April 13, 2015
It's a long one!

Para la familia Heintzleman-

Gracias por todo su apoyo. Solo para que sepan, las lecciones que me dio antes de la misión me ayudo bastante. Y, aunque no puedo poner acentos (este computadora es para ingles y no se como cambiarla) estoy bien cómodo con el idioma. A veces hablo como si yo fuera puro catracho. Tendré mi acento para siempre, pero no me importa. Si la gente puede entenderme, cheque. El único problema es que no hablo español, sino catracho, o sea, hondureño. Pero si, este es la obra del Señor. Tenemos mucho exito y la iglesia esta creciendo. Crecimiento real. Me imagina que mis padres ya les dijeron lo que esta pasando en mi misión, pero hay milagros cada semana. Estoy-estamos-bendecidos, de seguro. ¡Les extraño!

Good old heintzlemans. Hope I didn't make any mistakes, that would be embarassing. 

By the way, I'm finding it difficult to express myself without missionary/spanish words/sayings, so...you all may just have to learn them. Just so you know, 

geeper-flirty girl that likes the missionaries. The verb form is guipeyar. 

que honda-what's up. That ones actually spanish

cheque-ok. All is well, we'll roll with that.honduran. 

machete-when someone gets chastized. 

You'll just have to learn the rest, I can't spend two years translating things into normal enlgish. 

Good to hear that Kent's still alive, also really glad to hear about Rhys and Dallas. He was airlifted to phoenix or what happened? I'm a little confused on that part. 

oh, and Dad looks good in that yellow fishing shirt. 

And yeah man, animals mating...maybe I'm still immature but it cracks me up. The worst is when they get stuck together and there's just two sad looking dogs moping around town together. They say that if you look too long at two dogs stuck together it'll make you go gay. My last comp from Guatemala was legitimately afraid to look, good old latin superstitions. 

And I would definitely agree with President Carter's assessment. I've got the honesty and selflessness down, still working on the humility part. But it really does impede the work when missionaries are selfish. We spend a huge amount of time working with less actives that were converts of a companionship here that just went around baptizing people willy nilly without regard to their preparation because they just wanted baptisms. There's lots of ways missionaries can be selfish and it makes things hard. 

But yeah, what you said about inadequacies is spot on. I read Ether 12"27 alot. 

And yeah, I think Helaman would be good for her. Way more opportunities to make friends. More of a social scene. Heritage halls is really quiet and if I wasn't with the roommates I was with I would not have liked it. Didn't take first year writing. What's she gonna major in? But yeah, she sent me her own message. 

And yeah, grandparents-stories. Little things. Like where they worked, what they like, interesting little tidbits from their life. I actually have the stokes already filled in with stuff I remember but I can always add more. 

looking forward to the pictures, send me the old hunting and fishing ones too! 

Curtis-Look at you, ain't you a real florida boy, living it up! That's terrifying about the gators. I've had that happen too, (but at least I was in a bigger boat). they're so camoflauged it looks like a log, and then the light hits the water just right and you realize there's a giant alligator sitting motionless underneath you. Cool pictures too, you like the kayak huh? How's fishing out of the kayak? Do you just put your tackle bag on your lap in the kayak or what? putting my fishing stuff to good use? pre ap us history? didn't know that was a thing. 8th grade next year right? Keep on having fun and send me pictures!

Sterling-another wild man, we're gonna have a blast when I get back with you and Curtis. You and Wyatt are best buds or what? And you got to ride in the Camero...lucky dog. playing in the river, spears, that's the life. Glad you're having fun, and Academy sounds pretty cool. How are the parkers? Excited for middle school?? And just so you know, that breakfast sounds awesome, but balleadas are probably the best breakfast food in the world. Nice greasy flour tortilla filled with eggs and beans and cheese and sausage...mhmm. 

Kate-What's Gucci? Is that what kids are saying these days? Sounds really dumb. Y ¿que honda con diamond dolls? What do you do? I love baseball games though, hope you enjoy them. By the way, you're awesome. Good example. Proud of ya. Your friends are still guiping on me? Keep on keeping on, and send me some pictures every now and then! Who are your top 5 friends? Also I'm thrilled you loved conference. When I was your age I hated it. 

Ok, here's my little brief update. 

First off, just about everybody in Yoro is sick-the disease called chicomguya or something or other is passing around and hitting everybody and it's actually pretty bad. But we had a cool experience this week-one of our inactive families has a boy of 14 years that we're reactivating (came to church this sunday, with his inactive friend!) and he was bad. Couldn't move for pain, had a super high fever, couldn't hold down food, he was outtttt of it. We gave him a blessing, and I don't think he even realized we were touching him or giving him a blessing. Then we left. Next day we came back to check up on him and he's out playing in the yard. The family flags us down and is like "it was the priesthood! it was the priesthood!" Turns out he started to improve almost immediately and was completely whole by the morning. This disease usually lasts a full week. My comp had it for 5 days, and this kid had it for about 6 hours. Cool experience with the priesthood and the power of blessings. I can't remember if I ever told you about it but we healed a little boy on the island too-when the people have lots of faith there's lots of blessings! 

And yes, as you might have guessed, we have done lots of hard labor this week. It was actually only one day but we made it count alright. Javier Ramos (you'll see his picture-he's the one that quit marijuana and cocaine hard turkey to get married and baptized, and fun fact, recieved the priesthood this week) has property up in the mountains. Here, flat ground is for rich people so everyone else buys land up in the mountains, and they plant it-all of it. I could barely walk this hill was so steep, and he's got it planted with corn. Cornfields are called milpas here. So anyway we went to harvest his corn, so his family could make their own cornmeal for corn tortillas for the year. What we did was fill giant sacks, called metates, with the corn, and then hike them up the hill to a certain ridge and then roll them down the mountain to his little camp below. These bags are huge and when full with dry corn weigh about 150 lbs. I can barely walk this hill without a load, and with a load on my back I was stumbling around like a drunk guy. I fell down a few times, and Javier is dancing around me like a mountain goat. So we get everything up on the ride, then roll down the bags about 300 feet-and he has it down to a science. Every bag landed touching one another. Completo, este tipo. But it was beautiful with a view of Morazan (from the other side-we were in the southern mountains this time) and a super honduran experience all around. His wife packed us a breakfast and we sat up on the mountain as the sun was coming up eating beans and tortillas. Then when we sat down to rest at the end he cut us some sugar cane so we sat up there and chawed the sugar cane (sorry Bishop/Dentist Spencer) for awhile and talked about the price of corn.  The worst part though, is that we came on bikes. So we had to return dead tired, cross a river-picture pending-and then ride our bikes through town. It was a blast, totally crazy. Morazan is a small town but the main street is just as crazy as any big city. We're flying down main street, dodging buses and motor taxis and street vendors and horses, and I'm a pretty tall guy riding on a honduran size bike. Must of looked ridiculous. I don't think it was too stupid but at the same time I remember thinking "I kinda hope president doesn't find out about this". Good times all around and we found some new people to teach that work with Javier. Javier is a better missionary than we are, he talks to everybody about the church. 

javier eating breakfast on the mountain

Me and Javier standing on our metates. Javier's been an illegal a couple times and told us a story about how he got caught in Arizona. He went wetback and a rancher found him and gave them food and water and then called the border patrol. He still holds a grudge. Some times as a gringo its just best to keep quiet. 

 

crossing the river. I was expecting cold water with the current and the rocks and coming out of the mountains and all but it was warm! Like the pool in august. I was a little disappointed. 

 

Funny story for this week-remember the family of Jenny and Marta? We had a little short lesson with their whole family this week, and they have a little girl that's about 4 years old. Sweet as could be. She looks like a little white girl and always hops up onto my lap and asks me to say words in English and pesters my companion and I the whole evening and always hugs our legs as we're leaving. But then we were saying the closing prayer, and I started to look around a little bit, right? Bad habit, I don't know. She catches me looking, and all of a sudden, uncrosses her arms, and...flips me the bird! She flicked me off in the middle of the prayer! And then she saw me trying not to laugh, so she stands up and gets in on it with both hands and is flicking me off and dancing, and nobody has a clue except me. Then the prayer starts to finish and she sits back down and folds her little arms, sweet as could be. I died laughing. 

But yeah, we had a really succesful week this week. We have 3 solid baptisms coming up at the end of the month-they'd be next weekend but we have stake conference. Our attendence exploded to 76 this week, which is unheard of. We're growing! And 9 of those were our investigators, from our companionship alone. And two of our less actives that we're reactivating, two boys of 14 and 15 years old, came with white shirts and ties and all. So yeah, we're doing well. Just goes to show that when the Lord wants something to happen it'll happen. We're working hard but I feel like I worked harder in Roatan but with less success-the Lord does the work! 

Also had divisions this week-so I got to go up to Santa Rita with one of the zone leaders from the Dominican Republic and we had a good time all the round. He was about to get signed on by the MLB, I forgot which team, and then hurt is elbow. Pitches 87 mph in his prime. Cool guy, and I didn't struggle in the least to understand his spanish, which means I'm doing ok, because dominicans are probably the most difficult to understand. 

 So yeah, there's my week. I'm dead tired. My pday's gonna be sleeping. By last night we were walking like zombies...walking back to the house was the longest walk of my life. Took me a good minute to climb the stairs. Pday was much needed. 

Time to send some pictures now! 

Also, I'd love it if you could send me some BYU devotionals too, don't have to be from GA's or general conference addresses. 

Always love hearing from ya'll and seeing pictures of what's going on. Still waiting of a picture of mom fishing on the river. Everyone is looking good and healthy. 

Love everybody, pictures are coming!

first pic is javier eating breakfast on the mountain