Week 35

Hey family!

Hows everybody doing? It has been a pretty good week here in the office and in Jardines de Toncontín. Everything's been going pretty smooth with the finance stuff here in la Misión Honduras Comayagüela. I made my monthly trip to all the banks to pay all the landlords with my giant stack of Lempiras. Everything went smoothly at the bank though, no old Honduras ladies yelling at us for having too much money haha. Funny story though, now at each desk where the tellers are at there are big dividers between so you cant see what the other people are doing. I was talking to the teller and she told me that they put those up the next day after what happened the last time in the bank with us.  Other news, I still haven’t gotten my drivers license, I have to wait until I have my Honduras residence card which takes a long time to get…but im hoping that its sooner than later, I miss driving.

                On Saturday we had a fun p-day. All of us office missionaries and The Rays went to the Temple grounds and had a picnic. The Rays made us sloppy joes, potato salad, and cinnamon Rolls. It has been a really long time since I have eaten any of that kind of food hah, it was a nice taste of ´Merica. But the temple is taking forever to get finished; in the very beginning they were saying it would be done in May, then June, then August, then December, and now the very latest i've heard is in February…but i think that it could possibly be December. That’s what i'm hoping for at least. I really want to go there and see some of my families be sealed. From what i've heard from the missionaries that are in San Rafael basically everyone is still very active.  Las Familias Andino, Nuñez, and Medina are still all going to church every Sunday. The Medina family even goes along with the missionaries for there teaching appointments…its  makes me really happy to know that they are so active and really enduring to the end. We have also been seeing a lot more progress in my area here, Jardines de Toncontín. We found this one family, La familia Matute, contacting and the wife invited us right in. she got baptized about 20 years ago but has been inactive for a really long time but moved to the area recently and has been wondering where she could go to church again. She had also been praying a lot for her husband, that he would make some changes in his life and he has also been interested in god but just hasn’t had the chance to get kto  know his heavenly father. They accepted ta baptismal commitment during the first lesson, went to church the following Sunday (yesterday). and now tonight we are planning on putting the baptismal date. It has been really incredible to see how Heavenly Father puts people in our paths that are just waiting to hear and learn about the gospel. The ward i'm in is really great too, they are a huge help and are ready and willing to extend a hand of friendship. Sunday was really great though, the last few weeks we have really been struggling to get people to visit church, but everything kind of fell in place this week. We had 4 people attend church who haven't been in years and years. We've been focusing a lot in working with part member families to reactivate while teaching new investigators. We are teaching this one family where the wife used to be super active as a youth but got pregnant while she was a teenager and kind of fell away from the church. now she is living with her husband and daughter and she came to church for the first time in a really long time. the husband and daughter are also very interested. The daughter goes to a bilingual school and speaks perfect english so i get to teach in English for a little bit. I love it haha. It can really be frustrating sometimes because in spanish i can say what i need to say...but it is limited with my vocabulary. I feel like i am able to teach so much better in english...but i just have to keep working hard at the language so i can get to the point where i can express myself how i want to.

     That's awesome about mom and dads baptism! she sounds like she has a really great testimony. I'm sure our missions are very different as far as the people go, but really similar in a lot of other aspects. It'd be interesting to see your ward mission plan...its like pulling teeth to try and get our ward to do one, but it really does make a difference if there is one in place and the people are working with it.

    CONGRATS TO BRETT AND ASHLEY!!!! i love the name Avett!! haha he looks just like a little Brett. Yet another nephew/ niece that i get to meet when i get home...sometimes i lose track of who is pregnant and who is due soon, there is a lot of that going on in our family lately haha.

  well thats about it for this week. thank you so much for everything, you are an amazing family and i want all of the families i teach to be as happy as us. until next week...

Les amo mucho,

Elder Archibald