A Honduran Christmas and awesome rompompo

Dear beloved ones,

So.. let me describe Christmas in Honduras with four major things:

First like the "Holy week" everyone is super jolly, setting up gigantic towns of Bethlehem and nativity scenes in their little jail cell, (because they don't have yards I call them cells) like the full out bonkers, I saw one with an artificial river and water fall, like nuts.

Second on the 24th they have fire works at midnight and all the kids open their presents. I'm pretty sure santa doesn't visit here because if he did Rudolph would be a goner. Kinda like "Death by fireworks" here. The members tell us that they have like mini wars with roman candles and have like bases where they bomb the other team.. yeah nuts, idk how many people are in the hospital.

Third, all of last week and this week they eat tamales and camatales and torejas and stuff that is considered like special Christmas treats.. and aren't bad.. but with tamales it's like a prank to put something gross in the middle sooo ,beware if your friends with a Honduran.

Fourth, all of this is accomplished with the accompimiant of drinking a ton of alcohol and rompompo... thats just eggnog. Which is just as good here as it is in the states..

 

Speaking of rompompo, we were at some members house and they gave us this and said, drink it drink it, and of course we did.  Later they were looking at the bottle and saying that their grandma had made it. The next thought they had was, wait a minute, our grandma isn't a member.. usually eggnog is made with alcohol.. hahaha, so we were all like freaking out and the members were freaking out and saying what did we do to the missionaries!? and later we asked the grandma and she made it without alcohol in respect to her childrens beliefs and turns out wants to learn more about the church. haha God does work in mysterious ways.

Anyways, yeah, of course that was the highlight of this week. My companion and I are slaying numbers wise we just gotta get this family to pray about their fecha and we'll be baptizing this family of 7 people. But they gotta do their part. God will always do his part. Always. 

As a missionary I've learned that I NEED to trust God more. He hasn't let me down yet. I'm not saying everything is super smooth all the time but like with the story of eggnog, shoot I worried so much I was gonna like call the president and like.. shoot, I don't even know what I was going to do but I was scared, when really God knows my intentions, why am I so worried haha. Faith and hope. They're the best and really they come in a package.

I love this gospel, it's awesome. This New Year is gonna be sweet and I'm in the best place in the world for it. 

 

Love you guys take care.

Love Elder Johnson

Merry Christmas!

So... we had 4 more baptisms that rocked, and then the primary program brought like 50 more people to church than normal. WAHOOO!!!

It's so satisfying to see good things happen but I have something I have to admit... The girls here like me and it's wierd because the ones that like me are all under 12..... yeah like after the primary program three little ninitas attacked me and hugged me!!!!! AAHHHHHH!!! SIN!!!!!! Don't worry, I did tell the president and I did not hug back in any way.. super awkward....

The baptism was of 4 girls who are the daughters of Fabian. Fabian has a complicated story but basically we're waiting for the papers of marriage for him and his wife then they'll be baptized too!! These four girls remind me alot of my sisters.... and the youngest is 8 and getting her into the font was really funny because at the last minute she was super afraid of the water and her mom came and kind of pushed her into the font saying something like "do you love Jesus! Then do this!" and... yeah she got baptized super linda baptism cause we had all the kids of the ward there on the Saturday and they sang and everything!!! wow. Probably one of my favorites for sure, it's so amazing to see people sooo like clean, so clean you  can feel it... wow just loved it.

Small news,  I'm a branch president of the Las Anonas mini part branch, and I have had alot of interchanges. The members all love me now and I only have 6 weeks left in this area.. :( bummer.

Elder Montero is strong and always complaining that he's like a black person and this isn't his True color... haha I'm a red skin and less gringo than many gringos but... still there.

Well Merry Christmas!!! Love ya all and hope your all doing great! paz y amor :)

Elder Johnson

Missionary's advice to the youth in our ward for Fear Factor, Tuesday, December 17th.

Elder Sean Johnson
Advice: Hug your mom when you can, tell your dad you love and appreciate him. And talk about the Gospel with your friends, it's not just a Sunday thing.  Everyone wants to be happy. I promise that if you follow the commandments you'll be happy, that simple.
Elder Johnson


Elder Spencer Agren
MIs amigos!
Hola de Argentina! Missionary work is the greatest. You have no idea how crazy....insane... this work can be. Yes, there are tough parts about the work (like not having any snow at all for Christmas) but baptisms and playing futbol with the natives is the best. The Lord´s work makes every worth while! Have a good time this Christmas, and remember the real reason why we celebrate! Mormons rule!!
Elder Agren

 

Elder Alek Barney

Try Poutine. All it is is french fries with cheese curds and brown gravy it is really good.

I can't think of anything inspiring to say but  the way to a happy life is service and selflessness.

 

 

Elder Tyler Hanks

 

Beware the panza. It could kill you

Another baptism and I built a house!

okkkkk

This week was crazy!  I didn't feel like we did much then I looked at our numbers and we freaking killed..... (only an expression) but it explains why I'm so tired these days.

It's weird here they don't have day light savings so its really bright in the morning and really dark at like five..

Anyways this week we had a really great baptism and I helped build a house, pretty much the highlights of the week.

The baptism was the family of women so according to our standards not a family, but 5 women, but it was still awesome. They live out in the middle of no where... it's really weird, and we only found them because they came to church out of the blue once.

I also found out the members love me here!  That felt good, this one sister wants me to call her Mama mejia but I had to tell her I can't because I'm a missionary. Her son just got back from Guatemala... 

This letter isn't real focused.  Really this week was just a good solid overall week. My companion is growing, I'm growing, we need the office to reimburse us for paying the electric bill and... yeah we have a ton of progressing investigators and a family that is scheduled for next week. I can now say I speak spanish. I just can't say I speak spanish well.... umm....

Yeah thats it. I love this work!!! Love this Gospel!!! Love being happy!!!

Take care, love ya all. Elder Johnson

Anyone know what week this is?

Well.... um, yeah idk whats happened this week was.. well boring we have way too many meetings and not enough time to work.

 

Can I just say that my area is huge!! geez we found another village through a reference, and we don´t have time to visit them ever.... Ugh frustration, why couldn´t God make the earth in like 8 or 9 days that would be perfect for our area.. haha oh well don´t want to be sacrilegious or anything, I love the 7 days it`s really good too.

 

 

I have learned soooo much about training this week, and well, it´s true what they say the teacher always learns more than he teaches.

 

 

One cool thing is we lent (lended? Idk) service to a member and I put my ceramic skill to the test and made a pot!! Yes, I felt very accomplished.

 

 

um.. This week we found this stellar family who are super evangilistical but are totally gonna be mormanized. Why? Because when we explained about the Book of Mormon they were like... uh yeah but why this? and why this? and why this? and we did our little presentation had all the scriptures in the Bible to answer their questions and they wanted us to come back the next day but we couldn´t cause we were all booked so we get to teach them today! Sooooo excited for that..

Other than that, this week was about as boring as a mission can get (with out being put in your house and not allowed to leave.

 

 

Alma 26:12 the best by the way.

Love ya all, hope everyone's ok.  If not.. well you could totally email me and tell me about it I`ll listen.

Love, Elder Sean Johnson

 

 

(We believe what he is trying to say with the 8 or 9 days thing is that he wishes there were more days in a week, just in case any of you couldn't understand it like we didn't understand it.  We had to think about it anyways)

Love Pizza!

Welp, Idk who´s reading this at this point but I am so grateful for my awesome ward at home. I got your guys´ letters and just idk, thanks guys, means alot.

So to begin, I´m going to start by explaining that here we have  3 missionaries with more than a year in our whole zone... yeah out of 12 only 3 have more than a year... so basically we´re a bunch of greenies.  My district leader has two more changes than me, yes he´s new from Mexico.  Then there´s me and my son and that's the only changes... but in our zone the zone leaders have like a reward and point system by the numbers. And the best prize is they buy you a pizza if you are in 1st place. I´m proud to say me and my son (who I´ve been training for three weeks) have eaten pizza three p-days in a row... yeah pretty sweet.

Now that I´m bragging the Lord is for sure going to humble me in some way.  It just demonstrates that really it doesn't´t matter your experience, the Lord is working us in a way that I never thought was possible. We´re going like 100 miles an hour and honestly, I don´t want it to stop. I want to finish this race like this.

I´m so grateful for this Gospel. Seriously, this week I took a minute to look at how old I am, what I´m doing, and how I'm doing it and well really.... I'm so not qualified for these things.  Maybe that's why the Lord is sending such young people. Because they HAVE to rely on the Lord, not on their qualifications. We don´t have a choice, I can´t tell people how to fix a marriage because I went to school and received training, I can´t tell them that I know because I have experience with marriage, I can´t even give them advice from seeing a bad marriage, and people are trying to fix it. But lately that´s what me and my companion have been teaching a ton lately GET MARRIED. It´s like a Honduran tradition to Not get married, yeah the biggest block to baptism really.

Anyway, this week was good, just keep getting frustrated with fechas falling through, but part of the work. One of our members that really might be John the Beloved got beat up and couldn´t visit with us. Funny that here if someone gets beat up it´s like well psh why was he being stupid?

Where in Utah it´s like who beat him up? haha, well Ii think its funny.  It wouldn´t be funny if he was super hurt or anything and he was even making jokes about it haha oh well.

Oh. freaking sweet news!  We took one more step into making Las Anonas (the little village in the mountains) a branch!!  We´re having meetings up there on Sundays.. woooo hooo!

One last thing, the weather here is usually super hot but this past four days it´s been cold cold, but compared to Utah, nah, still warm, but for some reason I´ve been freezing my bottom off..

With that I´ll end.  I love this gospel, I´m grateful to God to have had the opprotunity to have this my whole life. love ya all, peace out 

Elder Johnson