Rapunzel de Morazan

and gift wrapped!

Martes: As a district we had a gift exchange in honor of Valentine´s day and my district leader gave me a rosary and said he would be offended if I didn't wear it. A little sacreligious but also a little funny. But yeah like mine and Calpa's gifts were the most thoughtful gifts and we even wrote little notes and got them gift wrapped and the elders were like wow they put a lot of time into this but truth be told we didn't even buy the gifts until that morning and our district meeting was at 10. I guess it goes to show why the elders serve for 2 years and the hermanas only serve for a year and half because we can get more done in less time haha.

We contacted this abuelito later and he was like yeah the Book of Mormon makes sense I think Jose Smith was called of God but he's like I can't commit to anything because ¨we in our church...¨ blah blah blah like everything in the ¨we¨ form. oh the lovely "sheep". People have such narrow perspective when they don't think for themselves. Some people can´t see past their front door.  But God wants us to search and to learn for ourselves. Search the prophets, "prove me now herewith". He wants us to come to our own conclusions, not survive off of regurgitations from others. 

Miércoles: Montón de estudios. Estamos preparando por nuestra reunión de doce semanas en viernes. I think we did like four modules of english trying to prepare my companion because even though she has been living with gringas for a year and a half, she really only knows how to say "shut up", and "your mom" hahaha. She's cute. But yeah all I ever want to do nowadays is to read the Book of Mormon. We're supposed to finish it by the 12 de marzo because that's when one of the 12 apostles of the church of Jesus Christ of latter-day saints is coming! And I just started like three weeks ago and I already finished the book of Alma and oh did I mention that I'm reading it in spanish, whaaaaat! 

Mom asked me a while ago if there's a market day and well today we actually went to this big market that for some reason I've never seen in this little town. And yeah it's every day and it's a whole bunch of people selling the exact same assortment of fruit and vegetables so that was kind of funny. And also people selling clothes that they hung way too low -like how am I supposed to walk here. Well my comp had no problem,  but she's five foot nothing. Shopping is so stressful here like there's always someone hovering asking what do you want? like I don't know yet! 

We helped this little 8 year old carry a bunch of firewood (leña) and we didn't know where she lived she was just like, I live over there because that's what everyone says (por allá!) But it turned out to be really far and it's just her and her mom living there and it was a ton of firewood idk how that little girl was expected to carry it all that far! Oh and get this they have fishies in their pila! And it's not gross or anything like their pila is super clean, they just caught fishes I guess and put the little suckers in there! 

Also we made macheteadas and the fire was really hot and the metal plate that they use to cook on is tore up so there were jets of flames coming up and around the pan and it was a pan of oil so we tried to make it level so we put a piece of wood under on one side of the pan to make it level but that caught on fire too. But it was fine in the end and the kids that we were cooking for liked it.

Jueves: We studied so much trying to get ready for our meeting on Friday. We were talking to Ashton and Mendieta on the phone and Calpa was saying that I almost fell where we were walking and Medieta said, that if I tripped right now I wouldn't fall until tomorrow #tallpeopleprobs. 

Our lesson with hermanita Y went well, she's really good with the reading but I call her Rapunzel because (1) She has reallllly long gorgeous hair, and (B) Her mom doesn't let her leave the house for anything, not even to go to church. 

We taught familia L and the mom actually joined us with her Book of Mormon in hand and didn't play with her phone once, I was so proud of her!

Viernes: So we ended up being like a half hour late to our meeting because when we transfered we got off 4 blocks early and had to walk. Later on our bus driver decided he wanted desayuno so we were stopped on the side of the road for a while. The meeting was fine, a lot of new goals in the mission, they're really whipping us into shape. I was all flustered from being late and stuff so I didn't perform super well so my comp wasn't as proud of me this time, awww. Afterwards we got to have lunch with one of my buddies from the CCM and his companion from Costa Rica (Calpa calls costa ricans the gringos of central america because they don't roll their r's) 

Sábado: We had our interviews with the president, but we told him that we had a baptism at 10 so really our interviews were like 5 minutes, he handed us a baked treat and pushed us out the door! But he did say that I could call anytime if I had problems so there's that. I didn't really mind the short interview, I'm happy, healthy, and worthy and I don't have any questions. Oh but we did talk a little bit about the new requirement that the missionaries do family history work. So I'm not sure where to start with that... The baptism was great afterwards though! One of the girls getting baptized waited 7 months to get permission from her parents and she was so excited to finally be able to! 

Domingo: We had 3 of our investigators come to church! Hopefully they can attend the next two sundays as well so that they can have enough asistencias to be baptized before my companion leaves! I went on splits with one of the members for the first time in my liiiife and it was so weird not being with my companion and having to lead the lesson. I'm still no good but hopefully I can improve. 

Sunday night Elders Ashton and Mendieta brought some of their investigators over to our investigator's house and we had a little noche de hogar but the house literally shared a wall with a church or something! and these people were yelling and crying to Jesus and singing/screaming but we still managed to have the spirit in our little lesson and I was like, what a difference ya know? the spirit is a still small voice, not a screeching voice haha so there ya go and it was great!

Lunes: The elders packed a picnic lunch and all six of us squeezed into a moto taxi and went to Pata Gallina! We played sand volleyball and had a picnic on the river bank. We initially said losers get to prepare all the sandwiches but obviously my team one but I ended up making all of the sandwiches anyway haha. 

But yeah everything is good here and I miss you all but not too much! 

I love this gospel and I love my calling and I love my God!