Holiday Challenges in Honduras

Dear Family

Well, first, I found Elder Long. He is actually in my zone. I saw him a few times before I realized it. Yep. Talked to him this morning. (I met his mother through facebook so told Michelle to keep her eyes open for him.)

This week was super good. Actually, it was mediocre, but I feel good. I feel like God is trying our faith because I am being super obedient, but we´re not seeing the fruits of our labors. We haven´t had anyone in Church for 2 weeks. This week we are going to have 10.(Our goal) I am so determined. I am going to become a challenging master. It is just hard because I seriously invite EVERYBODY to come to church. Every contact, every new person we meet, every member. If I am talking to someone, they are invited. Yet no one comes. A bit frustrating.

Thank you Grandma and Grandpa for the Christmas money! You guys are so sweet. I bought a lovely dinner and I am going to buy a backpack and temple clothes with it. The temple clothes here are so cheap. And  I really want them. Thank you so much!

We had a good Christmas. They celebrate on the 24th and eat a ton. They eat a dessert called Torejas... o algo... but it is basically french toast soaked in milk or honey. It is pretty good. They also make a ton of tamales. They are basically tamales that you just put your whole fridge inside--any kind of vegetable or meat. They all taste different. Today we are going to help an investigator make them.

For some reason nobody wanted to learn about Christ on the day we celebrate His birth, so we spent a lot of time walking on Christmas. But we were prepared. My companion's mom sent her goodies and candy to give to children, so we put them in bags with messages about Christ and the Articles of Faith and our number and we spent the whole time chasing children and mothers. It was a bit creepy. There was basically no one on the street so if we saw someone we went into full stalking mode. The first mom we saw, we pursued for 2 blocks. Sister Missionaries=  Creepy. It was way fun. I pride myself on my stalking skills, so it was good to fine tune them.

We almost had a baptism this week. A lady brought her nephew to us and told us to baptize him. But he doesn´t live here and was only here for a few days, so it didn´t work out.

I am learning the importance of obedience. The other sisters we live with aren´t quite the most obedient people.  They take a bunch of naps and don´t like to leave the house and come back early. I am hoping we will be blessed for our obedience. But They just baptized a family so.... Yep... its a bit hard. But we plan on baptizing 3.

We share the area with the sisters and it is getting increasingly harder. President is thinking about taking a pair of sisters out and moving them to a different area. We will see what happens. Our ward mission leaders are discussing the needs of the ward and the amount of work. But our area is HUGE!!! We also haven´t had a correlation meeting with the ward mission leader since I have been here.

Well, I love you all so much! Have a happy new year. 

Michelle