A good week

This week, starting last Monday night, started with a family home evening with a family up in our area called the Escondido. We shared the importance of being an eternal family. It built my testimony to testify of the blessings of having an eternal family. There are also about 10 little girls between the 2 families that we met with and they wanted to play games with us and ask us lots of questions. on Tuesday we went to Cofradia for a zone meeting and our new Zone Leader knows Chinedu! so that was cool to talk to him about Nedu for a bit. 

 

 

We decided to spend more time contacting this week so we talked to A LOT of new people. I am starting to like talking to people more, but it also makes me realize I have so much more Spanish to learn. we encountered a lady this week who was playing cards with her friends. she is like 50ish and she was hitting on Elder Permenter and I, saying she wanted to marry us. It was funny, but a little creepy too.

In our talking to many people, we need a reason to talk to people, so we have been asking people if they know anyone named Suyapa (mainly because it is just a funny name). But, we have had some success, and we now teach 3 people whose name is Suyapa! haha ask and ye shall receive I guess. But On our quest for a false Suyapa, we encountered 2 people who are actually interested in the gospel and they asked us many questions about the church and Joseph Smith! It was hard to answer a lot of the questions because they knew the bible pretty well. I need to study the bible more because there is a lot of things in there that people interpret different than we do. But we will see if they make it to church this Sunday! 

 

We also had many more opportunities for service this week. An older lady whose name is Hermana Troches had a wall built probably hundreds of years ago, made out of rock. so we offered to help build it again ( well my comp offered because I don't know how to build a wall out of rocks) so we get up to the wall and realize that it is not just built up of rock, but years of trash too! so we did a terrible job at rebuilding her Honduran wall because we were trying to do something in 2 hours that took 100s of years of trash to build! 

 

The lady that makes the Elders lunch has a bunch of pet rabbits

 

We also got to help teach an English class which was super fun because it made me realize I'm not too bad at Spanish, and It is fun to help people who really want a better life and see English as a way of having it. 

 

Although we don't have too many investigators, we have made many friends in our area. One including our banana man. He is a guy who sells bananas at the market nearby and we haven't had to pay for bananas for 3 weeks now because he always gives them to us for free! And we started going to this bakery store and yesterday the guy gave us cookies for free, i think because we talked a little with him about football! Little by little I think we are making a few friends.

 

I love and miss you all, have a great week!

The Work Continues

This week has been challenging for a few reasons, the ongoing heat being one, and the constant quest for people searching for the true church! Everyone we come in contact with is convinced that either it doesn't matter what church you go to, or that the catholic church is the true church. 

My new machete for "mowing" grass

This week we sat in a lesson with 2 old people. They had a dirt floor in basically a metal shack. they let us sit in their dirty plastic chairs and we taught them about the restoration of the gospel as simply as we possibly could and at the end of the lesson, they told us that the catholic church is what the bible always talks about and that it is the only true church. It made Elder Permenter and I very frustrated, but in that moment all we could do was give our testimonies and bare witness of Joseph Smith and the restored gospel, and that our message is true. We left discouraged, not because we knew they were wrong, but because they didn't understand. That seems to be the pattern of our lessons because we teach a lot of people who, although they have good intentions, they are not good learners! We teach them a lesson, go back and have to teach it again because they forgot what we taught the first time. we haven't had hardly any success this week, as we invite 20 plus people to church each week and none of them show up. It is frustrating but there is really no other option than to keep trying. 

 

Our room, the mattresses are off the floor to keep them dry and let the air move

 

We also have a few areas in the mountains. the 3 different areas take anywhere from 45 minutes to 1 hour and 30 minutes to hike to. We set morning appointments for one of the areas, got up and went out on our hike. When we got there, one of the families had left because they forgot about our meeting (keep in mind these people rarely ever leave their houses) and the other family was hiding from us! We have found that many people are shy or just don't want to talk to us so they quickly hurry inside and close the door, even though we just saw them, that part is a little bit ridiculous to me because we are just trying to help!

 

 On the road with Elder Permenter

 

I am thankful for the support of everyone at home, and for all the advice and encouragement. I have found comfort in the little things and I have faith that Heavenly Father gives us what we need.