Before 2014 ends I'm thinking we should have a "Preach My Gospel 10th Year Anniversary" fiesta. (Swear I'm going crazy). And we could put up a banner that says "PMG: Saving Missionaries One Page at a Time". We could like have little competitions and eat food and stuff. And chocolate. And wear party hats. Sounds good to me ;)I gave my capacitación last week! It went well. Sort of forgot to use all the stuff I had written down on the board (oops). I just got so into it! It was great though and I could tell that some of the Elders really were taking it to heart because one of the districts here in the zone this week, reported that 26 out of their updated 29 recent converts have attended church in the month of December!!!! And that’s December, the month where everyone travels and leaves or decides not to go to church because they’re too busy making tamales. So, so, so proud of them! The zone's retention went up by 8 percent this week so we're getting there!
I guess we're just so on top of things here that we give out copies of the Book of Mormon by 5:15 in the morning. But really though, last Tuesday we were headed to T____ I think and we managed to drop off a Book of Mormon to an investigator before she left for O_______! She ended up not feeling so well and not traveling that day so we got to visit her later on that day!Today in Wendy’s we met a member from the barrio M__________ in C_____! I asked about past missionaries there and he knew them! He also said that they ate at his house every Thursday :) Small world. Lots of stuff seems to happens in Wendy’s. My comp tried her first Frosty today! :)
Since we don’t have weights and we're running low on folletos, I've started using coconuts as my weights during the strength training parts of Jazzercise :) I guess that’s what you have to do in Honduras...use coconuts for weights.
On Sunday I handed out the little "HLJ" (CTR) rings my mom sent and we handed out "El Es La Dádiva" cards to all the sisters in the Relief Society and then we took pictures! We invited them to share it with a friend!
I will never get tired of looking at the stars here with the mountains and the beach on the other side. They’re so gorgeous here.
I heard that N___ G____ got ordained to receive the Melchizedek Priesthood! So happy for him! J____ R____, our recent convert who got baptized in O_______ just got called as the ward mission leader! We can tell he's excited and really energetic. We're going to get him to read about his assignment in Preach My Gospel and we've been visiting him more often. He wants to see a picture of my house...don’t know why. He just does haha. One night we went to go visit him and his tía R_____. I ended up sharing a bunch of pictures with them that my family had sent me a few months back. Ok I think it was actually a year ago cuz there was snow everywhere...But we had been talking about enduring to the end and I was like "Alright, we got to spice up this lesson..." So I started out with the pretty pictures of the roses and pine trees and we talked about God's creations. But then I showed the picture of the sweet gum ball and talked about how sometimes there are some things that aren’t so great in the world and talked about how my mom sometimes falls on the sweet gum balls. Then I showed the picture of my dad's foot and explained how he fell when he was cutting down some trees. I made the connection to how we have to perseverar hasta al fin just like my dad did in his physical therapy. I can definitely testify of the incredible power and Spirit that personal examples and pictures and hymns bring to a lesson. I swear every, single, time that we start in on a story or show a picture or sing a hymn, the people look up, the kids come around, the people pay attention. It's amazing.Got in a little "heated discussion" with an investigator this week. I've never had anyone accept a baptismal date and then reject us in the same lesson. Turns out he's the pastor of 10 churches here in C_____, maybe that’s why. We were explaining about modern day prophets, authority and the Book of Mormon. In order to understand about the Book of Mormon we start out asking people where the Bible was written. In all the people we've talked to in a year and a half, I've never met a single person who knows where in the world the Bible was written. So he obviously felt a little defensive about that and was trying to talk over us and change the subject. We taught more and I expressed to him how God doesn’t want His children to be confused and once again he got really defensive and started going on saying "You tell me I'm confused? Well señorita, you’re confused..." But didn’t even have any good reason for saying that. So that was a little disappointing, but we did what we could. I just ended with my testimony.
So even though we lost a day of work going to S__ P_____ to renew my residence, and we lost another day of work doing a super contact for our district leader's area, we worked to be able to teach 35 lessons this week! It was crazy! The super contact was really good, nice to get out of our area for a bit, but honestly there was such a different spirit not working in my own area. There just wasn’t so much motivation! It wasn’t so much "Well these are our houses, these are our people...". But it was great to help out and fortalecer the other missionaries work. The Zone leaders came to help out from T_____ and we all ended up going to a nice restaurant on the beach. But it was getting really late and we're poor missionaries so what did we order? Pollo con papas. It was fun and really pretty!We found such a great couple this week. They’re African American...or let’s just say they have dark skin cuz they could be Garífonas, I don’t know, but they’re a young couple living in a one room apartment in a poor little area with their one year old boy. They both love their little boy so much and have so many great questions. But we really thought they would come to church and when we passed by Sunday morning they did the whole "We have lots of things to do" deal and it’s like "We've been talkin about this day every day this week that we've visited you all...But we'll visit them this week. They do need to get married still though, slight setback. But man that would be such a great baptism to have before I left. It was so cool Saturday morning though because the dad was home too so we got to teach them both. We were teaching Lesson One and teaching about albedrio when all the sudden the guy gets up and grabs a black marker they had and starts writing on their wall (no really, cuz they have cardboard all over their wall to give it more support). And I'm thinking, "What is he doing??" He was like "I don’t want to forget". That’s when I realized he was writing "albedrio" with the definition. It was so cool. It was like "Heck yes, that’s what it’s like teaching in Honduras, having people write words on their cardboard wall so they don’t forget". They’re really special.
Tomorrow morning on our way to the multizona in C_____, we'll do a Secret Santa gift exchange as a zone! Here's to hoping I don’t get like dirty socks or something. The gift I'm giving is pretty awesome I have to say.
I can’t wait to talk to my family on Thursday! It's been 8 months, talk about forever! I can’t wait to be a full time missionary serving on Christmas! We don’t have any citas fijas that day since everyone will be out of town or super busy, so we might just hand out "El Es La Dádiva" tarjetitas in Centro or something or go caroling. Make some more memories :) Pero sé con todo mi corazon que Cristo realmente es la dádiva. I love that the card says "He IS the gift", not "was". I hope everyone has a great Christmas this year and that we all remember "who" it’s about, not "what" it’s about. Being in a place where people are more concerned about having money for tamales instead of money for gifts is a humbling thing and it’s a little easier to remember Christ and His humble birth. Love being a missionary during this Christmas time. Es lo mejor :)Con todo mi amor,
Hermanita Despain
