It's Never Too Late

I swear every week feels like 3 months at a time. it is really amazing how that happens. So this week is Semana Santa so everyone and their chicken will be "en vacaciones" or "andando en el río" or something so I’m pretty sure it will be a challenging week. We also have transfers this week and that always shakes things up. But im excited, things will definitely be changing around here....

So this week someone touched my knee, my forearm, and my shoulder, and someone tried to hug me. I swear it’s the most awkward thing to try and deal with. I just like back up all awkwardly and its like "whoaaa ho ho umm ok, bueno..." But I learn to deal with it.

Something super sad that happened a while back was that we were visiting Hermana A. One of her grandkids who has some special needs but they don’t treat him any different, poor little guy :( so he was playing with a pink belt and he threw it up in the air when it landed on me and I knew what was coming so I just sort of laughed it off and I was like "No, no hermana no se preocupe, no era nada..." and then they started hitting him and it was the most horrible feeling ever you guys. You have no idea. I felt so helpless and he was crying and I just couldn’t teach after that. There are just some experiences that happen here that I wish would have never happened.

But Hermana A. got baptized on Saturday! It was such a miracle! It felt so great because it felt like my first baptism :) and what I love the most is that me and my comp found her and we got to see the fruits of our work before my comp gets transferred :) So beside the fact that she didn’t get confirmed yesterday (oops) We'll get all that figured out and get her back here in Santa Rita. Church on Sunday was a nightmare. I swear it’s the biggest test of faith those 3 hours, after an awful "consejo de barrio" and after a good long cry, we went and visited a few people and then we met with one who is named R. who is just pure gold. My comp wants to come back for his baptism :)

"It is never too late to be what you might have been." I found this quote in a book one of my zls lent me and it’s by George Eliot. I really really like it because being about half way through my mission (no puedo creerlo) there are some things that I wish I had done better or not done but there are a lot of things I want to improve and this reminds me that there is still time :) and that when my mission is done, it’s not the end of my life or anything and as long as I’ve put everything I’ve got into my mission and learned something from it, that’s what’s most important. I also really like what Elder Russell M. Nelson said, "You are never too young to learn, never too old to change...each day brings opportunities for decisions for eternity." Sometimes it’s hard to see the big big picture and realize how important the decisions we make everyday are. They effect our eternity even if we don’t realize it! Everyday matters :)

Love, Hermana Despain

P.S. I'm training...surprise! hah! So um if anyone has any advice or inspired thoughts, send them my way? I’ll be back on Wednesday afternoon after transfers so just pray for me !  :)

Best Truth Ever!!

You just have to laugh when the power goes out in the middle of your precious emailing time that you get once a week and you end up having to take a bus to a different town to start emailing again #hiddenblessings

The power has actually been going out almost daily here. It's awful cuz there’s no schedule, like "every Monday at 7" or something like that, it's whenever for like 10 minutes to an hour at a time. We're learning patience, always learning patience :)

Speaking of patience! General Conference! Let me just contarles una historia. It’s like 9:50 Saturday morning and we're walking around the corner to the capilla when we see 8 elders sitting in the shade across the building. Turns out, no one has keys. No one is in the building. Where’s the bishop? So we gringos were all freaking out cuz this is conference and we don’t sweat this much in our life and deal with speaking a different language and suffering through a different culture and this heat for 6 months to NOT be able to listen to the prophet speak! So we're freaking out haha. But! the Zone Leaders (ZL's) booked it to a member's house to get the keys and yes my friends, only the missionaries were there to watch the morning session other than one of our members who brought his friends!  But then they left after a bit. "I bet the members have tv’s where they can watch it at home and that’s why they didn’t go to the church", you might say. Too bad only 2 members have the BYU channel. It was truly heartbreaking. We were able to watch it in English though in our little gringo room :) with air conditioning I might add!! The power did go out at least 2 or 3 times every session and it felt like the world was ending every time. But it was such a nice, perfect experience to listen to the prophet and the apostles and everyone speak and to hear it in English. Even when literally almost no one in 2 wards comes to watch conference, I just have to remind myself that the church is true!  Just like I said a few weeks ago! Haha because it still works! I loved Elder Uchtdorf's talk because I want to increase my gratitude as well as deepen the sincerity of it too. And I liked how he said there are really no endings, just eternal beginnings. Best thought ever! More like best truth ever!

I forgot to tell you all that I had mondongo a few weeks ago! It's cow stomach but it looks like some sea creature. I can't believe I ate it. I was so scared to eat it and the worst part? The family didn't have a dog I could just slip the meat to! But I just kept telling myself that there was "pastel después" and I managed to eat it. Crazy stuff! But crazier than that - I didn’t get sick! So yes, I have had mondongo and I don’t plan on eating it again. The soup part was good, the squishy meat that looked like a sea urchin? No thank you. There was this clear jelly looking thing and I asked my comp what it was and she just looked at me and was like "mejor don’t eat it" so I didn’t :)

Last week after teaching someone, a random guy that came and sat down with us and was super attentive and really receptive and he was like "so cuando van a devolver?" I’m pretty sure that was the first time I’ve heard that in my mission. It was the best feeling. No matter his reasoning, it was so nice to hear. Even when the pescado (fish), leña (firewood) and the tortillas seem to come before Heavenly Father for some of these people, little miracles still show up like that, people wanting you to come back to visit them.

We taught English classes two weeks ago! That was neat to feel in charge for a little bit, even if some of the girls that were there were completely flirty with one of the elders. When you start hearing "de que color son sus ojos en ingles" you know something is going down haha. But it's cool to teach English classes or at least help out a bit. It reminded me of when Jeffrey would talk about teaching English classes in Japan!

So I’ve had a bit of a bummer of a weekend but conference helped me through. Challenges come and they only make us stronger. If we didn't have challenges we wouldn’t get anywhere. We wouldn’t grow.

I read in 1 Nephi 17:41 and Alma 33:19-21 this week and I found it really interesting. Because of the simpleness of the thing, the people didn’t listen. Sometimes it seems too simple to have faith in Jesus Christ, to repent and to follow Him, but it's because it doesn’t have to be complicated, we just make it more complicated because we're human.


Well we're out of here but I hope everyone loved conference as much as I did!. I can't believe I have 8 months in the mission! It's just crazy but I love it :)

Love,
Hermana Despain

Short but sweet!

Biggest Lesson Learned This Week: Hermana Despain cannot eat Tilapia.

It was awful you guys haha our lunch appointment yesterday fell through so we put an appointment with a great member who is always so willing to help us out with whatever we need :) We showed up to the house and I was like wow it smells really good! Yeah I was in that little cloud of ignorance until I saw the entire fish head included frying in this huge dish...AHHHH hahaha. So she said it was Tilapia and I was like "alright I’ve had some bad reactions in the past but let’s see if this goes well..." So I ate it as much as I could, trying to avoid all the bones. We had rice with it too. We thanked her and left to go work. 2 hrs later we were sitting in a lesson with a 16 yr old B. who was super super nervous while we were teaching the plan of salvation. It was really weird! I even asked him straight up I was like "Are you ok? Are you nervous?" But he said he was fine :) He was probably just overtaken by the Spirit :) That’s what I’m banking on :) Anyway so that went super super well and then we headed up the hill to visit a part member family. My stomach was feeling a little weird but then during the lesson I just felt so so wrong. I could feel myself getting really dizzy and lightheaded and my hands and feet felt cold and the whole time I was just staring at the ground trying to figure out what the heck I could do to get out of that lesson. So I felt like I was either going to faint or throw up or die, but you wanna know the worst part of this whole experience??? The inactive member of the couple was actually progressing!? Hahaha!  We had been visiting them for months and months and he had talked bad about us and wouldn’t pray but, of course 8 months later, I decide to eat Tilapia and get sick, and he decides to progress and open up to us and be honest and tell us why he didn’t go back to church and all that! I felt so bad because honestly I can’t remember what happened during that visit. I just know that I was not all there and my comp did all the talking. So then I knew we just needed to get out of there so I started to put my agenda in my bag and my comp knows that that means like "Hey it’s time to go" So she sort of wrapped things up and they decided I would say the prayer since I didn’t say a word during the whole lesson! I swear that was the fastest prayer I’ve given but I tried to be sincere! :/ Then we like did the whole cheek kiss, handshake deal and we booked it out of there and I just started running down that hill...I was like "¡Hermana! ¡Me siento super mal!" and she was like "Are we not going to visit Hermana A.?" and I was like "¡No, we need to go home!" So we made it home and about 10 minutes later I was throwing it all up and it just got worse and man, let’s just say my abs hurt from yesterday...it was rough. We don’t have a fan in the bathroom obviously cuz it’s Honduras, so I was like burning up in there and I was sweating so much and it was just the worst experience I think I’ve had of being sick. But I knew I needed to get rid of everything in my system. But I’m doing better and I was able to just rest. Our datos failed as a result but that morning was one of the best Sundays in my mission. Know why?! Know why?!

We left in the morning before church to go to Pueblo Nuevo to go pick up some investigators. The familia G. actually came to church! We had been visiting them for idk how many months and the night before the mom had just broken down about how many issues are going on within their family and her marriage and I just held her hand and we tried to help dar consuelo and idk what happened, but she and her daughter came to church. We'll visit them in the week and see what they thought of it! But then we headed up the mountain to bring one of the investigators with fecha that is super super pilas and he was off fishing! I was sweating a ton and I was so frustrated cuz it was only like 9 in the morning! We were late for church and then our investigators were walking super slow and I was worried we wouldn’t be able to take the sacrament, but no we got there! Attendance went up by 53 this week - from 97 to 150! It was incredible! Everyone in the ward worked really hard this week. We ended up having 7 investigators in church! We normally have like 1 or 2! But it was such a miracle and it felt like such a success. But what made it even better was to see all the less actives and inactives that went! People that hadn’t been to church in months or even years! I saw them and I was like "I played a part in that :)" After sacrament meeting was over we were gathering everyone up to take them to class and I felt like a hen gathering her little chicks. It was so cute. And everyone was coming up and hugging me and saying hi and talking to me and my comp and it just felt so good :) So maybe I had the worst experience physically that day, but spiritually I felt so so good! :) so fulfilled and so successful. I told my comp after church I was like "even if the rest of the day is awful, pasamos una mañana de éxito" :)

So they’re closing up here in the café, but I'll write more next week! Just know that the church is true. Sometimes I still find myself telling myself during a meeting or during a lesson, “The church is true, the church is true!” Because sometimes Satan is just everywhere and it’s scary but we have that to fall back on. That the church is true, that it’s complete. That it is perfect. We’re not expected to be perfect, but we're expected to try. If we have the desire, and are improving that’s what’s most important :) I seriously can’t wait to tell you guys all the other crazy, fun, sad, hilarious stuff that happened this past week, and I can’t wait for General Conference! I’m soooo excited! I hope I’m able to watch it in English! :)

Have an amazing week everyone!

Love,
Hermana Despain