It started out horribly. Like I was at such a low point...but then at the end, everything was amazing! But guess why?! WE HAD A BAPTISM! That we didn’t even plan on! IT WAS A PURE MIRACLE! That’s every missionary's new challenge...put together a baptism in less than an hour.
But first...Wednesday, I woke up that morning, went to turn on the faucet in the kitchen, we didn’t have water. We didn’t have water for 3 days this week. I hope I never live that again. We resorted to collecting rain water, and let me tell you that is the worst feeling to wake up in the morning, go look in the bucket carefully placed outside under the dripping roof, to find less water than you saw the night before. Darn dueña stole our precious rain water. But right, the faucet...so as I'm standing there all frustrated that there was no water, I look out the window and I SEE A HUGE CRUISE SHIP! I ran up on the roof and started taking pictures. It was so cool! But I swear that ship looked GORGEOUS at night. Never been on a cruise... one day. There were actually two since one hadn’t come the week before. It was fun to see all the gringos in centro, there were a lot of Asians too. So what does that mean? Que esta gringa no se siente tan sola (That this gringa doesn't feel so alone!) It’s great. People still stare at me as usual but it’s not so bad with thousands of gringos in ponchos walking around in the rain like scared chickens.
The ships ended up leaving pretty soon that night though because there was a huge storm. We were in a lesson with a recent convert/less active when we got a call from our DL. We took it afterwards as we were walking. We were like 30 minutes from our house since we don’t live in our area. He let us know that we had to go home because there was a hurricane coming. Sooo that killed a ton of citas, it was really frustrating but ya know, safety first :) Just keep us in your prayers, apparently there’s only one road in and out of T______ and it’s definitely the rainy season.
That day was cool though because we decided to go back to visit the wife of that guy that started saying a bunch of junk about her. She can’t read right? So it felt really good the last time to at least read the Book of Mormon with her. Love those times, when I know I'm helping, I don’t just think I'm helping. She was outside under her little shack/lean-to thing made of sticks and those metal sheets, making corn tortillas with her daughter. Her daughter had brought these HUGE fish from R_____. Their eyes were huge it was hilarious. I wanted a picture so bad. But literally they were making the corn tortillas from scratch. They let us try some shrimp in the tortillas, it was so good! Probably because they cooked the shrimp in pure margarine. But it was such a miracle what happened next. Turns out a recent convert from September, D____, (10 years old), was at the house! The sisters before hadn’t been able to find him after he moved. So we got to visit him and teach him the Restoration again. He didn’t remember a thing and hasn’t been to church in months. But even if it just seems like a visit to a less active, you might just end up finding a long lost little sheep :)
Thursday I decided to look at the carpeta (area records book) for the first time. Big mistake. I wanted to cry, it was like a bad 6th grade notebook check...They've kept everything since forever. I found a registro since 2010 and none of the pages were punched with a hole puncher so it’s all falling apart, and the registros are all like half completed with scribbly hand writing. I wanted to scream. So we'll get that taken care of...idk how but we will.
Still going strong with exercising...I only got through like the warm up of an insanity DVD our dueña lent us. But it was fun! Super hard but fun.
The Elders had a baptism two weeks ago and in the middle of the bienvenida, one of the Elders turns around and is like whispering to us, "pueden discursar?" (Can you give a talk?) We were like..."you're kidding right?" I understand as missionaries we're supposed to be prepared, but that doesn’t mean that we need to encourage missionaries to not plan a baptism beforehand or ask people to give talks in the middle of the service. The DL called us that night and tried to machetearnos (scold us) and tell us that we need to be humble and always be prepared. Kind of an oxymoron if you ask me...
This week I was reading in Lucas and read about how Moses had put the snake on the staff, but then how Christ was like that representation...because the people only needed to look and believe, and it’s the same with Christ. We've been asked to read the first four books of the New Testament to get ready for the multi-zona in December. That and memorize all the 42 principles of Preach My Gospel and memorize the chapter titles and a bunch of other stuff. The multi-zonas used to really give us a lot of ánimo and they used to be really fun. Now we really have to work to be prepared. But they’re still really good.
Our dueña has these three birds outside her house in three separate cages and they each talk...it's hilarious. Sometimes it really irritates us when we're trying to study or just talk to each other and all we hear is "1buenas!" or "¡buscan!" or "¡pasen!" It's super funny how they’ve caught onto what people say here...smart little birds.
Lately we have been getting a ton of pressure to baptize, baptize, baptize and it's driving us crazy. I thought that's why my hair has been falling out, but apparently it’s the water. We think it's because it has so much salt in it probably. So I'm back to paying a ton for my shampoo and I'll start rinsing my hair out with purified water I guess.
OK! So Saturday morning we were super frustrated with where everything was at as far as our investigators, those with fecha (set baptismal dates), the baptisms... everything. Not to mention, as comps we just weren't getting along. We just stopped in the middle of the street after a cita with someone who is planning on getting baptized soon and we just didn’t feel right. Things just weren’t going well. We almost cried in the middle of the street. None of the investigators we had wanted to go to the conference in O________, no matter what we did, no matter how much we prayed. So we just went and got ready to leave. We were super excited to finally get to know O________ after hearing so much about it. It's actually really pretty! Everyone says it's super feo but honestly it's cool with the mountains so close. And the ride there is pretty. So we were waiting outside with all the sisters as the guys were all in their meeting. Suddenly we heard that President Klein wanted us to meet with him. We were so nervous, we had no idea what was going on. We found ourselves in the tiny office with our district, President and some other leaders to only have him ask us about a member who wanted to go on a mission. We established the fact that he was in our area. Turns out after even blessing and passing the sacrament, the jóven had never been baptized. Or they at least lost his registro. So President just looked at us and was like "Get him baptized, if not today, tomorrow...but please, get him baptized". And I'm just like "OK!" and he's like "Thank you!" So the next two hours were just insanity. We were running around like chickens with our heads cut off trying to llenar the registro, find baptismal clothing, find people to speak, finding the keys to fill the pila, making phone calls...CRAZY. But we got it all done and he got baptized. We couldn’t have done it without the ZL's of O_________ and some of the leaders of our ward here. The jóven getting baptized felt bad and was embarrassed that he needed to get baptized again, but in the end he was great. It was a quick servicio but it was exactly what it needed to be. Me and my comp had huge headaches by the end but it was perfect. So it was a great finish to a super challenging week. After he was baptized, he received the Holy Ghost, and the sacerdocio (priesthood)! Then they had him share his testimony, which was kind of funny, being a "member" and all for so many years. After the servicio, we all had the meeting where President spoke and at the pulpit he was like "Alguien va a bautizarse entonces tenemos que terminar esta reunión"... (Someone is going to be baptized so we need to end this meeting...) And all of us start making motions to let him know it had already happened and he was like "¿Yo no estaba por su bautismo?" (I wasn't here for his baptism?) We felt horrible! But in the end he dedicated his talk to the jóven Jason and it was so perfect. He talked about how to prepare yourself for a mission and how even on our missions and after, we should do those things. We talked with him afterwards and he let us know he was so proud of us and happy that we could have a baptism. So as we were leaving O________ me and my companion were like going crazy, it was like "¡Hermana....we just had a baptism?!" We went to O________ all innocently, to only leave having a baptism. It was a great miracle having a baptism in a place we had only known for about an hour. So, so cool.I went out with a sister in the ward here on Sunday for divisions. She was pretty quiet even when I tried to help her out by asking her questions she could answer to participate more in the lessons...but I realized after the 3 lessons we had, that she was able to connect with each one of the people. Whether it was "Yeah I had to stop drinking coffee too, it was really hard" or "I was Catholic too" or "Yeah I went to that Evangelical church too". She was able to help out a lot.
We visited a lady we're trying to help get to her baptism Sunday night after we got back from O________. During the week she gave us a bunch of excuses for why she couldn’t go to church the past two weeks. But we let her know how her baptism has to be moved when she doesn't go to church, and how church attendance is so important. She was really sad, but that’s the reality of it, if we don’t comply with the requisitos (requirements), we don’t get those blessings. But we're trying to get her baptized the 8th so my companion can still be here for the baptism before she has changes. On Sunday we taught her about tithing and fasting and we combined it with obedience. It was great, we had 3 members there with us since we had just got finished doing divisions. So definitely lots of support there. I asked her what questions she had and she was like "bueno...¿cuándo voy a diezmar? y ¿cómo? ¿cómo lo hago?" (When am I going to pay tithing and how? How do I do it?) It was great, it was like "Hey, thanks investigator for reminding me that that would be a good thing to teach". We were planning on teaching it the next lesson but it's what she needed at the time, so it worked perfectly!
We couldn’t remember if Thanksgiving was last week or this week...I miss holidays. I hope you all have a fabulous Thanksgiving. Pray for the missionaries. I'm so grateful to be able to spend two Thanksgivings in Honduras, even if last year only consisted of a baleada in Ceiba, that I paid for. Making memories :) I'm so grateful for the family and friends I have. I love you all for the support and prayers, I'll never be able to thank you enough. I'm grateful for the chances I've had to grow, for the cuts to the tree I've had to experience that have helped me learn. I'm grateful to be able to serve in this amazing mission. It's the best in the world of course.
Here's to hoping that everyone is staying safe in the cold, wintery weather! While I'm still here baking in this hot Honduras sun ;) Always praying for you guys.
Love,
Hermana Despain
