The Most BORING Holiday Ever.

Hey Friends!!!

I may have mentioned that we got water back last week ... well I may have lost it again (Sorry not sorry). Even though the pipe to our house is fixed, a different part of the plumbing is now broken, and the tanks that supply water to our house has run dry. In the morning, after the rain we have some water to flush the toilets and wash our hands, but not enough to shower, which is a little rough. 

Some weeks I struggle to think of a suitable name for my weekly email, and other weeks I have to pick between many cool names, hopefully this one has piqued your interest though.

I've been becoming increasingly worse at keeping up with my email writing, so this email may be shorter than the previous one (but we'll see).

Monday - Sept 11th

I've already talked about today, but I will mention something that happened after the p-day ended.

There is a family close to our home with many children, they love to see us and we usually visit at least once a week. Every meeting with them is a new experience, some good and some bad.

Today was one of those bad days. The kids were crazy, not listening to anything we say, and became a little violent at a certain point, hitting us (for fun, of course). The walk back home after that meeting left me more exhausted than ever before, and that one lesson took up our whole proselyting time.  

Outside of that meeting, one other not-so-great thing is that a lot of the talks, music, and writings I've downloaded on the Gospel Library app were wiped away. I'm a little puzzled as to why it all deleted itself, but I believe that there is a sort of timer on downloaded content, making it delete itself after a month or two. I'm mostly okay with this, because it's not too hard to download again, but I lost the Book of Mormon and the Bible and couldn't read either for a day (on my phone, at least. I've been using both digital and physical copies of each for my studies every day).

I downloaded a bunch of music accompaniments from the Sacred Music app, and I'm now addicted to them. Before my mission, my favorite genre's of music was Classical and Lofi. Both often don't have lyrics and consist of calming tunes and beats. These accompaniments are basically those two genres of music, and I'm loving it. If you need good music to study, I recommend finding some Lofi music (or LDS Youth Music accompaniments) to study to.

Tuesday - Sept 12th

My journal states this: "All our prayers were answered today - which is proof that God looks out for us." I don't remember which prayers we asked, but I'm glad to know that they were answered. Remember that God will answer your prayers, he is on your side.

I was tasked with teaching the Word of Wisdom to a person who will be baptized soon, and so I spent my studies researching the topic and practicing teaching it in Spanish. I think I did really well, and focusing on a single lesson really helped me understand it better. I'm going to try to do this more often during my studies.

We met with a family in Las Vegas called Familia Masariesgos (Masariesgos is their last name). They are investigators, and may end up being eternal investigators because their situation does not allow them to attend the church, which is required for baptism (and personal spiritual growth).

Anyways, for this family we taught a hands-on activity, where we read scriptures and then drew on paper according to what was taught. This is a very fun activity and one I'm sure I'll teach again a different time in my mission. 

One of our recent converts asked if we had a rubics cube, which my companion does have. When we visited to teach them (they are very active and they usually visit investigators with us, but this time we taught only them) we brought a rubics cube. I was tasked with teaching them how to solve a rubic's cube, which is difficult enough in English, and nearly impossible in Spanish. My companion was tasked with giving them a spiritual thought, which is about our ability to grow into the same glory as Jesus Christ and God through hard work, perseverance, and following the commandments we are given.

When the clouds hover overhead and lightning is seen in the distance, a sudden gust of strong wind signals the start of rain. As we were walking home we felt this gust of wind and immediately started sprinting for our home. We barely made it under our porch before it started pouring.

Wednesday - Sept 13th

I took some time to look through the bag of my big scriptures that I recieved more than 10 years ago for my baptism, and I discovered some handy booklets that talk about the gospel. One that I specifically like a lot is called True to the Faith, which talks about a ton of church concepts in detail, from Agency to Zion.

A few days ago we recieved 4 lbs of beans, but we don't know how to cook them. We asked our cook how to cook beans for ourselves, and today I decided to take the risk and try it myself.  

The process of preparing beans to eat takes between 1:30 - 3 hours. I spent 30 minutes cleaning out the beans, before putting them to a boil for 2:30 hours. After doing that I had to refrigerate the beans to cool them down, and blend them up with water. Technically, after than I need to fry the beans on a pan, and then I would have refried beans, but I didn't catch that last step and didn't do it. The outcome was very good, and I enjoyed the beans a ton, but next time I'll need to include that last step to say that I am 100% successful in cooking beans.

Because of all of that hard work, I was rewarded with more hard work - in the form of cleaning up! Before going to bed I spent time doing laundry, dishes, mopping, etc. It's not the most fun to clean, but I always feel refreshed after cleaning.

A notable lesson we had is one where Elder Miles and I read the first 15 verses of 3 Nephi 11 aloud for some investigators. These two investigators (Enrique and Mercedes) have troubles with their eyesight, and either cannot read or need to spend a lot of time staring to read even a little bit, so we decided to serve them by letting them hear the Word's of Christ, even if they can't read them.

Thursday - Sept 14th

In my journal yesterday I said that I felt like I was getting the hang of being a missionary. I think I jinxed myself because I felt nothing of the sort today. Today was a rough day for me emotionally. I felt all out of sorts and not able to fulfil my duties as a missionary. Some of my problem was probably myself, me being too hard on myself for mistakes and the like. It's hard to be positive all the time, but I think I will try to work harder and develop Christlike attributes to share with others, and with myself.

I taught a lesson by myself to a faithful member - Hermana Claros, and her husband. I'm very proud of this lesson because I had a very short period of time to give it, and I did all parts of the lesson by myself. When I say by myself though, I don't mean that my companion did nothing, I just mean that I took the initiative to do each part.

The lesson I gave took longer than we wanted (15 minutes vs. 5 minutes), but I'm proud for doing so much in such a short period of time. We had two prayers, a short message, a short Q&A session, and an invitation given in all that time, which is a lot. I don't know if you can give all of those in 5 minutes, it's a lot to do in such a short period of time.

Before I went to bed the power went out, but I couldn't remember which lights were left on and I didn't want to wake up in the middle of the night to lights shining in my face. I couldn't do anything about the power, but I prayed to God to bring it back, if only for a minute, so I could turn off all the lights for the night. Almost right after my prayer, the power came back for one minute, enough time to turn all the lights off, before going out for the rest of the night.  

This is a small thing, but a special thing for me because God answered my prayer, and I know that he can answer your prayers too. 

Friday - Sept 15th

Honduran Independence day!!! I've been looking forward to this day all week! Every day I've been hearing about the celebrations that happens, the food that is eaten, the fireworks that are launched, etc. For the past month, I've heard the marching band in the neighboring school practice every day, all day. Now I get to see them perform for real!!! I'm going to be outside all day, I can't wait to see all the cool stuff that will happen today.

Later that day

Okay... so no parades happened, no families had parties, there are no special meals had today. This sucks. I was wanting to see something cool. Hopefully I can see some fireworks as it gets dark.

Right before bed

Nothing. Not even a single firework could even be heard. This is officially the lamest holiday I have ever seen. The only sort of celebration I saw the whole day was a video of a parade in San Pedro Sula on the television in a member's home. 

Honduras failed me.

This is the most BORING holiday I've ever seen.

Maybe I should be thankful that it is so boring here, San Pedro Sula is the murder capital of the world so things could certainly be much more interesting, but not necessarily in the best way.

The most interesting thing that happened today was that the Power came back, but the Water left again. My biggest struggle so far in this mission seems to be the infrastructure. Roads, electricity, and water all seem to be failing/fighting against me right now.

We have a movie night activity planned for tomorrow, so we spent all day inviting everyone to participate. We'll see how it all work's out tomorrow.

During our studies we practiced teaching a whole lesson (all 7-8 talking points) in 5 minutes, which is much easier said than done. Luckily for my pride, neither of us was successful today, though we both got close. Doing this practice is helping me to understand how each point relates to the other, and how each point can transition to the next.

Saturday - Sept 16th

Today was the day of the movie night!!! We watched 17 Miracles, but it was just a miracle getting to the chapel. An hour before the activity was scheduled to start, we were informed that the bishop forgot to tell the bus driver that we needed to be picked up, so we called to let them know, and prayed that they would be able to change their schedule to drive us and the members over. Luckily, the bus came (it came a little late, but all that matters is that it came in the first place) and we got to the chapel just in time for the movie.  

It was a miracle that we got the movie working. The video worked fine and was on the projector, but we couldn't get the audio to work. Our solution was to play the video on two devices simultaneously, and have one of them play the audio into the microphone on the pulpit. This worked fine, with only a second or two offset between the two, but a handleful of times an ad came up or a phone call came, causing us to have to realign the audio and video together.

It was a miracle that I even understood the movie. I have seen it once or twice before in English, but now I was watching it in Spanish. It was a little funny how the mouths didn't line up with the words, but what was most funny was that they didn't translate any music to Spanish, so English songs were being played in the middle of a Spanish movie. 

I think I am slowly improving with my Spanish skills, because a few days ago (last week, I think) an investigator told a joke while we were talking to them, and I absolutely cracked up hearing it. While watching the movie today, I got a little emotional. Somehow I'm understanding things enough to start being emotionally affected by them. I'm so excited for this as now I can start enjoying jokes and stories as they are told.

Sunday - Sept 17th

Today was a very sleepy day for me. From the moment I woke up to the moment I finally went to sleep, I was on the brink of dozing off. Annoyingly, I also had a headache for a good part of the day as well.  

Today I got to try the second of three big Honduran dishes today. The big three are

1. Baleadas

2. Pollo Chuco (translates to Filthy Chicken)

3. Honduran Tamales

(I just thought of a fourth: Tortillas con Quesillo)

I've already had Baleadas, and while Pollo Chuco is very popular, it is not cooked very often here in Mochito. Honduran Tamales is almost exclusively a Christmas-time dish, and something I've heard I will be served a LOT of in December.

I've been looking forward to trying Pollo Chuco for a while, so I'm sorry to say that I'm still looking forward to that moment. Today I was offered some Honduran Tamale, and eager to try it I accepted. Honduran Tamales are pretty close to regular tamales, but are much sweeter than you would expect a normal tamale. Think of it like a sweet tamale. I actually really like it, and now I can mark off Baleadas and Honduran Tamales from my list.

Three families stood out from our lessons today, and the two big relations between those three families are many children and hymn books. For each of those three families we taught a bunch of children (and their parents), and we sang at least one hymn together. I can now testify of the power of music in bringing the spirit, because the lessons were so much more spiritual with the hymns we sung. I love church hymns, my favorite is hymn #105: Master the Tempest is Raging. In Spanish this hymn is #54: Paz, Calmense (which translates to Peace, Be Still. A better title in my opinion). If you can, try to sing more hymns, it will help.

Monday - Sept 18th

Another day to recharge. My companion has been turning off the alarm on p-day's recently, meaning I end up waking up a little bit later than I want. Luckily, the sun is a constant alarm, so I woke up at 6:40 instead of 6:30. 

We went to Las Vegas early today to get a head start on our day. We did the usual and got Baleadas and went shopping. The other missionaries didn't accompany us to these tasks though because Elder Porter was sick yesterday and is still recovering today. They did accompany us to the chapel though, where I was able to troubleshoot the Google Photos trouble that I have been having these past few weeks. 

Today, before heading back home, we got haircuts to prepare for this next transfer. Neither of us are transfering, but we will be visiting San Pedro Sula next p-day for some special celebrations. You see, in our zone, every single companionship managed to have at least one baptism this past transfer. Because of that, we will have a special p-day in the Mission President's apartment with games, food, and a movie. I may not send out an email next week because of this party, but I'll try to write my email during my free time after proselyting in the evenings on Saturday and Sunday. 

Getting haircuts was interesting because when we entered, the barber greeted us and put on English music for us gringo's. It was refreshing to hear familiar songs by Coldplay and Red Hot Chilli Peppers and other artists that I cannot name. When I sat down to get my haircut, I told the lady "One inch on top, a number 2 on the sides", and I prayed she would understand enough. A few times during the cut she would ask me a question, I would understand none of it, and I would say "Sí" (Yes) and pray she didn't ask to shave off all of my hair. In the end, the cut turned out amazing and I feel a little like a new man.

Sadly, this email will not come out on time because I didn't spend enough time focusing on this email, instead I wrote a bunch of personal emails to friends and family. For the rest of you, I'm sorry, you are seeing this one week late. In fact, I'm finishing off this email here at 10pm, right before going to bed.

Like normal, my family is doing well, which makes me very happy. My siblings are now far enough into school that they are starting to have fun club activities and field trips. Those that have jobs are progressing in them, though my dad is going to be switching jobs soon. I hope that works out for him and that they can all stay happy.

After p-day time ended, we visited Bryan Castellanos (Recent convert) and his family. They recently bought a new horse and we got to watch it be branded with the family name (A letter B for Benitez, which is the last name of the father). We're trying hard to help Marcos Castellanos, the younger brother of Bryan to be baptized, but first he must desire it, and we can't force him to want to be baptized. We have hope for him, but we need to figure out how to speak to his heart.

We ran into a Catholic lady on the streets who has a few nieces and nephews who are serving LDS missions right now. We were able to answer a few of her questions and leave behind a pamphlet to read. Maybe the examples of her family will leave her curious enough to hear more, but only time will tell.

I'm realizing that I'm starting to write more and more, so I'm going to try to stop now, but first I need to talk about the Burros.

Burros is Honduran slang for Botas, which is Spanish for Boots. A few days ago our landlady, and our neighbor, asked for a pair of boots to borrow. I offered my boots to them, and then an hour later my companion mentioned that they wanted us to give them boots. The way he said it made me think that they wanted to keep my new boots, which made me very worried.

A few days later, they came back with the boots and with donuts. I don't know what they needed the boots for, but I am so glad they only intended to borrow them. My boots are the best way to keep my feet dry during the storms, because my other shoes have holes to allow for sweat to evaporate faster. Most days I have to choose between dry feet and comfortable feet, and I think I value dry feet more than comfortable feet.

Spanish Word(s) of the Week

I would have done Burro, but I think I used that one up.

Churro is Honduran slang for chip. I'm sorry for all of you who imagined Mexican churros, here in Honduras Cheetos and Doritos are churros.

This word drives me a little insane, but if you want to say that they experienced joy, you need to say that they "Experimentan gozo". In Spanish the noun and verb for experiences is very different.

An experience = Una experiencia

To experience = Experimentar

It's like they went from experience to expirement joy, which doesn't make sense in my English brain. Sadly though, experiencar is not a valid verb in Spanish, so I will have to live with experimenting joy.

Scripture Thought

Ether 12:12 - "For if there be no faith among the children of men God can do no miracle among them; wherefore, he showed not himself until after their faith."

Miracles can happen in your life, but you need to have faith, and you need to show faith before you recieve that miracle. 

A good example of this is the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. In this story Jesus didn't do any work. He had his disciples open the door to the tomb, he had Lazarus get up, and he had Mary and Martha clean up their brother. They only thing Jesus did was what they could not do - bring back Lazarus from the dead. That alone is pretty cool to know, but thinking about it in the context of Ether 12:12, and you can see that Jesus needed everyone else to excercise their faith and do their part for the miracle to happen.

If you guys want some good stuff to read, I recommend reading 3 Nephi 11-29. Those are some pretty juicy chapters. If you want something shorter though, just read Ether 12. Both will bless your lives if you read prayerfully, studiously, and with faith.

I should stop here, I hope you guys are all doing well and are happy. If you are struggling, remember: God is always there for you, you just need to look for him in faith.

Check out my photos! https://photos.app.goo.gl/g2QAHn4xdMnPx4JT8

Don't forget you can email me for any reason. I won't bite! mgrant@missionary.com or reply to me here on this email.

 - Élder Grant