Everyone, Meet My Nephew!

Hi friends!

Wow. Kids grow up so fast, am I right?

I am now a full-grown missionary out of training. I feel so powerful now!

Also, my missionary family tree just keeps on getting bigger and more complicated. Let me explain it to you this way:

 - I have three missionary fathers. (Elders Miles, Van Dyke, and Franco)

 - Elder Porter is my missionary brother (Step-brother technically, but I'm going to round up to brother)

 - I have an unknown number of other missionary siblings and grandparents (though from what I've heard it's a lot)

 - I'm already a missionary uncle

It's time to become like Mark Rober and try to be the best missionary uncle ever. 

Welp. I've gotta get started writing because this email is already coming out late and I'm starting to forget what happened during the week (luckily, I wrote in my journal this week).

Monday - Nov 6th

Today is my last P-day with Elder Van Dyke. We savored every moment together, eating Baleadas, shopping, getting haircuts (I didn't get one, but Elders Franco and Van Dyke did), and more.

Like most P-days, I spent the day writing my email, shopping, and talking with family. Those are the three main components of my ideal P-day, so I'm glad I could do them today. At the time of writing this, I don't remember very many specifics on what those three events were like today, but I'm sure I was content doing them. 

When it came time to proselyte we visited the family of Roxanna.  Elder Miles and I stopped teaching this family because the only person actually progressing was Roxanna and she is too busy to meet with us.  To give a little bit more information about Roxanna, she works alongside Rosa Lydia, a recent convert, and became a bit interested because of that connection. We may visit them again in a few weeks, but for now, they still aren't very interested in learning more and they have a very wonky understanding of gospel doctrine that we aren't sure how to respond to.

After this family, and a bunch of rejection (I don't remember what kind of rejection, I'm just saying what I wrote in my journal) we finally had dinner, and we were pleasantly surprised to find out that the menu included Baleadas, and bigs ones. Baleadas are very quickly becoming my favorite food ... at least, here in Honduras it's my favorite.

Tuesday - Nov 7th

We spent the day in La 21, and we met with the family of Maria. This family lives at the very end of La 21, down the street from Rosa Lydia (though I won't show where Rosa Lydia lives). There are at least four adults in this household - Enrique, Feliciana, Maria, and Jose. Feliciana is always in the house and has recieved us the three times (two times at the time of visiting them today) we've visited them. Maria was here today so we got to meet her for the first time. Enrique has never come out to see us, even when we've asked. Jose is usually working in the mine so he sometimes appears at the end of our charlas and he usually doesn't want to hear us (but we're trying to get an audience with him). There is also a fifth individual - Aracely, who lives in Mocho Arriba but is a family member.  

Today we were able to talk with Feliciana, Maria, and Aracely - our largest audience yet - and we talked a lot about going to the church.  They have a lot of questions, and at least Aracely seemed a bit interested, so we are planning on visiting them more.

We had a short lesson with Joury where he told us he didn't want to go to church anymore (I'll follow up on that later).

We visited a house that usually has about 6 or 7 kids.  But today was worse.

Much worse.

At one point there were:

 - 2 missionaries

 - 13 kids

 - 3 adults

 - and 2 dogs

crammed into the same room.

I'm so glad that was the final lesson of the day because that absolutely drained me (and they were unusually well-behaved today).

Oh, and before I forget, I was told that I would be transfered by the ZLs, but they were only joking.  (Heart attack moment)

Wednesday - Nov 8th

I started my journal here saying "Rocman just keeps getting better".

This is 100% correct. Rocman is super cool and he is recieving our charlas (Honduran Spanish for lessons) very well.  He is also becoming even more animated and friendly with us with every visit.  At first we were in front of his house, then at the front door, then a step into house. We're seeing progress here.

We ended up meeting with an inactive member (that recently re-activated) and she gave us a tour of Barrio La Cuchilla. If you try to find La Cuchilla in Google Maps, you won't find it because the road 'Does not exist', but it is part of the main road in Mocho Arriba (and I guess, Mocho Arriba also 'Does not exist', but that's also a lie). Anyways, she tooks us to the houses of a bunch of inactive members so we could invite them to church and try to teach the lesson, but none of them were home. We are very grateful for her help anyways, and we'll try to follow up with them.

Today, we met up with the Pineda family for the first time. About a week ago Elder Porter came up to me and told me that the Pineda family had been asking for us, and wondering why we hadn't visited in a while.  Well, I didn't know they existed ... so that may be why we never visited them.

Anyways ... last Sunday I managed to find them in the chapel and planned a time to meet with them.  This family is pretty amazing and very loving and is one of the families in our area that likes to make food for the missionaries.  We shared a message about Jesus Christ with them and got to know them and started planning a repeating visit to them on Wednesday so we could keep member-missionary relationships strong (and enjoy a free meal on Wednesdays)

Today was the last day I saw my third father - Elder Van Dyke.  We met for Mission Coordination and Ward Council and he gave his final advice to the district and to the ward. We also traded ties to be able to remember each other.  I feel so proud to be his child, and to be the first person to trade him a floral tie in his whole mission.

To wrap up this day, we managed to meet with Francisco with Nelson and Freddy, so I think we are finally having success with the member meetings with investigators.  That's something that we've been struggling with, but it's slowly getting better (I hope).

Thursday - Nov 9th

We went contacting with a member called Doña Lydia (I'm not sure how to spell her name, this is just how it sounds (D'oh'knee'ah Lid'ee'ah).  But I suppose I should clarify a bit.  We planned to go contacting with her, but she went contacting without us.  We spent a good bit of time trying to find her and then visiting a few people with her. She is pretty old, but very spry for her age and very missionary minded. She can talk a lot which will be helpful in charlas where we don't want to talk a lot.

My journal seems to highlight a lot of food for today, so this is what happened: We ate Baleadas in the morning because a new Baleada restaurant opened up. We had lunch with our Pensionista, then we ate dinner with Hermana Claros, then we got second dinner to go from the pensionista.

We visited the house of Martha and asked what they wanted to learn today. They asked for a lesson on forgiveness, but then someone new entered the room and the conversation switched, so we never taught a lesson on forgiveness. To repent on that we sent out a church video that talks about forgiveness that Martha and her family can study on their own time.

Friday - Nov 10th

Welp, all of our plans fell through today. After 10 minutes our first 4 meetings (and about 2 hours of lessons) fell through and we had to spend the time contacting instead.  In the end, we spent four hours contacting a large portion of Barrio Guanacaste. We had 13 contacts, but most of them won't go anywhere.

We had a good evening, visiting the houses of Dago and Alberto Benitez. At Alberto's house we invited the family to go to church together, instead of just dropping off their daughter to go alone. We'll see how that works out, but I hope that they can start going as a family.

We also talked with Bryan and Marcos at the house of Dago (Dago is their father). It was an overall good lesson (I don't remember what we taught) and their older brother - Alex - was present and he participated a lot. Alex is someone I don't talk about a lot because we never see him. He is too busy working at their family farm to recieve the lessons we offer, but outside of that, he does seem to have at least a little bit of interest in learning more.

Saturday - Nov 11th

Today we decided to head out with Hermana Lydia (Sister Lydia) again. This time she didn't go without us, and we visited Rocman with her.  Visiting Rocman this time, he invited us fully into his house, and we had an amazing lesson with a member present. There are two kinds of members that can be present in our lessons - Talkative ones and Quiet ones.  Hermana Lydia is one of the talkative ones. Talkative members can be both useful and distracting at the same time because they both teach the lesson (useful), and then go on tangents (distracting).

Today we decided to invite Rocman to be Baptized and he said Yes! His baptism is now planned to happen the 24th.

We helped a family move into their home. We were walking down to an appointment when we passed by a moving truck and decided to ask if they need help. Then we helped them carry a mattress to their house and continued on our way.

We ended up at a house that had been marked as having inactive members. We went in and talked with the family and found out that they were 'members' in the fact that they had gone to church before.  They were actually investigators that previous missionaries decided to stop teaching. We may go back and start teaching them again and we'll see if they are interested or not.

Sunday - Nov 12th

Today we had record amounts of attendance from our area. SOOO many people showed up to ride the bus for church. We didn't have space for them all (we were cramming people in like clowns in a clown-car). Rocman was also among the group which came, which makes me happy.

I wrote in my journal: "Visited with Hna Lydia".  I don't remember what we did or who we visited, but she is quite the missionary. She's helped us at least 3 times this week!

During our weekly planning today we recieved many, many notifications. Turns out we have a lot of stuff planned for next week, and I won't have time to write this email until the next week. That sucks because now I have to write two emails in the same week (to keep the same flow).  I will report on what the conflict is in the next email because I don't want to write as much for this week.

Every once in a while we enter a house to teach and they have a show playing. A few weeks ago that show was Apple and Chive? (I don't know what it is called in English) and today the show is:

Miraculous!

You know, the show with the Ladybug and cat superheroes that takes place in France, and weird black butterflies makes people evil.

I legit think the show is better in Spanish than in English. But why does it even exist.

Part of our planning today was recieving a notification of a Zoom meeting with the Stake President, so we hopped onto that. The zoom meeting basically went like this:

Stake President (SP): ...So that is our stake activity for the week. Do you understand Bishop #1

Bishop #1: Yes

SP: Good, how about you Bishop #2

Bishop #2: No, I missed part of it

SP: Okay, I will explain it all over again

(5 minutes later)

SP: Okay, you got it Bishop #2

Bishop #2: Yes

SP: Alright, what do you think Bishop #3

Bishop #3: Yeah, my internet cut out, what was *so and so part*

SP: Okay, I will tell it all over again...

This went on for a while because the Stake President asked everyone to confirm that they understood, and repeated the whole thing if they didn't.

After the meeting Elder Porter and Elder Montoya from Mochito 1 messaged us to clarify because they couldn't hear the zoom meeting with the rain falling.

With all of the new events we were informed about, I suddenly became very aware that I was running out of money to pay for all of the travel expenses. I went to make sure my personal bank card was still around so I could withdraw money in an emergency, but I couldn't find it!  I am now stuck without Money and without Time to act on it.

Alright. I think I'm going to end off this email here, and start on my next one. But I will end this email off with a movie announcers ending:

Will he find is Debit card?

Will Rocman be baptized?

What is the conflict that lead to a postponed email?

We'll find out next time on: The Elder Grant Chronicles

Anyways, enjoy your day and I will talk to you guys again very soon!

 - Élder Grant

Saluuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu