No Hay Nada Mejor

K_____ got baptized! Por fin (Finally!) is all I can say. That little girl got super moody one week and was all " Just because I don’t go to church one Sunday, I can’t get baptized!?" And was like rolling her eyes and her head and everything. So I was like "We don’t make the rules, but you can't be baptized into a church where you’re not attending. And if that’s your plan, then you’re not doing it for the right reasons". So we had her think about it, then she told me that she had prayed about it last week. Then we followed through with everything and she was baptized Saturday. But guess where!!!...ON THE BEACH. Check that off the bucket list. Baptism on the beach! It was a really, really cool experience! As we were inviting people, they’d be like, "¿en la playa?... ¿por qué? aha, es fea allá." (At the beach?  Why?  It's ugly there!) And I'm thinking, y’all are crazy! People come from all over the world to tour these beaches and if we can have a baptism on the beach, why wouldn’t we?! So it was a really great little service and we did it at the house of an hermana who's like an eternal investigator, N_______. She’s so sweet though and her house is the one right on the beach so it was really neat to all be sitting out there on chairs and tree stumps as the sun was starting to set. The baptism was great and K____ was really quiet, but happy. Her parent's didn’t come, but her sister did.

I would say that the Honduran internet cafe's are one of the number one places I have learned the most patience...

My left hand sort of blew up this week. At the baptism as we were taking pictures and something must have bitten my hand and it swelled up! It reminded me of the movie "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" when Sam has that allergic reaction and her face and hands swell up. But I took some meds and put some anti itch cream on it because it was super itchy. It’s all better now though, like three days later haha. Ahhh everyday is such an adventure. Who knows what it was...

We had a fun surprise Tuesday night. We got a call that we had to be in Ceiba for the 12 Semanas meeting. We got up at 4:30 and were ready to go and then the Rapidito didn't leave til 6:30  (not planned) Then the driver listened to music while he waited and ran his battery out and we left late. Then we had to switch buses to a super slow one and we didn’t get there until 9:50 when the meeting started at 9. I felt so bad and so embarrassed. It was like "Wow, what are you teaching your new missionary??". But I apologized to president and he assured me that it was fine, that we can't rely on the time schedule of public transportation. It's true. We do our part...like with the investigators! BUT then on our way back, the tire busted on the bus and we had to wait for 30 minutes while they took off 3 tires and changed it. Luckily there was a tire shop around the corner from where the llanta exploded. Talk about a miracle! It just wasn’t our day to travel I guess! Haha. But I started handing out folletos as all the girls got out on one side and the guys on the other, checking out all the manly work that was being done with the tires. So maybe I only handed out three pamphlets but it was nice to just hand it to someone and not really need to say anything, just wait for the person to ask a question. The gospel speaks for itself a lot of times :) Love it.

For some reason we've had a lot of people ask us lately what "Moroni" means, and not just who he was, but what it the name means. And I'm thinking, "Oh yeah, let me just pull out my Iphone, do a Google search and tell you..." Bugs me when people sometimes ask questions like that, but don’t want to know things that would actually impact their testimony of the gospel.

Sunday night we contacted a house and we walked on their patio to realize that there was a dog in the oven and I was like, "What happened? Why is the dog in the oven?". And they said he had put himself in there and that he was dying. Poor thing did not look good at all. The fire wasn’t lit but I swear that thing was dying. So during my prayer I prayed for the poor little guy :(

This Friday we'll have a branch activity about missionary work! It will basically be the activity we did before I left in the YSA ward where everyone gets a mission call and you learn about different countries but we’ll also include a part about Preach My Gospel and a video about how every member is a missionary! I didn’t want to finish my mission without heading up an activity! Pray that it works out well!

On divisions this week, the sister commented to me, "Wow, you guys have so many prepared people here!" That’s what they say every time because that day, everything goes well...the other days not so much. Sunday comes around and everyone decides to not set their alarm, or not answer their phone, or be asleep so they don’t go to church. I told her that at one time I wanted to extend because the people seem really prepared, but who am I to mess with Heavenly Father's plan for me? Who am I to rob someone else of the opportunity to teach a prepared person and be able to see the fruits of the seeds I planted with my companion? There will always be prepared people, but I have to prepare myself to make this next step in my life.

It’s so weird finishing a mission. I just had this idea in my mind for almost two years that I'll never be going home, that my family and friends have all died and that finishing is just a dream...then suddenly I start getting flight plans, emails about final interviews, calls about flight plans and I realize I have to start packing for the last time.  And it all gets a little more real. But I'm doing a sort of 12 Days Before Home thing where everyday I do something a little different or exciting to finish my time here. Yesterday we went to this place in our area to take a super cool picture when we heard and saw these two cats staring at each other before getting into a little fight And we were both just so weirded out...then as we were taking the pictures we hear them freak out and start going at it. They were like all over each other and started rolling down the hill. And then just when I thought they’d stop, they fell over the edge together and dropped a good idk how many feet and hit these broken cement blocks but didn’t die, they just kept staring at each other. It was so dumb! I felt so bad for the cats! We thought they were dead for sure.

I remember before my mission, reading a sisters blog who was serving in Tegucigalpa. Towards the end she didn’t write as much and I wondered why. But I guess that’s a sign that you’re finishing your mission, everything starts to become so normal that you end up writing home about cat fights...

But MONDAY the power went out from 7 in the morning to 6 at night. Talk about an eventful last p-day in Trujillo! We had planned on making pancakes as a district but with the power out, the member's stove wouldn’t work. Then we got the great revelation to ask N_____ if she had a gas stove. And she did! SO we had fun making pancakes with her. She is such a sweet lady! She just opened her house to us right there! Talk about real service. The rest of the day was sort of sad though because nothing was open and there was nothing to do. So we ate baleadas and I ate a banana split. SO GOOD!! We sat and watched the rain for a while because it literally poured non stop. Sometimes people say it rains nonstop but really it rains and then it stops for five minutes. No, it rained nonstop..it was ridiculous! It made me think of a Chinese water torture or something, cuz I felt like I was starting to go a little crazy. Just when I thought everything was fine, this guy came over And started talking to us. With any guy in Honduras I'm always a little like "keep your distance dude"...but he seemed respectful and nice. That was until he told us he was a pastor and that he had studied for so many years to get a degree in teología, and that he had lots of smart people in his church, and that he had studied a lot about our church. So I was like "Have you read the Book of Mormon? And he was like "Oh si". Then they always have to talk about Joseph Smith...That’s when we sort of realize that it’s better to just let them get everything out that they want to say...It made me think of the part in Preach My Gospel where it says that you don’t have to respond to every objection you receive. I’ll stand up for what’s right, but I can tell sometimes when people just want to bug you and you know they won't respect what you have to share. So in the middle of everything he noticed I wasn’t responding And he started giving me a personality analysis. I just wanted to be like "Did I ask you for an analysis??" It was so weird and I felt uncomfortable and he was asking so many silly questions and telling me I was a person that gets mad quickly And I'm thinking, "No, I'm just not going to fawn over what you’re saying and respond to questions like "Are you passionate about things?". Preacher please...So he was like "I just hope better things for you two" And I'm like  "Para mi, no hay nada mejor que la verdad". (For me there's nothing better than the truth.) Then he tried to be all cute and was like,  "What?"..."La verdad". "For you...." So I finished my banana split lickity split and we left. So I guess even on a rainy p-day when there’s not much to do in Trujillo, there will always be someone testing your faith.

Have a great week and I'll be back for the last time on Monday!

Con Amor,

Hermana Despain

La Maestra de Inglés

Photo courtesy of http://themissionpresidentswife.blogspot.com/

I got a call Friday afternoon from one of the other elders here in T______ and he says, "Hermana, do you think you could baptize our investigator tomorrow?" and I just went with it, and was like "Yeah, sure no problem!"..."Ok thanks Hermana". Turns out when the two elders asked their investigator who he wanted to baptize him, he thought for a second and said, "La maestra de ingles!". I had taught English classes the night before and I guess he really enjoyed it ;) He got baptized Saturday afternoon... by the Elders!

This morning most of us from the zone went on a tour here in T______ of the mountains, one of the cemeteries, la Fortaleza, and we ended up at the beach to play soccer and volleyball! I swear, on the days that we just want to sleep all day, there we are hiking mountains and playing sports. Its so fun though and I felt good because like I’ve heard lots of times, “I can sleep when I get home! Got to make memories!” Everything was so pretty. I felt like I was back in Ceiba, climbing Pico Bonito, just with actual tour guides. We had to pay but I felt like it was worth it. I think they just didn’t realize that for a lot of the missionaries, seeing all that jungle stuff was like second nature. But they were really nice and one of them lives in our area, and he's married! So we'll go try to visit him and invite him to church! Honduras is such a gorgeous country. It’s got some not so beautiful parts, but it’s got some places where I'm just like, "Ok, can all my family and friends be here right now, because it’s just too gorgeous!"

Photo courtesy of http://themissionpresidentswife.blogspot.com

We played volleyball with the jóvenes (youth) and the other missionaries Saturday night. It was lots of fun to play with everyone, and I think my comp had a really great time. She doesn’t talk much or express her feelings and doesn’t like that I ask, so I think she had a good time.

The Young Men's President invited me and my companion to lunch on the beach this week. And when I say lunch on the beach, I mean we ate like on the beach. It was super cool and we talked about the jóvenes a bit. He's a little different though so we were ready to get back to work. My comp said in English towards the end, "Let's go" and we were both laughing for a good bit about that. I asked for the "Plato Típico". Too bad I realized I could’ve made that in my house...super simple. Tajadas, frijoles, huevos, chimole...whatever,  it was fun.

We finished the week with 20 new investigators, 10 progressing, 5 with fecha (baptismal dates), and 36 lessons :) Perfect. Those are like the goals for the mission so that was a great feeling. I feel like I'm doing work and not just till I leave, but I'm leaving potential people too. The work won’t stop after I leave, so I have to leave the area better than I found it :)

It’s been interesting teaching the past few days, or even just yesterday after church. People's baptismal dates are falling through as they don’t come to church, so it’s frustrating as always, but we keep moving forward, as always. That couple decided not to go to church this week, decided other things were more important, no matter how much we try to teach them about putting Heavenly Father first. But K____ did come to church, along with 4 other little girls who are siblings of a guy who was going to get baptized with the elders, but he did something in his house in their area, and got sent back to live with his mom in our area. So he didn’t want to go to church on Sunday because he wanted to build his rooster coop instead. Yeah. Whatever. So his four little sisters went. J_____ also went to church. So we had 6 investigators in church under the age of 15...we also have 3 investigators that come to church, but their parents don’t want them getting baptized. We also have 3 investigators who have family in prison recently. Just some trends we've seen lately. It’s interesting going through our lists of investigators throughout the week and being like, "Who's M_____, which one?"....."Oh, the one who's husband is in jail". Or "Who's A_____?...."The one that smokes marijuana". But that’s just like the norm here I guess.

The church wouldn’t be The Church of Jesus Christ, if it didn’t expect a lot. There are people that complain, that say we shouldn’t have to pay tithing, or that there shouldn’t be so many meetings, or planning sessions, or records taken, or manuals, but it’s all evidence that God is a God of order. And of course He expects a lot of us. He wants perfection! So yeah, maybe it's stressful planning a Gospel Principles class, or not so fun to go to three hours of meetings...maybe it requires more planning to not buy things on Sunday, or maybe it’s hard not doing what everyone else is doing. Maybe it sounds crazy to go to a foreign country without your family to work for hours a day under the hot sun, for no pay, speaking a different language so people make covenants with God, but it’s worth it. We just have to look for the blessings that Heavenly Father is giving us for the sacrifices we make. I'm getting excited to go home. I'm still working hard, but I've worked hard to be able to serve and have that finish line come a little closer. When it's time, it’s time and I'm learning to accept that and love it. Heavenly Father knows what He's doing. I trust Him :)

Love you guys!

Hermana Despain

Más claro no canta un gallo

Well we just got an email notifying us that we won’t be having the traditional “changes meeting” anymore. They just had to decide to do that in my last change meeting...now it’s like "Who knows when I'll leave and with who and para dónde". ¡Qué horrible! Pero todo va a estar bien. It will just be sad to not be able to have that final meeting and see people and hear other's testimonies. I was really looking forward to that...

We helped the elders trim their yard today with machetes. lots of fun. It's hard work and others had better skill with a machete so I helped in other ways haha. It was nice to do something more productive on a p-day though. I only have 2 left! I think I might cry. Next Monday the zone will come here and we'll play games and eat so that should be fun. And the next Monday we'll play soccer against Olanchito. Talk about competition!

We met some members from the cruise ships! We went to go check out the souvenirs and talk to some gringos after some citas in the mañana, when one lady came up and just said hi! And hugged me and my comp and she was like "We're from Salt Lake!" She was so cute and talked about how her son just got back from a mission in Rancho Cucamonga, California and we just chatted. Her and her husband, her friend and her husband were all there and we all talked about the work and it was a really cool experience. That hug from her felt like a real hug from my mom! Love Mormon moms :) I also met the neighbor of an elder who's serving in my zone! They weren’t even members but they came up and asked us about him. They didn’t even know which mission he was serving in in Honduras. What a small world. But really though. So cool. Earlier that morning, an investigator was driving two gringos in a taxi and they called us over and one asks, "You guys going somewhere?" and I’m like "Well, we're missionaries actually" and he's like "Yeah, I know, I was a mission president in the Congo..." OHHHH ok! Haha oops. Then the other guy has two sons serving and one gets back in two weeks. Love serving here, looks like I’ll have to come back on a cruise ship :) The Mormon world is a small one :)

I have to give another capacitación (training) tomorrow about how the Book of Mormon helps with conversion and the retention. I've been praying and studying for the past few days about it! Pray for me!

So for the past few weeks there have been some Indios that run around covered in paint and aceite (oil) with masks and whistles. They do it as a tradition. They run around harassing people and if you don’t give them money or if you laugh, they paint you or hit you or something. It was super frustrating because we always had to switch plans or turn around a different direction or couldn’t go to a cita because of it. But while they were doing it, they never bugged us and we were always protected. We were always able to avoid them. Last Sunday we had to walk all the way to the beach to avoid the HUGE crowd in centro. We thought the beach kept going to an investigators house, when all the sudden it just sort of ended and we were left there at the end of the beach where they had cut it away for the tourist boats that come in from the cruise ships. So much lost time. One time we were headed towards Centro and an inactive that has a pulpería we always wave to, came out and asked us where we were going. He suggested we go a different way because of all the Indios and we thanked him. It was really sweet of him, since he could have just let us go and get bothered, but he was protecting us :)

President came to the zone and talked about the four different paths we can take to the tree of life. He was aiming it mainly at us as returning missionaries...He was talking about how he's not only concerned about our lives as missionaries, but our 80 years of life after. That’s a real mission president. Someone who cares about your eternity, not just 18 months or 2 years. He talked about how we can take different paths and described more about the spacious building. He is so smart and inspired. Afterwards I thanked him and he just said, "That was for you..." OHHHH ok thanks President :) Love that man.

So if y’all remember that couple that lives in really humble circumstances (even though pretty much everyone here does), they FINALLY came to church! It was the first time in my mission, that we were able to bring a little family to church! Normally it was just one person, but this time it was a family! That felt great.

It was such a great thing to show up to their little one room apartment where they pay like 40 dollars a month, to hear the girl say, "Ya vamos". I thought she was going to come out with some random excuse again but they came out in the best they had, ready for church. They were really worried their little boy would make a huge fuss and be a problem, but he was actually really well behaved and quiet! They took our advice and brought a few little toys he could play with and I gave them one of the little toy dinosaurs mom sent me. I keep them in my bag all the time now for any little kid I see.

But the best part was when we walked into the chapel. Instantly, without us asking, a sister in the Relief Society came up and took Angelica over and showed her where they could sit and then a few people came over and shook their hands and greeted them. It was such a miracle. I swear I decided this Sunday, like I'm realizing I do every Sunday here, that I will miss this little rama SO MUCH. They are so special and such hard workers. I'm going to miss my little Africa :) Really though, the sociedad de socorro here is so special, I haven’t seen one like it in any of my areas. I love it because they’re all so strong and when someone makes a comment, they’re all like "así es, mmmhm, si hermana...." It’s so cute. In the middle of the lesson, the sister teaching asked someone to sing a song with her and at the end the sister yells out "Ahora todas".  And no one looks at anyone else weird, we all just started singing. They all tell each other what to do and they all listen and are really real with each other. It’s so great. When they sing? They put their heart into it. It’s not about the notes. They like shout it. I love it and I've started to do it too. AGH my little Africa!

A few weeks ago, during Sociedad de Socorro, a sister mentioned that we need to be "padres rectos, no perfectos" (righteous parents, not perfect). And this week a sister said "Más claro no canta un gallo" (It couldn't be any clearer). I guess it could apply to a lot of things, that the gospel is clear and perfect, that what Heavenly Father wants for us is perfect and so his plan is perfect. We try so hard to be perfect and not mess up and not have any errors, but we're imperfect people. The effort we make to be sinless is the perfect act. And it wouldn’t be possible without Jesus Christ. I’ve heard a lot of gallos sing here and all their cries are a little bit different, but they sure do sing when they want to. At whatever time of day. So really, we should be representatives of Jesus Christ at whatever time of day, in whatever circumstance. (You know you’re a missionary serving in Honduras when you start comparing baptismal covenants with roosters). But really though, life is good here, my time in the field is running out, but in my life in another way is just starting. It’s a weird chapter in my life and I get super emotional whenever I think about the time I have left, but I guess that just shows how much I've loved my time here in this amazing country with these people and all the crazy things I've learned in my chance to be able to serve a mission for the only true church.

Love
Hermana Despain

Defending the Truth

It’s really hard to type with one hand while you’re fanning yourself with another...I don’t know how it’s able to still be so hot here. So I swear there are just things you can’t find in T_______ very easily. We have a hole puncher and tape finally! Now we won’t have to be punching holes in our papers for the carpeta with pens. It will look a lot better :) And bread! The bread trucks hadn’t gone around for a while...so now we have breat! Fun stuff.


New Year’s night we were woken up at 12 by so many fireworks. I honestly felt like I was in a battle field or some war zone. It was crazy, but memorable!

Somos misioneras tan consagradas en que we just totally forgot to buy water...so we gave the money to our dueña to buy it. Then she forgot. Then the next day, the water didn’t pass by. THEN it was Sunday and apparently the water trucks guardan el día de reposo tambien. Sooo we had quite the adventure buying water from pulperías or having sore throats from not drinking enough. Planning, preparation and all that good stuff - learned on the mission!

I guess we're also just such good missionaries that we don’t even need to set our alarms...(total sarcasm). I woke up one morning and realized I hadn’t set the alarm! Normally I wake up to the sound of our neighbor outside showering and spitting... really. I ran to look at the clock and what time was it? 6:30 on the dot! It was crazy. Me and my comp laughed about it later, that now it’s just like in us to wake up right at 6:30.

Tip: Don’t ever get your head caught in a fence. It hurts. Ok so it wasn’t barbed wire, but it was that wire cabling they put up and I’m just not latina height, and I didn’t even see it when we were going to visit a less active sister to find where a recent convert lives from back in like August. It caught my hair and it hurt so bad. Talk about a blonde moment!

So I don’t know who invited Satan to every one of our lessons this week, but it definitely felt like that happened!  Fue horrible la verdad. Like I’ve never had to put up with so many pastors or just anti-whatever-we-teach people. We went to go teach a great family that has a daughter that got baptized in C_____ hace like 4 years and we were super excited to teach them. Normally it’s great to walk into a house and see like 4 extra people there to teach. It’s like "Oh, look at this great Christmas miracle, more almas to save!" Then they end up being pastors of another church and by the end of the lesson, the only ones that were strong enough to stick out the whole lesson were those two. It was a husband and wife and they really didn’t want to listen and the others just wanted to argue which just sent the Spirit away, it was unfortunate. Cuz as much as we tried to answer their questions calmly, they wouldn’t accept anything but the Bible and I read the scripture that starts out and is like "Oh necio, a bible, a bible..." Honestly we explained things really clearly and my comp did a great job with having things come from the bible but they still were convinced that we put more emphasis on the Book of Mormon and that we think it’s better and they couldn’t wrap their heads around the fact that the Book of Mormon was written here in the Americas. Towards the end, the one guy was like "Please, read the Bible and not this stuff," and pointed to the Book of Mormon. I was like "No hermano, no le voy a dejar decir esto, es escritura sagrada y sí leemos la biblia". THEN a random guy shows up in the doorstep and asks us if we can get married and then says that guys in the church have to have 7 wives and it’s like "who invited you and your natural man comments?!" The next day a woman was at a house we went to, visiting from T_____  and started to interrupt while we were teaching the Plan of Salvation. Almost no one ever has a problem with that lesson, but she did. She was arguing about the Fall of Adam and Eve but we did the best we could to explain and moved on. That’s what we usually need to do, teach the truth and move on in the lesson.

But I would have to say that the hardest moment of the week was when J_______’s  mom told us she wouldn’t give permission for him to so he could get baptized. We were going to teach him that day to finish up all his lessons, only to have him come out and tell us they didn’t want to sign the papers. So we waited outside and heard his parents yelling and everything. It was awful. We were just awkwardly standing outside and luckily I didn’t understand much of what they said. The mom finally came out and was all "You all came for me to sign? Well I’m not going to." And we tried to talk with her and listen to her concerns but she was just nervous and was making excuses. She was saying that he’s too young and needs more time but wouldn’t give us a time frame and then she started calling me "Senorita". I was perfectly ready and willing to defend J______ and tell her that he actually is ready for baptism and that it’s an act of faith. She wouldn’t let us talk about the Doctrine and Covenants and was just being a problem. It was so frustrating and my heart was pounding so much and her husband came out and started trying to calm his wife down...but he wouldn’t even look me in the eye. I asked his wife, "What is it that you want for J_______?" and she couldn’t and wouldn’t even answer me. They don’t talk with their son and they don’t know what he’s capable of. I felt like I was defending my own child. It’s incredible the kind of love we come to have for people we meet and teach. She was like "You can’t come in here and tell me that my son is ready for baptism when you’ve only spent a few hours with him" And I’m like "Actually I can! That’s the wonderful thing about faith and being a representative of Jesus Christ. We CAN see that in people and J______ is prepared". But in the end we asked to talk with J_______ and she said he was crying so I told her to go and help him. I just walked away. I was so angry I couldn’t even see straight and I just wanted to cry for hours and hours later. I really didn’t talk much the rest of the day in the lessons. But that night in the Noche de Cine, J______ showed up and he shook my comp’s hand and then came over and shook my hand. We just looked at each other and we both started to tear up. It was a really special moment. I know he’s strong and that he will be baptized. I know it with all my heart. I’ve never known anyone so prepared for baptism in all my mission. He is such an example to all the other kids in the rama and to everyone he meets. He really is special. He doesn’t give up. He brought a friend to church on Sunday. That’s what you call unique. 

So to start off the year, it really wasn’t that great, but I know things will get better. It always does. Lots of defending my faith this week, standing up for not only myself, but for other people. It’s exhausting work, but it’s worth it. It’s such a privilege to be able to stand up for the church and defend the name and our beliefs and when necessary, for other people. I know it’s the Church of JESUS Christ and that He established it.  And he did it perfectly.

I hope everyone has a great week.

Con amor,
Hermana Despain