"Tremendo Travieso" March 19, 2013

 

 

 This week was great! I'm so glad that I have had the opportunity to be on a mission in this time and place. The Honduras Tegucigalpa Temple was dedicated on Sunday. We took investigators to see the broadcast of the Cultural Night they did on Saturday. It made me sad because I realized how much I am going to actually miss the people, culture and just this country in general. I've only got a little bit more to go, its time to get going and take on all of the work that is waiting for me. I have transfers tomorrow and will be going to my last area! The time has gone by so fast, I cant believe it. I will finally be able to be a normal missionary and do all the work I want in my area without any worries!!! It'll be great, my Zone Leader days are finally over.

 

We went to go get our haircut last Monday. Elder Dockendorf waited for me while I was getting my haircut and he started talking to the family that owns the shop. They start to talk to him about how red he is and how he needs to wear sun screen. They begin to ask him where is was from and he told them "from Utah". The all start to say, "ahhhh...jewtah, jewtah!" we just started busting up because they couldn't say Utah. So then they point at me and ask him, "He's dark, where is he from? He's from Mexico isn't he? No? California? Really?! But is his dad Mexican? Its just that you are really white and he is dark and has darker hair." I don't know why, but alot of people think that I'm from Mexico. Its not the first time that I've heard that. Thanks Dad for the semi Latin look!

On Friday we went to our cook lady's house to eat lunch. She told us that one of her parrots is sick and showed us. It just looked really sad and in pain. I looked at it's stomach and it was expanded like a balloon! So I started pushing on it to force whatever was in its stomach out. So it started to gag and then vomited all over my hand. I was fine at first, but then this horrible stench just came up and I started gaging also! It was, what looked like, a bunch of sour mango splatted on my hand and it reeked! The cook lady just laughed at me and said that I am "tremendo" and a "travieso". I'm glad that she got a good kick out of it. But now the bird is happy, alive and eating! They just call me the Birdman now.

Okay so as missionaries, there are a couple of movies that we like to show to our investigators called The Restoration. And this movie, I am sure, I have seen over 100 times so far. We were with a member that was giving us dinner and while we were waiting for it the husband goes over and says, "Elders, I've got this great movie that you guys should see. I guarantee that you have never seen it before, I love it." So he starts flipping through all of his movies and I lean over to Elder Dockendorf and say jokingly, "Watch, I bet you it'll be The Restoration! hahaha". A little after the member jumps in surprise "Ah haa! there it is!" and pulls out The Restoration. We played it nice and tried not to crush his dreams and let him put on this "Never before seen" movie for the missionaries.

"This place is a killer!" March 11, 2013

This week started off a little hard. When we went home after emailing our families on Monday, we were surprised to find we didn't have any power. When soon found out that we were the only house with out power and that they had cut our power because supposedly the people that rented before us never paid. We quickly called the owner of the house and she got to work on that really fast. She's a really nice lady, she is always fixing up the house for us so that we are okay. We had to survive 4 nights with out any power, but luckily for us the Lord had blessed us with nice cool weather for those 4 days. It has been the coolest I think I have ever seen in Choluteca. But, the bad news... as soon as we got our power connected the heat came on like none other I have ever experienced here! We were walking to our cook lady's house and by the time we got there, we were just drenched in sweat. This place is a killer.

We are doing great here. The investigators that we have are good, they all have a baptismal date. 

"HIKING, not walking" March 4, 2013

This week has been really long and stressful. I cant believe that its finally all passed. As a Zone Leader, when something goes wrong, we get the blame and cant do anything about it. We had ZL Consejo and President got on us for the missions low baptisms. Well, our zone no, because we lead the mission in baptisms. But everyone was getting chewed out. The stressful part of the week was when we had to go and take out a ton of marriage papers!! Holy smokes, we were in the National Registro everyday asking for papers because the Zone's investigadors were all starting to progress. We have 3 papers to take out from the mountains in Concepcion de Maria... I'm done going though, its too far away. We are sending some Elders from the other zone to get them. We should be having about 4 Weddings and about 9 baptisms in the zone this weekend. I just hope that everything goes well.

 

I went out to Agua Caliente on Thursday. Its the area furthest away from everything in the mission. I could not believe that I was going out there, I had heard some weird rumors about this place I had to see if they were true or not. We go out there and its really out in the middle of no where, just as bad as Concepcion de Maria. We went out to work in a part of there area that was an hour away hiking. HIKING, not walking. We trekked for what seemed forever! We finally made it to this mountain side where there was no power, water system and no one had any cars or motorcycles. There are trucks that go up to deliver water and food to sell but that's about it. There were quite a few members there I was surprised. We spent the whole afternoon there and hiked back after teaching a couple families. We started to make our way back at about 7:39 and made it to the house at 8;50. The moon wasn't out, so it was really dark. We were good though, we had flashlights. I'm glad that I was able to survive Splits in Agua Caliente because I don't know if I will ever go back! We had to rough it. Just in this area though, they are having 3 weddings next week and 8 baptisms! The people there are ready for the Gospel!!

"Stress and Success" February 26, 2013

This last week was HHHOOOOTTTT!!! Holy cow, its just really humid and the sun is getting alot stronger. Just this week everyone has been saying that I am a lot darker. Choluteca does things to a man. For example: I get a nice tan, we get thin from the food, and we also get ingrown toenails.... oh yes, yesterday I had to go to Tegus to get my nail removed. I was freaking out a bit from some of the stories that I had heard. But we got there and the Mission had the doctor come to the Mission Office. I won't go into details to scare anybody, but it went well. They just numbed me up and then he took it out. He said that it was really sharp and that it must have been hurting, but really it wasn't bothering me that much. The only thing that really bothered me was the fact that I couldn't feel my toe while we were walking. Its the weirdest feeling ever.

Last week was a lot of stress and a lot of success. Our investigating family that has been walking to church (1hour walking) was baptized on Saturday. They were all happy that they were finally baptized.