Zarahemla Week 21

Our District

Family,

He cumplido seis meses en el campo misional. Siento que acabo de llegar aqui! He aprendido muchisimas cosas en estos meses pasados, y estoy muy agradecido por todo lo que he visto. Estoy tan emocionado por los proximos dieciocho meses en este lugar asombroso! This week was super great! We were able to do a ton of cool things, and we saw lots of miracles as always! Anyway, here's what we've been up to in Zarahemla this past week.

Last P-day, after emails, we went to meet Guillermo at a metro station to go to the Biodôme together. When we got there (a little bit late), he wasn't there yet. We would have called him, but of course our phone had to break the day before and we still hadn't gotten a replacement yet. We waited for about 30 minutes, then left. Went to the mission office to get the phone and noticed that Guillermo had left a message. Turned out he got there an hour and a half late and was confused why we weren't there haha! It was such a funny message, he called me "Hermano James Bond" (as he always does) like a million times. It's so funny, and it's been taking time to get used to, but most Latinos have absolutely NO sense of time. They're just so chill all of the time! Which of course is a good thing at time, but not so much when you have other things to do! We had time since we had planned to go to the Biodôme but didn't, so we decided to go to La Banquise again for poutine. Really good as always! After we finished all of our chores for the day, we went to two appointments, that both fell through. We then felt like we should pass by this guy named Alder (not Elder lol) whose address we had received a few days back. We passed by, he was home, and we taught an awesome lesson! The spirit was super strong. He was such a cool guy!

Poutine at La Banquise with Elder Landetta

On Wednesday we had Zone Conference, which was awesome as always. They talked a lot about keeping the Sabbath day holy, and all the many blessings that come from doing so. Being in the mission field, I truly have been able to see how doing more meaningful things on the Sabbath can really bless your life. At times it seems like just another rule to keep, but it's really such a major blessing to take one day out of the week to have a rest from the world! I encourage everyone to find a few ways you can make your Sabbath more meaningful. I will promise that as you do, you will be blessed more than you can imagine! Later that night, after Zone conference, we had the opportunity to eat at Eddy's house (one of our investigators whose wife is a member). They fed us some classic Honduran food which was so awesome. They're such a great little family.

Thursday wasn't busy at all, but we did get some good stuff done. We had district meeting in the morning, where we were able to discuss a lot about the things we had learned in zone conference and how to apply them. We set some goals as a district, and recommitted ourselves to old goals. We then went home, and were able to do our weekly planning. After that, we left for some appointments, and had a little miracle! We were going to pass by a former investigator, but for some reason, we weren't thinking and passed our stop on the bus. We got off at the next stop, and walked backwards. On the way, we ran into the former that we were going to pass by! It was so crazy—if we had not passed the stop, we would have gone to his house and he wouldn't have been there. It was a cool little miracle!

Death-Star hard boiled egg

Friday was my 6-month mark. Super crazy! I have some pictures of me burning a tie (little mission tradition apparently), but I'll have to send them next week. We spent a good part of the day contacting, and passed by some old formers who were pretty solid. We passed by one lady named Iris, who was apparently super golden, but sadly she wasn't there. Went to Hermano Sanchez and visited him a little bit, were able to settle some concerns he had about the church. We all have questions sometimes, and sometimes these questions or doubts about the church or the gospel can affect what we have come to believe. However, the solutions to these problems are out there, we just have to look! And sometimes they are difficult to find, but it's important that we always "Doubt [our] doubts before [we] doubt [our] faith!" (Elder Holland) Later on that night, we had another little miracle similar to the one the night before. As we were waiting for a bus, we saw a Hispanic lady and we, of course, talked with her. Turned out, it was Iris who we tried to pass by earlier in the day! It was such a cool miracle again!

Saturday was going to be really busy, but sadly a lot of our appointments fell through. However, we were able to pass by a lot of people, and we found a lot of new investigators as well. We had an appointment with Alder again, who we met last Tuesday, but apparently, he moved to Mexico! It was sad, but Elder Landetta and I laughed about it a little bit. That's the second person who just randomly decided to go to back to their home country! They probably just got fed up with the cold, and if that's the case, I don't blame them!

Sunday was awesome. I've been having troubles with feeling stressed during church meetings. I worry so much about our investigators not coming or, if they did come, their experience at church. However, this Sunday, I made an effort to just enjoy the meetings. When I did, I was truly able to learn from the talks and classes, feel the spirit, and just enjoy a rest from the stresses of the week. It goes back to what we discussed in Zone conference—Sunday really is such an amazing blessing to forget about all the stresses that we have on a day to day basis! It was very refreshing. After church we were able to pass by Hermano Mendoza again, which was an awesome experience as always. Una Hermana in the ward gave us some food to eat when we got home, so we went home and had some dinner which was amazing. We then went and passed by a less active family who Elder Landetta remembers teaching. We passed by and had a little visit with them, and they were so awesome. They still have very strong testimonies of the gospel, they just needed, as many do, an extra push (usually social) to go to church. It's important to notice when a fellow member might be in need of that push, and when we recognize it, be the push that they need!

Monday was fairly chill (as in not busy but also very cold). We spent a good three hours solid outside knocking doors looking for Hispanics. It was another little miracle though, when we were getting super cold after about two hours, I said to Elder Landetta something like, "I want someone to let us in; not so we can share our message, but so that we can be warm for only a few seconds!" The next door we knocked, the guy just let us in saying "just come, in it's too cold to talk to you by the door." It was super funny. Later that night we had dinner with Hermana Guerra from Chile, who is an absolute salvaje. She's super funny, and also cooks amazingly. It was so nice.

It's been an awesome week as you can see. I'm loving my time here, and I'm loving working with Elder Landetta. He's going home very soon, but that hasn't affected him at all! He's teaching me so much, and I'm so happy for everything I've learned and continue to learn. I love you all so much, I hope you have an amazing week!

Elder James