"Crazy Lightning Storms" April 23, 2012

Well, I don't know about you guys, but we were expecting changes this week. Elder Garcia has now finished his training and we were expecting him to leave. The branch president and some members threw a party for us Tuesday night to celebrate our time here. They set up chairs in the sacrament room and gave testimonies and said how grateful they were for our work and how they loved going out and teaching with us. It was really nice. Then at the end, Elder Garcia got up and bore his testimony. We ate baleadas and had a good time. When we got home, we received our change calls...NOBODY WAS LEAVING!!! Presidente Hernéndez told the Zone Leaders that he is satisfied with the work in Nacaome and is glad he can take a break from worrying about the Elders here. He also said, "This is the first time in a long time that I haven't received a phone call or had to worry about the Elders there." Great, that only means more heat and more crazy lightning storms. I was sleeping one night in my hammock right by the window and at 2 in the morning a huge rain storm came in and blew rain all over my face. What a wake up call! I was tired and frustrated to learn that it was only 2 in the morning so I worked on blocking the window from letting water in.

Some thing interesting: we went to go teach some investigators and the daughter had a turtle. She was playing with it on the floor and it would run around. It reminded me of my old box turtle, "Speedy", and I asked her where she got it from. Then the mom told us that when it rains, all of the turtles come out of the river and walk the streets out in this colony. I was amazed! The daughter then offered me the turtle because they are all over in this colony outside of Nacaome. I told her to keep it and that i would find one some day.

"The hottest city in all of Honduras" April 16, 2012

Well, first I want to say R.I.P. to my fighter fish, "Falcon", that I left behind in Bakersfield. He finally died after 1 year and 4 months of having him. I bought him in December during first semester at BYUI after driving all the way to Idaho Falls to pick him up.

So, back to life, This week is the week of Changes! One of us is going to leave, we find out Tuesday night. I personally want to stay, but if I go that's fine too. It's what the Lord wants. We have been working really hard to get our family here married but as it turns out, the wife's papers are in Choluteca and we will have to go to Tegucigalpa to get the husband's papers signed because they're lost! So its going to be a couple more weeks until they get married and baptized. The wife is amazing, my testimony grows every time she goes to church. She fights and drags the three kids to church and we walk with them and she never complains about how far away the church is like other people do. It makes me think of the effect this will have on the family's life. Her 11 year old son helps her, but she is a trooper!

We had a power outage last Tuesday. It went out while we were in the middle of a lesson. One of the Transformers blew out and wouldn't be back on until the next day.... Oh what a long night we were in for! We slept in the hottest city in all of Honduras without fans! It was close to impossible to sleep because of the heat. I was somewhat alright in my hammock, but my comp was dying in his bed. He was up all night until at 2 the power came on and he put both the fans on himself, haha.

"Semana Santa" April 9, 2012

Well, this week was definitely different. The Spring Break week down here is called the Semana Santa. Every single person took the week off. Sooo this meaning everywhere we could buy food to eat this week was closed. The despensa was open but we could only buy food that didn't have to be refrigerated or frozen because this week our refrigerator broke as well. It was the worst possible timing in the world for our fridge to break! Don't worry, we both are still living and found a "pulperia" (a house that people sell groceries, soda and water out of) right next to the house. During this week on Thursday every single person in Central America goes to the beach to "bathe" themselves and to spend the whole day there. So as we walked out of the house, we noticed this eerie silence as we walked the streets to contact. There was no one on the streets and no one in their houses.

In my 11 weeks here I have heard that it gets so hot that it looks like its snowing. Well, this week it finally got so hot, that when water would fall, it looked like little snowflakes falling. It was crazy looking, I wasn't sure if my eyes were playing tricks on me or not. I have also have had my hammock for 3 weeks now and I have slept in it every single night. Its so much more comfortable then a bed that I often think at nights how I can put a hammock up in my room in Bakersfield....just a heads up.

This week we had a date for this new family to get married and also baptized. The day before that we go to take out the papers to get them married, they get in a huge fight and she threatened him that he needs to move out and be separated. I can solemnly say that this is the sly work of the devil. This is the 4th family that I have worked with to get baptized and married and every time before they get married, they get it huge fights and talk about separating or dropping baptism in general. Its not a coincidence that this always happens! Satan is always attacking the family. Whether we know it or not, Satan is always trying to slowly work his way into the homes of many happy families to try and tear them apart through temptations. Why is it that Satan is always attacking the family? Its because families are a part of the plan of God to be married and live a happy life together as a family here on the earth and for all eternity. He is always throwing in the thought that we don't need to be married to have children or to start a family, but the truth is that we do! I know that the Family is a basic part of the Plan that God has for us and I know that through families, we can be more happy and get through life more easily.

"General Conference" April 2, 2012

This week has gone by really fast mostly because of General Conference. Oh man, it was amazing! There was so many good talks given, it was hard to write them all down in my notes! Well first it was a little difficult to get the District President to let us watch it because he kept on telling us English Speakers that we need to watch it in Spanish and he didn't want to set up a room for us to watch it. He kept on saying, "We're going to need all 4 rooms because we are expecting over 500 people to come to all 4 sessions. HA! there aren't even that many members in the San Lorenzo District. I don't know why he thought that. but we finally got our little "bunker" settled in where we watched General Conference in English. The only thing that I was disappointed in this whole week was that the Satellite connection in San Lorenzo went down during the Priesthood Session, so we didn't get to see any of it. We called the other Areas in the South and they all were watching it. That night we (Elders) all slept in the Zone Leader's house because there wasn't transportation back to our areas at night. They had asked us that had hammocks to bring them so that we could have somewhere to sleep. It was a good thing I brought mine, or else I would have been sleeping on the ground!

One of our families that are investigating have finally decided to get married! The husband wants to change his life from drinking and going to Billiard Halls all night. It feels great when the Spirit witnesses to those that need help that we are here. He came to us and told us he is ready to stop everything and be with his family.