"Feliz Navidad de Honduras" December 19, 2011

Feliz Navidad de Honduras!

This is the first Spanish speaking Santa I have ever spoken to!

Sitting in our investigator's house. This is Oto, he is an Awesome guy and reminds me alot of Brooke. His wife and daughter remind me of Gina and Kelsi too.

We were saying "good bye" to our recent converts Familia Rapalo, when we thought I would be leaving the next day. This is Geovanni, he is always the one to run out and greet us.

This is the rooster we feasted on as a farewell lunch to Sagastume. As it turned out, my companion and I didn't get transferred after all.

This week was the week of Cambios, Changes. We thought for sure that I was leaving Wednesday so we decided to buy a live chicken and kill it and eat it for lunch. So we went and I chopped the head off with a machete and plucked the feathers off and we took it to someone to cook it up for us. Since we thought I was leaving, I said goodbye to everyone that day. That night, we had a lesson with one of our investigators. When I told him that we might have changes he went and grabbed his ties and told me to take one! It was awesome, I snagged a Jaguar print one. I offered to leave him mine, but he insisted on keeping them both. We found out that night that we were going to be staying the same, I was excited because I felt like that I wasn't ready to leave this area. My work here is not done. The two other Elders that I came in with from the MTC are now training new missionaries this change. That's about all that has happened this week. I have been hurting in my stomach lately, and my Comp told a member...great. So of course she insisted that we come over that night so she can give me some medicine she makes for this kind of stuff. I was a little skeptical going into this, but we showed up anyway. She had made Manzanilla tea or something with a clove of garlic in it also. It smelt horrible. I asked Elder Belnap if I could drink it, and he said "yeah". It was really gross, but it worked! I was fine for the rest of the night. We also had a power outage in our Colonia, and we aren't allowed to work with out lights because it can be dangerous, so we headed back to the house. We called our investigator and cancelled our appointment and explained the situation. First off, this investigator is a little on the wealthy side and he asked us if he we were hungry and told us he was going to pick up a pizza for us from Pricemart (Costco)! So we had pizza that night and went to bed full and happy. Sunday, the branch president had forgotten to assign talks...welcome to Honduras. So he asked me to give a talk 3 min before it started. I gathered all my thoughts together and decided to talk on the Atonement. I was really nervous, but I pulled through and gave a talk for 12 min and 15 secs. It ended being alright. Another thing that I realized, Christmas is nothing without your Family. Be grateful for the time you have with them. This time of year, I've only been thinking of my family and how much I miss them. Also, fake Christmas trees are no where close to real ones. I miss our real Christmas tree.