Hello family!
One of the
things about the mission is that you don't really take a break. I don't really
know if I dream in English or Spanish or a mix, but I do know that I commonly
dream that I am teaching. In the dream, I can't really teach because I am
trying to sleep, but at the same time, I am not really sleeping either because
the lesson feels real! Sometimes I have to consciously tell myself that right
now is sleeping time.
So this week
was a series of adventures. I had to go to San Pedro so that I could become a
resident of Honduras. It's cheaper to switch us from being here on a visa to
being a resident once we have enough time here to qualify. I'd only been to the
mission office once a few weeks ago when my companion was sick, but that was
once more than the other five missionaries I was traveling with, so I was the
one to help everyone else get there. Fortunately, we managed the trip without
problems. We even managed to get home again, although we had a hard time
finding the right bus. People are so eager to get you on their bus that they
don't always give you good information!
Also, in the
MTC no one ever taught me how to arrange a wedding in Honduras. But this week,
my companion and I worked on doing just that. Fortunately, we had the help of a
member in the stake who knows her way around the process. But even still,
Thursday morning we were running around like crazy, trying to get the paperwork
in order. We hadn't realized until Tuesday that one of the papers the Elders
had obtained before they were transferred was about to expire. Why didn't we
know?
1. No one
taught us about the legal requirements for weddings here when we were in the
MTC.
2. A lot of
information gets lost when you whitewash an area.
But we are
doing the best we can and it's an adventure. I just hope that on Thursday this
all comes together and that the husband is still disposed to get married. I
just know that the wife still wants to and the children deserve it. Did you
know that life is a lot simpler if you get married first?
This weekend
was stake conference. The emphasis was on salvation, both from a missionary
perspective and a temple perspective. I believe the prophet invited the stake
to make that their theme for the Saturday session, and it carried over to
Sunday. Saturday especially was a powerful session. But sometimes listening to
talks from conferences make me want to be the member again. What this work
needs most of all is involved members. As missionaries we make very little
progress without the help of members! But let's be honest, I wasn't that
involved as a member-missionary. Maybe the real point of missionary service is
to train future member-missionaries.
Today we got
together as a zone and played futbol. Just so everyone knows, I am no good at
soccer, but here in Honduras I am slowly learning. Just like I have also
learned to make tortillas from scratch. My tortillas still look a little like
maps, but I can more or less do the thing where I slap the dough back and forth
between my hands until I have a tortilla instead of a ball of dough. Maybe I'll
attempt some tortillas or even some baleadas for you when I come home. But they
won't be the same because they use a type of cheese that I have never tasted
outside of Honduras and they also use mantequilla, which is a cream-like liquid
that might be unique to Central America. But I'll make my best imitation!
I hope you have
a great week. Enjoy the cool weather for me while I continue to sweat under the
sun.
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