December 2, 2013

This week I had 2 exciting events happen that I´ll explain in this email.

First, we had the most amazing Thanksgiving dinner that any missionary has ever had in Honduras. Second, I finally had changes and left Yuscarán!!

Alright, well I´ll explain a little of my week: the last weekend of november for the elections was when we stayed inside for 3 days straight. Then we had pday a day later (tuesday) and wednesday we worked for the last time in Yuscarán. Then, thursday, we went like 2 hours out to this area way far out in our zone and had an amazing thanksgiving with some members that live there. We went and had our district meeting in the morning there, and after, we went and they had cleared away a spot for us to go and play football there. I´m not referring to spanish fútbol like soccer, we brought out the real american ball and threw it around and played a little bit. They were really trying to adapt the american culture for us that day. After we threw the ball around a bit in the morning, we went into their house and we helped prepare the food a little bit, but it was a ton for just us. They had 3 turkeys, a huge thing of mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, jellos, salads, rolls, yams and marshmallows, and every other thanksgiving food that we would need. Plus all of the desserts, we had cookies, cakes, bars, and apple pie. It was an amazing meal that our whole zone got for free. This family is super rich, and they just offered to do this for us, just because they wanted to share with others who would apreciate it. it was so cool!

Then, thursday night, we got the phone call. They told me that my companion was leaving, and that the other elder from my branch was leaving, I was starting to get worried that I was going to stay in yuscaran because I had thought that my companion was going to be the next branch president, but then they told him he was leaving. But at the end they told me that I was also leaving. I came to one of the southern parts of honduras called Porvenir, Choluteca. It´s about 3 hours in bus south of tegus, unless you´re in a slow bus like ours, which took over 4.. The south is super hot, but it´s full of a lot nicer people. I´m in a really nice ward now too, and a good area. Yesterday in church it was weird because I just sat there in the back with my investigators and realized that I didn´t have to do anything in the meeting but listen. I didn´t conduct the meeting or the hymns, I didn´t bless or pass the sacrament or anything. Everything just worked without me having to do anything. Our ward is in the stake center down here in the south, which the building is massive, it´s bigger than my home church or my home stake center even. I´ll have to take a picture to send sometime.. We had like 130 people in church yesterday, which felt like a lot to me. It was nice to go to church with a lot of people again.

My new companions super cool too. I´m with the elder who was my DL about a year ago. He and I get along well and he is a great missionary. He´s from Riverton, Utah and has 20 months in the mission, so he´s pretty close to finishing. I just got called to be a Zone Leader this change, so he´s teaching me how to be a ZL. I didn´t think that I would be a ZL because most of the time you have to be a DL for a little bit before they call you to be ZL. But it´s interesting. I will have to learn a lot, because there are many differences between here and yuscaran. Choluteca feels like a completely different mission because everything is changed and it has its own kind of atmosphere. Our zone is really big now too, we have 21 missionaries in our zone and 8 of them are sisters, which is a lot. But it´s been good to get to know everyone here and learn how everything works here. I´ve been sick a lot this last weekend too. I got some stomach sickness that has been annoying me. Saturday we had to stay home because I really couldn´t go out. Sunday I felt a little better and today I´ve been doing pretty good, but it has not been fun being so sick.

I´m excited to be here and to start doing something new. I have a great area, a great ward, and a great companion and plenty to do, so I just need to start working like crazy. We´re going to always be busy now here, we have to work in our area, organize all the zone stuff with our big zone, we have a leader meeting in Tegus this week so we´ll have to go all the way back up there, and I imagine that we´ll be going on quite a few divisions with the people in our zone soon.

I hope that all of you everywhere are doing well and that my family can all recover from their sicknesses. I know that it´s not fun at all, but hopefully it´s just for a little bit.

I love you all!

Love,

Elder Ward