Oh No! Here Comes The Drunk People

Hi friends!

I did much better with keeping up with this week's journal writing, so we can go back to regularly scheduled weekly emails.  Also, with the end of Daylight Savings Time and the start of Standard Time I have one extra hour to write my weekly email before I can call my family.  

Some of you might be wondering why I have one extra hour with the change in time. You see, Honduras doesn't care about daylight savings time or standard time so my clock will be staying the same while everyone else's will be changing.  Right now the sun is rising at 5:20am and setting at 5:21pm and I wouldn't be surprised if the sun starts rising at 4:45am before the Winter Solstice (when we hit the peak of winter and the change in sunrise/sunset switches to start happening later in the day).

This can be both a blessing and a curse because I now have an extra hour to write emails before my weekly phone call, but also an hour less after the call to tie up lose ends.

Also, we usually do everything we can to avoid drunk people (and they try to avoid us) but this week has seemed to be the opposite. We had quite a few interactions with drunk people, one of which I will talk about later in my email (check out Wednesday - Nov 1st).

Now, without further ado... Let's get going!

Monday - Oct 30th

This was the end of a week of bad journal writing. So bad was my journal writing, in fact, that I had no desire to write my weekly email. That lack of desire to write, and a busy Monday lead to my shortest weekly email yet (sorry!). To fix that, I repented today and changed the way I wrote in my journal to not be so stressed by it. I now write a lot less about each day in my journal, but find it easier to mention all the main points of each day.

Today we had our Zone Activity. For the activity we decided to visit a place called Pulhapanzak (I don't even want to try to pronounce the name of this place, I'll just call it Pulha). Pulhapanzak is a very large waterfall near the town of Rio Lindo, about an hour and a half to the North of where I live currently. The waterfall is very beautiful and in front of the waterfall there is a colorful sign with the word Pulha.  A picture of the waterfall and this sign can be found in my google photos: https://photos.app.goo.gl/g2QAHn4xdMnPx4JT8.

Honduras has been doing a fun thing all over the country.  While El Salvador is renovating and paving all the roads, Honduras is putting up names of towns and tourist attractions to increase Honduran Pride.  The letters are very colorful and large and I want to get a photo in front of every one I find.  There is one of these Letter attractions near where I live, called Letras El Mochito on Google Maps. 

Speaking of Google Maps, I noticed that the google maps information of my area (El Mochito, El Mocho, Mocho Arriba... to be honest, I don't know what it is labelled in Google Maps) is all wonkey and incorrect. If you need help finding where I am in the world, I might try to add photos of me in front of a few attractions in Honduras on Google Maps. I often get questions from my parents about where places are in Honduras, so I have some desire to try to fix up the maps to make things easier (I've also been sent to the wrong address for references twice now. This has got to stop!)

After checking out the waterfalls we ate lunch as a zone at a nearby cafeteria.  I was in the mood for BBQ Wings (Buffalo Wings don't exist here and BBQ is my favorite sauce) so that is what I bought, and then we chatted and waited for quite a while. We waited ... and waited ... and checked our clocks. 45 minutes and counting...

At one point one of the workers opened up the door to the kitchen and we could hear one of the chefs retching. That may have explained the wait, though I don't want to know what was going on behind the scenes while we waited for our food for nearly an hour.

The BBQ wings were delicious (And the sauce was BBQ, not throw up) and after finishing those up we said our goodbyes and headed home.  We even had a few last goodbyes as some of the missionaries will be going home November 9th.

The bus ride is fairly long between the waterfalls and our home, and our bus was pulled over by the police so they could check our identities (I had a photocopy of my passport to give to them). After a long day of fun I came home to immediately call my family, send in a weekly report to my mission president, write as much as I could for a weekly email and get to work.

In terms of lessons, we had two amazing Charlas (Lessons) with the investigators Francisco Mateo and Angel Acosta. It's awesome to see their excitement to learn and improve, and I'm glad I can be acquainted with them.

Tuesday - Oct 31st

Happy Halloween! I hear that Halloween was cold in Utah, which sucks.  It's also pretty cold here, but more like 70° F cold than 40°F. Sadly, Honduras does not celebrate Halloween, and I think part of that is because they call it the Day of the Witches.  Honduras is very supersticious and naming a day after witches does not sit well in their stomachs.  I did discover, though, that Guatemala does celebrate Halloween (I think they call it All Saints Day, which is much more pleasant), so that is pretty cool!

This whole week has been pretty cloudy and cold, and we have encountered the problem of our clothes not drying.  To fix this problem, we've set up a contraption inside our house where a fan blows the clothes and the humid air is sucked up by a Dehumidifier. It actually works really well and will usually dry the cloths in about 3 hours - the same as drying clothes in the sun.

In addition to washing a ton of clothes and setting them up to dry, we were also commanded by our landlady to clean our Pila (What we use to wash clothes). To clean our Pila we needed to drain all of the water, brush out the debris (twigs and stuff that falls in the pila during the storms), scrub the walls and floor with Chlorine, and then refill the Pila.  

Our whole morning ended up being spent with this emergency cleaning session, so we had to fit in a bunch of studying in our study hour after lunch.  During this study hour we decided to watch a church video about Jesus Christ: I Know That My Redeemer Lives - https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/video/inspirational-messages/2020-11-0115-i-know-that-my-redeemer-lives-1080p?lang=eng 

This video is very powerful, and we decided to start including it with our 'potential lessons to share' list. I highly recommend that you guys watch this video and take note of your favorite pictures from this photo. Do it with your family for Family Home Evening or something. 

On other events of today, we've had some problems with accessing the missionary information of Victor Manuel, our recent convert, so we met with the bishop to get it all resolved.  We sadly couldn't figure it out (not even with the help of church headquarters) but we'll just make do with what we've got.

Wednesday - Nov 1st

We had an amazing charla with Rocman today about the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He is a very cool person, and he is willing to participate and read the Book of Mormon, which is something very few people seem to be able to do here in Honduras. He is a very cool person and I like meeting up with him.

We had a very productive planning session with the ward, and planned with a few members to have them visit with us for lessons.  One of our biggest struggles in our area is visiting investigators with members because there are so few active members in our area. This planning session definitely helped out with combatting that problem this week.

After our ward meetings we headed back home to have two more short lessons.  Because we didn't have much more time to proselyte before curfew. We first met with Darwin, a recent convert of quite a few months.  We met up with them and did a little bit of small talk and I started pulling out a scripture to share when the grandmother of Darwin offered some Banana Soup. I said "No Thanks" because I was not hungry and was eager to share a spiritual thought, but I was served a giant bowl of Banana Soup anyways.

If there is anything I have to say about Banana Soup, it is "NEVER AGAIN!!!". All we wanted to do was be in and out, but we had to spend 30 minutes trying to gulp down a giant bowl full of flavorless bananas (they were like uncooked potatoes in flavor and texture). Elder Franco offered to help finish my bowl because he plowed through his (somehow), but after about two of my bananas he almost threw up.  

Finally, we finished our bananas and we gave a spiritual thought and left. It was 8:30 when we finished, just about time for dinner, but we still had one more meeting scheduled so we took the fastest path to the house of Freddy and Nelson. That fastest path ends with a section of dirt trail down the hill to their house. It was raining so that dirt trail had become a mud trail, and we quite literally slid the whole way down the hill to their house (Never again!).

We tried our best to have a short charla with Nelson and Freddy, and we talked about the temples with them because they had a temple trip planned for Saturday.  We finished our lesson and ran back to the home of our Pensionista for dinner at about 9:15.  We had 15 minutes before curfew and we still had to eat dinner.  We ate as much as we could and then hurried home, but we were not in the clear yet...

As we were heading home a very drunk man started following us. We couldn't lead him to our house so we tried our best to lose him, but then he started talking in English.

Perfect English.

What in the world is going on?!

First the Banana Soup, then sliding down a hill, and now a drunk man is talking to us in perfect English.

We just want to get home on time 

Well, long story short ... we entered our house at 10:30, a lot, lot after curfew and went straight to bed because lights out is at 10:30. We literally spent an hour trying to shake this drunk man.  Not only was this man able to speak perfect English and Spanish, but he was unable to stop talking. We tried ending the converstation over and over and he just kept on talking. When we tried to just walk away he would follow us too!  This man is a lot to handle. 

What I have to say about this is "NEVER AGAIN!!!". I don't want a repeat of these events every again!

Thursday - Nov 2nd

We had our final district council with Elder Van Dyke because he will be leaving next week 😢. We also at our last ice creams with him (so sad). 

I was reading the church news (because the only news we can read is church news) and I ran into a paper about upcoming missions for 2024.  This next summer they will be adding 36 new missions to make for a total of 450 missions. As I looked at the map of new missions and read the article I was interested in all the new places that were recieving their own missions.  

As I went down the list I noted down: A new mission in Kenya, a few in Ghana, about 4 in the Phillipines, 2 in Mexico, a bunch in South America and North America, and a mission in SARATOGA SPRINGS, UTAH?!

Saratoga Springs is my home town! The place where I've spent most of my childhood. I've seen it go from 90% farms to supermarkets and houses everywhere.  To me, this is my little town in Utah Valley.  I can't believe Saratoga Springs got it's own temple, and now it's getting it's own mission!

I don't think Saratoga Springs is that big, but I guess I have to take note of the rapid growth it's had in the past 5 years. I may not recognize much of Saratoga Springs when I return in 2025.

Anyways, I think that that is super cool and I'm glad to see the work of the Lord continuing in all parts of the world, including my little part of the world.

On other news for today: We had two dinners, and in between the two I slipped in the mud and got everything muddy (except my white shirt, funnily enough).

We also met with a recent convert named Rosa Lydia. She is a door-to-door saleswoman who is very succesfull. She has very few days off so she hasn't been to church in a while, but a few weeks ago she allowed her children to be picked up by a member (and close friend) so they could go to church.  We hope that she can manage to go to church again sometime soon, but we'll make do with the circumstances for now.  

One thing to mention about her job. She is very good at her job. So good in fact, that Elder Franco bought cologne off of her though she wasn't trying to sell it.  Unfortunately, he didn't have enough money to pay for it all, so I needed to pay for the rest of it to avoid debt (a recommendation of the church is to avoid any form of unnecessary debt, and cologne is 100% an unnecessary debt).

Friday - Nov 3rd

I have a ton of BYU and church talks downloaded, so I've started listening to them and sorting them at the same time so I can find the specific talks I want to listen to more easily.

I also discovered that I can notify Google of inaccuracies in Google Maps, which is very useful because we keep getting sent to the same place on google maps when we try to find the locations of references. This location is located more than an hour to the south of us, in a location we cannot access, which is very unfortunate. I would like to fix these problems, if possible, so I can work more effectively during the week.

On terms of serving the people, we visited the homes of 3 families who had at least one sick member. Because of the heat here I forget that we are entering the Flu season, but I can see the illness spreading.  Gratefully, I've managed to avoid it so far, but I worry that my luck will run out soon.  Some missionaries went to the hospital last week because they contracted Dengue Fever (a very harsh illness) and I would like to avoid that if possible.

Along with visiting those families, we also gave two priesthood blessings.  Blessings on the sick come in two parts: The annointing of Consecrated oil, and the sealing of the oil and blessing.  So before today I had only done the first part (the easier part), but today was the first day where I was asked to do the second part. It was certainly scary to do because I had never done it before (in Spanish, at least), but in the end, I felt a lot of peace and I feel like I did pretty well.

This will 100% not be my last time doing either part of the priesthood blessing, but hopefully it will get easier as time goes on.

Saturday - Nov 4th

Today was the start of our monthly fast.  We fast on the first weekend of each month, and that's what happened today.

I have to shout-out two birthdays that happened today because birthdays are amazing accomplishments.

1st, I have to shout out Erick, the son of our pensionista. Happy Birthday!

2nd, I have to shout out my childhood friend, Kamree for her birthday as well! Happy Birthday🥳!

We had two lessons with investigators today, and for both lessons we had members participating with us.  It was so amazing to do it with members, and we could feel the power of having a non-missionary with us. I have a lot of hope for the future, and I hope we can have many more member lessons like these.

We also had a lesson in the Plaza where we met up with the drunk person we met on Wednesday.  This time he was not drunk, but still just as talkative.

Everyone, meet Freddy Pacheco! He is a very religious person who spent 20 years in the United States where he learned English. He is very fluent in both languages and loves to talk about religion, or just talk in general. 

He is very polite and kind and wants to meet with us again.  I'm not sure if he wants to meet to learn something, or just to talk, but either way we will try to build up any relationship we can here in El Mochito.

Sunday - Nov 5th

Today was the end of our fast, and WOW it feels great to eat food and drink water.  It's also the end of Daylight Savings in the United States and I'm now 99 days away from my birthday. It's crazy how time flies.

Rocman came to church with us!!! This was his first time going to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and I think he enjoyed it. Today was fast and testimony meeting, and I love those meetings because we are able to see the faith of all the members. Elder Van Dyke also gave a good-bye thought and testimony.

As I was doing studies after church I ran into a completely unexplored section in the Gospel Library app. I ran into the Church History section which has many treasure troves that I'm excited to explore. Sadly, I'm already studying way too many things right now so I will tuck that section away in the back of my head for later studies.

Something nice we did is we set aside a time to give a lesson to the pensionista's family.  Something which I learned fairly recently is that most missionaries forget to teach lessons to the people they interact with the most (specifically, the church leaders and pensionistas) so we decided to not do that in our area.  Today was the start of that, and we taught our pensionista family the first lesson they had had for many years. We talked about the family with them and read from The Family: A Proclamation to the World.

Final thoughts to wrap up today and this week: 

We had a devotional with the whole mission to start our fast, and in this devotional the mission president talked about the ordinary miracles that we often ignore.  I implore you all to ponder about what is an 'Ordinary Miracle' and why it can be so important in our lives.  I also recall there being a BYU speech about ordinary miracles so I invite you guys to search for that.

I am now into my last week of training, and by the end of this next week I will be a full-grown missionary.

Monday - Nov 6th

Yay, a new P-day has come.  For some reason, this week each day has felt super short, but the week as a whole has felt super long.  I'm just glad that I can have another day to talk with my family!

This is my final P-day with Elder Van Dyke, so we ate breakfast, went shopping, and got haircuts with them (I didn't get a haircut, but my companion did).

Compared to a few other p-days I've had, this one has been fairly uneventful. It's nice to be able to record all the events of each week though. One of the principles the Church teaches about is to keep a record. Ever since the beginning, the church was commanded to keep a record of events, and I'm doing my best to do my part with keeping a record of my life. I hope you guys enjoy this record and the in-depth details and tangents that I go on.

We will be recieving a new district companion this week. I don't know who it is, but I'm excited to find out and keep you guys posted.

Spanish Word of the Week

vos = you (extremely informal)

I spent some time with Elder Franco learning about the vos conjugations. In a range from formal to informal ways to say 'you' there are:

(Most formal) Usted 

(Most common)Tu

(Most informal) Vos

Vos is interesting because it is a lot simpler than the other conjugations, and in many ways unfinished compared to Tu and Usted. Often times, if there is not a way to conjugate something in Vos, then you just conjugate it in Tu form.

Also, for those who are aware of Vosotros, please acknowledge that Vos is a different conjugation than Vosotros.  They are not the same.  From the way I see it, Vosotros is very old and falling out of favor while Vos is very new and becoming more popular (in Central America at least).

Scripture Quote

John 3:16 - "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." 

I love this scripture because it shows the love God has for each of us.  I invite you all to search for the love God has for you and to try to share this love with the people around you. Bit by bit we can make this world a better, happier, more loving place.

Thank you all so much for your time, love, and support. It always means so much to me! Please remember that I pray for you all and I hope that you are all doing well. Never forget that God loves you and is always ready to support and bless you (in fact, he already is supporting and blessing you).

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.

Talk to you next week!

 - Élder Grant