Date's Back on Track!

Me with a kitten in the yard. I did the "pspspsps" thing, and it came to me immediately! Cats are one of my favorite things about Honduras.

Hello everybody!

 I hope you are doing well. This week has been crazy once again, which might be normal, but then again I wouldn't know.

This week was busy! ! I was in charge of directing the area because my training ends in 2 weeks, which was very stressful. The bright side is that last P-day from a Facebook missionary group, I got a lot of sheet music in a Google Drive! So now I have a simplified hymn book, several songs, and several jazz fake books! I remember once my grandma gave me a fake book for practicing the piano, but I didn't use it much then because I didn't recognize any of the songs, but now that I've listened to more music I recognize lots of the songs from Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, and Louis Armstrong! It's also got a lot of music theory books, so I hope to better step up my hymn playing for the ward.

I was sick earlier this week, which was not fun. I definitely have gotten a lot better though, and I wasn't sick for very long. It was the worst on Wednesday when I was sick. We were in Santa Ana, and I was directing the area, but we did experience a miracle that day. I've not been doing very good with my planning, which was not very efficient, but, we found someone new because of it! We were going by a house, and my companion felt that we should go knock on the door or greet "Buenas" and there was an older lady there who lives alone. She is only there at that time of day because of her work, and we would not have been there at that time of day if my planning had been good! So God can work through my stupidity; which is good, because I've got loads of it.

Friday and Saturday were a hot mess. We did exchanges and I was with an Elder Estrada. I was still a little sick and from the very beginning it was crazy because he left his suitcase in the taxi. This happened after we had started the exchanges, and we were already running very late because we had waited for that taxi for a long time. Because we needed to get the suitcase back (and the driver was in another city by the time we realized it was gone), the day was a whole ordeal, and we ended up missing more than half of our planned lessons that day.

There were some good things though. On the way to the house, a man came right up in front of us on a motorcycle, and told us he wanted to change his life. He said he had lots of problems with drugs and I think he might have said something about his daughters being in the hospital. But the problem is he lives 2 hours away by motorcycle past La Cumbre in a place called San Marcos, which I haven't been able to find anywhere on Google Maps. We were able to give him a pamphlet, say a prayer with him and share our testimonies with him. I'm not sure what more I can do, but he will be in my prayers. We also found a family, where the mother had suffered a miscarriage just the day before. I wish we could have spent more time with them, but we had to leave to get Elder Estrada's suitcase. He promised the people that we would go back Sunday, which we couldn't do because we'd already had a schedule for then. He also promised to a member family that we'd do service for them, after he'd already gone. Lesson learned: don't promise things that you cannot fulfill. If I were better at Spanish, maybe I could have handled that situation better.

The next morning was also very chaotic! Elder Estrada decided it was a good idea to go to a ward activity, all the way in La Cumbre (a 40 minute walk) with Hermano Rosano in the Bishop's car. I don't know why because he:

1. Wanted to finish the exchange early.

2.  Had scheduled service for us a half hour from when we left for the ward activity.

3. There is no 3, I just wanted to make a list. But when we got there, Elder Paton called us, and was pretty mad at what we'd done. I wish I'd learned more Spanish so I knew what was going on before we'd gone all the way out there.

Playing the hymns was pretty good. They didn't change any, and Hermana Rosana decided that it was a good idea for the ward to start learning new hymns! So we're going to start doing that, and I'm very excited for that. Also Fabiola came to church so we were able to put a baptism date for her sometime this upcoming week, which I am also very excited about!

My Spiritual thought comes from Galations 5:13, it says:

"For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another."

This is a great testimony to me of our Liberty and especially our agency. We are free to choose and God has given us this choice because He wants us to serve each other with our liberty in a way like how Jesus Christ chose to serve us in the greatest service activity ever known: the Atonement of Jesus Christ.

Anyways, that's all I've got! I hope you're all doing well, and learning, because I know I am! Take care, and may God bless you!

Sincerely, Elder Cobian

Elder Estrada and I before lunch. He wanted me to take a picture of him, and I thought I might as well do a funny face.