Hello! I don´t think anything too exciting happened this week.04/13/16

Hello!  I don´t think anything too exciting happened this week.  I don´t have any pictures either, haha. I had to take some more missionaries to immigration this week and everything went really smoothly.  No one complained, got confused, or irritated (including myself) so I think we reached a new milestone, haha! 

We contacted this family in the street on Saturday and when we invited them to church they were like, "yeah, we were actually already planning on going tomorrow."  Elder Johnson and I were really confused and then we found out that the wife is the cousin of a member and she invited them to go.  So that was really cool, and they showed up the next day!  We actually had a lot of investigators in church on Sunday.  Only that some of them left right after sacrament meeting because little children having meltdowns took priority...haha.  

We had to go to some mail place by the airport because Elder Johnson had some document that he needed a stamp for.  We show up, and the guy that needs to give us the stamp won´t let us in to his office until he got to half time of the soccer game he was watching...Sometimes people are more religious about soccer than religion.  

We are teaching this sassy little old catholic lady who I think is more concerned about being our grandma and feeding us food than what we come to teach.  She invited us over for lunch on Sunday.  When we teach something, she will end up saying something like, "I am sitting here listening to what you are saying, but I just don´t remember anything" haha

Robelio is progressing a lot.  He is always ready to go to church and loves when we come over.  We taught him about the restoration and the word of wisdom and he just accepts everything without any doubts.  It was such a great lesson!  He is seriously so prepared and wants to get baptized.  

That´s all I can think of for right now!  Have a great week!

- Elder Burnham

General Conference 04/05/16

Hello Everyone!  

General Conference was really great!  I really liked the talks by Elder Kearon and Elder Uchtdorf!  I really loved the focus on service (especially humanitarian service) and repentance and forgiveness. We always have to opportunity to change and become better people and we become closer to Christ.  We were able to watch all the sessions at our church building and we were able to bring some investigators to the Sunday morning session.  

The whole mission flipped out a little bit because our old mission president, Candido Fortuna, was called to be an area seventy!  There was a little bit of gossip going around before the conference because an RM told someone here that President Fortuna had been staying in Utah the week before conference, so rumors spread that he was going to be a seventy, and it came true! haha.   Elder Duncan, the seventy, also spoke in the conference, he has visited us a few times because he is assigned to Central America.   

But being in the office is nice because I can go back and listen to the talks again in English while I am working. It is just not the same when you can´t hear the actual voices of the general authorities.  And it´s also a little easier to pay attention when it´s not in Spanish. haha.

We were able to go visit with this one family that we are teaching and celebrate my birthday a little bit.  Their (now) three year old son has the same birthday as me so they threw a little party for us and invited the other elders and some families in the ward, so that was fun, and cake was involved. haha. 

We found this guy Rodelio contacting and he is super great! He is like 65 and really receptive.  In the first lesson we had with him, he accepted the invitation to pray, to read, to go to church, and to be baptized!  Elder Johnson and I almost could´t believe it.  We came back on Saturday and had a really great lesson about the book of Mormon and the plan of salvation and the spirit was really strong.  On Sunday morning we went by to pick him up for conference and we was all ready to go. He really loved the conference and was able to make some friends in the church.  Hopefully he keeps progressing at this speed!   

Our old investigator Emelina called us out of the blue this morning after we hadn´t been able to get in contact with her for weeks!  She wants to come back to Tegucigalpa to find work and come back to church!  She had been reading the book of Mormon and praying that whole time we hadn´t been able to contact her.  She had been staying with family in some pueblo out in the middle of nowhere where there isn´t even a signal for a phone, so she kind of disappeared for a while.  If she doesn't move back to our area, we will get her in contact with other missionaries.  We were just so happy to make contact with her again and that everything seems to be going well.   

If you haven't yet, go and watch Conference!  Have a great week!

- Elder Burnham

Rain in Semana Santa?

Hello!  I hope you all have been enjoying Semana Santa (Holy Week or just Easter, I guess)  This is always an interesting time of year because everyone just kind of disappears.  People go out to the pueblos to visit family or go to the coast up north or down south for vacations.  Everything will be kind of closed Thursday through Friday, so that will be interesting to see how the office work functions in the city.  It also must be a time of the year when people do stupid stuff because all of the sudden people show up on the sides of the streets selling fire extinguishers and those traffic triangle reflector things.  

This time of year is known to be very HOT and dry, but for some reason we have been getting a lot of rain, which has been really nice.  On Sunday it was really hot, and then on Monday it was POURING rain.  Yay!  It also makes good conditions for rainbows.  Yesterday we saw this full fluorescent double rainbow!  "Double rainbow all the way across the sky!"

On Saturday, we ran by the distribution center by the temple and I ran into a member from Sorzales and also Elder Gomez´s MOM! Haha.  Their ward seems to always have trips to the temple from San Pedro Sula.  Now I have met both his mom and his dad.  Now I just need to meet his siblings. haha.  

On Saturday we had the baptism for Geancarlo and an investigator of the other elders.  It is a goal of mine to have a baptismal service that actually starts on time sometime on my mission.  haha.  We were supposed to start at 5, but didn't actually get going until 6.  I guess that is Honduran standard time.  But the service went really well.  Geancarlo´s brother and aunt are members, but his parents are not, so it was cool to see his mom show up.  Some of the primary kids came and had a little song prepared too, so that was fun.  He is a really intelligent kid and was so happy that night. 

So we ended up finding a reference through the Referal Manager. I never thought I would ever have a Salt Lake reference from the computer, haha.  We realized that the reference was received in February (whoops), but we decided to go contact him.  I was surprised we were able to even find him.  According to the reference, his mom lives in the USA and requested the missionaries to go visit her son.  But when we got there, he told us he had no idea that we were coming and that his mom said nothing about it.  But is was true that she lives in the States.  He was really cool, and has two younger brothers.  We taught them simply about Christ and the importance of keeping His commandments.  We will see how that progresses. 

If you haven´t yet, go check out https://www.mormon.org/easter

Have a great week and a great Easter weekend!  Christ lives!

- Elder Burnham

 

 

Hello!  I hope everyone had a great Easter weekend!  Because of Semana Santa, most people had work off Thursday-Sunday, so the city was a ghost town.  Everything kind of shuts down and you end up not being able to get much work done.  Then we decided to go take pictures on the roof of our building! haha

We also went to go see one of the coolest things that they do here for Semana Santa which are las alfombras (carpets)!  Basically, the people get a ton of sawdust and sand and dye it different colors and make cool designs in the street.  They spray it with water to make sure it doesn't blow away in the wind. One on the coolest things I have seen in Honduras.  Some people got really creative with their designs.  

This weekend we helped a lot of elders move houses.  That is what happens when my companion is in charge of housing contracts and we have a truck to help people move. haha.

I really like the Easter season because we get to focus our lessons on Christ and His atonement. We would read scriptures from Luke and Alma and how they teach about the His suffering and resurrection, and all the peace and joy we can receive though His atonement.   

We were all pumped up to have a lot of people in church on Sunday, but it was pretty empty.  The attendance was about half the norm.  I guess people were still on vacations.  But this week was really good for finding new people to teach.  We have been working in less explored parts of our area and seeing lots of small miracles.  

General Conference is this weekend!  Make sure to watch it and be inspired!

Have a great week!

- Elder Burnham