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

Active in Living the Gospel

Well, another week living the missionary life which mostly included: fallen citas, people pretending they weren´t home, investigators who don´t keep commitments, just one investigator at church, and 2 days in San Pedro for doctor and dentist appointments. Woohoo! But it´s all good.

We´re almost done digging the hole for Hermana A for her latrine. It is now about a foot or so above my head. We still lack another meter or so. Hopefully we can finish it this upcoming Saturday. She will be excited for that.

We had a noche de hermanamiento this past Thursday where we watched the church video on John Tanner and his living of the law of consecration. It´s amazing to see his example in living this higher law. As members of the church, we may not have to sell everything we have, pack up, and leave our homes to go establish Zion, but the Lord does expect us to abandon our natural man tendencies and live righteously. 

We were talking with a stake high counselor at lunch on Sunday after church and he said there are two types of ¨active¨ members: those who are active in the church, and those who are active in living the gospel. First off, there are many many inactive members here in Honduras. I don´t know how it happens, but when we talk to them it´s as if they had not learned anything in the first place from the Word of Wisdom to principles of the Restoration and what it entails. These people still ¨go to church¨ but just different congregations believing it is the same since they are still worshipping God. Then, there are active members in the church. These members come to church nearly every Sunday, but they still don´t pay their tithing, they dress immodestly, etc. They aren´t truly converted. Then, there are those who are active in living the Gospel. They read the scriptures, pray daily, have noche de hogars, live the commandments because they want to, and attend both church and the temple regularly. The high counselor said that the stake is filled with active members, but there are usually only 2 or 3 families per ward who are truly active in living the gospel. As missionaries at church, we can see clearly who is doing this and who is not. The Lord needs more members who are active in living the gospel.

Well, that´s all I have this week. Hopefully more spiritually uplifting stories this next week.

-Elder Lund

Ocotillo, El Carmen, SPS 6/2/14 - 6/9/14

Productive Week

Pretty decent week here in Ocotillo. We taught some really good lessons and have about 10 planned baptisms for June (I believe 8 with fecha and 2 others that we still need to set a exact fecha with). The unfortunate thing is we only had 2 investigators at church yesterday. We are having some problems with our investigators keeping their compromisos. I don´t completely understand - we have awesome lessons, the spirit is present, and they accept the compromiso, but they just never seem to fulfill it. It´s a little frustrating sometimes especially since we are pressured to have a ¨mega bautismo¨ at the end of June.

I´ve started to stop reading things in English. I had a goal of reading the Standard Works in English, but it will probably be better to just study the scriptures in Spanish. I have the rest of my life to read in English. I have begun packing up my English Scriptures, the English Missionary Library, etc. I have started doing this because I feel like my Spanish has been so-so the past 6 weeks or so. It might just be that I realize all the mistakes I make that I hadn´t before, but either way this will help.

We´ve made friends with (potentially) a mara salvatrucha. He drives a moto taxi here in Ocotillo. When we walk by the moto taxi area he is always asking us where we need to go or what things we need. He was given us his number and we call him when we need rides. Yesterday, there was a huge thunderstorm that came all of the sudden. We were a good 15 minute walk from home so we called the guy and he picked us up.

Being in San Pedro (well, just outside but still pretty much SPS) is awesome. We´ve had McDonalds, Wendy´s, Little Caesar´s, and we can find pretty much anything in the stores that would be in the states. Today we played Basketball in the Stake Center (Benque). It was a lot of fun to finally play basketball indoors again.

Well, that´s all I have. Cheque.

-Elder Lund

Ocotillo, El Carmen, SPS 5/26/14 - 6/2/14

Many Teaching Opportunities

Another week in the mission field, and another week filled with experiences. We had a baptism for an 11 year old this week. His name is V (I´m not sure of his other two names that he has) but it was really cool. His sister is getting baptized in June when she turns 8...it still counts as "our" baptism since they are reactivated and she wasn't presented to the church. We also had an invesetigator and her two kids come because she is best friends with V´s mom. We knew from that time that she was ready for baptism. Her son kept saying that he wanted to get baptized. The funniest part was when we were taking pictures in the baptismal clothing, this investigator wanted to get a picture with me and my companion too. More about her later.

We are continuing to find menos activas families and trying to reactivate them and baptize the kids who weren't baptized. We had two great citas with Familia A this week. She - C - was baptized around 9 years ago with her mom in SPS but for some reason she went inactive. The family now includes her grandma (Católica) her mom (member) and her two kids ages 9 and 6 (both not members). It's kind of sad because she literally doesn't remember anything. Prophets, word of wisdom ("wait, you guys don't drink tea?") and a lot more. We learned this on Wednesday and re-taught leccion 1 yesterday. It went really well. Even though they don't remember it, they really understood it...we believe it's still in their memory and the spirit is helping them "remember" what they don't know is there. We set a fecha bautismal for the Grandma (82 years old) and she said in the future after she investigates more. C responded "you don't have much time left...you should do it quick" and we all started laughing. We found another menos activa family yesterday with 6 kids...she is bien evangelica and we're not sure how it's going to turn out. We'll try to visit them and reactivate them. There are a lot of others that fit this category as well.

Ok, back to that investigator I was talking about. Her name is A and she has two kids ages 11 and 8. Honestly, I don't remember exactly how we contacted her, but she came to an activity last Sunday night and her best friend's son's baptism. She is probably a good 300 pounds. Talking to her more, it sounds like it came from stress and problems with drinking and smoking. We are helping her out right now because she doesn't have the money to dig a latrine hole for her. We are about a meter and a half down and we still lack another 2 or so. We taught her leccion 1 on Friday and it went really well. We were going to bring a youth in the ward who is going to serve his mission in June but it fell through. We felt we should bring someone so we brought the bishop's son, Josue. We had a good lesson. When we asked her to pray to know if it was true, she said she already knows its true. She told us of two dreams she had had. One was about 6 months ago about people who got killed. She had the same dream 3 nights in a row and a couple days after some neighbors got shot in SPS. She told us another dream she had recently where two men dressed in white (she considered them angels) came to her house with another person who accompanied them. They started teaching her the gospel in the dream. She said that my companion and I in our white shirts and the Bishop's son remined her of that recent dream and knew it meant something. I had the opportunity to invite her to be baptized directly after that. The spirit filled the room, she started crying, and she accepted. Her son also accepted. No surprise there, he kept saying he wanted to get baptized since V's baptism. The daughter, however, flat out said no. We're not sure why, but we'll work with her. People are truly prepared.

We had another finding experience on Saturday/Sunday. We went to N's house to teach. He is less active and we found out he has severe drinking problems, but more about that later. Anyways, he wasn't there, but the mom or aunt who isn't a member was there. She said she had severe pain beneath her breast and she couldn't breath very well. The two other ladies who were there told us to give a blessing with oil (we didn't know them or if they were less active members or not) so we went inside and gave her a blessing. My comp annointed and I sealed the anointing. During the two prayers, the other ladies kept saying stuff like "Mmmm, Amen" and "Mmmm, sí gloria a Dios" and other stuff. After the prayer the woman - Felipa - kept saying things like "I'm ready, Lord...I give my life and will to you...my life is in your hands...my life is yours...etc etc etc" It was kind of funny and I looked at my comp smiling because we didn't feel like anything major was wrong with her. A nurse came who lives up the hill. She took her blood pressure and said everything was fine. Felipa said she had pain under breast and the nurse just responded saying she had pain in her back and in her legs but she keeps working. Felipa then said she had a tingling sensation in her mouth and the nurse, being completely sarcastic for some reason, said she needs to go to the hospital immediately. She then smiled, said everything should be fine, told her to drink a smoothie with mango and some other fruit and rest. Long story short, we contacted the nurse the next day. She said she is evangelica and wasn't really interested with us even though we hadn't brought up anything church related. We talked chit chat for a little bit longer and found out that most of her family are members in La Ceiba. We also found out that she and my comp may be related from some family in El Salvador. After talking about this and family history work that the church does, she told us she will "study the bible" a bit more and talk with us. Cool.

Funny story with N. We went to his house Sunday afternoon. We were chit-chatting while he was sitting on the floor and we just knew he wasn't ready for a lesson. We asked him if he could leave with a prayer. He stood up and then fell on his knees, raised his arms, and said a really strange prayer. Strange, but sincere. We're going to try to help him get back to church and talk with the bishop. His "compañera" isn't a member and she started tearing up when she started seeing how bad of a shape N was in. We're hoping to help N and teach the girlfriend.

Oh, I also had to talk in church and give the sunday school lesson today without preparing. Life of a missionary.

We ate at McDonalds today. I bought a John Deere camo hat and a Polo hat today in Centro. Good P-day.

Well, that's all I have. I love you guys and I'll talk to you next week. Cheque...

-Elder Lund

Ocotillo, El Carmen, SPS 5/19/14 - 5/26/14

Hola Ocotillo--Elder Lund's New Area in El Carmen

EMERGENCY CHANGES!!!

Well, I got changed to a new area. We got a phone call around 6:30 Monday night from the APs saying that I had an emergency change as well as another Elder in the house. I had to pack my bags and be at the mission office by 8:00 AM the next morning. Well, see you later Cofradía...I´m sure I will return to the zone before I´m through with the mission. (Pic is of the Cofradía house that morning)

I learned Tuesday morning that my new companion is Elder M. He is from Arlington, Texas and has around 11 months in the mission. His family is from El Salvador but he was born and raised in the states. He grew up knowning Spanish and English. His son who he was training went home. He had a hernia in his esophagus and is going back to recover. He will go home and then get recalled to a stateside mission.

Elder M opened the area and has only been here 2 weeks. He and his comp didn´t get the chance to work much (for obvious reasons) as they were in the mission office, hospital, and at the AP´s house for a majority of the time. So basically, we are both working together in a new area for both of us. We have a few investigators from the old area before they split it but we spent most of this week establishing a good foundation of investigators and menos activo to work off of. We are sowing a lot this change in hope for a big harvest of baptisms during the next change.

Oh, and my new area is Ocotillo. It is in El Carmen just outside of San Pedro Sula. Google it, it is pretty close to SPS. It´s a little bit hotter and a little bit more dangerous. The proselyting area we are in isn´t as dangerous as the others in Ocotillo, but we still have to be careful. We see the gang members driving around on their motorcycles at night patroling. They ride with 2 guys to a bike - one to drive and one to shoot. It´s actually completely illegal in Honduras because of this reason but they don´t care. We had dinner in a "hot zone" one night. It was pretty dark and a little sketch but nothing went down. Don´t worry mom...I have been told it´s not as bad as other areas like Chamelecon or Satélite. You can stay updated on the SPS news if you want.

Back to missionary work...a lot of potential baptisms we have are coming from less active members with children who weren´t presented to the church so they are technically under the mission´s stewardship if you want to call it that. We already have one of these getting baptized this upcoming week. I guess you could say this is the "low bearing fruit" or "high cotton" for us missionaries because it is simple. Reactivate the family, baptize the children.

We also contacted a lot this week and had some good success. We found a family of (potentially) 88. We gave service to the Grandma and brought back stove wood to her house. We asked about her family and she told us she had 13 kids (hopefully with spouses) and 60 grandchildren (with more on the way). They all live spread out in Ocotillo and about 10 of her grandchildren were running around the house at the time with the Grandpa and a few of the children. We talked about eternal families and left a L2 folleto and will stop by sometime this week. We also found a lot of other families but this one stood out.

We went to Wendy´s for P-day today. It was good to have American food again, but it still wasn`t quite the same quality but oh well. I am finally in a ward. It is nice, but the asistencia is a little low. Their building is very new and really nice inside and out.

Anyways, that´s it. ) love you all.

Elder Lund

Ocotillo, El Carmen, SPS 5/13/14 - 5/19/14