Called of God

  Elder Valdovinos and I enjoying the swings Hello everybody! This week it has rained a lot. I really miss my umbrella that I left in the mission office. We didn't have any water last night. Hopefully, it'll come back on tonight because we don't have a lot left. It came back for a little this morning, but that didn't last long and was very dirty. We are kind of starting over in this area. We've found out for sure that the other elders before us were only focused on big numbers and not on the names behind them. There were so many people that had only been taught once, and never followed up on. They also would stop teaching recent converts, who become inactive if not supported. If you are a missionary reading this, or going to serve a mission: don't do that. What good will it be to you if you baptize a thousand, but none of them have been really converted? What if you yourself are not converted? Aside from that, we have found a good group of people who have some r...

  Welp. It is probably not the best way to start this email, but the water situation has been less than ideal this week. I'll get it out of the way and say that we didn't have running water for four days. We're supposed to get it every night. The pila was running very low.  Luckily we have water now. It also goes without saying: this is very late. P-day was very busy and I didn't get to write it until now. Élder Valdovinos said it would be okay to send my email late this time because of the circumstances. Anyway, the church leaders here are awesome (and the members are too)! They have been very helpful with teaching and planning. We were able to visit Victor Manuel with President Troches and with Hermano Hinmer (President of Elders Quorum and Ward Mission Leader). We had very good, powerful lessons. It's just too bad that Hermano Hinmer talks too much. Anyway, we've got a couple of people that seem to be learning and progressing! They ask really good, meaningful...

 So it turns out I don't know what "Emergency Transfer" means. I thought that they happen when normal transfers are changed but just to a place that wasn't planned. An actual Emergency Transfer is when I find out that my companion is going home right away, and I have to learn to direct the area I've had with less than two weeks in. We found out on Wednesday night that Elder Sanchez, my companion, was going to go home. Having my companion go home was stressful, and I was really worried about leading this area when there is so much I don't know. I'm not going to lie, there were times when I really wasn't sure I would make it this week, and I wondered if I should go home, too. But I've just stuck it through, and now I feel a lot better. There is a lot of value in "weathering the storm." We thought Elder Sanchez was going to stay here until Tuesday (tomorrow), but then it got moved up to last Saturday early morning. Thursday we worked like no...

I've started counting weird, interesting, or ignorant things I've heard people say since I've been here: *Calling me Chinese (they say that because they think my eyes are small):  17 times *Saying I look Honduran (I don't even know why):  2 times *Being confused about being baptized when they already were: 3 (that I counted) *Completely disregarding all the examples of physical temples in the New and Old Testament: 3 *Getting catcalls: 1 (Hopefully that last one doesn't go up.) Tuesday we had our mission coordination meeting in the chapel. More than half the people that were supposed to be there weren't (including the sister missionaries because the lady they were visiting wouldn't let them leave), so half of the meeting was the mission work coordinator telling me everything that I already knew about being in charge of the area when my comp (Elder Sanchez) leaves. I did get to practice the piano and talk to another member about music though. Wednesday we spe...