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