Friday, December 21, 2012

Week 74






Dear family!
   Another great week out here in Piedras Bonitas, Comayagua. I am honestly loving it out here. One of the best areas in the mission in my opinion. The branch is doing great (except for some gossip between leaders which is really immature and doesnt help anyone). But I think ill be here for another couple changes...at least i hope so. Haha you never know in the mission.
   Ill try to be quick because i dont have a whole lot of time but we had a pretty cool adventure on wednesday. We  had to go to this tiny little village to take out some wedding papers for the san pedro sula mission. Its called ojos de agua and its like an hour in a half from the city in car, we got a member to take us out there. The road was pretty ugly so it took us a really long time...we crossed this really sketchy bridge thats like help up with cords and wood planks. Luckily we made it across safe and sound with the car and all. then when we got to ojos de agua we had to go to another village about a half an hour further out but we couldnt make it in the car we had...then miraculously we found the only members in this place (there isnt even a branch there) he is the mayor actually, and they lent their motorcycle to the member we were with and he went to get the other papers. About an hour later he got back and we went back home in the car. We were gone ALL day doing that and we were so tired when we got to our house. I really hope this family gets married and baptized for all that stuff we had to do haha.
  Sunday was great we had a few investigators in church. An investigator from the military base came and we got to talk to him for a little while. Right now we are organizing an english tour of the temple during the open house with all the soldiers and military that want to go. We were really sad though because la familia guzman didnt show up to church, we went to their house in the morning and were getting dressed to go to church and said they would show up a little later but they never did. We are still working really hard with that family. They are amazing. They think im so funny haha, like everything i say they laugh so hard haha its so funny. Like someone knocked on their door during a lesson and i said it was probably their dog (not that funny) but they laughed for a good minute straight haha. Their kids are so great. Pray for that family please! 
   Also on saturday the whole mission did service for the bishops and branch presidentes. We showed up to the branch presidents house with machetes and we cut his lawn and cleaned it up for him. He was really appreciative.
So im pretty sure that ill be able to call at like 1 or 2, illl let you know next week the exact hour and see if i can use google or skype and to see if its skype 5.0...i still have to find an internet cafe that will be open on the 25th...most places are closed so ill see what i can do.
   Alright well thats about it...I love you all! thank you for your prayers and support. Have a good week
Con amor,
Elder Archibald

ps...sorry if parts of this letter dont make sense, i was writing really fast :)

Friday, December 14, 2012

Week 73: Piedras Bonitas, Comayagua







Hey family...
   Well Im not in Barrio Lempira anymore haha. CHANGES! crazy right? i
was SO surprised...and really sad honestly. i was not happy about
leaving the 15 baptismal dates we had there :(. The Zone leaders told
us the changes during the district meeting on tuesday so i was busy
all that day packing my bags and saying good bye to everyone that i
could. I really loved that area and it would have been nice to be able
to stay there longer than just 6 weeks...but anyways I went to the
transfer meeting the next day in my church in lempira and waited to
see where i was going to get sent. now im in an area called Piedras
Bonitas in the city of Comayagua. Its a really really pretty area
about 2 hours from tegucigalpa. Its super touristy and really clean
and beautiful and safe! Ive actually wanted to come to this area my
whole mission. My companion`s name is Elder Gillespie from Utah. He is
a really good guy. i just have 1 more change than him in the mission
so we are about the same "age". we are The Zone Leaders in the zone
comayagua...its HUGE. its the whole department of comayagua and its
got 12 companionships.
   On friday i went back to the city for the zone leader council in
president fortuna`s house. Sister Fortuna is always SO happy to see me
haha i love it. we learned a lot of great stuff about how we are going
to start using the book of mormon more and how we are going to be
working more with the members and we are going to be talking about
baptism with EVERYBODY. We have are zone meeting tomorrow so im
excited to communicate this to the rest of the zone. Also, i think you
already know, but the temple has a dedication date! March 17th! open
house starts on feb 7th. its so nice to finally have a date to tell
people. its going to be such a huge help with missionary work. I just
hope my branch is going to be well organized to help bring people to
see the temple.
  Im really loving the area though, we have a few great families. The
most special family right now is la familia Guzmàn. They are
absolutely incredible. They have a pretty nice house and the dad is a
politician here in comayagua. they have 8 kids! 6 of them are older
than 8. They all get really excited when we come to see them. They are
also really intelligent and are all reading in the book of mormon and
really understand the restoration. The only hard thing is its hard to
find them all together. this sunday only the dad and a nephew could
attend, but next week i think the dad and the rest of the family will
come too. They have a lot of friends in the church too so that helps
so much.
  I really love the branch here. Its actually pretty wealthy...its
funny in elders quorumn because everyone has their ipads out like i
imagine it is in the states haha. In our branch there are quite a few
military servicemen from the states that are stationed in a military
base right close by to the city. We are going to go to the military
base one of these days because elder gillespies dad is air force and
he has like a military ID that lets us get on the base..pretty cool i
know haha.

haha well thats it for now! thank you for everything...still waiting
for my christmas packages ;) haha

con mucho amor,

Elder Archibald

btw, we had a baptism on saturday of a family that just got
reactivated. their daughters got baptized.

and im attaching pictures of some of the families i left in lempira
...and some other pictures...that i took with the new camera