Hello to my friends and family! It certainly was a delight to speak to you on Christmas, I did thoroughly enjoy it, especially all of the joyous jokes in which we shared.
This past week...well...was interesting to say the least. We were all super pumped at the start, because we got to climb the ridiculously high mountain, and then proceed to work extremely hard until Saturday, because by then it would be very hard to work! So, that is what we did. We hit the dirt road hard, and started to teach with power! It was a great week for teaching, and I believe we have brought a few families even closer to baptism.
The Zuniga family is a family of 5, and 4 of them are 8 or older. They are a super great family, but a little hard to work with because oftentimes they do not come to church. But, after a few lessons and some persistence, we have them committed to marriage, and then will be working on getting them baptized.
The Martinez family is a family of 2. They are Catholics, but don’t really attend the church. Hno. Martinez’s wife just barely got back from a trip on the 24th, and the first time we met her was on Sunday as we were trying to take them to church. She gave us a tamale, and then promptly left with her husband to come to church with us! Wow! It was also a great church service, a lot of emphasis on temples. Afterwards Hno. Martinez was asking us a lot about temples and saying he would love to go into one one day!
I hope that everyone had an amazing Christmas in your respective homes and abodes. We here in Honduras passed the time with plenty of food, and company of the members. But don’t worry, we still worked pretty hard in bringing investigators to church! And, more importantly, I hope that everyone was able to remember the real purpose and reason behind this holiday. The greatest gift we have ever received is Jesus Christ, our Savior and Mediator with the Lord. This time is for us to take us away from all the day-to-day drag of life, and remember our Father in Heaven and His Son even more than the other times of the year. I hope that this year we are willing to give a little something back to Jesus Christ, and do something more for him. Read the scriptures 5 more minutes a day, or wake up with a little better attitude on Sunday, or give a little service to your neighbors. The opportunities are around us every day!
Christmas here is a little crazy. I by far ate way too many tamales and sandwiches. We didn’t even really visit all that many members or investigators, but simply talking to people in the street or outside their houses they would end up offering us something! Sheesh! Oh, that and I helped make a few tamales. Now, they were not masterpieces, but I am a little proud of my work; especially as a gringo! But also, there were crazy parties at every house! So many people! We just ended up sharing a little about the message of Christmas with them and chatting about the holiday. Everybody was curious about what the tradition of what to eat is in the United States, and I always just told them, well...I don’t really think there is one. We don’t have one set food everyone eats. Especially in my family!
One funny experience that happened this week, was we walked into Restaurante Sú to teach Hna. Estela on Wednesday and the Lord of the Rings was on! I purposefully situated myself so that I could not see the screen, to avoid such temptation. But, I could still hear it. So, as we started eating after the lesson, I was saying something about Christmas coming up, and Junior asked me if I wanted a ring. A little confused for a moment, I then caught on and said, yeah, that would be nice. After all, it feels like I walk to Mt. Doom and back every day here!
That is about it! I hope that everyone will have an amazing week, and that they are finding use for all of their new toys!
Con mi amor,
¡Que les vaya bien!
Elder Tinkham
