Week #32 - Hot Days, Cold Showers (Cerro Verde)

Hola familia y amigos,

Espero que esta semana fuera mejor que la semana pasada!

Well, it is getting absolutely hot here! It feels hotter than Arizona, which I didn’t think could happen, but it is absolutely crazy! I’ve had a nice migraine this week from the lovely weather here! It’s just weird cause as soon as the sun goes down it starts to cool down a lot and the mornings can get kind of cold, so adjusting to this will take a while. All I know is that I don’t like sweating, haha!

Well this week we had 2 baptisms, for Cristian and Daniel, and I got to baptize Cristian. Satan was working hard this week to stop the baptisms, well at least for Daniel. His past is a bit sketchy, he doesn’t like talking about it and his parents say that where he lived before didn’t have a good influence on him, so some of those problems came up these past couple weeks with him, and we have been trying to help him and the dad to overcome it, because the dad has been taking it a bit hard too. So he got baptized and we just hope he can push forward. Cristian is super pilas! He has gotten more comfortable with us, but when we read the Book of Mormon with him and talked about the Priesthood he was more serious and showed respect. He seems like he will be great addition to the youth here.

We were planning on getting Victor and his girlfriend married this week with so he can get baptized, but they have to pay L 1000 to get married and they don’t really have the money. So we are gonna try to help them get it, get them married this week before conference, and maybe get Victor baptized during sessions. The problem is that he works and won’t know when he works until the day before and his boss isn’t very compassionate towards other religions. We are gonna keep passing with him, he seems receptive, the problem is that I'm not sure he has a testimony quite yet, but I know if he goes to conference he will get it.

I feel like conference is a perfect opportunity to help spread the gospel. It’s a way for people to see and hear from our leaders what we teach and what we aspire to do.  I hope that everyone can take a non-member friend to conference. Invite them to your house for a session, they will begin to see that we aren’t crazy and we don’t teach things contrary to the bible.

I hope everyone has a great week, and that everyone is preparing for Conference, I’m so excited for it!!! Keep pushing forward and trust in the Lord.

Elder Neher

(Notes from a follow up email where he answered a few questions)

I did finally get my new nametags either this week or last week, and Pres Veirs made a comment about Abuelo, I didn’t quite understand him, but now that you said this it makes sense haha! (He lost his pocket nametag a couple of months ago so we asked Abuelo if he could order new ones through his job at the Church offices. They told him that it could only be ordered by the mission, so Abuelo wrote Pres. Veirs an email about it. Pres.Veirs wrote an email back and had some nice things to say about Steven. At least now he won’t have to wear his nametag on his tie!!)

We had a zone conference, I don’t remember how long ago, everything has gone by so fast! President Veirs talked about the medical things that happened with the Atonement, what it takes to bleed from every pore, and what pain is experienced while on the cruz.  It was very interesting and I loved learning about it. It made me realize more how much Christ suffered for us.

My companion has been here since December, so we think he will leave this change, although I don’t think he wants to, but we´ll see what happens. I’ve been writing Chase every week for about a month, just sending him stuff about the culture and what not. I felt like I needed to send him some encouragement with the language and other things about Honduras.