One Empty Chair

The Zone with President Dester--Missing Sister Dester as she had to be with some sick Elders at the hospital.

¡Buenas!

Another quick week here in the mission field. We did divisions with Paraíso 2 on Tuesday and in Santa Barbara on Friday. I was with Elder Vasquez (from Ecuador)on Tuesday and we had a great work day. Although several citas fell, we were able to find teaching opportunities.

In Santa Barbara, I was with Elder Tomas (Guatemala) and Elder Navarro (Panama) who both actually arrived at the same time with me to the mission field. We taught some good lessons. The best lesson was with la familia A. Look up the daughter M and I´m sure you´ll find out pretty fast who the family is. Ya...the family of Miss Honduras. There were a lot of pictures framed and I saw the big trophy. We taught all the living members of the family...Teresa the mom and Cory the oldest daughter and her two boys. The mom, the current relief society president of the branch, was baptized 3 years ago and the two sisters who were killed got baptized (not sure exactly when) before the tragedy. Cory still has had doubts about José Smith. The dad died 3 years ago before knowing the church and Teresa plans to be sealed to all of them in the near future. We taught the Restoration and had a great, peaceful, spiritual lesson. Teresa came to tears near the beginning after the hymn and prayer. They have been through a lot, but the gospel has blessed her a lot.

We found a quality family this week - Familia Z. There are 5 kids from 8-18 years old, the single mother, and a friend René who is frequently there (he´s 50 something and is actually the brother of a member family in the ward). We visited them Sunday night with the ward mission leader and they have desires to know more and get baptized. The biggest problem is that the oldest daughter works at Popeyes in San Pedro on Sundays and A, the mom also works Sundays right now because her boss recently had an operation. But, the work will go forward.

We saw good progress with E (the 80 year old). He was struggling with keeping his thoughts clean at his corn grinder in front of his house (he sees women pass all day long in front of his house and women visit him to get their corn grinded to make tortillas...he described their immodest dress. To help out, we gave him another folleto of Plan of Salvation and put the painting of Christ in Getsemaní up. We told him whenever a women walks by or into his molino and he starts to lust, all he has to do is look at the foto of Christ. We followed up on Saturday to see how it was going and he loved it. He was very happy with the progress and talked about the principles from Mosíah3:19 (his favorite scripture from the Book of Mormon). Unfortunately, he did not come to church the next day because family came to visit. That happens a lot here...family comes in to visit and they skip church (investigators, menos activos, and even members).

We had a good turnout at church with 7, but we still have a lot to go to see baptisms. Anyways, I think that´s all for this week. Have a nice week!

-Elder Lund

Cofradía 1, Zona Cofradía 8/24/15 - 8/31/15