A Mission Demands Your All!

Elder Lund visits The Mayan Copan Ruins on Preparation Day

Elder Lund and Elder P

¡Buenas!

Another great week in the mission field. Even though it was overall awesome, the mission can be really hard sometimes. It demands your all - physically, mentally, and spiritually. We had ZERO investigators come to church this week which means we had ZERO progressing investigators (technically). We usually pick up one of the investigators but long story short we didn´t. But, the mission is also very rewarding. When you plow through the tough times, success eventually comes. Later that day, we had one good lesson, we became more united because of it, and we went on to have a great rest of the day contacting and teaching. 

Yesterday was also the first fast in the mission field. It depends on the companionship, but we fasted lunch to lunch. We had planned on breaking our fast at the house by ourselves. La Familia M (recent converts), however, invited us to lunch after church. They had prepared for us chicken noodle soup, tortillas, and grape soda (3 Litros, of course). This wasn´t the typical Campbell´s chicken noodle soup. They had literally cooked 2 recently killed chickens with noodles, potatoes, carrots, onions, and other vegetables. When it was all finished cooking, the broth was pretty much pure grease. When they served us, they also didn´t serve us with a typical cereal-sized bowl. They served each of us with two huge bowls typically used for mixing brownies. The food in Honduras is typically very good, but when I first looked at this huge bowl of soup, I really didn´t want to eat it. At that moment, I remembered a story from my football coach. Before the King City game my senior year, he had told us a story about himself and his grandpa (his grandpa had been awarded the Medal of Honor in World War II). One day as a child, he had told his grandpa that he was hungry. As his grandpa would normally do, he made his grandson a plate of eggs. However, he also wanted to teach his grandson a lesson. He then poured a bunch vinegar all over the eggs, essentially ruining the food. My football coach wouldn´t eat and his grandpa told him "Boy, you ain´t hungry." As the principles of this story were coming back to memory, I recited in my head "Boy, you ain´t hungry." But the thing is, I was, and I decided nothing would or should stop me from satisfying this hunger. Not only was I physically hungry, but I was also "hungry" to be the best missionary I could be, and the best missionaries form positive relationships with everyone and definitely eat everything they are served at meals. I made the deciscion and ate the whole bowl, which included the heart (which actually was kind of good), and some other weird body parts (either the throat or intestinal parts). But I wasn´t quite done yet. They then offered me chicken feet which included the foot up to the knee. Let´s just say "the chicken did have large talons" (Thanks Napoleon). It was weird. You kind of just had to nibble off the skin as you would nibble at a used corn on the cob. I broke the skin and pulled apart some ligaments connecting the foot to the knee. I asked if you eat the ligaments too, and they said yes. It felt like I was swallowing a shoe lace. I used the help from my grape soda to get it down my throat. All in all, it felt good to finish what I was given. The best part, however, was the fact that they also had family (a couple who is about to get married) at the table and we shared a lesson with them. They really liked it and are going to be our new investigators. They seem very promising.

We went to the Ruinas de Copan as a zone today. My companion woke up at 3:30 AM and turned on the lights which woke me up too (Even though we didn´t leave the house until 5:30). We took a small bus to the various stops on the way to the ruins to pick up the rest of the missionaries in the zone. We got to the ruins at about 9:00 and had a great time. We also had a great lunch in town - Pollo con Tajadas. We got back to Santa Rosa close to 4:00...long P-Day out of the house. 

I don´t really have much else to say. Our investigators are progressing (besides attending church...we are working on figuring that one out). We are finding a lot of people who are prepared to receive the gospel. Things are tough sometimes, but overall the joy that comes from working hard and serving others outweighs those other times. I really liked the"You ain´t hungry" story this week. It helped me expand my comfort zone. It´s easy to work hard/do the right thing when everything is going well, but what are you going to do when times are tough or you don´t want to do the things that are necessary. Are we truly hungry for success? Whenever you have something that you don´t want to do (whether it´s because you´re too tired, you´re too sick, it´s too hot/cold, you´re having a tough day etc etc etc), just think to yourself "Boy, you ain´t hungry." Then, tell yourself you are truly hungry, stop complaining, and just do it. You´ll be grateful for all the I´m glad I did(s) in place of all the I should have done(s) in your life.

Cheque Leque...

-Elder Lund

Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras 2/25/14 - 3/3/14