24 February 2014

24  February 2014

Dear family!

Another week has flown by. I’m not quite sure how the weeks do it, but before you know it, every day is Sunday, waiting to see if the people we’ve taught decide to come to church.

Tuesday we contacted a family that had an electric keyboard sitting on their front porch. I played the keyboard for our song in the lesson (‘’I Know That My Redeemer Lives’’).  I think it was the first time I played the piano in a lesson as a missionary.

Wednesday we had a multi-zone conference and Elder Carlos H. Amado came to teach us. The conference was a spiritual feast. He taught us a lot of things about how to teach lessons where we teach by the Spirit and our investigators can feel the power of our message. I also came away from the conference with instructions that I need to keep doing my personal study in English. After three or four months in Honduras, I started doing my personal study almost entirely in Spanish, as a way to improve in the language more rapidly and familiarize myself with how to relate the scriptures in the language I use to teach. However, Elder Amado taught us that the Spirit will speak to us more rapidly in our native language. Thus, Thursday morning, I pulled out my English scriptures for the first time in months and Friday I pulled out my English Preach My Gospel.

Also, we picked up some copies of the Book of Mormon and pamphlets after the conference. Walking from the conference to the punto de colectivos, a lady stopped us and asked for a Book of Mormon. I’ll probably never know what happens to her, but I hope she reads the book and prays about it.

Thursday we retaught Rides about the Restoration. We also gave him his personal copy of the Book of Mormon. We’re still hoping for a miracle with him.

Miracle! The first round of paperwork that we need in Tegucigalpa finally came through. Now the papers are in Langue and hopefully in just a few days we will have the paperwork we need to have Ricardo’s marriage so that he can get baptized. I don’t know how much of the drama I’ve shared, but let's just say these papers have been in the works since the beginning of January or end of December.

We’re still teaching our neighbors and they are slowly progressing. Hopefully, they won’t wait many more weeks before they decide to visit the church!

The things that people can grow in their backyard here include, but are not limited to, oranges (dulce y agra), lemon (limón), papaya, avocado (aguacate), and guayaba (guava).  Also, you can buy oranges on the street for 2-3 lmps (10-15 cents). I think that limón here is more like lemon, but it doesn’t seem that both exist here. But we make up for it in the variety of bananas! There are more fruits than just banana (guineo) and plantain (platano). By the way, one of my favorite foods that I would never have considered making is fried platano. You cut it into thick strips and then fry it and eat it with beans and mantequilla (our closest equivalent might be sour cream, but not sour).  

In other news, we now have four sisters living in our house. Hna Trujillo and Hna Cuc switched houses.  Now I have an exciting opportunity. Hna Cuc is teaching me Kekchi, her native language. It’s kind of wild to read it because it uses mostly the same letters but with strings of consonants that seem to be lacking vowels. I’ll keep working on it!

Hermana Davis

17 February 2014

This week we officially decided that none of our investigators want to progress. If I am exaggerating, it's only a little. We went with Rides and his family, and Rides said he doesn't want a baptism date. He is still open to having us visit. But he will notify us if and when he wants to get baptized. It was really hard to hear his no. The hardest no's are when there are family members who desperately want their loved one to get baptized and later be sealed as an eternal family. I think that's why the no's from Rides and Silvia are so hard. It's not just the two of us who are invested in teaching; it's a whole family who is waiting and hoping. (Interesting language note: wait and hope are the same verb in Spanish and related nouns)

This week our divisions took us to Tela. It's a somewhat touristy area in Honduras, but obviously we didn't get near the beach. We were too busy teaching people. The morning we were leaving Tela, frente frio moved in. Mostly that just translates to a lot of water and a slight drop in temperatures. As a result we got to wade through flooded streets to get to the bus. At first I was trying to keep my skirt from hitting the water, but when the water hit my knees, I gave up. You only get to be a missionary once! (Note: I recognize that I will still be a member missionary when I get home. And someday I might serve again as a senior missionary. But it seems to be only the young, full-time missionaries who get the full experience of wading through all types of weather, every day of the year.) It made a good adventure.

We have now decided to revert to going street by street and contacting every single house. Our general plan is to chat a bit and sing a verse of ''I Know That My Redeemer Lives.'' If we have a chance to do a mini-lesson, we share DyC 76:22-24, the prophet's testimony of Christ and share our testimonies. We then leave a pamphlet and try to set a return appointment. Saturday we found one promising investigator contacting, and he even came to church Sunday. We also had an amusing conversation with a slightly eccentric elderly gentleman, who told us he couldn't afford to get angry at us because of his pacemaker. Hopefully this new tactic will help us find the people that the Lord is preparing in our area.

I love you all. Have a wonderful week and enjoy the snow and cold while it lasts.

Love,

Hermana Davis

10 February 2014

10 February 2014

Hola family!

This week the letter might be a little short. First the light went out. (That's what people say here instead of saying the power went out.) It came back fairly fast, but then the internet connection failed. We had to look for internet elsewhere, but now we are short on time. On Monday night we had a baptism for Josiri, a 17-year-old we have been teaching. I know that Monday night is highly unideal because of FHE, but we just invited the people in the ward who have become her family here. It was the only time that all the important people could be there to support Josiri. It's been a small miracle to see how God took her out of the really bad circumstances where she lived, helped her come to a new city, and then find work with members of the church who have adopted her as family. She has a new chance at a better life. And as of Sunday when she was confirmed she now has the gift of the Holy Ghost to help her make decisions in that new life. 

Saturday we set a new record--a Saturday with only three lessons. I really don't know where all the people went. 

Sunday Rides (Lesly's husband) came to church again. He has now been three times, thus qualifying him for baptism when he finally decides to accept the opportunity. We have a family home evening with him to see if he now has his answer. Here's hoping that this family home evening goes better than the one two weeks ago with Silvia. 

I hope you all enjoy the cold and have a great week. I love you all!

Hermana Davis

DyC 90:24

3 February 2014

Family!

When I first started here as a missionary, I never wanted to drop investigators. I held onto a desperate hope that they would all progress. (And I didn't like facing the challenge of finding new people who wanted to listen to us.)  But with time, I learned that sometimes you just need to move on, and I developed a sense of when it's time to leave investigators alone or just check in on them once a week. But in the last few weeks I have had a new experience. Instead of us dropping investigators, the investigators are dropping us! And I am not just talking about people who hide when we go to a follow up appointment after an initial lesson--that's normal. I am talking about progressing, promising investigators. A week ago Saturday, someone who had accepted the invitation to be baptized told us that she was going to go back to her old church (her pastor had come to talk to her). That was a little bit of a blow after she had related her feelings about the first time going to church with us--how she felt a strong sense of love from the moment she entered. But that is nothing compared to Silvia. Silvia is basically our Grandma. We were progressing steadily with her. She was reading and retaining the Book of Mormon. She was praying for the strength to proceed toward baptism. But Monday, she told us she didn't want to waste our time anymore. Someone had told her that she was just wasting our time because she never accepted the invitation to make covenants. So she decided to drop us. Later we found out that her frustrated granddaughter (member) had made a comment to that effect with the intention to push her Grandma to action. But the attempt backfired. I don't fault the granddaughter. She, perhaps more than anyone, wants her grandma to go to church. We gave Grandma Silvia some space for about a week and then went Saturday for a purely social call. It was evident that she had missed us. She started talking from the moment we entered the house. We are going to wait several more days, and then maybe--just maybe--we will be able to go a share a message.

Friday and Saturday the ward hosted an activity to raise money so that one of our investigators could get married. This Hermano has a lot a family who are already members. So Friday the family made 200 tamales. (I got to help make the maza, batter, sifting and mixing the ground corn.) I was also going to help wrap the tamales, but Hna Manuel is an expert and can judge just how much of each ingredient to add so that we could get the 200 tamales. So she wrapped all of them while the rest of us helped where we could with other side tasks. On an interesting note, Brother Galo told me that he knew Hna Manuel when he was in Progreso.

Sunday we had 214 people in Sacrament meeting. A new record. Obviously we don't have that many people every week. But I really like to see the Sundays where lots of people come. We've definitely seen this ward grow in the past 3 months. Some of it has been baptisms, but most of it has been reactivation. The mission is really focusing on bringing people back, and I love it. Our mission theme for 2014 is ''traerlos nuevamente a Cristo'' or ''bringing them again unto thee in Christ'' (Alma 31:34). It applies equally to everyone.

I hope you have a wonderful week. I love you all so very much!

Hermana Davis