it will work and we'll just waste time...but okay". But one house we went to, we talked to the mom of the less active, turns out she just works at the house, but we found the house! Haha, half the battle here is that the streets are horribly marked and the directions usually say "abajo del.....al lado de un palo de mangos..." It's hilarious actually. But then as we were about to leave, the less active showed up! Miracle! We've done a lot more contacting too and that always brings a lot of rejection. One house we were like "buenas!" (Hello!)  and the guy yelled from inside...."¿Quién?" (Who is it?)...."¡Las misioneras!"...."¡Que les vaya bien entonces!" (Have a good day then!)....Mhm....My comp is always like, "Día del juicio...vamos a ver que pasa"(On the day of judgment we'll see what happens.:).  But we laugh a ton and try to keep our spirits up :)

Of course visiting N___ is always a treat, and we usually end up learning from him :) This week's tidbit of N___'s words for life is "Para vivir el evangelio uno tiene que tener fe y energia". (In order to live the gospel one needs to have faith and energy.) Simple and sweet. It was so fun to hear during conference about the number of members in the world now and know that thanks to some hard work and the help of the Lord, a few of those were my converts :) But it's so true that your first convert in the mission is yourself :)

Funny story though we were talking with N___ asking about how the third hour went since he goes off to Priesthood...and he mentioned how they ended at 11:30 and he left when the convert who was asking all the questions left and that didn’t make much sense since we heard she left early...So I was like "Entonces, no fue al reunión del sacerdocio?" (I didn't go to priesthood!) And then it was like the clouds had lifted and he realized he had left church an hour early :) He started doing the finger snap thing when he realized it. It was hilarious and we were laughing so hard. I am going to miss him so much.

We were walkin through L_ F_____, another sketchy part of our area (as if all the area isn't sketchy) and there's always a lady selling chips and candy in the street. Whenever one of our investigators who lives near the alley wasn't home, we would look at the lady sellin candy at the end of the alley and she would yell, "No está!" (She's not there.)  So she's always helped us out. But this time I asked if she knew if the lady was home, and she told us she wasn't. I asked if it was true that one of the family members had died of the lady since we had seen her crying with a bunch of people behind her a few months ago. It turns out the person that had died was the husband of the lady selling the chips and candy. I felt horrible...but we stood there and did our best to console her and ask her more and tell her we were sorry. We told her to take care...as we passed by later she called after us, "¿Quieren lichas?" At first I thought she said "¿Quieren leche" and I was confused but then she offered us the fruit :) It was so sweet. Here this lady lost her husband and is probably the only one providing for her family by selling this candy and chips, and she offered us fruit. It was so sweet. It was like her saying, "Thanks for listening"....

But life is good. Everyday it’s still a fight to work under this hot sun, but then the clouds come out! I've become obsessed with finding all the rainbows that come out after it rains. It’s the prettiest thing. :) I saw a double rainbow and the mountains are still as pretty as ever :)

Have a great week everyone! The church is true and Honduras is a crazy country I have come to love :)

Love,
Hermana Despain