4-28-14 preparing fried chicken the Hounduran way, from the beginning

Yesterday it was 110 degrees.... just got to throw that out there. We also haven't had water in our house for like 3 weeks. They turn on the water for just enough time to shower or 5 min for me and 5 min for my comp or that's how much water they are allowing to fill our tank of water... its really great. haha

Other than that we seemed to lend alot of service this week. First we killed 30 chickens, like cutting of the head and de-feathering and then we ate 1 of them... fried.My companion was really squeamish and almost fainted. That was fun but I'll just say it was the best kind of service :) Then we went to chop wood which I'm getting pretty good at if I do say so myself haha. seeing as we do it every week. My hands are finally hard enough that I don't get blisters every time. Accomplishment!

Other than that this Wednesday is the changes meeting.  We don't know if I'm staying and we won't know until tomorrow... kinda a bummer. I'm not giving up. If I stay I'll be good with it...but oh well. We'll see.

Let's see right now we continue teaching a half gringo family   But it's sad because they won't come to church! ha I'm out of ideas.  When we pass by to help them in any way, they don't answer the door or the phone on Sundays. It's a little discouraging but there we go.

I really enjoyed nefi 20 this week, like it talks about the importance of baptism and taking the name of Christ in the beginning.  Then I really enjoyed how the Lord talks directly in 15- 19 about what he expects, why he expects it and the promises if we do it. "Righteous as the waves" That's what I want right now, to be constant.

I'm Keeping my eye out for miracles, I'll see them soon...

4-21-14 Happy Easter!

Hey so.. HAPPY EASTER.

How did everyone's Easter go? I hope good.

 

 

So this week was the real holy week, and well it was not the best. The biggest reason is that everyone was going to swim in the river so nobody wanted to listen to us so we tried to throw an activity, a movie night, and well us missionaries had alot of fun but ... not even 20 members came,  let alone the investigators,so kind of dissappointed there.

Other than that its so hot here, we started taking our beds out to the garage to sleep because it's all outside and in the night the concrete buildings cool down fast, so I also slept in the hammock that we have there. But hey its cool. We have a bit of extra time in this area because we have to enter our apartment an hour early so I'm experimenting with cooking and we've started to play uno.... good times.

 

Me and My District

 

Other than that,  we found this really cool family. We found a North American (gringo) and his Honduran wife and they are our most positive.  Really we just got to find people.

Chocobanana

 

Loving Jacob, that is in the Book of Mormon. Shoot, who doesn't love that guy.  I'm gonna sign off here.

Love you guys, 

paz y amor

Elder Johnson

4-15-14 Cardboarding and Caves

This week was well pretty excellent!  I feel like I´ve really discovered like... idk, the reason for missionary work... haha Yeah I know "well that took you long enough Sean" but yeah. It´s like every person knows right? I guess I was a bit behind the curve but hey I´ve arrived haha. So what changed?  Well I was just reading my journal and see that I´ve made progress. Maybe not physically but like mentally or in my way of thinking... sorry.. wierd way to start this letter but eh. haha Who cares? I love my life. haha ok so now I´ll tell about the week.

Last Monday we went to this this place called the culture house. They have like skeletons of people which according to carbon dating put them about 800 B.C. which was pretty cool.  The owner is a member and they're  from this cave cemetery in Talgua. Really cool. When we went to the caves we couldn´t enter that section because the testing and science stuff isn´t done yet. Other than that they just had historic photos of catacamas... like three different pics had subtitles that said like this was such and such and was mysteriously and sadly stolen... hahaha we had a good laugh.

Caves of Taulgua

 

Then on Thursday the next exciting thing is, well, it hit 104 degrees in farenheit (spelling) and the power went out because of a massive windstorm that destoyed a bunch of electric posts, so we woke up and I had to figure out how to shower from this pila water.  I set up my blanket and well now I just am gonna say it actually feels really good to shower outside in 104 degree weather. Definetly suggested ... hahaha

On Saturday we pressed or lent? idk service by cleaning these steps to this culture house. Here they make like really cool gutters on the side for when the rainy season comes so we cleaned that all up and then found some card baord to do what? yeah, you know it, go shuting.  We call it cardboarding now haha that was fun.

Cardboarding!

 

Other than that the branch pres. challenged the branch to read the Book of Mormon in 4 months.  I accepted the challenge. That means 3 pages a day, its been 2 weeks and 2 days and I am on page 49. In Spanish the Book of Mormon has 642 page which is 111 pages extra, just an interesting fact.

I really appreciated like Nefi´s attitude, every one knows the Nefi 3:7 "I will go..." and he shows this attitude again in 1 Nefi 16:9-10. He is told to build a boat and instead of being "like oh man, I can´t do that!  That's sooo much work, idk how to do that."

"He just went and was like show me the tools" really less than that even its like "show me where the minerals are so I can make the tools"

I want to be like that as a missionary. Like that JFK saying..(i think it was jfk) (inexact quote) "ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country-" now we just apply that to our church, ward, friends and family. I want to be like Nephi. 

Other than that I love this place.  I´m learning so much and even if I can´t seem to be able to help a ton I´m trying, the Lord will form me into who he wants me to be.

Love you all, 

 paz y amor

Elder Johnson

4-7-14 Conference Miracle

So this week we watched... haha kind of.... conference. The thing is that the devil seems to be working really hard around here. All the technology basically failed in our building. Haha, so like for example, Saturday session we went and then the satelite failed and everyone was listening in different launguages so we set up the land line for the internet in time for like the prayer. Then it was like skipping part and everything then we went to another room and set it up in English. Honestly, it was very broken and I didn´t understand alot of part and I know I probably missed a ton, but man, nothing I can do about it, so it´s ok gotta keep going. That's what I thought to myself.

On sunday we saw a miracle. The story is that we came early to try and help our district president to set up everything. They had played around with the satelite and were getting the spoken word and all that and it seemed like it was in Spanish. Everything was good, then the  session started and everyone was like this is Portuguese but like I was talking to the missionaries and like we all understood it. I know this sounds nuts, but we as missionaries understood the Portuguese, maybe not perfectly but we started telling the people that were there what they were saying. Or what we understood they were saying. While the district pres. set up the land line and just hooked up to the internet radio. That's when we stopped. They shut off the portuguese audio, turned on the internet radio and and it was in spanish.

The video from the satelite was a little smoother than the internet radio so after that it was kinda broken apart but man, that was freaking cool. I didn´t understand everything but that I could get the general idea. I´m convinced it was nothing short of a miracle.

After it got choppy we went to a different room and finished out in English.. but good experience.

haha well got to go, love ya all I'm ok and healthy.

 paz y amor

Elder Johnson

3-30-2014 This is God's work

Well, this week is the first week that I've had with my new companion. I've found that being a district leader until now is basically saying a lot of yes and no, and collecting numbers..... haha but whatever.

Me and my new companion

 

Right now I'm in interchanges with one of the coolest kids, we went to Mexico together and now he is the district leader of the other district. Named Elder Woodland, basically he is a stud and well I'm pretty happy that we had this chance to be on interchanges.

My District

 

Tomorrow we are going to go to Tegucigalpa, or  the capital of Honduras, where the majority of the missionaries are. Not excited for this trip, it's always super long and I'm always hungry, but eh.

Well other than that we are just working so hard on trying to animate and encourage this branch. and after all our work this week. we only had 47 people attend when the normal is like 95... idk what happened there but next week will be better. I hope...

This is Gods work, and I'm learning so much. I am so grateful to all of you for all of your love and support. 

Paz y amor

Elder Johnonson