This Is Hot Honduras ... Then Why Am I So Cold?

Hi friends!

Because Honduras is pretty close to the equator there are really only two seasons here: Summer (Hot and Dry) and Winter (Hot and Wet). This week, while places like Utah and England are transitioning into Fall, Honduras jumped from Summer to Winter.

No joke, last week was SO HOT, and this week has been SO WET.

Nonstop rainstorms have meant that clothes I've washed days ago are still wet.  Additionally, being in one of the coldest areas of my mission means that I actually feel cold here.

I don't want to feel cold! This place isn't made to combat cold temperatures, only hot temperatures. I've actually switched from shorts to pants at night because our stone home turns into a fridge at night.

Coming from Utah, a very dry place to Honduras is proving to be a challenge because I'm not comfortable with all of this ... wetness! I'm not sure I will even become fully dry during my mission, I'll just be in a state of perpetual wetness.

I can only imagine what it will be like coming back to Utah after my mission ... stepping out of the door of the airport and shriveling up because there is no moisture in the air. One nice thing about the moisture in Honduras is that I don't need lotion. That's one less worry I have here.

Anyways... that's my complaining session about this past week. A few times I could have sworn it was snowing, but then I remember that it's only snowed in Honduras 3 times in it's history.

The work of the Lord is still progressing here in Honduras. I got my companion, Elder Franco, back from the hospital this week.  He is super nice, and he is very organized. We've spent most of this week taking a look at everything - our house, our clothes, our documentation of the area, etc - and organizing it.  The missionaries before us definentally made a mess of the place (I guess I was one of the missionaries before my companionship with Elder Franco so I guess I made a mess of the place).  This week, and likely the next few weeks will be spent tidying up everything so we can work more efficiently.

Welp. I should probably get into the deets about each day. I was pretty lousy at writing in my journal this week, so hopefully each day will be much more bite-sized and easy for you to read in a short period of time.

Oct 16th - Monday

This p-day was spent with the missionaries in Las Vegas. I managed to write my entire weekly email in the morning and I listened to a pretty cool BYU talk about the Atonement with the other missionaries.  I think I made the right choice to listen to this talk because I now understand the Atonement better, and the lessons we learn from it are useful to teach other people about Jesus Christ.

At about lunch time we left the house for burgers (I got nachos instead) and then we spent the rest of our p-day in the chapel downloading talks and (approved) music, sending emails, and calling our families. At the end of our p-day we went out for ice cream, and then went proselyting.

One notable moment to talk about while out preaching the word of the Lord is that we visited some recent converts and when we started Elder Van Dyke told them we would be reading from the Book of Mormon and that we would be talking about Jesus. He then looked at Elder Porter and I and we we're like 'yep! There's a scriptures somewhere in here about Jesus'. I chose to read from Alma 36 (verses 17-20), and then Elder Van Dyke and Elder Porter continued the lesson and I realized that what they meant was that they were going to teach the Atonement based off of the talk we listened to earlier in the day.  The scripture they were going for was in Alma 34, and I chose Alma 36!  Luckily, the lessons learned in Alma 36 were related to what was trying to be taught, so it ended up being a good transition for the lesson.

Teaching about the Atonement, and not just hearing about it really helped me understand why it is important. I could try to write down why it is important here in this email, but that would take a bunch of space, so I'm just going to try to link the talk so you guys can listen to it for yourself and come to your own conclusions.

Oct 17th - Tuesday

Today was the day of the Multi-Zone Conference. The second one of my mission. Because I was now aware of how a multi-zone conference worked, I brought some extra cash so I could by some Honduras ties while in San Pedro Sula. This morning was the first morning of winter, and I was shivering during the bus ride to San Pedro Sula. There are a few reasons I was so cold this morning, and those reasons are that: 1) It was very early and the sun had not risen 2) It was raining 3) The window next to me couldn't stay closed so wind and rain was blowing onto me.

In San Pedro Sula it was still wet, but not as cold as my area, so I quickly got over it.  

During the multi-zone conference I was finally able to reunite with Elder Miles and Elder Franco. This was the first time I saw them for a week! I was also able to see my other buds from district 13G and catch them up on what's been going on in my life.  Shout-outs to Elder Evanson who managed to read my entire weekly email that week. I'm pretty sure it took him at least 30 minutes to read, so I applaud you all for your hard work in reading my emails.

At the end of the Zone Conference, all the missionaries that are leaving this next transfer cycle recieved special, custom made, mission themed soccer jersies. Following jersies we took a big multi-zone photo, then ate lunch and bought ties.

I decided to buy 3 ties to help replace the ones that are falling apart, and so I could have more variety in my options. There is a member in San Pedro Sula that makes accessories (like the ties) and sells them to the missionaries. His nickname is the Lord of the Rings, which I think is pretty funny.

Oct 18th - Wednesday

My first full day with Elder Franco since the accident. Now that we are down a companion (Elder Miles is staying in San Pedro Sula to be the next financial secretary of the mission) and we've been out of the area for a week we need to figure out how to function again. These next few weeks will definentally be a bit more difficult as we figure out how we want to lead our area, where we need to focus, and more. 

Today we had mission coordination and ward council, and we didn't have anything planned to share in terms of progress because the area had no progress over the last week. I decided to share where we were planning to focus our work, and to talk with the church leaders over ways they can work with us to improve the work in our area. I actually found it really fun to be more involved in the planning this week.  It's not so fun having to figure it all out, but it's fun to get ideas and to plan new ways to help the area.

Hopefully in the next few weeks we can get some new people to teach and progress in every part of our area, but for the moment ... we have to catch up in everything we missed this past week.

Oct 19th - Thursday

We had district council in the morning, and it was focused on Who is Jesus and his Atonement (I wonder where the idea for the atonement part came from). Nearly everyone here in Honduras is religious and christian, so that should mean that everyone knows who Jesus is ... right?  Wrong! While everyone knows the name Jesus Christ, most people don't have a clue of who he is or how he is important.  It's a little difficult to get people to care about the Church of Jesus Christ if they don't know who he is or why he's important, so the point of this district council was to practice teaching about him and showing why he is important.

After district council and morning studies we went out to preach the gospel in La 21.  We don't have many members there, and even fewer investigators, so we went there to talk to the members and contact a few new people.  When we finished in the evening nothing changed.  Most of the members were busy today, and we didn't have success running into new people, so I guess you could call today a 'hard day'. We did manage to have one meeting with a member, and it was a dinner meeting so we had two dinners today!  We had dinner with Hermana Claros (Hermana means Sister, so we ate with Sister Claros) who is the Primary President in our ward.  We decided to talk with her about some investigators we have who would be going to primary, so would be under her care.  We made a few plans to meet with them with her.

Today was a gloomy day - physically and emotionally. The perpetual cloudiness and gloom of the past few days is starting to get to me, especially because I wake up shivering each morning. I'm starting to go out with my rain jacket to help keep myself drier and warmer.  On the bright-side, I'm having a lot of fun talking to Elder Franco, so we have a pretty good friendship.

Oct 20th - Friday

In the morning we did some service for a recent convert by shucking corn for them. A bunch of corn husks we didn't touch though because they were covered in ants. DON'T MESS WITH THE ANTS HERE IN HONDURAS. It doesn't matter what kind of ant they are, they all bite, and they all hurt. I got bit three times and WOW it's not fun being bitten by them.

There stings reminds me of a plant here in Honduras. There is a plant called Chiquicaste that has small leaves with little spines on it. Touching this plant aggitates your skin for about 10 minutes and leaves a small rash. Chiquicaste is a lot like Poison Ivy, or like Stinging Nettle for those of you familiar with that plant.  The first time I discovered that plant Elder Miles smashed a leaf against my hand. It doesn't feel very good, but it doesn't last too long either.

We decided to visit an investigator that is progressing very well with the Elder's Quorum President. It was an eventful meeting, and we found out that the investigator wants to be baptized, but he needs to earn enough money to be married first.  His wife is a member (of many years) and wants to be sealed as a family, and a few months ago her husband finally started sharing similar feelings. Now they are both progressing to achieving that goal, but they still have a long way to go.

The husband, who is investigating the church ended up telling us that he wants to be bugged by us every day with text messages, phone calls, visits and more.  I think he is the first person I've met who actually wants to be bugged like that (maybe Francisco Mateo wouldn't mind with that, I'm not sure) and we're like: Sure ... I guess we could bug you everyday about church and stuff like that.

After this meeting, we visited the house of the Las Vegas missionaries with the Elders Quorum President to pick up our mattress. We weren't sure how to get the mattress from the house in Las Vegas to the house in El Mocho, but luckily the Elders Quorum President has a truck, so we used that to transport our mattress to our home.

Oct 21st - Saturday

After a full week of morning conflicts, today I was finally able to have a 'full' study sesson. It is very nice being able to focus solely on studying in the morning, and I'm going to try to focus on studying who Jesus is these next few weeks so I can better understand the people I worship. 

Today we focused our work in Las Vegas, and we successfully chatted with a lot of people ... but none of them had phone numbers or houses I guess, so we can't follow up with them on their desire to learn more. That kinda sucks because we had a lot of good conversations with people, but few to none of them will progress.

In the evening I finally decided to explore the songs my parents left me. In the CCM, we had super strict rules over what we could listen to, so I didn't check out what I had been left, but here in the mission the rules aren't so strict, so I was finally able to see what was left for me.  There are a bunch of amazing songs, and a pretty cool playlist full of talks about Joseph Smith, but not all of them I'm allowed to play.  

Sadly, I don't think Peponi by the Piano Guys nor the Saturday's Warrior soundtrack follow the mission rules, but the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sure fits in with the okay to play list.  I grabbed a bunch of songs that were okay to listen and saved them on my phone. I really need a new batch of songs to listen to because the infinite youth music is slowly starting to grate on me.  A break from that will help me enjoy it better in the future.

Because my parents grabbed those songs from old CD's they would play, listening to a bunch of the songs brought back memories of when I was young. It's nice to go back in time every once in a while and remember fun experiences that were had.

Oct 22nd - Sunday

I'm trying to better follow the commandments that we've been given, and one of those commandments is to Keep the Sabbath Day Holy. In order to do this, I decided to avoid doing laundry today, though that's what I've done in the past. Not doing laundry was a little rough today though because today was the first sunny day in a week, and I can't put up clothes to dry today!

Instead of doing laundry, I found myself with time to do more studies.  I decided to start reading Jesus the Christ by James E. Talmage, and WOW is it cool. It's a super big book, so I'm going to be reading it for a while, but I'm really impressed with how in depth it is.  I also hear that there is a project going on to make a similar book about Joseph Smith (Joseph the Prophet). I don't know if that is true or not, but it would be cool to read it one day.

On Sundays we do Weekly Planning to prepare for the next week. We recently recieved notice that we needed to switch from doing our planning on paper to doing it on our Area Book app. That's what we tried to do today, but we discovered that our Area Book app was very disorganized, often having missing or inacurrate information.  We try not to take up too much time doing weekly planning, but today we spent a lot more time than usual just trying to clean up our documentation so we could do some planning. I regret that we did not spend quite enough time proselyting as we ought have, but hopefully the cleaning up we did today will help us be faster and more well planned in the future.

We visited two recent converts - Nelson and Freddy - today, and we showed up without anything planned, but out of nowhere I found myself talking about the temples and the importance of the endowment. I'm not sure how it came up, but that was one of the lessons we teach to people, and it may have been something that they needed in the moment. For new members, they need to wait at least a year to enter the temple to recieve their endowments (and they need to be at least 18 years of age), and these new members are rapidly approaching their 1 year mark. 

Oct 23rd - Monday

A new p-day, a new day to write my email. I'm writing my email in the morning, like I did last week, so I don't have too much to report yet.

My general plans for the day are: Do Laundry. I have two weeks worth of laundry, and today is pretty sunny so my clothes should dry today. It sounds like it will be stormy the rest of the week, so I'm going to make use of my preparation day and prepare for the rest of the week.  

As far as I know, we don't have plans to head into Las Vegas right now, but we might head in just so we can steal wifi from the chapel. Us missionaries have a limited amount of mobile data to use each month, so we try to save mobile data by using the wifi we can find in the chapel.

Spanish Word of the Week

Colchón = Mattress

Sometimes you discover that you need a specific word multiple times in the same week. This week's frequent word was Colchón.

Scripture Quote of the Week

2 Nephi 1:20 - "And he hath said that: Inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments ye shall prosper in the land; but inasmuch as ye will not keep my commandments ye shall be cut off from my presence."

This warning is given at least 9 times in the Book of Mormon, so it should be pretty important to follow. Reminder to all the peeps out there to Keep the Commandments! You don't want to be cut off from the presence of the Lord.

Other scriptures where this quote is found are: 2 Nephi 4:4, Jarom 1:9, Omni 1:6, Mosiah 1:7, Alma 9:13, Alma 36:30, Alma 37:13, and 3 Nephi 5:22

This is more or less 1000 years of the same warning.

Anyways, I think that's all for me this week. Compared to last week this week feels pretty boring, but I'm having a ton of fun chatting with Elder Franco.  When we reunited on Tuesday, we both said "I've been thinking". During our week apart we both pondered on what we needed to change to have more success in our area and we have a bunch of ideas on what we need to do, who to focus on, where to focus our work, etc.  Over these next few weeks we'll actually start applying what we've learned and what ideas we have, but for now we just need to smoothly transition from one state to another.

I recommend for everyone who reads my emails to try to focus their weekly studies on Jesus Christ. It was really impressed on me this last week that I didn't really know him, or that I had a lot of unasked questions that had been bugging me. As I've done my studies this week I've found a lot of answers to my questions, and now Jesus actually feels important to me. I especially recommend trying to study the atonement and what it means to you.

Thank you all for your love and support! I'm doing great here, and I'm excited for what the future will bring!

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.org or reply to me here on this email.

 - Élder Grant