Thursday, April 26, 2012

Week 42

Hey family!
¿Cómo están todos? Another good week down here in Honduras. First off, thank you to Brett and Ashley for the Easter package! I haven’t had a ring pop in a really long time haha and the nerf gun is awesome…I pass time by shooting the lizards in our house with it. Also to answer some questions from your letters: Yes the office has air conditioning, which is awesome because this is the hottest time of the year. Mom, we call our district meeting lessons Temas, what are they in German? And Brett, your Spanish is still pretty good…looks right to me at least. Also, thanks for doing my taxes dad, that was a lot bigger tax return than I thought i´d get. That’s crazy that cole is already back home and at BYU. How is he doing? I´m still waiting for the package from Dad, I hope it gets here soon. We go to the post office every Wednesday, so hopefully I’ll see it there. That’s also cool that Jason Esplin was the financial secretary in Brazil…we´ll see if I’ll be a CFO haha. I’m thinking that what I do is a lot more accounting than finance stuff…or at least I hope because if not I’m changing majors hah.
 
This week kind of flew by so its hard to remember everything that happened. I have a new companion, his name is Elder Gonzales. He is from El Salvador and will be Elder Quevedos replacement. Elder Q is training him to be the materials secretary before he gets changed on the 9th. I`ll be sad to see Elder Quevedo go, he has been my favorite companion by far.
 
Things have been going pretty well in the area; the ward is still struggling but things are headed in the right direction. Attendance has been going up slowly but surely. The ward is a little bit more excited about missionary work now that we´ve been bringing investigators pretty consistently to church. Yesterday we had 5 in the sacrament meeting…we were expecting a lot more, but it was still great.  We also started to teach a Gospel Principles class for the new members and investigators because they will be able to learn more than in gospel doctrine..and frankly they other class was really boring, so we had to do something to switch things up. There`s a ward that had 65 investigators in sacrament meeting last sunday and over a hundred references because each member commited to bringing someone to church. Once the Bishopric got the names of the people they wrote personalized invitations to each person invited and gave them a set of scriptures...it was a huge success for them. It really shows that if a ward will magnify their callings and work together they can do a whole lot more than just the missionaries
 
Samir showed up like always, he still has his baptismal date for this Saturday. He works a lot though so its hard to find him and we still have a few more lessons to teach him before the baptism, so let’s hope everything goes well. He´s awesome though, his best friend just got back from his mission in Chile so that helps out a lot too.
We also had this other Family come to Church, la Familia Súniga. I wrote about them a few weeks ago about how the mom and the sister in law just showed up to church without being invited. They are a really great family except for the husband wants nothing to do with us...and thats kind of the reason why the mom doesnt really want to get married to him...even though they have ben together for 25 years and have 5 kids together. Its a hard thing for me to understand. But We are going to keep trying to talk to the dad and see if he will soften his heart if he sees the whole family going to chuch...at least to the point where he will be more loving towards his family and maybe then they will want to get married.
 
Its a similar situation with la Familia Matute...The husband wasnt really sure if he wanted to get married the the wife...which is kind of understandable because she is 15 years older than him and is pretty mean to him...BUT nonetheless he finally decided that he wanted to get married and get baptized. So now we just have to get papers moving for the wedding...I really had no idea before the mission that i would be helping so many people fix their marital problems. Im just glad that I have a great example in Mom and Dad and I know how a marriage and a family is suppposed to work and how it can be happy. A lot of people say that i dont understand their problems and that i cant help, which is partly true...I`ve never been married or anything, but I tell them how happy my family is and i know that it is because of the Gospel, and i know it can change their family life as well.
 
Alright, well thats about it for this week. I love you all. Thanks for your prayers and your support! hope all is well in Germany, Florida, Salt Lake, Colorado, St. George, and LA. haha. Hasta luego
 
Con mucho amor,
 
Elder Archibald
 
ps. Mothers day is on the 10th of April in Honduras...i forget when it is in America, i think its the second sunday of the month, right? anyways, im sure that we could do the whole webcam thing again this time and it will be a lot easier now that i`m in the office. You`d just have to talk with Elder Ray and he can help us set it up. I am available monday through Friday from about 9 in the morning until 3 in the afternoon.

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