Los Almendros is Beautiful to Elder Lund

¡Buenas!

Well, this past week I had changes. I knew I had a 75% chance of leaving, but as always, it was a little tough to leave the area, especially with a baptism this past Saturday that I missed and an upcoming family who will get married and baptized in March. It was tough saying goodbye, but I was able to despiderme de casi todos.

With that said, I love my new area and my new companion. I am in Los Almendros (Zona Choloma) with Elder Pivaral from Guatemala. Interestingly, Elder Pablo, my dad, served here about a year and a half ago. He baptized the members who we live with. Elder Pivaral and I already know each other well. We were in the same district in la zona El Carmen when he started his mission, we were in the same house for a change in Río Lindo, and now we are companions. He is a convert and has a strong testimony. Los Almendros is a lot poorer...it reminds me of the slums in Río de Janeiro because there are a lot of houses stacked up in the hills...but it is beautiful to me. It´s really really hot and it´s only getting hotter coming up on Semana Santa in Abril.

The first few weeks of the change before, they had baptized 6 people, but in the last 2 weeks, they said they had a hard time finding and teaching people. This first week, although a little short because of changes, we focused on finding and setting fechas and we were successful.

La estaca choloma (the choloma stake) has a plan for member missionary work. It starts with members writing down 20 names, choosing names based on prayer, PLANTING THE INITIAL SEEDS by doing one action each week such as sharing a book of mormon, watching a church movie, FHE, etc, all this while praying and fasting for their friend. When the initial seeds are planted, the full-time missionaries will come in, teach the doctrine, and baptize. Accelerating the work of salvation. We worked with families this past week as well. The ward is supportive (and there is a chapel!!!) with this initiative. They also recognized the need for a perpetual marriage fund so that the missionaries don´t have to worry about marrying people. They just focus on teaching, helping investigators repent, and then the members help with the marriage. As always, the investigators will have to do their part such as selling tamales or something like that.

As said before, we´ve been working hard and have had success. We found a family with 5 kids (two of them for baptism right now) and they miraculously came to church on Sunday. They told us they couldn´t, but around 9:45, they rang the gate and they had come in their motorcycle...SUPER MACIZO!!! The lesson in principios del evangelio was on eternal marriage and they enjoyed it. During the lesson after the high counselor gave his testimony of the blessings of eternal marriage, the husband touched the wife´s knee and looked at her with that "hey, do you want to marry me for eternity" look. They enjoyed it. They met the Bishop and high counselor and other members of the ward. They have two neighbor families who are members (a bit menos activo, but still members) who can help them a lot. La Familia Moncada Días - familia de oro. Still a lot of work to do, but we pleading with Heavenly Father to help us with this amazing family.

A lot of other amazing experiences. Things are going really well. 6 at church yesterday. Let´s keep it rolling.

As a companionship, we are really getting along.

Funny experience last night. First of all, dinner fell because it was far away and getting late so we went home and made baleadas. Our tortillas were a little ugly, so we decided to just eat tortillas, eggs, frijoles, and mantequilla (cream). It was a lot of fun. As we were about to go to bed, I noticed something inside the covers of my bed. I touched it and it felt like a squishy toy...I thought my comp was messing with me or I had a bag of bleach there but as I lifted up the covers, we discovered a garrobol (male iguana) was in my bed!!! (Sound familiar mom? jajajaja) After some time, I caught it (2 for 2) and we took pics, videos, etc. To make the story even better, this morning, we showed it to the hermana who lives with us (we live in a room seperated from the house...I guess you could say it´s a guest house...but much more chasta). As I was showing the hermana this morning, the garrobol shook a lot and the tail broke off...it hid under some tools as the dog started hunting it down. Long story short, we captured it again, taped the tail to the body again with duct tape, took pics, and then set it free near the river.

We didn´t have much to do for P-day, so we planned specifically for our batpisms this change (see Predicad Mi Evangelio 222) before going to Wendy´s for lunch. It was good to eat fast food again.

Well, I don´t have anything else. Pray for us so we can keep up the good work. #dedicated #loseyourself (in the work)

CHEQUE!!!

-Elder Lund

Los Almendros, Zona Choloma 2/16/14 - 2/23/15