WHOBULATION, MORE GUIPERS, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

I'm just gonna get right to it! Starting with Tuesday. So we have a baptism lined up for this coming Saturday with Christopher, a kid that came to English class. He is super super cool and really wants to be baptized. But the plot twist is that since he is under 18, we have to have his mom’s permission for him to be able to be baptized. So Tuesday, we went over to their house to talk with his mom about the baptism. She was super nice to us, but as we explained that he needed her permission, she was basically just nicely saying “That’s not going to happen.” We started talking to her and kind of trying to figure out how she was feeling, and she said that 1. He was already baptized in the Catholic church when he was a baby and 2. He doesn’t know enough about our church yet to make the decision to be baptized. I just thought to myself “You baptized him when he didn’t know how to talk, let alone know anything about Catholicism, but for THIS baptism he needs to be a Mormon doctrine expert”. Kind of ridiculous haha. But anyways, I didn’t say that to her, I just thought it. We explained how he actually does know a TON more than she thinks he knows, his baptismal date is still 2 weeks away, and he says he’s more than ready, so we just need her permission. She was still super against it, so I told her about my conversion and how I didn’t know everything either before I was baptized, but I knew it was the right thing for me and its changed my life for the better. That’s the reader’s digest version of what I said, but I was basically just bearing my testimony. We saw like a visible change in her face, and she started asking all these questions like “Where will the baptism be?” and “what time are you planning on doing it?” I was like BOOM BABY. She made sure we knew that she wasn’t 100% sure, but it was better than before. So pray for him! Twas a grand experience. Thursday was kind of annoying because like ALLLLL of our appointments fell through. We went to visit that family that is a reference from our convert, and only the mom was there peeling corn. So naturally we helped her with that since we are pros at it now, and gave her a little message. After that, the family we were going to teach was peeling roughly a billion pieces of corn, and was too busy to stop and have a lesson. So of course, we helped them too, but then just left because they were to in to their corn to be taught haha. We had English class again that night, but the bishop’s son wanted to teach it (he learned English on his mission in Panama from gringo companions and is now teaching in Honduras) so Elder Zura and I just sat in the back and I helped when he pronounced stuff wrong haha.  

Friday there was a Mexico v.s. Honduras soccer game in SPS, so the people we pretty hyped up. They had flags everyyyywhere and were all wearing their jerseys and what not. Everyone who knew that Zura was from Mexico was talking trash to him saying they were going to lose, but he kept telling everyone that he was from Guatemala so that they wouldn’t kill him if mexico did win haha. We didn’t watch the game obviously, but we knew anytime Honduras scored because there were screams from literally every single house and fireworks going off like crazy. It was nuts. It was a draw which is kind of lame, but at least I don’t have to worry about the people here killing my companion haha. We went to Hermana Magda’s for dinner and right as we were about to leave, the power went off. Like allllll the power here is connected throughout our whole area, so its just pitch black. We had like a 15 minute walk home to do still, so we were a little freaked out. However, the moon was shining like wayyy bright, to a point where it seemed like day time kind of. It was actually really weird haha. Missionary blessings! When we got home, our power was out too. That is a HORRIBLE thing because its been ridiculously hot this week, and without power we cant use our fans. Our house had been in the 90’s like every night this week, and that night it was 96 degrees and we were without fans. Twas torture. It came back on eventually though, so we survived. On to Saturday. Pretty uneventful actually. Our convert, Hermana Marta, is super sick and only getting worse. She is bloated like a balloon, but doesn’t have the funds or anything to take care of herself. When people here get really sick, its way sad because they usually never get better because they cant afford medical care. She just sits in bed all day and is always cold, even though its 100 degrees out, which doesn’t sound like a good sign to me. So please pray for her. Backtracking a bit, when we were teaching our gospel doctrine class, the teacher that teaches the teenage kids came in and asked if we could come to her class. We went in there and she asked me to bear my testimony about the Book of Mormon. It was really random, but I just did it. After I was done, she asked me to tell how long I have been in the church, so I told them, and they were all like “Wowwwwww” like I was some show and tell project haha. It was funny. Anyways, that’s pretty much it for the week. I feel like this email was way sporadic, but oh well, aren’t they all. Stay classy world!

EVANGELICALS, PRESERVED RECORDS, FLAMING SCORPIONS

Hola Mundo,

I'm just going to start with Tuesday because Monday was pretty uneventful. Well, Tuesday we found out that this member has a reference for us which was awesome, because usually they never do. We went with the member and his family to visit this other family. It was WAY far away, and we were just following them down this dirt road for eveeerrrr. Elder Zura and I have this thing that anytime we are following somebody somewhere, after its been like 5 minutes and the place is starting to look more sketchy and deserted, we look at each other and say ¨Uh oh. They are going to kill us¨ like they are taking us to some empty warehouse.  I don’t know why, but it always cracks me up haha. Anyways, we FINALLY get there and its this quaint little family that is really nice. Apparently they had talked with missionaries before but never progressed, so we are going to see what we can do, but the mom is like a super hardcore Evangelical, so it will be tough. Evangelicals are veryyyy prominent here and veryyyy crazy haha. Sometimes they will try to argue with us about stuff, but they don’t really even know what THEY believe, let alone what we believe. There church services are crazy too. They have Pastors SCREAMING at them about God and stuff on a microphone, so you can hear it clear as day like anywhere you are in our area. Its ridiculously annoying, but somewhat funny. And then they have a ton of dance parties and listen to music SUPER loud. So its kind of hard to compete with their church services when the people don’t have a testimony of anything and only want to dance and be yelled at haha. But anyways, the family is pretty cool. Right as we were leaving and walking out the door, the member we were with like pushed us back and said “Elders. Get inside.” But he wouldn’t tell us what was happening, because he was too busy being all protective. It was freaky. My mind started racing wondering what it was. Was it a murderer? Was it a burglar? Was it the goose from last week back to finish what he had started? We had no idea. Finally, he let us leave and he explained that as he was walking out, this group of guys were like freaking out saying “We got to get out of here! He's looking for us!” and took off on bikes. But it was whatever. We really weren’t too worried, we just wanted to get out of there haha. Wednesday we went to another WAY far place. We had to take a bus there, but it was still in our area, if that tells you anything about how gigantic our area is. The bus ride cost seven limps, so I gave the guy a 10. He was counting out my change from his big stack of money and grabbed a 1 bill, another 1, and then acted like he grabbed a third but just faked it, and gave me 2 back, thinking I wouldn’t notice. I don’t know if that story made sense, but it happened, so I shared it. That kind of stuff happens allll the time to me. People try to rob me just because I’m a gringo and they don’t think I will notice. Most of the time I call them on it, but a guy stealing 1 limp from me isn’t anything. In American dollars, a limp is 5 cents. If the guy really wants to steal a nickel from me, he needs it more than I do haha. Anyways, we make it to this house, and the people that said they would be there WEREN'T there. But the grandpa was there, so we chatted with him for a while. He looked like he was 55, but he was 81. A lot of the people here are like that. He was watching his grandkids, one of which was 4 years old but couldn’t walk or talk. I have come to find out that a lot of kids have problems here, but i'm not really sure why. I'm not a doctor, I’m a missionary, so it makes sense that I don’t know why haha. But this girl just sat there, laughed, and drooled. She is way cute, but just cant walk or talk. She scoots herself around with her arms, so at least she’s resourceful. If anyone out there can diagnosis this child for me from what I have described, feel free to let me know haha. We shared a short message with the grandpa (who is an inactive member) and went on our way. So every Thursday, we have weekly planning sessions in the church in the Zone Leaders area. So we grab our area book and other stuff we need, hop on a bus, and go to that area. It’s the junior companion’s job (aka my job) to take care of the area book. It is too big to fit in my backpack, so I just have to hold it. We got on the bus and there were no seats so we just had to stand, which meant I had to put the area book on the rack about so I could brace myself while the crazy bus driver took us to our destination. More and more people kept getting on the bus, so I was getting pushed back farther and farther. We finally got to our destination, and when the bus is really full, if you are in the back half of the bus, you jump out of the emergency exit door in the back. So we get out and start walking towards the church, and Elder Zura turns to me and says “Where is the area book?” We both just stop in our tracks and realize I left it on the bus. Anyone who has gone a mission knows how ridiculously important the area book is, so losing it is a very, very bad thing. I couldn’t believe I left it. Actually, I could believe it because I have a horrible memory and once it was out of sight, I forgot about it. But still, I was freaking out. Zura was freaking out too, saying we were in big trouble. Here is a little background information. Buses pass like every 10 minutes. They go every which way. Some go just through the city, some go all the way to San Pedro, they go everywhere. Basically what I am saying is that there are a lot of busses. The only good thing is that the bus we took was like oddly unique in the sense that it was exactly like a big yellow school bus, but miniaturized.  Anyways, we got to the church, told our ZL’s, they 

contacted the office in San Pedro and asked them to try to get a hold of the terminal up there and find it, but after that there wasn’t much we could do. We had to go on with our planning without it, but first we did personal study since we were early. I said a prayer before I started that we would find it, and then just started to study. I was just reading in the Book of Mormon in Enos and came across verse 15. It says “Wherefore, I knowing that the Lord God was able to preserve our records, I cried unto him continually, for he had said unto me: Whatsoever thing ye shall ask in faith, believing that ye shall receive it in the name of Christ, ye shall receive it.” HELLOOOO. The area book is just a giant book of RECORDS. Obviously its talking about a different type of records, but still. I was like NO WAY. It was crazy. After that, I just knew we were going to find it. Like there wasn’t even a question in my mind. So we went home at like 3 and called the office to see if they had found it. This senior missionary, Elder John answered, and when I explained the situation, he had said he hadn’t heard anything about it, but he just said its gone. He just started like chastising me for losing it. Hes like “Elder. Do you know how many buses are in the terminal? Every bus is privately owned. There are probably 40 bus companies. They all go every which was throughout the entire country. You think you are going to be able to find a little blue binder somewhere in this country? I think you just have to accept that you lost it Elder.” I was just like “Yeah, you're probably right. Thanks anyway!” But in my head I was like “Oh ye of little faith, Elder John.” That book will return to me. Mark my words. I told Zura that we should go out to the bus stop and wait for 1 hour to see if the bus will pass again (This was like right at 3). So we went out there and waited. And waited. And waited. We saw a few buses that looked similar, so we hopped on and described our bus, but no one had any clue what we were talking about. It was 3:56 and we were heading home from where the bus we had gotten on dropped us off, and all of the sudden this bus started honking at us to see if we wanted a ride, like they all do. We turn around, and it was our bus!!! We got on, I ran to where I put the area book and it was right where I left it. Elder Zura and I started freaking out, and everyone just kept staring at us. It was so awesome haha. Twas a miracle, for real. So awesome. Anyways, that night we had English class which was fun as always. The people like love me haha. They laugh at everything I say and we all have so much fun. We did all these role playing things where I set up 2 chairs and they had to sit and act like it was a real life situation. I was like “Ok. Here's the situation. We are in California. Christopher is waiting at the bus stop. Jose Armando is going to come up and greet him. Its 8:00 A.M. ACTION!” So then Jose Armando walked up to the chair next to Christopher, sat down, and said “Good mawrneeng. Hauw are you?” to which Christopher replied “I am goooood. Tank you.” It was seriously so fun hahaha. After that, we went home, and found ANOTHER scorpion. That makes 3. But we are pros at killing them now. For this demon, we put it in a bowl, poured alchohol in it, and lit it on fire. I don’t know if its very humane, but oh well. There is no other way. I think haha. We forgot that the bowl was plastic, so we ruined a bowl, but it was for a good cause. That night, we had lessons with some people from English class, and set a baptismal date for them! I don’t know if they will all go through with it, but I'm pretty sure at least one of them will, which means English class was a success! Huzzah! That’s about it for Friday. On to Saturday. We had the opportunity to go to the cultural celebration for the temple! Not go to the actual one, but they were broadcasting it at the stake center. Our ward rented a bus and said they were leaving at 5 because it started at 6. Remember how I talk about people always showing up late? Yeah. The bus didn’t leave till 5:40. Seriously so ridiculous. It makes us so mad haha. Anyways, we got there and watched it. I think you can find it online if you want. It was pretty sweet. The funniest thing happened though. So we had a Zone Leader leave last Monday because he finished his mission. He is from Tegucigalpa, so we were all jealous that he was probably at the actual event. So we are watching all the performances, and then this one starts where the youth are all dressed up as missionaries and singing that “Army of Helaman” song (I don’t know if that’s the actual title, I’m a convert). Near the end, this guy dressed as Helaman rides up on a horse and its our old ZL! We all started CRACKING up because it was just so random hahaha. He went home a WEEK ago and we see him on a horse performing in front of thousands at the cultural celebration. So funny haha. But it was way cool. Watch it if you can. Now on to Sunday. We got to go to the stake center to watch a broadcast of the temple dedication. It was way cool! President Uchtdorf and Elder Holland were there. It was awesome. When they did the sealing of the corner stone thing, it was sooo funny because President Uchtdorf was like GIDDY with excitement. He kept doing that little german laugh he does and was smiling from ear to ear. He had everyone and their dog help with the sealing the cement thing haha. Overall, it was pretty awesome and I’m super grateful we got to see it. Now hopefully we get to go sometime soon. Anyways, that’s about it for the week! On to random stuff. 1. The weird picture of me is kind of hard to explain. All my pants are like way big because I’m losing a ton of weight in this area (Turns out if you only eat once a day and walk through the jungle for 6 hours everyday, you lose weight. Shocker haha). So I was showing Zura how high my pants came up. Then that turned into me adjusting my tie to fit my high pants. And now we have that picture haha. 2. It rained a TON this week (Hence why im wearing boots, like every other gringo this week). I took a pretty majestic picture, if I do say so myself. I call it “Sad Bird on a Wire in the Rain”. Feel free to sell copies of it. 3. I put in a picture of my breakfast. The little bag is milk. So weird. It tastes weird too. I don’t think it’s the milk of a cow, if you catch my drift. Anyways, that’s about it. Hope all is well! Oh, and March 15 was day 100. Crazy. I'm almost done. Start preparing for my homecoming, you only have like 630 days left people haha. Adios!

Elder Shuga

ZONA CELESTIAL DINNER

FALST HEART ATTACK MAYHEM, DEMON GOOSE, ZONA CELESTIAL

Buenos dias!
We were finally both healthy this week so we were able to actually work without dying, so that’s good news! Anyways, I guess I’ll just get right to it. After P-day ended last Monday, we went to Hermana Magda’s house for FHE and to celebrate the birthday of her daughter Madeline. She gave us cake which was like way gross and runny, but apparently that’s how cake is here. Not a fan haha. Tuesday we had district meeting and afterwards, thestake president of the area bought our zone, Progreso Sur, pizza. He is the stake president over the stake that is covered by the Progreso Norte and Progreso Sur zones, so which ever zone has more baptisms each month, he buys them pizza. And that was us! So that was pretty sweet. After that, we went on and continued with our day. We went to the house of the guiper and the crazy old man to teach, but they weren’t there. It turns out that our ward mission leader is like building a house right near there (super random), so we stopped and talked with him for a bit. When I say house, I mean like a little tiny cement room, like the size of a living room, that is going to be a house. It’s pretty crazy how small some houses are here. After that, we went to another appointment with this couple we have been working with. They went to the temple open house and talked about how great it was, but still aren’t sure about the church. SO many people here have that problem. They go to the temple open house and come back and say “I have never felt like that in my life. You could tell there was something different about it. Buuttttt…I don’t want anything to do with it.” It is SO frustrating haha. Anyways, so we are just working with them and it seems to be going pretty well. The weirdest thing happened though. We were sitting in their front yard talking to them and their daughter comes speeding in on her bike, skids to a stop and says “(Inser tneighbors name here that I don’t know) just died!!” Cut to our investigators TAKING off towards these people’s house and us just sitting there like ummm this is interesting. So we start following them down the street and we get to the house of the lady and there are like 20 people outside of it just sobbing their eyes out. Zura and I look at each other like “What in the world is going on?!” People are running in to the house crying. People are running out of the house crying. People are running around the house crying. Basically, everyone was either running, crying, or running and crying. It was mayhem. And we were just standing there with no idea what to do hahaha. A few minutes later, a member from our ward randomly comes out of the house (we didn’t know he was in there) and explains the situation. Apparently, some lady had like a heart attack or something but didn’t die. But while the mayhem was going on, she passed out, so everyone assumed she was dead. So all is well. She is alive. So that’s good! The rest of the day, every.single.one. of our appointments fell through. Do you know how annoying it is when you walk 20 minutes through the jungle to get to someone’s house and they aren’t even there? Let me tell you, it is pretty annoying haha. On to Wednesday. We have been teaching this lady Maria Isabel and her two granddaughters Yolanis and Reina. Here is a little background on them. Maria Isabel is the mom of a lady who got baptized a couple months ago, but is inactive now unfortunately. She and her granddaughters were a reference from another member, so we have been teaching them. They are all SUPER cool and we set Saturday as a baptismal date for them, but more on that later. The younger granddaughter, Yolanis, is like RIDICULOUSLY smart. We teach her a principal and then ask questions to make sure she understood it, and she says things back to us that are like wayyyy spiritual and insightful. Its crazy haha. They are all awesome, but ill get to more on that when I talk about Saturday. After another lesson with them, we went to visit Hermana Marta, one of our recent converts. She was one of the people baptized my first week here. She is the one with the super big stomach in the group picture I sent that first week. I don’t know if you can tell, but shes like way swollen because she has like diabetes or something, im not exactly sure. But anyways, we went to visit her and she was just laying in bed, when usually shes outside sitting in this chair that she is ALWAYS in. Apparently, the night before she had just been in HORRIBLE pain from the swelling. She cant walk or anything, so she just sits around all day. 

We offered to give her a blessing and she accepted, so we did that while she way laying in bed which was kind of interesting. Afterwards, she wanted to sit up and talk with us, but she like couldn’t do it on her own. We and her husband had to help her up and get her situated because she like physically couldn’t do it. After we got her up, she just started sobbing asking why God would let this happen to her and a bunch of other stuff. It was suuuper sad. Im glad Zura was there to handle it because I don’t exactly have enough Spanish to comfort her with something like that yet haha. We calmed her down and told her we would come back again to check up on her. Moving on. Thursday. Thursday was kind of interesting because we woke up and the power was off. Really, its not like we have computers or phones to charge, so not having power wouldn’t seem like a big deal, but it is. We each have personal fans and we couldn’t use them so it was SO hot. We asked our neighbor if he had power, and he said no and that he had heard on the radio yesterday that they were going to turn the power off until 6. With no explanation. Who does that? Not cool. We had plans that day to go visit a member who is wayyy far away from us, so we were happy to leave the house and head over there. We made it to the members house and visited with them for a little bit, and then the husband took us to a family near by that we are going to start teaching. This guy has a son who joined a church and went on a mission, but he has never done anything to learn about the church. So we’ll see where that goes. As we were leaving, we saw these 2 geese, which was really weird to see. I always see chickens and roosters, but this was a first. As we were walking by and I was marveling at their majestic beauty, this demon goose bows its head really low, starts honking really violently, and begins chasing me.Talk about random. I didn’t do anything to provoke it other than compliment its divine nature, and it started chasing me. But it wasn’t like a legit chase, it kind of just waddled behind me trying to threaten me. It was really weird. I was doing a little fast walk away as it was “chasing” me and just kept telling Elder Zura “Im being chased by a goose! Im being chased by a goose! I have something good to write home about for today.” Haha. I also found out that the word “goose” is an inherently  funny word. Goose. Try it out. Goose. English class was that night too. I seriously love teaching it. It is so funny listening to people try to speak English, because I get an insight as to what I sound like when I speak Spanish to them haha. We have like 3 new investigators from it, 2 of which are probably getting baptized by the end of the month. So it was a success! On to Saturday. We baptized Maria Isabel and Yolanis Saturday! Yolanis chose me to baptize her, so that was pretty cool. Reina, the other granddaughter, didn’t get baptized because she said she wasn’t ready like at the last minute, so we will see what happens with her. But the other two did and it was awesome. Elder Zura baptized Maria Isabel, which was almost a catastrophe haha. She is kind of a bigger lady, so Elder Zura wanted me in the font on the other side of her to help her back up if he couldn’t do it himself. So we get in and do the baptism, but right as Elder Zura is like dipping her back in to the water she lets go of his arm that she is supposed to hold on to that she can help pull herself back up, and leaves all the work to me and Elder Zura. She turned in to like dead weight and we both had to use all our strength to prop her back up because she just went limp. It was so crazy hahaha. We somehow got it and it all worked out, but it was definitely an interesting experience haha. That night we went and visited a man named Melvin. He has been meeting with missionaries for months but always gets dropped because he wont commit to anything. Elder Zura and I recently started teaching him again and we decided to commit him to be baptized. I explained my conversion story and then asked him if he would be baptized, and he said yes! We were both shocked because he never has before. This doesn’t mean he will for sure go through with it, but there is a good chance. When he heard that I was a convert, his face like lit up and he was like “really? How did you know you wanted to be baptized?” So its cool that after all this time he has finally committed to it. That was pretty much it for Saturday. On to Sunday. After Church, we went to visit Hermana Marta again. While we were there, like 6 sisters from the ward showed up with hymn books to sing to her and asked us to join. NO ONE here can sing. Seriously. So it was kind of rough with them, but we did it haha. It was funny because we sang Nearer My God to Thee and they all just stopped so they could listen to Zura and me. They thought we were just soooo good. It was funny haha. We went to go have a lesson with Mileidi, the guiper from last week, but she wasn’t there. Only her crazy old man dad. So we just talked with him for a bit, and he was crazy as ever. He calls us Elder Flacco and Elder Gordito. Which is just Elder Skinny and Elder Fat. So rude haha. After that, we were walking to another appointment and walked by the bishops house and saw his wife like peeling corn, I don’t really know how to describe it. She just has like a million pieces of corn, and uses her thumbs to push off all the kernels into a giant bucket. We offered to help, so we did that for like 20 minutes. I found my calling in life. Im SO good at it. I did 2 with one hand in the time it took Zura to do 1 with both hands. It was nuts haha. Not much really happened the rest of the night worth mentioning. However, today (Monday) we got to have lunch at the Mission President’s house because we were Zona Celestial this month! That just means we were the zone with the most baptisms, and Zura and I had the most baptisms in the zone, so that was pretty cool. Anyways, that’s pretty much it for the week. Twas a swell week. Now on to the random stuff. 1. The bishop of my ward is like a pioneer. He was the first person baptized in all of our area. Its pretty crazy actually. 2. I learned the words to the Macarena song. So awesome. Who knew there were actually words? I just mumbled until you scream Macarena haha. 3. The Spanish to English translation is so weird on some things. For example, “Que onda?” means like “whats up?” but it actually means “What wave?” And then allll the kids say  “Que pedo?” which is like whats up too, but pedo means fart, so they are saying “what fart?” Its seriously so weird haha. 4. There was one of those lizards that can run on water in our yards.I think that’s what it was. I got a picture of it. For those of you who have seen Land Before Time, tell me it doesn’t look EXACTLY like Ducky from that movie. I swear it does haha. Well, that’s pretty much all I’ve got. This email was pretty sporadic, but I guess they all are actually haha. Stay classy world!
Elder Shuga

BACK PORCH PHARMACY, RETIRED CHIROPRACTOR

Buenas Dias!

Ok, so this week I made sure to write down everything I wanted to talk about for each day so that I wouldn’t forget about it when I sat down at the computer haha. Ill just get right to it then! So Mondays are usually uneventful because its pday. But this Monday was a little different because Elder Zura was super sick with something, but we didn’t know what. So usually every Monday, we go back to the house around 5 and start doing missionary work again at 6, but Zura was too sick to leave, so we stayed inside all night. He was like dying in his bed and I was just sitting there studying. It was kind of awkward actually haha. There really wasn’t much we could do other than have him sleep, so that’s what he did. And that’s about it for Monday! On to Tuesday. Zura said he was feeling good enough to go out, so that’s what we did. But first, he wanted to get some medicine. Let me give you a little background. He thought that he had what is called “Dengue” (pronounced “dangy). It is basically just a fever and really bad body aches that you get after getting stung by a mosquito who carries it. It isn’t life threatening or anything, its just miserable. So he wanted to go to this pharmacy before we went out, but he didn’t want to walk, so we called a mototaxi to come pick us up at our house. The mototaxi gets there and says “Hey, there is a snake in your front yard.” Wonderful. Just what I needed to deal with. Serpents and sick companions haha. But luckily, the guy was all for the opportunity to kill a snake, so he said to let him in and he’ll kill it, so that was cool. We let him in, he goes behind the house to find his weapon of choice, and I keep an eye on the snake so we don’t lose it. All of the sudden, this guy comes out from behind our wall with this giant tree branch and goes off on this snake like it killed his family. The snake starts like having a seizure and disappears. Legit disappears. We saw it go into this box thing, so we searched it and it was no where to be found. We looked for a good 10 minutes and it was seriously gone. So somewhere on our property is a half dead, very angry snake. So that’s cool! After all that happened, we had the guy drive to the “Pharmacy”. This was my first experience with these “Pharmacies”. I put it in quotes because it is just someone’s back porch gated off so it looks like a store front and little packs of medicine everywhere. Zura got some stuff called “Denguini” (pronounced “dangyni”) and we went on our way. I personally wouldn’t take that route for medical attention, but hey, to each his own. He took it and he was like totally fine in an hour, so I cant really hate on it haha. It was actually pretty crazy. So we continued on with the day and our lessons, and I started to have this pain in my chest. It got to a point where it was so ridiculously bad that it like hurt to walk every time I took a step. I thought about taking the miracle Denguini drug, but I came to my senses and didn’t haha. We had to end the night early seeing as its kind of hard to missionary work when half of the companionship cant breathe without pain. Who knew. We were falling apart health wise this week haha. We wake up the next morning (Wednesday) and I feel a wee bit better, but the pain was still miserable. We decided that we would go out after lunch instead of in the morning like we usually do so I could take more time to rest. Random side note: We usually keep the doors open during the day to let the breeze run through the house, and while I was lying in bed this bird flew in and was FREAKING out. It was so funny though because neither of us did anything about it, we just accepted the fact that it was there and let it figure out how to get out. Pretty random haha. Anyways, we went out after lunch and I just decided to deal with the pain. We had a lesson with this a reference from our ward mission leader. We got to her house, which was wayyyy far away, and there was only this old man there. He let us in his house and said the woman we were looking for, his daughter, was in her room and we could just wait for her. We talked to him for a little bit and he was CRAZY. He was just a crazy old grandpa. He was seriously so funny, but crazy nonetheless. He kept telling me how I am going to find a girl here and marry her and not want to go back to the states. I kept telling him that isn’t why I am in Honduras and he would just go “Oh. Yeah. But you’ll probably find a girl here and get married and not want to go home”. He didn’t seem to understand haha. The woman FINALLY came out of her room and started talking with all of us. I don’t know if it runs in the family or something, but SHE started saying how I’m going to marry HER and not want to go back to the states. I couldn’t escape it haha. She was like half kidding, half serious, but we were able to move on and teach haha. She is actually really cool and super receptive, so it was awesome. We had dinner and like right after Elder Zura just started sweating like a pig. He looked like he was going to die and kept gagging. I told you, we were falling apart haha. He seriously could like barely stand. We ran in to some members that we planned to meet up with later that night and he was telling them that he was going to have to cancel because we were both sick. The whole time he was like “Hey we are really-gaaag- sorry but we are bo-gaaaaag-th feeling sick so could we-gaaaaag- come back another night?” And they were all just like “Yeaahhh that would probably be best” hahaha. It was like pathetically hilarious. So we get back to the house, and start shutting down for the night. I go to take a shower and there is this gigantic cockroach in the bathroom. Turns out, those things are pretty hard to kill. So I am in the bathroom trying to stomp on it, trying to crush it with whatever I can find, things are falling over, my chest is killing me, and I can only imagine what Zura is thinking on the other side of the door hahaha. He finally asks whats going on and I’m like “Oh don’t worry, Im just in the war of my life, don’t mind me.” This really isn’t that great of a story, but it made me laugh. The next day, Thursday, we were having a Multi-Zone Conference and the president was going to be there with the AP’s, so we could just drive back to SPS with them. The conference was actually really cool. They just talked about teaching techniques and what not, and then President Veirs taught about the anatomical implications of Christ’s crucifixion. It was SUPER interesting. Everyone should research it. The amount of physical pain, not even counting spiritual pain, He suffered is like unimaginable. Look into it. Anyways, after it was over, everyone lined up at one of the pews and I didn’t really know why. It turns out, President Veirs is a retired chiropractor, so after every conference like this he adjusts any missionary who wants it. It is SO funny. People just sit down, he asks them what hurts, puts them in to a position, everyone gets silent, he does his thing, there is a crazy loud cracking noise, and all the missionaries go “OOOOOOO!!!!” Its awesome haha. I did it and it felt suuuper good.We head back to our area just in time to make it to our English class. We had like 25 people show up, and a bunch of them weren’t members. It was actually really fun. Zura didn’t do like any of the teaching for whatever reason, so I taught like the whole thing. It was fun being the only one who knows the language instead of the only one who DOESN’T know the language for a change haha. It went really well and we got the names and numbers of all the nonmembers that came, so we have been visiting them this past week and will continue this week too. On to Friday. It rained! I love love loveeee when it rains here because the temperature drops like 20 degrees. My alarm clock tells the temperature and its usually like 90 in our house at night, and when it rains it has gotten as low as 68. Its heaven. Anyways, it rained, and it was awesome. Something funny about the weather here is that when it rains, alllllll the gringos break out their boots that they thought they would never get to use. It is hilarious. The Latino missionaries all make fun of us for it, but we don’t care because boots are awesome haha. So I think I said last week that Marcos and Lidia were going to married and baptized on Tuesday, but it actually got pushed to Friday. So here we are, the big day, and we cannot get a hold of them. We called them in the morning to make sure they would be ready at 3 when we were supposed to pick them up, but they were nowhere to be found. We tried EVERYTHING and could not get a hold of them. It got to a point where we just had to cancel the travel plans and everything because we just could not get in contact with them. They weren’t at home, they weren’t answering their phone, nothing. We just had to continue on with the day and make other plans. We decided to call them one last time before we left for the day and they answered, saying that they didn’t want to do it. WHAT. Ridiculous. We had jumped through hoops for them to make this work and they are backing out AGAIN. We told them we were going to come over and talk about it. Zura and I talked about it beforehand and decided that we are going to give them one more week, and if they back out again, we are going to have to drop them. They have been meeting with missionaries on and off for months, and this is the closest they have come to being baptized. But we have had 3 baptismal dates for them since I have been here and they backed out of all of them. So we go over there to see whats up, and apparently someone had told them that Mormon weddings aren’t legit. What? That doesn’t even make sense. They weren’t even referring to like temple marriages, they were saying that the lawyer we use to legally wed people isn’t legit. It didn’t make any sense, but they believed it. So we laid down the line and told them what was up, so we will see what happens next week. It was definitely a bummer because we were way excited, but there wasn’t much we could do. That kind of put a damper on the rest of the day, but we carried on. That night when we got home, there was this giant spider chilling on the wall. Right when I tried to kill it, it scurried up in to the ceiling somehow. So now it is just up there. Waiting for the perfect time to resurface. Then, after that, we found a SCORPION. So let’s review. We have had a bird, a snake, a cockroach, a giant spider, and now a scorpion in our house. Ridiculous. We dealt with it the only way either of us knew how. Fire. We sprayed it with bug spray and torched it. It was quite intense. We were screaming, fire was burning, the scorpion was squirming, it was chaos. I kept yelling “Tell your friends!!!!” in hopes that we would send a message to the others. I think it did, because we haven’t seen one since. Even though its only been like 3 days haha. Moving on to Saturday. Jeeze this is getting long haha. Ok so Saturday the great weather continued, I continued to wear my boots, and we were back to full health. All was well. It was a good day. We went back to the house of the crazy old man and the guiper to teach, and it went really well. The whole family was there, so we were sitting on the porch teaching the restoration, and they were all like teaching themselves and answering all the questions perfectly. They are getting baptized. Mark my words. While we were teaching, this giant bull comes waltzing on in to their property, crawling under the barbed wire fence. Nobody really did anything because it wasn’t attacking, but the 5 dogs that were there FREAKED OUT. They all took off in a 100 Yard Dash like they wanted to demolish it or something. It was so funny though because the bull didn’t even budge. Just by the look on his face you could tell he’s like “Im a starving bull. Living in Honduras. I’ve got enough drama in my life right now.” So he just continued eating. The dogs were too scared to ACTUALLY attack, so they just barked, and all the people on the porch and Elder Zura just laughed. The whole time I was just sitting there like “Where. Am. I.” hahaha. The weirdest most random stuff happens, and no one thinks twice about it. That night, we had plans to go to a colony called Las Minas to visit a recent convert. Lets just say some not so good stuff has happened there recently, so I wasn’t a big fan of going there, but when we were planning the night before, Zura said we needed to. There really wasn’t much I could do to disagree, so I just prayed we’d be safe and all would be well. Anyways, we went to the house of our ward mission leader to pick him up because he was going to come with us. While we were waiting for him to get ready, the guy we were getting ready to go visit in Las Minas walks up and is just like “Hey! Fancy seeing you here!” and we just taught him in the ward mission leaders house. Talk about answered prayers haha. He seriously showed up out of nowhere and had no idea that we would be there or that we were planning on visiting him. So crazy. The ward mission leader has a little daughter named Yoselin who is SO cute and hilarious. She is like 4 years old and is seriously so funny. She is obsessed with playing with us and loves when we visit. The funniest thing is that she calls me Hermano Lechuga. Two things. 1. People here call us Hermano, even though they are supposed to say Elder. But its whatever. 2. The “Shhh” sound in “Shuga” isn’t a thing in Spanish, so they pronounce it “Chewga”. This little girl thought everyone was saying Lechuga, which means lettuce. So she always calls me Brother Lettuce. It is so funny hahaha. Moving on to Sunday. Almost done haha. We got to church and it was pretty awesome. First of all, we never sit in pews because there is no room, which is great problem to have. Second of all, the husband of Hermana Magda who has been inactive for like all his life came to church! So sweet. Third, one of our recent converts got up to bear his testimony like a CHAMP. He is seriously so crazy hilarious. He goes up there, starts preaching like hes the bishop, and sharing scriptures like hes been doing it all his life. Then he asks his wife (the woman I baptized) to come up to the stand. He didn’t even say anything about her other than her name or have her say anything. It was so weird hahaha. She was SO shy that she started crying. It was crazy haha. Them and their whole family are so golden it is ridiculous. We love them. So this Sunday we just walked ALL over the place. We walked soooo far. One appointment we had set up was seriously like foreeeever away, and the guy wasn’t even home. That night, we had dinner at Magda’s house and then had an appointment with another lady at 8. We always have rides lined up at night, but for whatever reason it fell through. We could not get a hold of ANYONE, and we were already running late, so we had to walk. And it’s a pretty far walk. At night. In the dark. In Honduras. Not the ideal situation haha. It was so creepy. Every little noise in the dark sounds like its something that wants to kill you, when in reality its probably just a rooster or something random. The whole time we were walking in the dark, I kept thinking of this story Kim’s dad told me about walking through the group of like gang members and being really nervous or something while he was on his mission. I don’t remember all the details entirely, but I remember him making sure that he was going where he was supposed to be going, doing what he was supposed to be doing, and that if he was, he was entitled to the Lord’s protection. I went over that checklist in my head 100 times during that walk hahaha. I wanted to be totally sure that we were on the Lord’s errand, and we were, so we made it there just fine. But it was still creepy. Even for a super brave manly man like me. So that was pretty much the end of the week right there. Finally, its time for the random stuff that doesn’t fit anywhere! 1. The guy who owns our house is saying he needs it back in 6 months. When I first got here, we were in another house, but we were only there for 3 days because THAT land lord needed the house back. Now THIS land lord is saying he needs this house back. Ridiculous. And he has a Hitler mustache. Dictating that he wants our house back and has the same mustache…Coincidence? I think not. 2. Dogs here either love us or hate us. One night, we had a mototaxi drive us to an appointment. The street we have to take is FULL of dogs that are all cool with us. But this mototaxi driver decided it would be funny to try to scare the dogs and almost hit them all. So on our walk back down the street after the appointment, the dogs turned on us. There were probably 20 dogs, all barking at us like they knew exactly who we came with, the evil mototaxi driver. They were like encircling us. It was super sketchy haha. We picked up rocks to arm ourselves, and they backed off, but still kept barking. It was notttt cool. So now we have to take a different road because these dogs have a vendetta against us. Lame. 3. Im tall here. Im average in America, but pretty tall here. People don’t have washers and dryers, so they dry on clotheslines. I have been literally clotheslined like a million times.  These people just walk right under them because they put them just high enough so that they can, but I never see them and they almost cut my head off like every time haha. 4. The clothes here are really random. You know how you donate clothes to goodwill or wherever? I feel like those clothes end up here. I saw a kid wearing a Chick Fil A shirt that had the year 2005 written on it. Talk about random. There isn’t a Chick Fil A within 1000 miles to this place I don’t think haha. And everyone wears Hollister. Its weird. Anyyyyyyways, that’s about it FINALLY. Thanks for reading this if you read it all the way through. You're a champ. Well, have a good week!

Elder Shuga