Teaching Models and 22 year old Hooligans

 We're teaching a model! His name is O____ and we found him after being super rejected from this other lady...I was like "Buenas! Hola Hermana ¿Cómo está?! Soy Hermana Despain y esta es mi compañera....somos misioneras de la iglesia...." And out of nowhere she's like "You can talk to me about Jesus Christ, but if you're going to talk to me about Joseph Smith..." And she just had the worst little attitude. Let’s just say it was a good thing I was so far away from her because I could just feel my adrenaline running and it took everything I had to not march over there and...well I don’t know. But instead I just spoke with my little voz de trueno (voice of thunder) and I was like "Hermana, Jose Smith fue un profeta, creemos en Cristo..." So after my comp tried to end it so we could continue on, I was so mad and frustrated that I just wanted to punch a palm tree like I had in Ceiba, but instead we contacted the next house. :) And who comes to the rescue?! A model of course named O___. He is super great. He always pays attention and actually studies the folletos (pamphlets). It’s a miracle. He can't come to church this week because he'll be going to U___ to model but he said he would bring me back sand!

And for the record, even though my comp and I didn’t show up in the newsletter for the mission, we did indeed baptize N___. The Elders stole our thunder. But it’s more about the wonderful ordinance that happened right? Right...

Finally caved. After a year, I finally bought sun screen. We thought we had packed it in my bags but I guess not! So I bought some "Roatan Tropic" that cost like 115 for 100 ml! Crazy...but it smells super good and I feel super prepared every time I put it on! No way I'm letting myself get skin cancer?!

I thought it was scary to hear little squirrels running around on the roof back home....that is NOTHING compared to hearing huge iguanas slithering around on your roof during the night. They don’t just walk, they slither. And with their sharp nails and everything! They move super slowly too and I just know they’re like right in the corner right above me...then all the sudden they run super fast and you just know they’re running after one another. It’s quite the adventure.

Sunday was an eventful day! We got to watch the Primary Children’s presentation. That’s always super cute! One little boy was super super nervous and his mom tried to help him out, he would get up there and just get so scared and close his eyes and say "Y Jesus respondió!" But I was reminded of when I'd be sitting in Sacrament meeting and my mom would always remind me to be quiet if I was whispering a ton...and now I'm the one having to shush people! There were a bunch of "young adults" behind us, more like a bunch of 16 to 22 year old hooligans making a bunch of silly comments behind us about every little thing. Super "natural man" ish. If they would just listen to what was really behind what the kids were saying maybe they would have actually learned something! That's what I'm learning little by little, to not just listen to the words people are saying, but to listen to the message they’re trying to send...with my companion, with the investigators, it applies to everyone.

N___ also got ordained to the Aaronic Priesthood! It was incredible to see him stand up in the congregation in his little spot and have everyone sustain him, I couldn’t stop smiling! Those are the moments when it's like, "It's ok if I don’t have another baptism in my mission. I feel great and this has changed this man's life." He is so much happier, it's so visible. He can’t stop talking about how happy he is to be Mormon :) The Bishop told us he's already earned part of his pasaje (bus fair) to the temple :) We also had an investigator J___ come to church this Sunday! Sounds like she told my comp that she's actually getting married next month, definitely news to me, so we'll find out all the details this week...but I thought about how we invited her to church. Usually we just say "Le invitamos a la iglesia este domingo..." (We invite you go church this Sunday.) but this time I looked at her and I was like "queremos que vaya a la iglesia este domingo"(We want you to come to church this Sunday.)  So it was pretty direct, who knows, maybe that did the trick!

As missionaries in the ward, we all chatted after church meetings yesterday and we're going to start teaching English classes! We want to make it something serious where people need to enroll and everything so they take it seriously and stick with it. We want to give little quizzes and things and have a little graduation at the end. It will take some planning but we’re all pretty motivated to do it! It's nice to speak English every once in a while and teach it too, reminds me I actually know how to speak a language. No matter how much you study a language, your native language will always remind you that you’re not completely dumb :)

We had an awesome p- day, we went to the Patriarch's house and ate lunch as part of the zone! Our new district leader is super animated and knows a ton so he's making a calendar of all the activities we'll do. It will be nice because we'll have more unity as a district and that always motivates us to work harder when we have better unity. It was nice to just relax and talk with everyone!

One time we sat down to teach and all the sudden we heard some loud thunder and the people we were going to teach were like "vienen con trueno..." And I thought that was neat. It's true, as missionaries we should come with thunder and power and tell these people what the Lord wants them to hear. The trick is just teaching it with love and with the Spirit. I'm trying to have more love for the people....

So N__'s little words of wisdom this week really stuck with me. He was like "Estas oportunidades no vuelvan, verdad?" (These opportunities don't come again, right?) And he is so right! Sometimes I feel like I'm going to be in Honduras forever, then I get a little heart attack thinking about when I'll need to pack up my bags for the last time and not leave the changes meeting for a new area, but to head home...It's hard to think about how Honduras will only be my home for about 5 more months. But I'm just trying to love every minute! I only have this one chance to serve my mission in Honduras, my one opportunity ;) So I have to give it everything I've got and soak up all the awkward moments and enjoy the shade and the sun and all the little challenges that come my way.

If you all have any advice of how I can help my companion have a super great last transfer, I would appreciate any advice! She's having a difficult time accepting the fact that she's ending her mission and I want her to be so happy and finish strong, so anything you guys have for me, just let me know! Big hugs and shout out to my little brother who entered the MTC this week! LOVE YOU DALLIN!

Have a great week everyone, love y'all!

Con amor,
Hermana Despain

THIS is why!

Still don’t know if we have changes or not, we'll find out tonight at an FHE we do every Monday night with the Elders here and a family in the ward. Even though I would love to know what’s going to happen. I feel like patience is the number one lesson you learn on a mission.

This week was actually a lot more calm. So that was kind of nice, not as hectic. We found a ton of new investigators so that's been nice to have fresh faces and new challenges. Imagine that, having it be nice to have new challenges haha. We're teaching an hermana M__ and she has a little baby boy named S___ and he is the cutest thing ever. Normally the babies and kids are a huge distraction in every lesson no matter how many little pictures of the prophet I give to them to play with...so I'm trying to work on having more charity for everyone, but mostly the little kids. M___ didn’t come to church but she's a great investigator who seems to actually want to learn.

So last week I mentioned how I made goals for my last six months of my mission so that I finish strong! 1. Be obedient 2. Read The Book of Mormon again (I’m all the way to 1 Nephi 14!) 3. Finish Doctrine and Covenants (Halfway done!) 4. Memorize Doctrine and Covenants Section 4 (...Getting there...) 5. Lose 15 pounds (...Almost getting there...) 6. Love every minute!

On Tuesday and Thursday nights a lot of the church's have "culto" or their meetings. There’s a tiny little church in our area that holds like literally I think 8 seats but every time we pass by there, I give a huge wave to the pastor and he always gives a huge wave back :) In the middle of his preaching! It's actually pretty cool if you think about it. We can still have that respect for other churches even if they don’t believe what we believe, even if they talk bad about us...we can still wave and say hi and be polite :)

We had been visiting a family right in front of our area and we ended up passing them along to the elders since technically they live in their area...but when we first started going there, the two little boys never wore clothes. Honestly I've gotten used to it but me and my comp would always be like "Where are your shorts? Where are your clothes??"and every time we went it got a little better! They would bring their clothes to their mom to have her put them on. Then later they started to put them on themselves! Then we would show up to teach and they would already have clothes on! So we laughed about how the kids were progressing more quickly than the parents were since the parents still aren’t coming to church...But it’s true, kids learn really quickly. One time as we were walking towards their little apartment, the kid saw us coming and he ran inside and came out with clothes on about 2 minutes later. We were so proud :)

Our newly baptized N___ is planning on going to the temple in a few weeks! We are so so so excited for him! I can just see him on the bus on the way to Tegucigalpa with the rest of the super strong ward members and him entering the temple and just being so happy and at peace :) We hadn’t even asked him about the upcoming temple trip at that point, but he brought it up, so we're especially excited. Now we just have to baptize his wife :)

We taught a part member family this week and two of the sisters that aren’t usually there were there and they all ended up coming to a baptism the Elders were having on Saturday! It was such a great thing to see because they just came! One of them came on Sunday to church and I sat by her. So we're super excited to see how things go with her! She's separated from her husband and has a little baby boy so she can be baptized a lot sooner than I was thinking!

We were trying so hard to reach all our goals as far as lessons went yesterday and we were like "we need one more "other", just one more!" So we saw a few ladies sitting together under a big apartment building and started talking with them. There was some party music being played up above us but we didn’t really pay attention to it. As soon as we started talking more about the church the music was being blasted on purpose and I was getting so frustrated I was like "Hermana, dónde están algunas piedras?!" (Sister - where are some rocks??) so I could throw them at the person blasting the music! But instead :) we prayed to have the Spirit with us when we shared our little message and gave them folletos and towards the end the person lowered the música after one of the girls went up to talk to them. Talk about another "hostile venue"...

So I've gotten better about personal study and everything, to where I'm starting it at like 7:30 now. I'll start a little CD we have of Motab and I'll eat my raisin bran while reading conference talks. It makes me feel super poderosa (powerful) as a missionary to be reading a conference talk while listening to the Spirit of God at 7:30 in the morning haha. It's really great though cuz I get more time to study and learn. But even though all the talks are great, I really like Elder Robert D. Hale's talk "If Ye Love Me, Keep My Commandments".  It was super machete, but I liked how he explained about how Heavenly Father didn’t take away the Savior’s agency in the Garden of Gethsemane, but he sent an angel to comfort him. It's like in the mission, maybe you don’t have emergency changes when a companion really bothers you, but someone is sent to be super nice to you that day, or the donut man happens to ride past and you get to eat a donut that day, or you're given a little bit more patience to be able to make it through the change. Elder Hales said, "Why do any of us choose to be disobedient when we know the eternal consequences of sin?" While being on the mission I’ve learned the importance of accountability and not giving excuses. Making excuses is a waste of time and it's not "spiritually mature". Later he talks about how rationalizing disobedience doesn’t change anything, how it only "leads to confusion, instability, wandering in strange paths, being lost, and grief". And life is challenging enough.  I don’t know anyone who wants to make their life more complicated...later he said "Obedience makes us progressively stronger, capable of faithfully enduring test and trials in the future." Sometimes serving here scares me because I feel like I'm being prepared for some huge, huge trial that will come in my life...but who knows. I'm learning a lot about trusting in the Lord and in the things He wants for my life so it's a lot of giving up of the desire to control everything and have everything go your way.


Another talk that really helped me was Elder W. Craig Zwick's "What are you thinking?" We're supposed to ask that question of what others are thinking with patience, but sometimes with my companions I just want to ask "What are you thinking?!?!?!" But it's true. Here a lot of times I hear "I just talked to her directly, hable bien claro..." But like Elder Zwick said in his talk, "Words that may be firm in information can be soft in spirit". So it's possible to be direct but do it in a loving, patient way.


I also read the talks from the priesthood session and learned  a lot about the priesthood. I loved when Elder Oaks said, "When a woman young or old is set apart to preach the gospel as a full time missionary, she is given priesthood authority to perform a priesthood function". That was a bit of an "Ah hah" moment...made me feel a little better about how important our calling is as sister missionaries.

I feel like a phrase that is always running through my head throughout the day as we're walking and yelling "buenas" and inviting people to change their lives, is "This is why!". We listen a lot to people talk and talk and complain about how horrible their lives are. It's true that they have really rough lives, but its pretty easy to notice why their lives are the way they are. A lot have straight up given up hope and just live day to day when its necessary to live for the future! I'm left thinking "this is why we choose our future spouses wisely...this is why we go to school...this is why we go to church...this is why we save money...this is why we don’t hit our kids...this is why we do what the Savior wants us to do". So don’t get me wrong it really is sad to see the effects of bad decisions in people's lives, but at least as missionaries we see those effects and hopefully we remember them, write them down and make a promise to ourselves to not make those same mistakes.

I had a dream this week that I saw my mom in a mall and I got to run up and hug her :) It felt so real. It made my week. Love all my family so much! Have a great week everyone!

Con Amor,

Hermana Despain

¡Nunca es demasiado tarde! It's never too late!

It still amazes me at how much happens within a week here. It feels like it's been three months.

So I completed a year in the mission! I made 6 goals for my six months! I forgot the heart post it I wrote them on so I’ll share those next week! I'm excited to be making what I see as so much progress. It’s exciting. Things aren’t perfect but it's all getting better.

But to celebrate my one year guess what we did?! Stayed in the apartment...not because we wanted to plan...my companion got really sick and couldn’t walk. So we got her the medication she needed and then later I got sick and it was just a stressful week. Our dats (numbers) were horrible and we were sick and we had a baptism on Saturday and I needed to give a talk and it was our turn to teach the Gospel Principles class and I was just a stress case. It was awful! When I got sick I blamed it on the fact that I exercised every day except Sunday and Monday and I probably just freaked my body out...but I think it was more than that! Haha.

But today for pday I made pancakes for everyone and we played with my piñata :) I think the Elders had a pretty fun time with it haha. When we went to a few piñata stores to ask if they could make one of me my comp asked "¿tienen piñatas como ella?"....and they were like "tenemos algunas princesas por aqui?) cutest response! cuz all of them were blonde, that’s why they said it. We had to do a little bit of surgery so it looked like me, and we cut off the long sleeves and gave it a bigger smile and a missionary placa (name tag)  and everything :) but we didn’t end up setting it on fire, we just hit it with a huge stick from the basketball court outside the stake center here! I attempted to make some brownies in the microwave for my one year, but they tasted weird and I ended up pitching it :( I’ll just wait till I get home for those brownies haha :) We kept the piñata in the front room though where the kitchen and mesa are and it scared us during the nighttime anytime we had to go back to that room for something...oh piñatas :)

You know the Mormon world is a small one when the mom of an Elder in your zone is in the same book club as your aunt....Elder N___ lives in South Ogden on the same street as my aunt and uncle! Crazy connections!!! Love it!


We were teaching a couple this past week and they were just not paying attention and we were using all the examples we could think of. You can just tell when someone doesn’t get it, but they don’t want to get it and it’s not important to them and they just want to argue...so I ended up looking the man in the eyes as he’s all acostado en su maca and I was like "Hermano, yo sé esto con todo mi corazon" (I know this with all my heart!) I swear I was almost shaking...I was so serious about it. It was pretty powerful and I loved being able to just be like "Look, after all is said and done, we know this is true!".

So once again the poor sister missionaries have been loaded on with serious information from a recent convert that only the family should know. It’s frustrating that people feel the need to tell us all about their sicknesses and the family gossip and things about their neighbors when we're just trying to bring the restored gospel to people. But it motivates me to keep my life in check and make good decisions and do things in the right order and timing. Because that’s when esperanza (hope) comes into play :)

During my personal study I was reading in the Book of Mormon about where they’re asking, "How is it that ye have forgotten?" and it was just really interesting....how is it that we can forget that God loves us, that he knows what’s going on...how is it that we forget to do what’s right and how is it that we forget that if we do what’s right, we'll be blessed for it?

I don’t remember the details (surprise surprise) but we were visiting someone and we asked them to offer the closing prayer. In the prayer they thanked Heavenly Father for sending "these angels". It was the sweetest thing to hear. Even if we aren’t perfect and we make mistakes, it’s just nice to know that for at least one person, we're angels :)

On my one year mark, I was reading my Patriarchal blessing for my personal study and I was left stunned. as always I found things I hadn’t seen before, learned new things and put other things together I hadn’t in the past. It was the neatest experience. I felt the Spirit so strongly and I was just sitting there with my eyes wide open. It is like reading personal scriptures from a loving Heavenly Father. It helped me remember to see things in terms of the big picture.

I noticed this week probably as we were walking and walking and walking (like the pioneer children! hah) that as missionaries, we are always looking to the future. We use the past obviously to plan and make goals, but we are always looking ahead. We look to tomorrow, to Sunday, to three weeks from now, to six weeks from now. It’s probably so that we apply it in our lives when we're released as missionaries when we get back. I love it though. If we don’t look to the future, the past becomes useless and the present, just a useless speck in time. But when we look to the future we're putting faith in the Lord and trusting that He knows everything and that He wants the best for us.

There were some pretty funny things that happened this week...

1. People always call my comp "la chaparrita" (shorty) and we heard from the mom of an investigator, that there was a "chaparrita y un modelo...gringa...que se llama christeli" that were teaching him. I don’t know where they get those names.

2. Ít was like 2:30 in the afternoon and we were sitting in front of a pulpería as we were almost dying from the heat trying to get ourselves together when people kept going up to the little counter thing and me and my comp were so dead that she was like "quizás tenemos que pararnos para que nos sirvan..." (maybe we have to stop so that they serve us!) idk why but it was just so funny...we were so out of it!

3. We were having a hard time remembering the 7 continents this week....(life of someone who's been out of school for too long) and we were like "Where's Jerusalem?" and my comp didn't know who Martin Luther King Junior was (which is not overly surprising). When we were counting the continents, my comp was like "Egypt! that’s the other continent!"... We need to get back in school!...
 

But I gave a talk on Sunday on the baptismal covenant and I felt pretty proud of myself! I used the general conference talk from Elder Richard G. Scott about examples and tied it together with how by being baptized and keeping those covenants, we're examples, especially the parents for their children! So of course I had to use some personal experiences! I talked about how dad taught me how to change a tire, but that in order to teach me, he showed me how to do it first.
Then I shared about how when mom taught me how to make cinnamon rolls, she cut it first, to show me how it was done. I loved sharing those experiences because I got so into it and I was smiling during my talk when normally I’m pretty serious because im concentrating on what I’m saying in Spanish and all that. but I hope the parents really took it to heart, I feel like they need so much help with that, seeing that their kids really are watching and they learn from them. It was a simple talk but I learned a lot from preparing for it. But the best part was? Seeing N___ there in his white shirt and tie :) That’s right! N___ GOT BAPTIZED!!!!

So it’s always a little scary, the weeks and days leading up to a baptism cuz Satan is right there...he's always right there trying to get at our poor, innocent little investigators with their big hearts. So with N___ we would check up with him and remind him of his fecha and he was always on board! Let me tell you about N___. I feel like he is my Honduran grandpa...he is actually 78 years old but he is seriously the best. I just have a thing for finding and baptizing grandmas and grandpas but I think it’s because my heart just goes out to them and I try to show them so much love. During our lessons with him, he pays attention but sort of looks off into the distance and as we're teaching him. We're always worried that he's going to die, or worse, he's not paying attention. Cuando en realidad, he's just thinking really hard! He doesn’t make too much eye contact but after we ask a question, we have to wait about a good 15 seconds and then he responds with an incredible answer. We're like left there waiting and then we just breathe a sigh of relief and smile when we hear his answer. He is the cutest thing! But we reviewed the baptismal interview questions and for some odd reason he felt the need to pull a bunch of jokes during it! He was like "I just want to make you guys laugh!" It was so weird! But he seriously had us laughing. He had had a problem with drinking a beer every so often with one of his friends so when we asked him about the palabra de sabiduria (Word of Wisdom), and more specifically, "when was the last time you drank?" and his reply? ".......hace........24 horas?" (It's been ...24 hours)  My heart you guys, I almost died! I just looked at my companion and she was just staring at him with the pages of her book closing slowly. Then he was like "no just kidding..." he scared me so bad! But it was a great baptism. It was crazy stressful and it started to rain, there were ants in the cups of watermelon we brought out afterwards, and they needed to do the ordinance like three times because the baptizer was a recent convert of the other Elders (coolest things ever!) and N___ couldn’t bend his knees because he just can’t...but in the end it all worked out great and he was baptized!

The next morning we were booking it to bring everyone to church and we passed by his house later than planned so we ran to the church and there he was sitting in the second row in his white shirt and super pretty blue tie he bought! He had walked to church all by himself! It was the cutest thing! He was confirmed and everything! Everyone is helping out a lot to support him and turns out his nephew is a member and some more of his family are members! His wife goes to an evangelical church but she just needs some time. We went to visit him on Sunday and we just asked him about his life, how he met his wife and just chatted with him. It was so nice. My comp went to the bathroom and he was like "aquí estamos...Mormones". And when I asked him at church how he felt he was like "estoy feliz". Lots of times people just say, "bien!" but he was like "estoy feliz" it just made me so happy. My little Honduran grandpa :) He said that he's an "otro soldado" (another soldier in God's army) and he was like "es un milagro que Dios ha hecho en mi vida a ser Mormon porque tengo 78 años....¿es raro verdad?" (It's a miracle what God has done in my life... to become a Mormon because I'm 78 years old!) The honest truth? Nunca es demasiado tarde :)

Love,
Hermana Despain