Lots of Investigators

¡Buenas!

Well, Elder M had changes and I´m still here in Ocotillo. He got shipped up to ZL in Yojoa and I got shipped up to comp mayor. My new companion is Elder M. He is from El Salvador and has a little over 4 months in the mission. He´s cool and is really good at fútbol. "It´s my life" he told me today. He´s a good Elder with good teaching skills.

We had a pretty good work week. We sowed seeds and formed the foundation and hopefully we´ll be able to see the fruits by the end of this change or into the next change. I believe I´m only going to be here one more change (since I will be having 4 1/2 months in Ocotillo after this change) so we´re working hard to see some baptisms. 

We have 17 new investigators, 11 of them coming from 3 families. We also have 3 potential baptisms from part-member families and 3 others. The biggest problem is of course chocoleyde. None of the families are officially married. Plus, 2 of those potenitials from PF are living in chocoleyde at 14 and 15 years old. The girlfriend lives with the son and the member mom doesn´t seem to care. Both of them, however, were really interested in Baptism (they asked us first) and we challenged both of them and they accepted. But as I said, we still have a long way to go.

Funny moment. After teaching the restoration to one of those families, we showed them a picture of the prophet and quorum of the twelve. A friend of theirs had joined the lesson and she (also unmarried but with a family) said "I want to marry David (Bednar)...he´s handsome!" 

I hit the 7 month mark yesterday. The last 2 changes have been a lot of fun while working hard at the same time. Because of that, unfortunately it´s going by a lot faster as well. 17 months... work hard, play hard, and enjoy the journey.

I´ll send some more pics next week. In the meantime, good luck with everything and cheque!

-Elder Lund

Ocotillo, El Carmen, SPS 7/21/14 - 7/28/14

Denny's, Futbol, and Reaching out to the Youth in Honduras

Lunch at Denny's

District Lunch at Denny's

 

Burn Day Outside the Apartment

 Baptism Last Week

Saturday Night Futbol after English Class

Moto Taxi Driver

 ¡Buenas!

Pretty normal week working each day to find, teach, and baptize people here in Ocotillo. We had our ups and downs with some lessons going very very well while many return appointments (mostly after "Lecciones para Encontrar" AKA contacts) fall which can be frustrating but just the way things go.

Since our contacts haven´t been as effective, we thought of some other ways to find new investigators. We were talking with the Bishop´s son who is a return missionary. He said he would talk with the kids and gain their confidence then ask if they could go talk to their parents. He said he had a few baptisms out of that. We have been trying to do that more...gain the confidence of the kids and youth. One day, we played a soccer game that they call Chano. Two teams of two play at a time. One player shoots a free kick and the other team has to catch it in the goalie keeper´s box. If they just knock it away, the other player can shoot again or take it out and pass it to the other player to shoot. It is still in play until the team shooting scores or the defensive team grabs it in the goalie´s box. Each player has 3 shots. My companion and I won three games in a row with a bunch of kids and youth cheering us on. After playing for 20-30 minutes, we said goodbye, invited the kids to futbol at the church Tuesdays and Saturdays, and went to our next appointment. Even if we just gain their confidence, it will be worthwhile. Many of the kids are just totally ingrained to think Mormon missionaries are bad and they should avoid them (or just ask us "quieren café?")

We went to Denny´s today for lunch. I had the Bacon Avocado Cheeseburger. MMMMMM!!!!

Well, we have changes this upcoming week. Odds are, either I will leave Ocotillo or I will stay and just get a new companion. In the meantime, you will have to just wait for next week.

I´m sending another email with photos and the explanations.

Cheque

-Elder Lund

 

Ocotillo, El Carmen, SPS 7/14/14 - 7/21/14

Pretty Good Week

¡Buenas!

Pretty good week. G (I believe in previous weeks I may have spelled it Y) got baptized on Saturday! It was really great and all of her member sisters were able to make it as well. There are still a few others in the family who still need the gospel, but I´m sure it will come to pass sometime in the future.

Our other investigators E and D were not able to get married this week so they weren´t able to get baptized this week either. The biggest thing they lack now is time. Because of the marriage laws, they both have to go back to where they were born and take out records showing they are single. They can´t get others to do it for them and it must be where they were born because that is where their records stay. He will have to make close to an all-day trip because he´s from Santa Barbara and she is from a city closer to Teguc. Tough stuff, but we´ll see how it goes in the upcoming weeks.

We have another couple making progress too. The "wife" has been coming to church for a while and is ready to be baptized, but the "husband" is struggling. He made some major improvements though this week and came to church as a family yesterday too. I won´t say too much more at this time.

That´s all I have this week. Go get ´em out there!

-Elder Lund

 

Ocotillo, El Carmen, SPS 7/7/14 - 7/14/14

Watching an Investigator Set His Sights on the Things of Heaven--Happy July 4th!

4th of July--Pizza Hut

¡Buenas!

Pretty good week. We celebrated the 4th of July by going to Pizza Hut for lunch. Ya, 'Merica! The waitress messed up our order but whatever. When we visited members that day, I told them ¨Feliz día. Hoy celebramos el primer paso de la Restauracion.¨ They all thought it was kind of funny.

We´re in the process of dropping a lot of investigators right now. They aren´t progressing and they are just dragging us down with them. It´s really tough to do because we´ve had so many great lessons with them, but they just aren´t ready right now to keep commitments.

I remember hearing before the mission that it´s tough getting the door slammed in your face everyday. I think I would prefer that, because we have great contacts and a lot of return appointments. When we go the next day, however, they somehow aren´t there. It happens a lot with our ¨progressing¨ investigators too. I get my hopes up, but then my heart literally gets ripped out.

Thankfully, we have one investigator who is truly being converted. He and his wife are making preparations to be married and then baptized this upcoming week or the following week if the marriage doesn´t work out this week. The husband has been working like a burro lately to save up money for the marriage papers. The colony where he lives got their water taken away recently and he is the only one that has the proper tools to build water wells. (Tender mercy of the Lord) He rents the equipment and then charges to help build the well. His personal well for his wife was having problems, and he worked through the night to build another one for his family instead of sleeping after a long day working at the Don Julio Chile factory and building other wells. All in the meanwhile, he has a smile on his face because he can´t wait for his baptism. He has no excuses. As the parable goes, he is selling everything he has to buy the field with the hidden treasure. I hope we can find more people like him or at least help people get to that level of commitment.

Well, that´s all I have. Love you all.

-Elder Lund

 

Ocotillo, El Carmen, SPS 7/1/14 - 7/7/14

Six Months in the Mission Field

Elder Lund, R and Elder M

Well, I hit six months in the mission field this past Friday. It is crazy how fast it has gone by. Unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity to burn a tie. We got back a little late and we live in apartments. I hope to burn one at the year mark.

This week, Elder Ochoa from the 70 came to speak to all the missionaries in the Benque Stake Center. It was a great meeting and we learned a lot about faith in Jesus Christ, how we can develop it, and how we can help our investigators also develop faith unto repentance.

My companion has been sick the past two weeks. We were in the hospital four mornings this week for stool samples to see what's wrong. Not once has he truly complained about it. He always has a smile. I know for a fact I would be irritable and complain. I have learned a lot from him in this situation and I hope I can apply it.

We have 3 really pilas investigators with fechas not this saturday but the following saturday. 2 of them have to get married and they have 2 young kids. The third is also pilas. She would be this Saturday but a family member died so we´re rescheduling it for the following week. It´s been tough for other people to keep their commitments. I don´t get it sometimes. We teach great great lessons and get them to commit, but when Sunday rolls around they still don´t come to church. I really don´t want to drop them but we may need to drop a lot pretty soon.

Last night, we got locked out of our apartment. We left the keys inside when we went out to proselyte and when we got back at 9:30, we realized we were in trouble. We tried going to the dueñas house for the keys (right next door) but she was sleeping. We tried calling her. No luck. We had to sleep in the other Elder´s apartment. We had been doing some chapeando (machete) work in a field as service earlier and were all sweaty and itchy but couldn´t take a shower. We also didn´t have a bed, but we improvised and used some cardboard. When we got the keys in the morning, we returned to our apartment, but the electricty had gone out and their was no water to shower with. (hashtag) Cien por ciento catracho. (hashtag) foreign mission problems. I have photos of it but it´s on the other Elder´s camera. I will send it next week.

Well, that´s all I have. Talk to you next week.

-Elder Lund

 

Ocotillo, El Carmen, SPS 6/23/14 - 6/30/14

R's Baptism

We had a baptism this week! It was also my first baptism. Her name is R and she is the sister of V, the kid we baptized a couple weeks ago. The family was reactivated in the church and we had the opportunity to baptize the children who were not baptized or announced to the church when they were born. On Tuesday, another DL in the zone gave the interview and afterwards we asked her who she wanted to baptize her and she chose me. We had the baptism on Wednesday for her birthday. Pics hopefully will be attached. It had just rained and the pila water was kind of dirty, but it was a good baptismal service.

E and his family came to church for the second time in a row. He has a fecha for the 12 of Julio. The biggest challenge he has is to get married, but we and the ward are going to help him out every step of the way. He is good friends already with the bishop and his family and they will be a super pilas family when they get baptized. I hope we can continue to help them progress. He knows everything is true and has desires to be baptized. He is still a little skeptical with the 12th just because he knows he has to get married, but like I said, we are going to be there every step of the way.

We also have an Hermana named Y. All of her older sisters were baptized a year or two ago, but she wasn´t. We´re teaching her and she has a fecha for the 5th of Julio. She is pilas too. She is 18-20 years old and we always teach her with her super talkative sister. The sister also knows some English too. Y knows pretty much everything. She was a little unsure with President Monson, but we shared a mp3 talk with her and she felt good about it. She will be a strong member.

We are working with a lot of other people too, but it would take to long to write about everything.

Honduras lost to Ecuador on Friday. We were stuck in the apartments but everyone was watching it so we heard the game play by play. Elder G is super happy that they won. For P-Day today, we were given permission by President to watch one world cup game as a zone. We went to a residential area where a bunch of rich members live. It was fun. We watched Holanda beat Chile 2-0. There was another baptism on Friday night and the power went out with a huge rain and thunderstorm. It was cool. It was just bright enough to see the baptism with some emergency lights on. I caught an iguana with my bare hands yesterday. We also saw a pig about to go to the slaughter. It was squealing like crazy. It was both funny and sad at the same time.

I´m going to be sending some emails with videos, photos, and their explanations.

Well, that´s all I have. Talk to you next week.

-Elder Lund

Ocotillo, El Carmen, SPS 6/16/14 - 6/23/14

World Cup Week

This week had a lot of ups and a few downs, but overall it was a good week. The lights went out last Monday. This has been the first time since I left Copán where they would go out all the time. We planned on having a lesson with our investigator L, but unfortunately we couldn´t leave the house. L is 19 and has a lot of interest in the church. We had some super maciza lessons with a member family (Hermano Santos shout out) for the past two Mondays, but we are limited to teaching him because he works at his family´s pulperia - . He is reading in the Book of Mormon and waiting to receive an answer of it´s truthfulness. It may be slow, but he will come around and experience the joys of the gospel.

We began teaching some former investigators this week. F (mom), L (daughter), and the grandma. The grandma is super católica and will not accept anything we say. She asked us if we believed in Mary, which we do of course, but she made the claim we didn´t because she was supposedly a virgin all her life and Jesus didn´t have any brothers or sisters. I kind of wanted to machete her referencing to the last verse in Mateo 1 and Mateo 13:55 or something like that, but I just said ¨I´m pretty sure it references to Jesus´s siblings in the Bible, but I guess I have to study more.¨ We taught a pretty good Restoration overview lesson with them. We asked if they believed the things we taught were true. They said they did, but they are waiting for that confirmation from the Holy Ghost. We could´ve challenged them to baptism, but we didn´t. The grandma kept getting in the way during the lesson so we´ll challenge them at a further date.

I´ll be honest. I don´t like contacting. References are so much easier and they tend to be better anyways. But, we had some fun times contacting this week. We contacted one house where two ladies were gutting chickens for soup. Pretty cool, but they were busy so we´ll contact again in the future. Near that house, we contacted again and they were busy so we came back the next day. The dad was lying on the couch watching TV and we asked what day we could come back. He replied ¨ninguno¨ ... ouch. We did have some success with a pink house on that same street. They are a family of 5. The father (I believe step father) is indio and the mother and the two teenage kids are garífuna. The father´s sister also lives with them. The indio father seemed really into the church. We were supposed to teach them yesterday, but we couldn´t. When Honduras plays in the world cup, we can´t be out and we have to be in early. On Sunday, we could only work from 4-7 and we had some more important citas in el porvenir since we have baptismal dates coming up for some of them.

Speaking of the world cup, it´s pretty crazy. Actually, it´s been relatively calm. People are glued to their TVs, but nothing crazy has happened. People light off fireworks (which are more like mini explosives here in Honduras) and drink a lot, but nothing out of the usual. Honduras lost and everyone was all sad.

Before the mission I never watched champions league and I never watched the World Cup, but now that I can´t (well, supposedly we can occasionally, just not all day but we´re still not going to) watch, I really want to. I can´t wait to get back and start to follow fútbol more in depth.

Anyways, that´s most of my week. Left out a lot but got most of the good stuff in. Talk to you next week.

-Elder Lund

Ocotillo, El Carmen, SPS 6/9/14 - 6/16/14