Mid-Week Email

Hey Mom!

I know you send emails to me every week during the week, and I never have the ability to read them before my P-day. I don't know if you've sent and email yet, but I was just thinking about you today and decided to write an email. You'll likely see this a short while before we talk, but I always appreciate seeing your emails, so I can see you appreciating mine.  

Today is Honduran Independance day (Sept 15th) and so far it's been ... underwhelming.  I've heard lots of things about today, and about how crazy it is with everyone celebrating, but I have not seen any celebrations happening.  I hear that there is some sort of festival going on in Las Vegas, but we can't go into the town without permission from our district leader, and I doubt he would give permission to "Spectate celebrations".  Either way, I have high hopes that I can see lots of fireworks from my home this evening.  

I've heard interesting things about these fireworks, that they are more bomb, and less a show.  I'm kinda excited to see these bombs look in the night. Around holidays in the USA there are often celebrations happening a few days before and a few days after the holiday, but here they seem to be reserving it all for the holiday itself. I have not seen or heard a single firework yet, and I'm starting to get worried.

Yesterday was a little rough emotionally for me. I just wasn't really feeling capable of teaching, and District Council didn't help. We were trying to teach a short lesson and give an invitation in less than 6 minutes for some practices and I took nearly 12 minutes - that's 6 minutes for each task!  To give myself some credit, both senior missionaries took 10 minutes, but it kinda sucked to take the longest.  Additionally, we were running behind with our schedule, so my companion decided to skip a lesson, but because we were already at their house I decided to just share a short thought.  I had 5 minutes to do it, and it took 15 minutes to do the prayers, thought, q&a, and invitation. After the lesson I was proud of doing so much more than the practices in the about the same amount of time, but my companion was only seeing that I took 15 minutes, which made me feel bad.

Something I love about my companion is that he never lingers on things, so after a few minutes it was like the lesson was forgotten and he didn't bring it up again. I'm always worried after a lesson about him pointing out mistakes I made or things I messed up with his lesson, but he never does.  If he lingers on those things, he never shows it. It's kind of like one of the sayings of Bishop Anderson - "What goes on in the game, stays in the game. It's forgotten once the game is over."  I know where I can improve, and we work on those things during our studies. Out in the field, we don't linger on mistakes - because we need to be unified out in the field, and criticism would hurt that unity.

Today has been a little better (actually, much better, just not perfect) and I'm feeling a little bit more confident.  I think it helps that today is a holiday, and that we have some meetings planned with some people I'm comfortable talking with.  

We have an investigator (his history is complicated, I'll talk more about it later) who is going to be baptized in a week, and we need to teach him every lesson in that shot period of time.  Because of the large number of topics we have to talk about, and because we have a busy schedule and little time to teach, we have been practicing speed-running all of lesson one.  Our goal is to teach all 7 points in less than 5 minutes, and so far neither of us have succeeded (though we are close).  It makes me feel good that we are both struggling to cut down our lessons, because there is so much we can talk about, but we are only trying to give the most basic 2-3 points about each topic.  We will likely teach all those points in about 7 minutes during the real thing, but that should be fine.

Let's talk about the investigator. Victor Manuel has practically been a member, always coming to church. About 30 years ago he was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, but because the ward has no record of him, and we can't find sufficient data to prove his baptism (He needs a date, a name of the baptiser, and something else I don't remember.  He has a date, but no names, and no photos to prove it happened).  Because he doesn't have the records, he is technically not a member and needs to be baptized again.  He already has the lessons, knows the bonus stuff (D&C and Pearl of Great Price), and participates a lot, so we just need to do the required task of doing it all over again. We are speed running it because we want him to be able to get baptized (again) and to be able to recieve the priesthood and go to the temple ASAP. It's also something that he wants, so we are trying to help him with that.

He is one of the 6 baptisms we have planned for the next month (when I say we, I mean for the whole district, not just my companion and I - we have 3 baptisms planned) and we're trying hard to make sure they are ready for it.

After proselyting, I'm continuing this email.

For better or worse, our meeting with the investigator fell through, but that doesn't mean that we did nothing today.  We spent basically all of today inviting people to participate in the movie night activity we have planned for tomorrow. We spent our companion study planning how we can tie in a spiritual thought with our invitation, and we themed almost all of our lessons on the topic of miracles, because we will watch 17 Miracles tomorrow.  I'm excited to see the movie. I'm pretty sure I've already seen it, but now I will watch it in Spanish (and not understand most of it)!

Today is better, and I think what I'm learning is that each day is it's own adventure, and I can go from low energy to high energy and visa versa overnight. I'm going to try to focus on growing my relationship with God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost, because I firmly believe that I cannot survive my mission without them.  Similar to Peter on the water, starting to sink, calling out to Jesus, I feel like I need him to stay afloat for this time.  I could keep on talking forever.  

I'm so grateful for the progress I've had so far. I'm writing this on Friday and tomorrow I will have 75 days on my mission, and 30 days in Honduras. On Sunday I will hit one month on my mission. On Tuesday I will celebrate Katherine's birthday (though I cannot call to say happy birthday, I may write an email to her and have it be a timed send for her b-day).  I still have a lot of time left, but I am already so close to 100 days in, and I have so many small events to look forward to, like holidays, b-days, missionary events, etc.

Maybe by day 200 I will feel confident with my teaching ability, and Spanish speaking, but for now I will try to have patience and to take each day one at a time.

I think I've spent enough time talking about myself now, and I can certainly keep talking forever (though I don't have time to write forever), so I'm going to ask a few questions right now, maybe some you can answer during our phone call.

Who is your favorite kid that you are teaching? You are teaching in 2nd grade? Is that right?  How often do you run into Shannah? Marley and Brody? Sra. Duran?  Your friend who sent an email to me, does she speak only Spanish? How much English does she know?  

How has your scripture study been going? Have you liked 3 Nephi 11-29? What other scriptures/GC talks have you read?  What are you looking forward to doing in your life? Who is your favorite general authority? I'm split between Russell M. Nelson and Jeffrey R. Holland as my favorites (but keep in mind that they are all amazing).

I'm so glad to write this. Writing this is helping me emotionally, and I hope reading this will bring you joy as well. I'm so excited to see you again, it's definentally one of my favorite parts of the week, and it's one of my goals to never stop keeping in contact with you, in or out of my mission.

Thank you so much for your support! Knowing you are praying for me gives me confidence, and please know that I am praying for you and the rest of my family as well!

 - (Élder) Mason Grant