In Scott's letter he said this was Alonso's family

 

Happy Monday!  Glad to hear that now everyone in the family can ball except me. At least I can play soccer now. So Krista up and quit huh? Sounds like its for the best, works better for everybody. Who are you gonna replace her with? Glad to hear that NC is still coming along. And since when does Jason drink coffee? Glad he had it though, that is a little scary. Always truck problems. How's everybody in the shop? I bet Nikki's real happy with Ohio state's performance this year. Still can't believe there's a cat in the house either. Poor skip, doesn't even get to rest in his old age. 

 

Marsela is doing great.  She's coming to church on her own and if everything goes well she's gonna get baptized the 24th. Jaisler as well, but we need President Kline to come out to the island for the interview. Gustavo is attending church still but never has time to meet with us and I honestly think he doesn't want to. But at least he is still actively investiagating on his own. 

And we have another solid woman named Krisia, also from mosquitia, who lives in the worst part of the island that I know. She also started with zero fundamentals, but is progressing and has the desire to make changes and be a woman of God and raise up her family in the right way. We haven't taught her about the word of wisdom or the law of chastity yet, but without us teaching it she decided to leave her boyfriend and quit drinking. She only has one church attendance (and it was a mess, we brought her in in jeans and a tank top, 20  mins late, with 3 raggedy black children in tow) but she liked it and has a baptism date for the 31st. Her kids are adorable, usually. Sometimes I want to beat them. She has 3 boys, and they're all tiny. Oldest one is 6 and the youngest one is 3 or 4. Always barefoot, excpet when they went to the church, sometimes naked, sometimes wearing underwear and a tshirt, and sometimes they get all dressed up with jeans and jordan imitation high top sneakers. The youngest one is Shula Alexander, and if you don't use his full name he gets mad. He's bitten me several times. Whenever the kids see us passing on the street they yell and scream and swarm us and then walk with us wherever we're going, and when we're walking on the street they grab our hands and walk with us wherever we're going. I feel like the pied piper leading a bunch of el swampo kids around town. and sometimes I bring little candies or chips for them, we have quite the fan club. But, they can be awful too. One time we were waiting for Krisia and I was playing with shula and he spit right in my face-I told him to stop and he did it again and ahhhh I wanted to hit him so bad. That's Krisia's Kids. 

Lots of other investigators, still teaching a ton, but nobody is married. We've gotta learn to just leave them.  No one ever does what's necessary to get the papers. (It's the governments fault though, they make it ridiculously hard to get married, its another way for them to bruise the poor and suck out a little more money-I hate the Honduran government worse than I've ever hated anything in american politics) The good thing right now is that we have 3 single/soon to be single people, for once. Still working in spring garden and right now we're also traveling to a little town called french harbor (look it up, its pretty-not tourist pretty but its genuine roatan) to work with a reference from the president. He has a friend who has a daughter who went and fell in love with an islander and they're gonna get married so we're giving the lessons to this guy. Also, I found an old progress record sheet from the missionaries in the longwood ward when I was a ward missionary...holy cow, they had 8 lessons in one week! We've had 8 in one day before, I guess Roatan isn't so bad after all. 

The island is still beautiful this time of year. Even away from the coast it's real picturesque. The other day I was up on our balcony washing my clothes and realized how beautiful it is. The air is dry, with a light breeze, cool in the shade, and blue skies. We're surrounded by coconut and mango trees, and below us is a green field rimmed by banana trees with a bunch of chickens running around. I can smell someone making tortillas in the pulperia behind us and I can hear someone playing spanish music in a house down the road. 

And then when we're up in the hills it feels just like Florida-we'll be teaching a family on their porch (kinda, its more like sticks with a sheet of tin and a bare light bulb, but still) as the suns setting back in the jungle and the crickets start singing and it feels like I'm back at Julie's or anywhere in florida. And then it really feels like Florida when we're in the coastal parts and everyone's black and has some money. The black people with money drive nice trucks and listen to country music and have fish stickers on their trucks and have construction companies and stuff, it's like being back home, except the wealthy blacks hate us. And all the cars here must be secondhand from florida. I've seen so many cars with UF, USF, Stetson, FSU stickers, Seminole State parking passes, Gander Mountain stickers, sorority stickers, the works. It's odd. 

Also, the roaches fly here. Like mosquitos. Buzzing around. It's awful. 

But yes, Winter is the best time to come, it would be a blast to bring the family back here and dive/explore. It's soo cheap. Their tourism industry has taken a beating too, so the resorts are super cheap. And its super safe and the touristy areas are really clean. 

I've had a pretty good week. Very motivated. Very on top of things. With the new year we've been working with the branch counsel and I've done very well in presenting ourselves, our needs, ideas, and taking counsel. Still comp issues, as always. I didn't do super well with my patience\parental role this week, we fought quite a bit. I can't even begin to list the stuff this guy does. But the highlights this week, just to give you an example, he: told a black guy he would go to spirit prison because of his skin, laughed in the middle of an investigator's prayer when she said something a little different, told me to shut up in the middle of a lesson, and told someone that the psalms weren't inspired of god and that the ones with symbols are from satan. It's been an interesting week. I can deal with the weird stuff but the things I find very hard to forgive are his lies and his laziness. He works in the lessons, but as soon as we have time to give service or help somebody he's just about useless. And the lies...that's what I hate the most. He's full of crap and he knows that I know it. But enough complaining about my comp, he's got his good side. He's good with kids and he does have the desire to baptize and teach lessons and he knows the scriptures very well. So we're in two steps forward and one step back and this week was kind of a step back. 

Also, we can't go anywhere in town without people stopping us on the street and asking us to pray for them like we're some kind of catholic priest. They're usually drunk though, so we just tell them that we'll pray for them, tell them that they can pray for themselves, that god loves them, and to quit drinking. We've got it down to about a 30 second spiel and then we gotta book it out of there because they keep trying to hold our hands. I had one drunk guy start kissing my hands after our little message, that was a first. 

So that's Roatan for ya, always interesting. My spanish has been really good this week, I can read and write fluently and my verbal/listening is close to fluent, and when we're teaching lessons totally fluent. It's just hard because Roatan, Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico all have different vocabularies so its like I'm learning 4 languages. Also, I'm really impressed with Elder Sandoval, the 25 year old convert from Mexico. We need more Mexicans like him in the states. 

Also, that sounds like a sweet plan for summer, That's what I would vote for. Go big and swing up through the carolinas and virginia for the hiking and then go to Palmyra and then cross over to Nauvoo. I never wanted to do a church history tour when I was younger but now that sounds like a blast. 

How's the arizona family doing? And how did Sarah's tournament go? 

 

I'm sure I'll remember something else soon but that's all I have for now!

 love yall