Monday, December 25, 2017

Week 52: Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone!
I´ll tell you a little about what happened in my week leading up to the day we commemorate the Saviors birth. 
It went by super quick, we had a a lot of work to do for the zone. The zone Juticalpa has been struggling a bit, but it´s nothing a little diligence and obedience can´t fix. 
Elder Banda and I had found some cousins a couple weeks back. We have been working with them and they have been progressing. They are called Jary (pronounce Hary) and Luiz Miguel. The two of them are very positive and want to come unto Christ; it´s just a busy schedule that is stopping them with the Christmas season. 
Our days just before Christmas were jam packed with visits with investigators before they either headed out of town or had family come and visit. 
Elder Banda and I worked hard and have been looking for more people to teach. The Lord works in mysterious ways... we had almost no luck. We found some people but we were no where near reaching our goal for the week. On Sunday the 24th, it´s the day we celebrate in Latin America as Christmas or the Good Night. We leave our lunch visit with the Soleno Family and we get looking, knocking on doors and contacting in the street, looking for some new people. We had a bit of time just before we had to be at a members home to celebrate the holiday. It starts pouring rain. Banda and I began knocking a little bit more to get out of the rain and find someone with an open heart, someone to open their door to two soaked missionaries... but nothing, it seemed that no one would open. We finally got lucky. Well, they just put us on their porch to wait out the rain while they finished cooking their Christmas dinner. Then the rain stopped for a bit, and with heads down, Elder Banda and I headed out again to keep looking. We knocked a couple more doors, and nothing. At 4:30, thirty minutes before we had to basically turn out for the day because people will be celebrating Christmas. And I´m exhausted, and wet and cold, and more than a little grumpy and Banda says to me, ´´lets knock one more door.´´ I give in, and while we are walking to the next door Banda is talking and saying with his faithful imagination... ´´we´re going to go in and it´ll just be the parents, but it´ll be a family of 8... and the parents, they´ll have 6 kids all over the age of 8. They´ll let us in and give us a drink and we´ll be able to teach them and they´ll like it, but we have to be on it.´´  I laughed a little bit at his overly perfect situation and I knocked on the door. Well, A man answered and asked what we wanted. We gave him our regular spiel-- that we are missionaries and we want to share a message of Jesus Christ. The guy said SURE and let us in! The moment started to click the man had let us in pretty quick. We sat down and his wife came in and saw us and gave us a drink. I was thinking in my head that this was all just them being nice and having true Christmas Spirit. Well, we began to talk and we quickly found out that it was a family of eight! All of their children are over the age of eight. (the only thing is that their children are grown and have families of their own and live in the States.)  But I won´t lie-- I almost fainted! We left the lesson finding out that Guiermon isn´t assisting a church, but that his wife is less active but loves the church. 
I felt blessed and humbled by this Christmas miracle. 

I´m very happy to have talked to my family today and I wish you all the Merriest of Christmases and I hope you all can have a Happy New Year! 

keep truckin´


A missionary Christmas dinner at the church.
Elder Roberts, Hermana Latimer, Elder Valadez, Elder Banda, Hermana Gamez, Hermana Bravo, (Hermana Da Silva is in the bathroom), and Elder Garcia (Elder Garcia is Valdez's companion and is going home in January with Banda)
Banda helping with the set-up
Hermano Leo from the Belen Branch made our dinner.
Thursday was a good day. We went to Oh Crepas. I ordered a waffle. It was 90 limps
Merry Christmas! It's Christmas Eve or The Good Night... the day that latin America celebrates Christmas.
Taking a Santa pic... and this Santa is trying to tell you that fireworks are super loud. 4 limps buys a packet of fire crackers. The kids here light them off all year. They have been going off all day.
We did a secret santa gift exchange with the Hermana's from the Belen Branch and Hermana Melba.
Hermana Latimer got Elder Banda a gift. Hermana Gamez got Latimer a gift. Elder Banda got Hermana Gamez a gift, and Hermana Melba and I drew each other. 
Hermana Melba got me a red tie.
Christmas gifts from home for Elder Roberts. Mom was on it when she sent the package so early. (globalmissionshipping.com) With all this political stuff going on I won't get my other Christmas and Hump day stuff until January 9th or so.
Elder Banda with his Christmas present
Elder Banda seriously loves Sour Patch!
Best part of Christmas--- Talking with my family! (blog post of call home)
20 Years Old!!
Banda's 1st time shaving!
Shaving ad!!

No comments:

Post a Comment