Week #102 - Weak Week (Montecristo)

Hola familia y amigos!

Well this week was pretty weak. We weren’t able to teach that many people this week and I feel pretty bad about it because I know things could have been better. Problems kept coming up left and right. Recently we have been having a hard time working together as a team. My comp still continues to dominate a bit in the lessons and I feel like the majority of what he says is 'fluff' and nothing really spiritually meaningful. It never feels like what he says comes from his heart, but I’m sure in time he will get better. This week we were supposed to go to El Confite to work on Friday, well I was supposed to go on divisions and do some interviews while my comp went to El Confite, but the elder I was going to go with got really sick, and we couldn’t and then we couldn’t get anyone to help us do divisions in El Confite so we left to do the interviews and lost a lot of time. We also found out a bit how much Nidia walks to get to church each week, about 6 km! Isn’t that crazy?! She is really dedicated and her baptism this week was great. She showed up a bit late but came with friends and there was a lot of support from the ward. Yesterday was her birthday and she was also confirmed a member and she feels great right now. She is a great lady and hopefully she can stay strong and active in the church.

Nidia's Baptism

We have a baptism tonight for Rina, she is the girlfriend of a member who lives in the apartment above us. He has had some problems, but now can baptize her and tonight we will have her service. Yesterday we were supposed to get my comps patriarchal blessing, but it didn’t go through because the patriarch didn’t have anything to record with, but we should get it done this week.

This week I have a resolve to work harder and be better! Oh almost forgot a good story. On Saturday we went with a member to a part of our area that neither of us had been to. We went to go visit some members, and it was pouring! (I love rain!!!!) So anyway, we were walking and this guy said come on in, but we were already at the house where we needed to go. After that appointment we walked back and asked that guy if we could come in. He said that they wanted us to come in earlier because of the rain, but he called the entire family out and we ended up having a great lesson with them! We found out that after 14 years they were thinking of getting separated because he has been drinking a lot. We had a great lesson and they felt like we showed up at just the right time. They were going to go to church yesterday, but something happened and they couldn’t make it, but hopefully we can teach them some more this week. This work is amazing! I love every minute of it and really don’t want to go home, so I will just keep working here, haha! I hope everyone has a great week!

Elder Neher

His description was, "Our house...I wish!" 

Week #101 - Rare Reunions (Montecristo)

 

Hola familia!

Well this week went by a little too fast, but it was filled with a lot of good stuff.  To start off, last Monday I had an interesting run-in with some Americans. They were at the computer next to me and they noticed me watching Mormon Messages and when I sang at General Conference and commented on it. They asked for help on their computer and I helped them a bit. Later they got off while I was up front paying and I heard them say 'oh its 11' and they started taking out dollars. I mentioned that I hadn’t seen dollars in a while and they asked how long I had been here for (they were only here for a week for a church service project). Anyway, I told them I would pay because 11 limps is only 60 cents. When they kept insisting they said, 'well, now you got some dollars!' gave me a five, said ‘God bless you’ and walked out. It was pretty funny!

Well so this week we have been working as hard as we can! I have also had some interesting reunions this week. One started with Hno Amador, he is the guy that goes to all the missionaries’ houses and church buildings in Honduras and sprays them for bugs. He showed up and I was able to talk to him and found out about some people from my area 6 de Mayo that are going on a mission, it was awesome! So there was that, then the next day we went to a member’s house around 10am to teach them something and when we showed up, a truck selling veggies pulled up and the guy said “Hi”.  I said hi back but I kept walking to our appointment. Well he kept calling and so I looked back and realized it was Gina's husband! (she was one of my converts from 6 de Mayo) I had a great chat with him, and found out that he recently got baptized! That made me so happy!! Later on in the week we went to Hna Fausta and Merci’s house (the two that called you guys) and they got the Patriarch from Puerto Cortes on the phone. It was because of him that they joined the church and so I talked to him for a good while and caught up on things in Puerto Cortes. Then on Sunday I went to church in Confite while my comp stayed in Montecristo and there I ran into another member from 6 de Mayo. His last name is Carcamo and he served in Costa Rica and knows Kati Hunsaker. I talked with him for a while and then last night there was the Pioneer concert here in La Ceiba and we took an investigator to see it. While I was there I saw a member from my first area Olanchito! He told me about everything that’s going on out there, and that Pedro, my last baptism there, recently got sealed in the temple!!! I was super excited! Later someone called him and his mom answered and so I talked to her for a bit. It has been a really cool week being able to see and talk with so many people from my different areas!

So, getting back to the work here in Montecristo, things are going really good. This next weekend we will have a baptism, Nidia will get baptized and she is really excited about it. We will also have a baptism on the 6th as well. There is a return missionary that lives above us and he has a girlfriend that has wanted to get baptized but she just had to wait for him to be ready. Now everything is good to go to get them baptized. I am loving the work and I really don’t want to go home, but everything is great down here. It’s raining a lot and I love it, and the beach is amazing of course! I hope everyone has a great week!

Elder Neher

Week #100 - The Elders of Montecristo

Montecristo and Confite Wards

Hola a todos!

Well this week has been fun! My goodbye in Santiago was ok, my cook cried, others cried and the morning we left in the bus for SPS, the BP was hiding behind his wall watching us, bah! My new area is called Montecritso in La Ceiba, by the beach!!! I love the beach and the weather here is beautiful! There are mountains close by and we live only a few blocks from the beach. It is amazing here and I am so ready to work! My area consists of 2 wards and an extension (it’s like a mini branch) and our coverage area is pretty big. Our work schedule consists of Monday through Thursday here in Montecristo, Friday in Confite, and Saturday in La Masica. On Sunday normally one of us stays here in the Montecristo Ward while the other goes to the Confite Ward. We have investigators in all three areas, with some progressing more than others, but the members in all three areas are ready and willing to work! We get a lot of references and the members will go on visits with us or invite people to their house for us to teach them, it’s awesome! Our area is pretty big. It takes about an hour to go through it in bus, but it’s fun.

 

My new companion is Elder Novoa from Chinandegas, Nicaragua, and his dad was baptized by someone I know in Puerto. Weird huh? He is really cool. This is his second change, so I have to finish training him which shouldn’t be too hard, since I’ve done it plenty of times before. He is cool, it just seems that he wants to dominate a little in the lessons but we will see how it goes as time goes on. 

On Sunday we went to Confite because an area seventy, Elder Ocampos showed up and he gave a really good talk, then we had to come back to Montecristo to see how our investigators were doing. We had 7 investigators at church yesterday! We have one whose name is Nidia and she was going to get baptized in another area last year, but someone put stuff in her head and she got scared. Recently she went to a baptism and has gone to church twice and now she wants to get baptized! She walks a really good distance to get to us to have the lessons, it’s crazy! Yesterday we were teaching a lesson to her at a members house when they invited someone else to listen too. She said that she liked what we taught and that no one could confuse her now because she came and listened to us and you could tell that she was ready to listen to us.

Well I don’t have a lot of time today, but I love the work! I am so happy to be here and this is the greatest thing I could be doing right now. Apparently Pres. Veirs doesn’t allow missionaries to extend (I heard other elders that wanted to and said they can’t) so I’m done in August! I am thankful for all the people that have had an impact on me in my life. Hopefully I can have the same type of effect on others! Well hope everyone has a great week!

Elder Neher

Week #99 - So Long, Santiago

Buenas Tardes todos!

Well, this week was definitely an interesting one. To start things off, I do have changes this week and I am very happy, even though I feel bad that Elder Baldwin has to keep dealing with the problems that come up. This week was a very trying one for me personally. I feel like out of all my areas, I have tried my hardest here to just make sure everything goes right and that we get baptisms. I have read talks, heard great messages from Pres. and it all gets me excited to work and I start putting stuff into practice and then something comes to kill it all. This week was pretty bad that way. Honestly I think our branch president is jealous that we eat where we do, because the missionaries used to eat at his house but then they changed places. The place where we normally eat now is a family restaurant and we always go in the kitchen to help, or talk or whatever. On Friday night the BP showed up and was super angry saying that he didn’t want to see us in the kitchen, only in the main part, sitting, waiting for our food and nothing else. We were so mad that we just grabbed our food and went home to eat it. Apparently later he went back looking for us, and since we weren’t there he started talking to la Familia Carranza (the cook and her family) and they got really upset because of the things he said. I’m not entirely sure what he said, but it was enough. On Saturday we didn’t have any enthusiasm to work. Both of us felt terrible and la Familia Carranza was so mad that they didn’t want to go to church. Everyone we visited could tell that we were not doing well. We both felt done for the day but then we thought, what do we want to do, go home or go to La Zona, a different part of our area? We decide to go there and as we are walking we ran into the 'wife' of an investigator who told us that he was home, so we went up to see him. We taught him a great lesson about the Book of Mormon and the spirit was so strong that he was about to cry. It was a great way to get us back in the right mind for working. Later we finished the day by visiting a couple of recent converts. On Sunday our BP called us into his office for an interview (which, if I’m not mistaken, he shouldn’t do) and tried to 'fix' the situation. He was trying to say everything was a ticking time bomb waiting to happen because we took Ruth, one of la Familia Carranza, out with us too much to visit people. She is one of the few members who has been willing to help us! I was trying really hard to stay calm, but I told him everything that was on my mind and hopefully he can do better when the next elder comes. I have noticed that Satan has attacked me a bunch here, because this is where I have felt that I wanted to work my hardest and stuff always happens to get in our way. 

Something really great this week happened as well. In the midst of all this chaos, Tuesday night we got a call that a sister, Luisa who wanted us to go to her house because she was feeling a bit sick. We had English class that we had to get ready for, but we left and showed up at her house. Turns out that a little after she called us she passed out. She is in her 70s and hadn’t been feeling good throughout the day and supposedly her blood pressure dropped a lot. We got there, checked her vitals, and found that her pulse was weak. We explained to those who weren’t members what we were going to do for the blessing, and then we gave it. Later she told us that even though she was unconscious that she recognized that she received a blessing, and she knows that that's what helped her. Right after the blessing her pulse got better and she seemed a lot better. We left and later that night she got a bit worse, but they gave her a shot to help her. We showed up the next day and she looked better but she still couldn’t sit up, she just felt way too tired. The next day before we left she sat up, and the next day she was walking around her house. She now has a really strong testimony and faith in the church and the blessing we gave her. It was great to know that we could help her and that we were willing to follow the prompting to go. This week was hard, but I hope that my next area I can finish with a bang. I definitely learned a lot here and overall it was a good area, just super hard. Well, I hope everyone has a great week!

Hasta pronto!
Elder Neher

Week #98 - Caught Green-handed (Santiago)

Hola familia y amigos!

The time is going by way too fast and I don’t like it! This week was pretty good, I am still trying to help Elder Baldwin as much as I can, because it is a for sure that I am leaving this area next week. It’s been kind of hard, but I am trying my best, I don’t think I ever said this but he has a learning disability and so it makes it a bit hard to teach him, but he is working at it and learning and understands a lot.

This week we had planned on doing some service by helping to paint a local store. Our appointment to start painting was right after lunch, so we went to lunch dressed in our jeans & t-shirts so we could go straight there when we were done.  Our house is on top of a huge hill, so it’s so much easier to just go to lunch at the bottom and leave to do service than to go up and down, back and forth. Anyway, while we were eating of course the BPs family had to get involved. I’m almost positive they called him because when we left, we ran into him by the church, and while we were walking to him he had a huge grin on his face like he just caught us in some terrible act.  I just told him that we were going to paint for a service project and he said, ‘ok’ like it wasn’t true. Later when we saw him we were covered in green paint, so I guess we were caught green handed! The whole encounter kind of bothered me, but whatever.

So this week we were working hard to help get Ondina baptized. She is a friend of Lorena´s and she is also Gustavo´s mom. Anyway, she has had a really hard time in her life recently. She is in debt to 5 banks, but she is pulling through. When we first started working with her we wanted her to at least go to church for the first hour, but she stayed for all three! Then we invited her to drop coffee and that night she dropped it! Well this week she got baptized and she was so happy! She took all her family (four of them aren’t members) and it was a great service. On Sunday at church the Spirit was really strong and she cried during the confirmation. It was a great weekend!

This week we went to San Pedro for a multizona and we watched a talk by Elder Holland that he gave in the MTC in January. The talk was really great! It talked about why they made the Preach my Gospel manual. He said the first purpose was first to convert the missionary, and I realized that it was true. I feel so much more... better I guess you could say, because it really did convert me. I always asked myself why would people go on a mission and go then come home and go inactive, or just basically be lame and not want to help anymore. It’s because they weren’t really converted. I feel like when I get home it doesn’t finish with what I did here. I have to keep working when I get home, it really is a commitment for a lifetime. It was a great talk and I really felt the Spirit and it made me want to work the best that I can right now. I don’t want to go home, I love it too much here, but the show must go on! Not to make you guys baggy, but I did get my travel itinerary. I fly to Miami in the morning of August 23^rd. I leave SPS at 7:15am, arrive in Miami at 11:35am then leave for Phoenix at 5:20pm and arrive at 7:10pm, so now you can start planning for that! Well I hope everyone has a great week!