Honduras Week 1

**Dad Note ~Chandler is serving in Los Castaños on the northern outskirts of San Pedro Sula in Honduras.  Nichol and I received a note from his Mission President confirming his arrival.  Here is Chandler's note for the week.

 Here's a look at all the donuts the missionaries received for valentines day at the MTC

 Leaving Mexico

Hola ¿Comò està? 

This week has been very different so I have lots to tell! My companions are Elder Merlos and Elder Zepeda. We are in a trio. Elder Merlos is from Dallas, Texas but his parents are from el Salvador. He speaks perfect english and spanish so he has helped me out the most. He also likes cars and watches, very typical American Latino style. Elder Zepeda is from Tegucigalpa but he is just with us to wait for his visa to Costa Rica. Everyone here learns both english and spanish in school so we run into a lot of bilingual people which is a pretty amazing skill to see people have. 

My apartment has 3 rooms, kind of. There aren't any doors accept for the front one. We have fans so that is a relief at night, although it cools down pretty good in the evening. The past few days have been really good weather. We sleep on mattresses on the floor. I have two stacked on top of each other because the first one I got was a piece. The neighborhood is like a street and the houses are built kinda like town houses but way smaller. We had a bunch of ants so we learned quickly to clean up our messes. 

There are so many good foods here, my favorites so far are baleadas and pulpulsas. Baleadas are like a thick tortilla with fijoles, eggs, cheese, and some sour cream or mayo type stuff. A pulpulsa is a tortilla type thing with frijoles, chicken, and cheese in the middle of it. they were super good and its cool to watch the street people (usually ladies) make them because they are super fast at it. 

For a shower its more like a faucet and there is only one knob. I have never in my life had to take a cold shower so this is a bit of a shock to me every morning. I don't know if ill ever get used to it but it needs to be done I guess. There are alot of transvestites around here.  Someone said that's because a lot of people take drugs while they are pregnant, kind of a weird thing to say. One of them was walking towards us and elder Merlos asked me if that was my boyfriend. He said it in spanish so I didn't really understand so I just said 'sì'. Merlos and Zepeda started cracking up and then they told me what he asked.  So every time we see that person(more often than you'd think) they say "su novio su novio" which means " your boyfriend your boyfriend" its pretty funny. 

Also we bought a bag of noodles that when we opened it up had a bunch of animalitos in it. (bugs) It made me very thankful for the food that I eat and that it never had bugs in it. 

I haven't received the package you sent yet but they said it usually takes a few months. we do have fans that the mission provides. I did my laundry by hand for the first time. It was a lot of work for not that great of a pay off and it takes forever. It is very relaxing though, i like it. The bus system here is crazy, its like a business. They have one person hanging out the door yelling at people on the street to ask where there going and cars pretty much do whatever they want. 

My testimony has grown a lot, although I have a long way to go. I have noticed things that I didn't realized were such luxuries like, a hot shower, a washing machine, clean water, etc. I have taken a lot for granted and I still do! but seeing these people be happy with what they have is inspiring. Those were are angry and not as nice, I can understand why. 

I love and miss you guys so much, I will continue to try and paint a picture for you here in Honduras! I cant send pics yet because the computers aren't safe to plug my camera into. I might be able to another time. I will ask if there is another place to send pics! Much love!

Love

Elder Dowell