Progress

¡Buenas!

Well, another week in the mission field.

I´ll start with the best news. We had a really really good Sunday. 9 investigators at church. With Yojoa and Río Lindo 2, we had 18 investigators in our branch yesterday. We also had a menos activo Melch. Priesthood holder come and other menos activo. Last week, as I had said, a new branch president was called and things are really starting to improve. I don´t believe I will see construction of the capilla built while I´m here, but if things keep improving, hopefully they will start construction by the end of my mission.

We had interviews with President Dester on Thursday in Potrerillos. I am always more encouraged after interviews or when he speaks at Zone Conferences. Thankfully we will have some Zone Conferences coming up in February which I am looking forward to.

As with investigators, nothing really that stands out. Many are progressing, many are still having challenges, but overall pretty good. We contact an antigua investigadora and she is pretty pilas. We usually have to teach her outside the house because no one is present so we can go in, but we´ve also had lessons with her mom, sister, and cousins. She has a baptismal date for the 21st of February, but still lacks church attendance. We haven´t taught Día de Reposo yet, but hopefully she can understand its importance and go to church these next three weeks.

Lately, well, throughout my entire mission, people have had problems with the way that they pray. Investigators, and even members, pray the way they hear their pastors pray and follow the pattern. They start by addressing Jesus Christ, instead of our Heavenly Father, say their own personal prayers while someone else is praying (whispering or out loud). Even when I feel like we teach the manner of prayer clearly, they still seem to always do the same things. I talked with my companion about it and we came to two conclusions - we aren´t teaching with the spirit or they just feel more comfortable in their habits. I think I got the answer this week. We finished the Restoration with an investigator and taught her how to pray correctly. She had difficulties, but finally started by addresing Heavenly Father, gave thanks, asked for blessings, and then during a long pause, I reminded her to ask if these things are true. After another long pause, she said rapidly "Señor Jesus, ayúdame a saber si José Smith fue un profeta" and asked for other things always addressing Señor Jesus... people feel more comfotable praying the way they´ve heard it their entire lives. 

Our golden investigators from San Francsico - A and R - are doing well. R doesn´t know how to read and started learning a few weeks before we contacted them. We promised her that reading the Book of Mormon, the Bible, and other church material will help her. She was asked to read in Principios del Evangelio yesterday and she did very well. Still a little slow, but she has improved a lot and she recognizes that what she is doing is helping. She tells us she reads a lot from the Ezra Taft Benson manual. We are planning on having a baptism on the 14th of February.

Well, tonight we are going to have a fast with our investigator N. Her mom still won´t give permission to get baptized. She is super pilas and is ready to get baptized, but without her permission she will just have to wait.

Well, that´s all I have this week. Take care!

--Elder Lund

Río Lindo, Zona Yojoa 1/19/14 - 1/26/15

Wonderful Baptism





 Fun P-Day









¡Buenas!

Well, another good week in the mission field. To get to the best news first, we had a baptism this Saturday!!! It almost wasn´t going to happen because he was working a lot, his phone seemed to always be turned off when we needed to contact him, and he had job interviews - that have gone well - in Villanueva. Despite all this, he was able to pass the interview the night before and be baptized the next day.

We were planning on starting the baptism around 4:30 but he didn´t get back from work until 5:20 or so. It was a good baptismal service and a lot of people showed up. We performed the ordinance in a nearby river at dusk. He was super nervous, but a member friend was able to help him out. We closed the meeting at the church by singing "Conmigo quédate, Señor"...classic. The next day, we had to call him to wake him up for the confirmation, but he still arrived on time. He is really smart, great (changed) guy, and has a lot of potential, but I still worry for him a little bit. We are going to do everything we can to help him continue on the covenant path and stay active.

I did divisions with Elder C from Dallas, Texas this Thursday. We had a really good day with some good lessons. During one of the lessons with member, I had challenged S at the end to baptism and she accepted. Today, however, we found out she will be working for our investigator L with fecha bautismal for the 14th of Febuary. For L to get baptized, she needs to go to church, and for that to happen, she wants someone (o sea, S) to be in her restaurant on Sundays. Awkward dilemma. Either S will get baptized or L unless something else happens.

We had a really good Sunday. The branch president got released and will be on the High Council. Our new branch president is super pilas and I know we will have a lot of success this year. The stake president and his counselor came and had a 2 hour combined sunday school to present parts of the 2015 Plan de Area for Central America. Each member will be getting a cardstock sheet that has a calendar for 2015 with boxes for FHE, prayer, scripture study, and a check mark for tithing, fast offerings, and temple names. Super cool and hopefully will help members do the little things so that a capilla can be built this year and that plans can be made for a temple here in SPS soon.

Well, my companion and I had some more setbacks this week and we didn´t start progressing until we hit "rock-bottom" but I´m doing the best I can. He literally is showing the exact same signs of what I had and did with my trainers Elder P and Elder S. I´m trying to be patient and humble enough to improve personally.

I´ll now talk about the p-day last week and today's p-day. Last week, we hiked a hill near Río Lindo. Cool pics. Today as a zone, we went to Pulhapanzak again. It was raining, but it was fun. I´ll send some pics.

Well, nothing else really. Right now we are preparing for some baptisms for the 7th and the 14th of febrero. I hope you guys have a great week!

--Elder Lund

Río Lindo, Zona Yojoa 1/12/14 - 1/19/15

Get to Work

¡Buenas!

Another pretty good week in the mission field.

However, it started out with a bit of a "hic-up" between my companion Elder G and me. We have an investigator who has had some problems and we were talking about it during our evening planning session Tuesday night. I didn´t think it was getting out of control, but he got up all of the sudden and left to his room. I kind of laughed thinking, what went wrong? I felt like the conversation was not too confrontational. Anyways, he didn´t talk to me the entire morning. De hecho, he had done the exact same thing that I had done to my trainer Elder P...I shunned him and studied on my bed. We talked it though eventually, I shared my experiences in the past, and went out to work. I knew he was upset, and I knew he had to learn to work despite these feelings. I had learned that in Ocotillo. When you don´t feel like working or you are mad or you feel inadequate, you have to work. Talk with the people, make some contacts, etc. When this happens, all the negative emotions and feelings that Satan throws at us disapate. I wanted him to learn that for himself so I gave him 3 folletos and told him to contact people and I would follow his lead. He was still upset, and said "no, you're the trainer, you're the DL, etc, I´m going to follow you." We ended up sitting for an hour on a street corner. Moto taxis drove by asking us for a ride, but we ended up staying there until lunch. Our first appointment was at 3 in San Francisco, so we were going to contact until that time. Again, from 2 until 3, we sat there waiting. We were able to contact some people who approached us and asked questions, but my companion was still pretty quiet. By the end of the day after a good day's work and investigators progressing, he came through and we are back on good terms.

We went on to have a really good week. We had an excellent lesson with I. We invited him to a members house and they did a great job. B and his wife F helped him out a lot with the problems he is facing and he will be baptized this upcoming Saturday on the 17th. 

We had a really good lesson with E and O. We taught the plan of salvation and talked about temple work and eternal marriage. O is kind of "duro de corazón" but was intrigued by the message we shared. We asked him if he would like to be with E forever and he responded "SÍ HOMBRE!!!" There is still a lot of work to do, they have to get married legally first, then go to church (well, him at least. She´s already been 3 times) but with the help of the Lord, we will hopefully see some fruits soon.

We went to San Antonio this past Friday. It is part of our area but super far away. We were there pretty much the whole day. It is its own municipio but there aren´t many members there. There are just 2 active families and a handful of less-activese but that´s it. We had a good day and 3 people from the area went to church this sunday. We will probably work there every week and a half or so. It will be interesting to see that area in 5 years because there will probably be 2 sets of missionaries and a branch if the work can progress. All in the Lord´s timing and His will.

We had an awesome Sunday. 125 or so came to church and were kind of squished in the small house, but it was great. 7 investigators came to church including 3 from San Antonio, and 2 from San Francisco. A lot of Sacerdocio also were there. The meetings had its problems. Hermano A started talking about dancing and parties that the LDS youth go to during his lesson on agency. All the missionaries started looking at eachother because a lot of people believe dancing "bailando", even appropriately, is sin. (even though they also do dancing "danzando" supposedly there is a difference, during there church meetings). Anyways, it ended fine and they enjoyed the third hour much more.

A lot of work to do, a lot of tender blessings, and still a lot of problems, but that´s the way it goes. Cheque leque!

--Elder Lund

Río Lindo, Zona Yojoa 12/29/14 - 1/5/15

PS - Who won the 2008 Orange Bowl? I saw a shirt that said "Kansas Jayhawks Orange Bowl Champions 2008" but I don´t remember them winning any bowls recently. I may have finally found that shirt haha.

New Years

¡Buenas!

Well, another week in the mission field. We started out the week with a pretty good P-day getting some work in during the morning. We gave service (moved a whole bunch of dirt for a mini construction project on the house) for hermana E and her family and directly after started a fast with la Familia G. They are menos activos but their 10 year old daughter P hasn´t been baptized yet. We fasted so the father can quit smoking. We fasted from breakfast until dinner, but when we arrived they had already broken there fast around 4:00 in the afternoon. Not much, but it´s a little something to express their faith.

We did pretty much nothing for New Years. We were in the house early and were going to break the piñata but forgot. (We ended up breaking it last night and got a bunch of candy woohoo). I was super tired so I went to sleep around 8:45-9:00ish. My companion and the other two missionaries were woken up by the fireworks (more like bombs) at midnight because it was supposedly super loud and they couldn´t go back to sleep until around 1:00 because of the noise. On the other hand, I slept through the entire night. It reminds me of the time when I fell asleep to ESPN in Hawaii while Victoria and Dad were locked outside (because for some reason I bolted the door) and couldn´t wake me up. Haha...good times.

Anyways, we had a lot of good lessons this week. We found some potential families and our investigators are progressing. There still seems to always be problems that come up. N left for Villanueva for the month, but hopefully she can still go to church and read in El Libro de Mormon in order to stay animated. Our investigator with fecha for the 17th texted us this morning basically saying the trials and difficulties that we said would come started coming last night and this morning, whatever that means. Other probelms, but hopefully the Lord can help them out and they can stay strong.

My companion and I prepared a lesson for New Years that we shared with a lot of people. We used President Uchtdorf´s First Presidency Message from January 2014 about the best moment to plant a tree. We also took the principle from a Mormon Message "Flecks of Gold" and taught it with an example I had prepared. During a span of 3 months from Copán to Ocotillo, I gathered coins from the dusty streets and collected them in a small peanut butter jar. Although it doesn´t value a lot, (10-15 Lempiras) it weighs a lot. With these two resources, we taught the people the importance of "starting" to change and the importance of "doing the little things daily" so that they can have success with their goals. We shared this lesson with investigators, members, and menos activos in order to animate them to set goals and keep commitments this upcoming year.

We had a really good Sunday yesterday. We had 4 investigators at church. R, the 5 year old son of E, came to church in a white shirt and jeans. He said all he lacks to be a Mormon is a tie haha. He doesn´t know how to read but he likes walking around with my himnario and a Libro de Mormon. He´s more pilas than his parents and sister haha. After church, we had Consejo de Rama and set goals for the upcoming year. As part of the consejo, we held a capacitation for the leaders of our vision for missionary work the upcoming year. We showed the members the Work of Salvation Mormon Message "I´ll go where you want me to go", explained our vision of how the members and missionaries should work together, and did some practices. It went really well and hopefully this can improve the missionary effort in the branch so that we can build the capilla and become a ward.

I took out money and bought some clothes. Tan shorts...$3 (with an original tag that says $20)...Brown Shorts...$3 (again, originally $20 with original tags)...Lacoste Polo Shirt...$7.50...Grey Van Huessen Collard Shirt...$17.50...cheap hand-me-downs from up north...Priceless. Well, 620 lempiras for some new p-day clothing isn´t too bad. Thank you!

Well, that´s all I have this week! Cheque!

--Elder Lund

Río Lindo, Zona Yojoa 12/29/14 - 1/5/15