Whoo
hoo! Super Bowl. I honestly would not have paid a ton of attention to
the Super Bowl even if I was home, but I am so out of the loop here that
I didn't even know that it happened only 30 minutes from my house.
haha. Sounds like the half-time show was pretty good though.
Last
Monday, Elder Rivadeneira left the office officially and Elder Johnson
finished his training as the new membership secretary. He has been a
really awesome companion and he is my second American companion (he is
from Utah).
Last week we finished all the
multi zone conferences. I ended up missing the first part of my
conference because we had some immigration emergencies. Sandra called
me and told me that two certificates to be able to take out
missionaries' residencies were going to expire in two days,
so we ended up scrambling around to make sure we could take these
missionaries to immigration before the expiration date. We had to
strategically plan the two days we had so that the missionaries would
not miss their multi zone conferences. We had one group go on Wednesday and the other on Thursday. Everything worked out in the end, like it usually seems to do.
The
next night after the conference, a ton of missionaries got really sick
and were throwing up, and it turned out that they got food poisoning
from the meal we had at the conference. oops..We kept getting
notification after notification that missionaries were really sick.
Including Elder Bingham. The rest of us in the office didn´t get sick
though.
On Saturday (Jan 30), President had some important meeting with all the bishops and stake presidents in the mission. So on Friday
night we were all in the office working like crazy preparing all kinds
of presentations and graphs and data about the missionary statistics in
every ward/branch and stake/district for 2014 and 2015. So we were in
the office SUPER late getting all of that ready. We were all starving
and we jokingly asked President if we could go to Denny´s (because it
was the only place open) and he said YES. I was so surprised. I think
he felt kind of bad for making us stay in the office so late. He told
us to be careful. haha. So here we were, six missionaries eating at
Denny's at 2:00 am
in Tegucigalpa. And this was a brand new Denny´s that they opened near
the airport. It had only been open for a few days. And that was about
the time that all the food poisoning took effect. Elder Bingham got to
break in the brand new toilet in the Denny´s bathroom. So that was a
really interesting night.
Also on Saturday,
we were able to go to the Temple. It had been 7 months since the last
time I went, so that was really refreshing. Elder Johnson and Elder De
La Rosa both brought family names to the temple. so that was really cool
to help them out. We even got to do initiatories. That was really
cool, because I hadn't done that in a really long time. And it was in
Spanish. Brother Matkin (the new couple missionaries from Canada) was
in charge of the session, so it was cool to see him. I love going to
the temple because there is such a strong spirit and I always get
motivated to work harder in the mission field.
When
we left the temple, there was an IMMENSE traffic jam on the highway.
To the point where people would turn there cars off because no one was
moving for ten minutes at a time. After almost three hours, Elder
Johnson and I decided to just walk home. We weren't too far and it
would have been much faster. I don´t really know why, but the highways
in Honduras have nice paved sidewalks on the highways, like it is a
normal thing to walk down the highway. We got back to the house in like
25 minutes and the other elders got home about 15 minutes after us.
They somehow managed to get the truck over the median on the highway,
and drove the other way and found anther route home. haha. The rest of
the cars remained stuck on the highway. We found out the next day the
cause of the traffic. The trailer of a huge semi-truck somehow skidded
off the truck and fell on top of a car and completely crushed it. The
two people in the car were both killed. So that was kind of scary.
On Saturday
we had the baptism for Jina and her son Manuel!!! Everything was going
perfectly well until they arrived. We realized we didn't have any
baptismal clothing that would work for her. So were were kind of just
sitting there for a while like...what do we do. Then Elder Bingham had
the idea to stop by the temple and ask the Christensens to find a temple
dress that would work. They ran by and were able to pick it up. We
ended up starting the baptism an hour late, but everything after went
really well. It was a really great service. Elder Rivadeneira was able
to come and do the ordinance for Jina. She bore such an incredible
testimony. She and her family are such great people. It was amazing to
see so many things fall into place so fast for this to happen. She
received so much guidance from our Heavenly Father and so much help from
the members in the ward. so many miracles!
This
has honestly been the start of a really good transfer. There have been
so many things happening. A new companion, two new secretaries and a
new assistant in the office, a new (and really motivated) ward mission
leader, and the trip to the temple. We have been working harder in our
area and have been really seeing some potential. We are meeting so many
new incredible people. Things seem really good right now.
Have a great week! I hope all you football people enjoyed the Super Bowl.
- Elder Burnham
