Week #80 - Wedding Worries (Puerto Cortes)

Hola familia y amigos!

Well to start things off, some news, I broke my glasses. For some reason they were on the floor and I stepped on them. I managed to fix them a bit, but the right frame is held on to by tape, haha! 

Well this week was pretty fun, although I feel like it continues to be the same with what was happening before with my comp, and at this point I don’t really know what to do, but we will keep working. We have found a few new people this week, but yesterday the bishop left with my comp to find some old investigators and inactive members, which helped a lot. 

Well a month or two ago we contacted the principal of one of the schools here and she said we could do a demonstration at her school about the church, so we taught lesson one, and my comp was super nervous, he got red every time it was his turn to talk (there were probably at least 60 youth). Well we showed the importance of prophets by trying to do a follow the leader with their eyes closed, and then I chose one to have his eyes opened to follow me. We also taught about the apostasy  by having 4 girls hold some glass and when we got rid of them it fell and broke into a ton of pieces. Of course once we got to Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon there were questions, but we shared testimony and were able to give away all the books we had, which were about 15. It was a really cool experience, but apart from that it was a pretty slow week. We did find some new people and one of them seems really excited. Her name is Gloria and we saw her last week, and left her a BoM to read. When we came back she hadn’t read it, so we read it with her and she really liked it. She said she would be able to go to church and she went yesterday! She said it was better than what she expected and that she learned a lot and said that next week she is going to bring her family with her! That was super exciting! 

All right about the title, all week we have been worried about getting our wedding ready for Lillian and Darlyn, because she had to know so she could make reservations and send out invites. So Tuesday the papers were supposed to come in, but they didn’t. We wanted to put them in the soonest we could so that we could get it all taken care of (you are supposed to put them in 15 days prior to the date wanted) but that night we found out that they were here and that we were going to have divisions with the AP’s, so they would bring it then. The AP’s didn’t come on Thursday like planned but they came Friday morning to give it to us, only to find out when we get to the city hall that they had to pay some other fines, and they were closed this weekend.  So today we got up early to go with her and a friend to get everything ready, but once again something else popped up with some medical papers. Needless to say we walked a ton this morning, but finally we have a wedding and baptism scheduled for this week!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! haha  I am so happy! The lady accepted everything and it’s all a go for Friday and Saturday, thank goodness! Next week I promise to have pics, but that is all that happened this week. Oh by the way, Elder Elison should be calling you this week. Well hope everyone has a great week!

Elder Neher

Week #79 - Dumped on Valentine's Day (Puerto Cortes)

Hola familia y amigos!

Well this week was probably one of the hardest ones of my mission. We had very few lessons this week and it was just hard to find new people to teach. One thing that went well was that I was able to talk to my companion during companionship study about how I feel when he teaches, and we were actually planning for a lesson, and that lesson we planned for went very well.

This week was just really tough because we had a lot of citas fall and we got dumped on Valentine's Day. The lady said she loved what we taught (she read 13 ch of the Book of Mormon!) but she said that she felt like she couldnt leave her church and what she has there. It was pretty funny that she bought us some food as a good bye gift!

This week we did find some really good families, one where we contacted the house and as soon as the lady saw us she got a big smile on her face and let us in. We didnt have a lot of time, just getting to know her and what not, but I taught a short version of lesson 1 in about 3 minutes and she was amazed. We came back to teach it a little more in depth and her husband was there, who has word of wisdom problems, and we taught all of the restoration and the word of wisdom in lesson in an hour. I was dumbstruck! haha Anyway, they were awesome, and we found another family who is just as interested in the church. Hopefully next week they come to church and they can get baptized in the near future.

Fam Alvarez is ready and willing to get baptized, we are just waiting for the papers to come in still. I got the package and thanks for the camera! What do you want me to do with the last one? Well I completed 18 months on Saturday, and its really weird to think about that, but I am just trying to work as hard as I can and to keep moving forward. Hopefully this change we can have some success and be able to have some more baptisms! I hope everyone has a great week!

Elder Neher

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Week #78 - Another Fast Week (Puerto Cortes)

Hola familia y amigos!

Well this week was another normal week it just went by super fast. I was super surprised. There were some really surprising things that I learned this week, like that Winnie the Pooh is of the devil, because if you put pooh in a calculator it says 400d, which means 400 demons, and that Shakira is Satan's wife, haha! This came when we contacted these two girls who asked us questions to see if first we could talk to them, like if we believe in God, Christ and the Holy Ghost, and they said that their mom says they aren’t supposed to receive visits from the Jehovah's Witnesses or the Mormons. It was funny to see their reaction when we told them who we are. They go to a big church here called the Cosecha, and they also said Barney is evil and that the guy in charge of Coca Cola made a pact with the devil, so they aren’t allowed to drink Coke, and they believe it all because they read it on the internet! Just shows you what people are willing to believe. 

Well this week wasn’t very productive again. We are still waiting for papers to get a couple married that we are teaching. We actually found a new family that seems really interested. The husband lives in New Orleans and he was baptized a couple months ago, and we showed up to the house of his wife and kids, She has had some dreams and knows that this is what she needs in her life, so it’s really interesting how things are developing there. The only problem is that they didn’t go to church yesterday. It was a bad day yesterday because we only had 60 people at church, normally we have 100. When it rains here no one goes to church which is kind of depressing, but we are trying to get the ward a lot stronger. This last week I went out with the Stake Patriarch to visit some people, and we found a guy that seemed interested, although he, like a lot of people, say that whoever speaks of God is welcome. Afterward we went to see an inactive member who the Patriarch is very familiar with and we noticed she wasn’t doing so well so we gave her a blessing of comfort, which seemed to help a lot. 

Well this week wasn’t too great. I’m still uncomfortable in my companions ability to teach and contact. It seems like he does it by motion, like a robot, and when people have a question he jumps right on it without letting them finish their sentence. He talks a lot and it’s still hard for us to find a groove, but hopefully this week will be better. I hope everyone has a great week and a great Valentine’s Day tomorrow!

Elder Neher

Week #77 - Gnawing on Gnocchis (Puerto Cortes)

Buenas Tardes familia y amigos!

Well to start off I am super excited to hear that everything is better back home with dad’s new job! It would be awesome if you could come pick me up, come get to know a little bit of the Hondo, haha! 

Well this week seemed like it went by really slow. I’m still having some problems with my companion. It’s awkward sometimes because I have no idea what to talk about, because somehow the topic always goes back to Guatemala versus Honduras. He always says 'well we do this and we call it like this’ and I’m kind of tired about hearing the comparisons between the two, where it always sounds like Guatemala wins. I am in Honduras and I love Honduras, end of story. 

We have been trying to do divisions and stuff this week to find more people and I talked to Magdaleno, a young adult who should leave on the mission soon. He said that he honestly thought my comp was new when he first saw him and he says way too many things that are unnecessary in the lessons.  I still have a hard time getting a say in because apparently his last comp was a gringo who is finishing soon that never did tackle Spanish very well, so he would have had to take control in his last area. I feel like he should at least trust in what I am doing. He is a bit immature and it’s just hard sometimes dealing with everything, but hopefully we can turn everything around. 

We have a family that we are hoping to baptize soon, Fam Alvarez, all we are waiting for are the papers to be able to get them married, and they are set! He is from Juticalpa, which is in the Comayagua mission and those missionaries still haven’t taken out the partida, and we have been waiting for months! Well needless to say they are awesome and are progressing very nicely. We had an activity with them and the Bishop's family and another family where I taught them how to make Gnoochis, and they all loved it! It  was fun and we made them from actual potatoes which turned out really good. It was nice to see them interact with the other families, but other than them we are still lacking new people who really want to learn and know about the gospel. We contact people and show up and they aren’t there, then a couple of days later we see them and they say they are Catholic or their pastor won’t let them, buh, but we are lways trying to find new people to teach. 

We did have an interesting experience last night. I was on divisions with Magdaleno and we visited a part member inactive family and the mom was just going off. She was talking about a whole bunch of stuff, and Cindy (Magdaleno's cousin) started talking about Joseph Smith, and then I recited the first vision, and she kept quiet and you could really see that she was understanding everything, even though she has had a difficult life. It seems that everything went well last night. Well I don’t have much more time to write today, but thanks for everything and I hope to hear back from some more people next week. Thanks Jen, Abuela, Tio Daniel, and Gma and Gpa for writing, it is always a pleasure to hear from you, and congrats Jen! Let’s hope it’s a boy haha!

Hasta luego!

Elder Neher