GARIFUNAS, ELDER LECHUGA, LIVING LIKE A KING

What up world!

Just another week of doing my missionary thing. I cant say how much I love this area enough times. Its so chill and awesome. Its great. We just did a bunch of teaching this week and looking for people to baptize for the coming month. We are teaching the sister of Mabel, the girl who got baptized last week. For anyone confused, yes there are black people here and yes they are awesome. They are called Garifunas and they came from somewhere at sometime and I know nothing about their history, all I know is that its awesome haha. Its kind of weird though because I have grown up knowing black people my entire life and never once have I met a black person who speaks spanish. Whats crazy is that these people speak spanish, and sometimes their OWN language, called Garifuna. Its so awesome and complicated. Im trying to learn it. Im going to come back trilingual, but one of the languages will be one nobody in america knows. How useful! But yeah, we are doing that. We are also teaching this one guy Mario. He is seriously SO funny. I laugh at like everything he says. The only time he is serious is when we are teaching him, but outside of that he seriously kills me. He is going to be baptized this Saturday and its going to be awesome. The whole ward loves him so its probably going to be packed. The members here are seriously so cool and they all really like me, or at least thats what they tell me to my face. Who knows for sure haha. I introduced myself during sacrament meeting last Sunday and when I told them my name, which is SO hard for everyone to pronounce, I said it was like "lechuga" or "pechuga", which means lettuce and chicken breast. They all got quite the kick out of that and allllllways remind me of how I made that joke. Every time I see a member, they are like "Hey...remember that Sunday when you said your name was like lechuga or pechuga? Good times..." And Im just like yeah, it was last week, I was there haha. Speaking of members being cool, they alwayyyys want to feed us. I dont know if I have talked about baleadas, but they are like the national food here. They are just flour tortillas folded in half with beans, cheese, and whatever kind of stuff you want like eggs for example. One day, we went to this baleada shop in our area for a little snack if you will, and they gave us the BIGGEST baleadas these american eyes have ever seen. They were seriouly like foot long tortillas. I only ate one and was so full. Anyways, a couple hours after that, we went to a members house that we had plans to eat dinner with, but she forgot we were coming and felt soooo bad. Shes like "oh I'll go get baleadas! Is three ok?" And we just assumed she was going to go the place closest to her house, which sells normal ones, so we said thats all good. Cut to her coming back with three gigantor baleadas and telling us to dig in. I could only get through 2 and Ramos only made it through 1.5. It really was a trial. She just laughed at us haha. Other than that, this week was pretty chill. My clothes are being washed in a washer now instead of outside with a washboard, and are being dried in a dryer instead of hung up on clothesline. I feel like a king. I have 2 more funny stories and then thats it. We have a cook and she gives us super good food every day, and here you just have to eat whatever they give you. For whatever reason, this week she was a big fan of giving us tomatoes. For anyone who knows anything about me, I loathe tomatoes with the white hot passion of a thousand suns. But I ate them. And they werent even that gross. And I didnt even cry. People say you change a lot on your mission, and I now have a strong testimony of that. I eat tomatoes now if Im forced to and I dont even gag. I think that makes me an adult. Or at least less of a little girl. Last funny story. There is this little 4 year old girl who is SO funny here and is always cracking me up. She is the little sister of the girl who made the One Direction comment. We were talking after church one day and she and her sister were telling me how I am like their older brother. Then the little 4 year old butts in and says "But if you ever say any bad words, Ill hit you in the mouth." What? It was so randomly hilarious. Its not like she has ever heard a bad word come out of my mouth, she was just making sure I knew the consequence if I ever decided to go rogue. It was so funny haha. Anyways, thats about it. Stay classy world!

Elder Shuga

STARS FROM GOD, WITCHCRAFT, NEW GRINGOS

What Up World,

Hello from Cerro Verde in the zone Fesitranh. This area is the bees knees. For real. Super sweet. There really isnt much to write as far as new stuff goes because I wrote last wednesday, but I will do my best. Basically, I love this area. It has been so cool and all the members are super awesome. It is a huge change for me because this area is like way rich relatively speaking, and I just came from the jungle basically. I pretty much just got here and we went right to work. We met a lot of the members and I already love them a ton. The kids here are so funny too. I dont know what it is, but kids just love me here and just want to talk talk talk talk all the time. A few of them speak english which has been hilarious too. This one girl speaks english and we were talking about America and she asked if I had ever been to Hollywood. I said no, but my old comp (Castro) was from Hollywood and she FREAKED out. She asked if he knew any "stars" and I said no, and she's like "Oh...thats ok. You are all stars from God because you are missionaries!" Like trying to make me feel better that he doesnt know any stars haha. She says the funniest stuff. The next day, she was asking me all about American music and saying everything she likes. She was listing all these artists and said One Direction, and then out of nowhere says "You couldnt be in One Direction. You are too muscular." 1. Look at my pictures, Im clearly not too muscular for anything, Im at the twig stage of my life haha. 2. It was the most random thing I have ever heard hahaha. She is awesome. We have a ton of baptisms lined up here

and had a baptism. It was the girlfriend of our ward mission leader and it was awesome. Something way funny happened there too. The ward mission leader speaks english but as a really thick accent and its sometimes hard to understand him. The day of the baptism, he asked me to tell Elder Ramos to "give a talk on the Holocaust" for the baptism. I was like what? Why would we ever talk about something like that right now? I could not figure it out so I asked him in spanish what in the world he was talking about and he was like "Holocaust...you know...espiritu santo?" He was trying to say Holy GHOST but it came out like Holocaust. Super weird haha. We pretty much spent this week just visiting with the members so I can get to know them, and we had a few lessons. On the way to one, Elder Ramos warned me that the sister of our investigator is a witch. Witchcraft is like really popular here, and Ive heard about it a ton but never encountered it. I was super pumped to go visit her and expected her to be green and wearing a black dress with a point hat. Ramos says that when they teach the investigator, the witch sister is in her room and there is smoke just coming out from under the crack of the door. Not like weed or cigarrete smoke. Witch smoke. So I went over there with my hopes as high as they could possibly be, and it wasnt anything like I thought. She was super nice and friendly and looked normal. Ironically, she was wearing a jackolantern shirt, so it is a definite possibility that she is a legit witch. But yeah, all is well here. A little about my comp now. He is from Mexico and has 19 months in the mission. It is annoying because I HAVE a much time as he has LEFT, and he never forgets to remind me of that haha. He is cool though. He doesnt speak english, so thats kind of weird for me. Im at a point now where I can speak spanish as much as I need to, so its not a big deal. But the problem is that Im so used to speaking english with my comps that I speak it to him all the time and he just looks at me with a blank stare until I realize im not speaking his language haha. Its funny. Our zone is way cool too. We have three brand spankin new gringos fresh out of the MTC and it is SO funny to me to hear them talk about the stuff they do. They freak out about all the stuff I freaked out about and now am used to. For example, they all are just blown away about how nonchalant the people breast feed here like I was, and now its just every day life haha. Its way funny because our zone is mostly latins, and they all talk to the new gringos in broken english as best as they can, but they talk to me in spanish. And if they ever cant get the gringos to understand, they ask me to come over and translate haha. Its crazy how much changes in 5 months. Anyyyyyyways, all is super cool here and Im loving life. Stay classy world! 

Elder Shuga

A FAMILIAR SITUATION, CHANGES, GOODBYES

Hola,
This mass email is going to be kind of weird, because it was a pretty crazy week and there is a ton to talk about, but I'm only going to mention a few things haha. The week was pretty chill for the most part. We are teaching a bunch of people and have a lot set up for this next coming month to be baptized. We are teaching a family that the elders in this area taught a long time ago, but had to drop because they were having problems with marriage. They have to get married to be baptized, which they are completely willing to do, but the thing is that the husband married a lady in Tegucigalpa like 30 years ago, and they have to get divorced. However, the ex wife didn't want to sign the divorce papers, so there is nothing the old elders could have done. Castro and I decided to pick them back up and try again. They were so happy to see the missionaries come to their house again because they truly wanted to get baptized, but there was nothing they could do at that time. I told them that we were going to do our best to try to get this situation worked out for them and they kept thanking me for being so willing to help. They were seriously so ridiculously grateful, it was awesome. One of the other people we are teaching is someone who I REALLY hope gets baptized. Her name is Carla and her boyfriend is a member. He brought her to church last week because he really wants to get her baptized, share the blessings he has in his life, and be married with her. The thing is though that is moving out of town this week and she is kind of having to do the whole investigating process by herself, and just have his support from far away. Sound familiar? haha. We got to teach her a little bit this week and she is seriously so cool. She straight up told us "Yeah, my boyfriend introduced me to the church. I was never baptized, but I want to be. So I just have to go to church a few more times, hear what you have to say, and know its true, right?" Uhhhh yeah, that sounds about right haha. I shared my conversion story with her and how Kim did like the exact same thing for me, and she just thought it was the bees knees. I told her that if she was having any doubts, just realize I was in her shoes like 2 years ago and now I'm the one doing the teaching. It was a really cool, really weird "full circle" moment for me. So yeah, I hope that goes through.  We found out this week that I had a change, so I had to say goodbye to all the people in my area. I was way bummed because all the people I personally baptized while I was here WERENT HOME. They are ALWAYS home and just werent here the one day I was leaving. It was way sad. I did get to say bye to a lot of members and a few recent converts, so at least I had that. It is really weird how much I have come to love these people in these short 3 months. They were all telling me how much they are going to miss me which was really nice to hear. Saying goodbye was hard, but I guess Im just going to have to get used to it haha. Im in my new area right now. Im in the area Cerro Verde in the zone Fesitranh. My companion is Elder Ramos from Mexico and doesnt speak english, so thats a first for me. Its pretty chill though. He says my spanish is way good and was shocked I had only been out 5 months. The area is WAY nice and super rich compared to my old area. People have dogs as PETS instead of just stray dogs everywhere. Crazy! Im excited for this change and hopefully I can continue to work as hard as I did with Elder Castro. Life is good right now. Stay classy!

Elder Shuga

MY MISSION LEADER IS A PIRATE, COMPANION SEPARATION ANXIETY

Whats up world,

This has been a pretty difficult week for a bunch of different reasons, but we made it to Monday. I don't really have a lot to write for this week, but I'll just get right to it, starting with Tuesday. We had interviews with President Veirs, so we drove all the way to San Pedro and were there for a good portion of the day. It was cool to sit down and talk with him because we don't ever get to interact with him otherwise. He is leaving in two changes, so he is way busy right now trying to make the mission as best as he can for the new presidents coming. Wednesday, we had district meeting which was way good. Everyone always gets reenergized after talking with president. We do role plays during meetings so we can practice different teaching techniques and what not, and I ALWAYS get asked to act as the investigator because I am a convert. Its funny. Thursday, we went to a few appointments with our ward mission leader, Hermano Gallegos. When we went back to drop him off at his house, he was way impressed with how far I've come since I have gotten here. He always makes fun of me for how timid and quiet I was when I first got here in contrast with how I am now. He's way cool. At night, we went with Magda and talked with her a little bit. I think I mentioned this already, but her husband and her younger daughter (17) aren't members. I had been talking with them and teaching a little bit, and then we just went on with the night. Magda pulled me aside and thanked me, saying that she has had missionaries coming to her house for 7 years and has never heard a testimony like mine and felt like someone has reached her husband and daughter like I did, That was pretty awesome to hear, and hopefully they will eventually get baptized. Friday we just spent teaching a ton. Castro is making me teach by myself pretty much just so I can get the practice. It is always crazy to me coming out of a lesson and realizing I just spoke a language for 30 minutes straight that I didn't speak 5 months ago. Super weird. We went and visited Hermano Gallegos later in the day and the weirdest thing happened. We show up to his house, talk for a little bit about missionary work, and then he busts out an english catalog of all these metal detectors and asks me to translate. I asked what for and he told me that he wants to create a society of people and start looking for gold. I think our ward mission leader just turned in to a pirate. I was doing everything in my power to not bust out laughing, and it was making it worse because he was being so genuine and serious about it. Thats like the most random thing I have heard in a while. I translated the stuff he wanted, but he was disappointed because he was looking for something better. He wants a metal detector that you can point at a mountain from like 2 miles away, and it will tell you where all the gold is. First of all, I dont think that exists. Second of all, if it did, someone has probably already taken advantage of it and there is no more gold left in the world. I counciled him a little bit and let him know that he probably shouldnt do it because these metal detectors are SUPER expensive, and he is going to have to find a tonnnn of stuff before he even starts making a profit. I didnt tell him this, but these things cost more than the house he lives in. He has seriously gone crazy. But thats not where it ends. He asked ME if I wanted in on the project. I politely declined seeing as I'm slightly preocupied with this whole little "2 year mission" thing I am a part of. After I declined, he didnt stop there. He asked me if my PARENTS want in on it, and asked me to write them today to see how they feel about it. So, mom, dad. If you want to get in on Gallego's Gold Rush, let me know and I'll get started on some paperwork. Moving on. Saturday we just spent the day reminding all of our investigators to come to church on Sunday. It was a pretty uneventful day, but two funny things happened. We were taking a bus to an appointment that was in SUCH a hurry for some reason and crowded as a bus can be. I had to stand, so when our stop was coming up, I just started walking. As I was scooting forward, this lady scooted forward with me and got like DIRECTLY in front of me. I was walking sideways, and she got sideways too and started like getting all up in my business. I was like WOAH lady, just go ahead, so I stopped. And then she stopped. So I was like fine, Ill go. And then she went. It was so uncomfortable. I looked back at Castro, who was sitting farther back then I was, and was like "Dude this lady is trying to grind on me" and he just told me to push forward till I got off. Following his advice, I just kept on trucking until I finally jumped off the bus. Once I was off, I looked back to find Castro, but all I saw was the bus driving away. I realized that I ran off the bus, and the driver didnt see Castro trying to get off through the sea of people, so he just took off, and I was left all alone. I could see Castro like running and screaming trying to get to the front of the bus to tell the driver to stop as it was driving away which was wayyy funny. I knew the bus was going to stop again just down the road, so I just waited and laughed as Castro got off. It was super funny. Sunday, we just did our missionary thing as we always do. The highlight of the day was probably the time I had to talk to Magda's husband. Everyone was inside and we were just sitting out back and talking about all his doubts and concerns about the church. I felt like he really got a lot out of it, and I was shocked with some of the answers I knew that I didnt realize I knew. So yeah, that was cool. Well, thats about it. I completed 5 months on Sunday, so thats nifty. Im basically almost done with my mission. Peace!

Elder Shuga

NEW MICROWAVE, HOUSE HUNTING, FRIENDS WITH THE PO-PO

Hola,
I’m just going to get right to it all I guess. Tuesday was pretty lame. We went to district meeting and did our normal thing. Oh, and every area in the mission has a microwave now, so that’s pretty cool. We are living like real kings now. But I don’t have anything to microwave, so it’s kind of pointless haha. After we lugged our giant new microwave back to our area, we went on with the rest of our day. When we left the house, we noticed that someone had painted “For Sale” with a phone number on our fence in front of our house. Not cool. We went and talked to our land lord, Santos Dias, and he’s like “Ohhhh yeah, that. Don’t worry about that, I’ll give you 15 days notice!” What a guy, right? Wrong. He is just selling our house out from under us. Not cool. So we have been house hunting this week, but there is seriously NOTHING in our area. Im just hoping I don’t have to live in a tree trunk in the jungle or something. On to Wednesday. The whole zone decided to do a super contact in our area because it’s gigantic, so everyone came over and we split up looking for new people to teach. It was pretty successful, but some of the missionaries were not very smart about it. They had to get the names, numbers, and addresses of the people, and one missionary just gave us a piece a paper that said “Roberto. Los Mangos. Casa Azul”. Los Mangos is a little colony in our area, and do you how know how many blue houses are there? A LOT. Ridiculous. So we had to deal with all that, but it worked out. Eventually. On to Thursday. We did weekly planning as a zone this week which was pretty fun. We got to eat Little Caesars and just hang out for a bit afterwards, so that’s awesome. It always weirds me out when I do American stuff here. I am so used to eating nothing but tortillas and beans, so it’s like reverse culture shot when I eat something good. After that, we went back to our area and taught one family we are really hoping to baptize. The dad is a member but has been inactive for like 7 years and the mom is Evangelical. They are way cool and receptive to us, but the mom is wayyyy Evangelical sometimes and has a lot of doubts about some stuff, mainly Joseph Smith. So we are working on that right now. On to Friday. We were eating lunch and these 2 police officers walked up and started talking to us, basically just questioning us about our missions and what not. They were way cool. Then as we were leaving, they asked where we lived and asked if we wanted a ride. We obliged, and they let us know that if we ever have problems with anybody or need a favor, they are there for us. So basically, I’m best friends with the police. No biggie. They will make an appearance later in this email. We went to go find some people that the missionaries found during the super contact. We taught this one family, and it went really well up until the end. We asked if they had any questions, and they just started pouring out every single rumor about the mormon church they have ever heard. Apparently, there is some dvd circulating around here that shows a bunch of “bad” parts of different type of religions and EVERYONE has seen it. I guess for the mormons, they say that Joseph Smith worshipped a mummy. So these people were all concerned about the fact that he worshipped a mummy. After we talked THAT craziness through, the mom tells us she was baptized in our church, but had some problems. We were shocked that she was baptized because she didn’t really know a lot, but we asked her what problems she had. She then proceeded to tell us that she was baptized in the name of Joseph Smith. Ummmm. What? Apparently, she was baptized in what she THOUGHT was our church, but it turned to be a branch of the REFORMED church in San Pedro Sula. Super weird. So yeah, that happened. She was so sure that it was our church and that we baptize people in the name of Joseph Smith, to a point where it was annoying. I was like “I was baptized and have baptized people. In two different languages. And I’ve never heard Joseph Smith mentioned during a baptism.” But of course, WE were wrong and our church worships Joseph Smith. Crazy crazy. On to Saturday. Saturday is pretty much our day of just rounding up people to go to church. We went to one family we are kiiiiind of teaching in the sense that they kind of seem like they are not in to it, and it was way awkward. We walked up to their house and their door was open, so we yelled the obligatory “Buenas!” to signal our presence, the mom of the family looks at us and goes “Oh no….” and runs away and tells the daughter to deal with us. I don’t know if the mom thought we couldn’t see her or what was going through her head when she did all that, but we were just like wellllll ok then. The daughter came out and gave us some made up story about how they are busy, so we just left. So that’s kind of a bummer. But oh well. She was the lady who had the dream about the temple and us being persecuted, and now she is all freaked out when we come up. Again, Im really hoping she isn’t a witch or something and knows something about us that we don’t know. But I guess only time will tell. That night, we called the Familia Sosa to remind them about church and the wife was like “Ohhhh well my husband just came home SUPER drunk, so I don’t think we are going to make it.” 1. What a horrible excuse. 2. We are so frustrated with them. They are so cool during lessons and everything, but if we aren’t there babying them, they start drifting away. They never keep commitments, so we are going to have to drop them probably, which really sucks. On to Sunday. We had Stake Conference, so us and our whole ward took buses to the stake center. It was way interesting. The power went on and off like 5 times during the meeting, which was super weird. The speakers just had to scream at the top of their lungs and go on with the show. All things considered though, it was pretty good. President Veirs was there and gave a talk. He is a stud. For the rest of the day, we just taught a few lessons and then had dinner with Hermana Magda. We live like a 15 minute walk in the dark away from her, so we usually try to get mototaxis to come pick us up, but no one was working. We realllyyyyy didn’t want to make the walk because Castro had his camera and a bunch of valuable stuff for some reason, so we were racking our brains trying to think of someone to drive us home. Then, brain blast, our new best friends. The Po-Po. We called them and were like “Heyyyyy guys, it’s the Mormons (The only way any one knows around here). We are over here, can you come pick us up?” It turns out they were like 20 minutes away from us, but they were just like “Yeah, stay put. We will be right there.” Cut to 20 minutes later, a cop truck is patrolling through this area with its light on looking for us, everybody looks all freaked out, and then we get in to the back with them like we are just the best of friends. It was so funny. I was just like “Don’t be alarmed folks, they’re with us. Go back to bed.” It turns out, one of the two cops went to school with Magda, so now we are like DOUBLE best friends. It’s pretty sweet. But yeah, that’s pretty much it for the week. Not much happened. Peace!