December 7, 2015

 

And how come Kate is the one that has the party this friday, she´s still got the whole month to go! sounds like a blast though, go big or go home. 

What´s going on now that everyone is at home? I´m still waiting on some river pictures. Still wishing I could have gone on that trip, sounds like it was a success all around! 

And yes, please get a garden planted! That´s cool with the banana tree, hope the cold doesn´t kill it. Or, better yet, forget about the garden and plant more citrus and peach trees. 

I´ll have to see on the shoes. Not sure if I threw them out or not. But yeah, the jerseys turned out good! Navas is just super gay in a latin way-always shaving himself, his legs, eyebrows, and takes an hour to get ready in the morning-he bathes before I do, and then I bathe, and then I´m dressed and packed before he´s even got his pants on. It´s not that weird for a latin. Love him to death though, no complaints there. 

And yes, we have a mormon street where everyone is LDS and then up in the mountains one of the valleys is all LDS or investigators. 

You all liked what Elder Anderson said huh? He came to the mission and I remember not being particularly impressed-I mean, its an apostle, but I just didn´t feel the same from him that I did with other apostles that have visited. That´s interesting about scouting though. I hope they get their eagles too but...I´m not real worried about it. If scouting was not affiliated with the church I would never do it, and the non-lds scouters are, on the whole, pretty weird. Too bad though, the worlds changing! In Honduras personal progress is pretty strong, and duty to god as well but there´s no scouting-like program. 

And I honestly don´t know how missionaries like Nuñez do it. If I had an iffy family I´d be a real iffy missionary. 

On the shop stuff, how are connor and jason? I hope you find a good installer. Say hi to everybody for me. 

Have fun decorating the tree...that´s one of my favorite christmas memories. I think the things I remember most about christmas is the tree decorating, the alan jackson and josh groban cd´s, potpurri, Christmas Eve, oranges off the tree, christmas movies, tamales, christmas breakfast, going fishing or hunting in the afternoon...good stuff, keep the traditions going! 

I´ve got really few things to tell you all! This is gonna be a good month though-we´ve hit our stride as leaders and we´re more relaxed with better results. Slow and steady wins the race. 

With President Klein- One thing I´m kind of questioning though is some of the methods/focuses of the mission-some of the things and methods that are asked of us are just not supported by what I´ve seen in my time on the mission. In other words, what they ask of us is not what works best in the long run. I´m real hesitant to bring this up and I fully realize the improbability of a 21-year old knowing more than the president, but I´ll be meditating on that one for a while and see if I can´t talk to him about it in one of our private meetings. 

But yeah, we didn´t get robbed this week! Saw a body in the street on saturday night-someone stopped him in his truck and then shot him through the windshield-but besides that the week was pretty uneventful. Kind of frustrating, really-all of our work, all of the hours we spent working in the rain, all week making committments to go to church and talking about how much they´re changing and how excited to go to church they are and then on sunday morning they´ve got laundry to do. granted, laundry in honduras is an endeavor, but my gosh...and then, all of a sudden, people we´d given up hope on showed up to church and we find new people to teach. I shouldn´t complain, we had 6 investigators in church including Anne, who´s going to get baptized on saturday (she´s the white looking girl holding a baby in a picture I sent you with the familia Zelaya a month ago) but still...lots of letdowns. Some people just aren´t willing to sacrifice and you can´t force people to have the desire. But, we´re moving right along, the church is growing, and everything is allright. 

Our service project turned out pretty cool though-we went and visited the hospital here and brought gifts to the children, that was fun. One of them we gave a nerf gun and made a little shooting gallery and told this little boy with a broken leg that if he shot me he could have another toy. He shot me right in the chest so we let him pick another one, made his day. I also found some toy six shooter pistols in walmart and bought those to give out, and in hindsight that may not have been the best idea but the kids loved them. 

Sorry this is such a boring email! Don´t even have pictures. 

Not even any spiritual insights, I think I studied once this week. There´s just no time! In other missions if the missionaries don´t have time to study in the morning they have them study later, but here we´re straight off to the field ASAP. On the job training. I´m sure glad I´m not in another mission. In the limited time that I have had though I´ve been enjoying the New Testament. Surprises me every time how much solid doctrine is there and how much restored doctrine is there if we read it with the proper eyes. 

Anyways, love and miss you all! Anxiously awaiting my package! This is my favorite time of year and I hope you all are enjoying it. 

Love you all!