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 :)

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

Week 72

Hey everybody,

     well its been another great week here. First things first, La familia Zamora got baptized on saturday and confirmed on sunday. It was a really pretty baptismal service and was well attended. They looked so happy after their baptism and you could really see a change in their countenance. It never gets old seeing that. Right now we are working with a few other families. One is called la familia irías, they are a really young couple and are already married! they have been to church twice and really love it. they have also been to a couple activities in the church during the week. They say they want to get baptized but they say that this saturday is too soon for them, so we are going to see what date we can work towards. They always give us food when we go over there...so thats a good sign haha. Im pretty sure that they will get baptized this december. Also la familia landes is doing great, they all attended church for the third time and loved it. The 3 kids want to get baptized as soon as possible but we have to marry the mom and dad and he has to quit smoking. We have been struggling a lot with that. before he was smoking about 20 cigarettes a day, now hes down to about 4. We are trying to keep him excited about quiting smoking and making sure he has a lot of support from his family. 

     On friday we were in the chapel and there was a multistake seminary graduation and the torocagua stake was there (my first zone) and i got to see a bunch of families from San Rafael that used to give us food and visit with us. It was really cool to see that they actually remembered me and were really happy to see me...especiall now that its been about a year since ive been there. They remember me but say they dont really remember my companions...haha. 

    On saturday all the missionaries in the zone went to one of the wards here to do divisions with the members and meet with the less actives for 2 hours. While i was walking with my partner for the day i ran into one of my first converts from San Rafael (juan jose avila)! he was selling oranges on the side of the road, and i saw him and went up to him and gave him a big hug haha. he says that he will be going to the temple in guatemala next week to recieve his endowment. That was so good to hear.

   Sunday was great too, we had 7 investigators in church and we are trying to keep finding new investigators. My companion and i are really starting to gain the trust of the members and it makes the time a lot more enjoyable.

The only bad news is that i got REALLY sick last night. I was throwing up all night and have bad diarrhea. I couldnt even keep water down...im still feeling pretty terrible so im looking forward to wrapping this letter up and going back to the house.I still have lots of body aches and my stomach is still queezy. Im not sure whats wrong with me, i dont remember eating anything strange but keep me in your prayers so it goes away as soon as possible.

Alright well thats it! i love you all and hope you are having a great week.

Con amor,

Elder Archibald

Week 71

 Hey family,

This was another great week. On monday we went to the main market in downtown comayaguela and looked around at some pretty cool stuff...a bunch of leather work, wood work, knock off soccer jerseys and all that cool suoveneir stuff. It was a fun p day. Im really enjoying my time here with the this zone, there are a lot of cool missionaries that are fun to be around.

   on tuesday I had exchanges with a missionary here in the district that has been having a lot of problems, not really about disobedience or anything, but he just wants to finish his mission and go home early. we had a really good time and found some really great investigators and had a heart to heart talk about how he can start to enjoy his mission more...he said at the end that the 14 months left that he has isnt really all that much and that he should finish.

   I also had exchanges with the zone leader Elder Jeff Luna from el salvador. It was so much fun because we have been really close friends throughout the whole mission. We went to visit the families that have baptismal dates and he helped out a lot. He has a great way with people and they just naturally want to follow him.

   On friday la familia zamora got married! we got to go to this small town far away called ojojona where weddings are cheaper. a member from the ward drove us out there and it was really pretty. This next saturday the family will get baptized.

    We had another amazing sunday as well. La familia Landes showed up about 10 mintues late to church but walked in and we sat with them...and we were worried that la familia zamora wasnt going to show up because they need to attend church one more time before getting baptized...but they showed up about 20 mintues late. and then la familia Irias showed up about 40 minutes late and then another familia came later too. in all we had 13 investigators...it was so funny to see the bishop smile as one family after another came into church...and the cool thing is that they all have plans on getting baptized.

well thats about it! i love you all! thanks for all your prayers.

Con amor,

Elder Archibald

Week 70

Hey family, this week has been another great week. We are keeping really really busy with all of our investigators. Its been actually pretty hard to make sure that we stay focused on each and every one of them so that things will go as planned. Right now we have 10 baptismal dates for november and december. Sunday went really well again, we had 9 investigators in sacrament meeting. A new family of 5 showed up that we have been teaching. They are called la familia Landes and are going to get baptized on December first. They came early before church started and we gave them a tour of the chapel before the meetings started. Then we talked about baptism while we were showing them the baptismal fount and they said they would pray about it. Later that night we went to their house and they said that they LOVED church and want to get baptized. Now we just need to start working on their wedding papers. The family that was going to get baptized on the 17^th (familia zamora) didnt show up...i was pretty sad about that. But we just moved the baptism back a week. They are still going to get married this friday. We just have to do a couple food selling activities to raise money. The dad makes tourist t shirts and sells them the the touristy spots...he says he`s gonna hook me up with some shirts haha.

On other news, we tried making baleadas from scratch...we tried making flour tortillas and they turned out okay.

Well thats about it for this week family, sorry for another short week, but we have not have a lot of time to write. I love hearing from you all though.

 

Talk to you later!

 

con mucho amor,

 

Elder Archibald

Week 69

    Happy birthday heather! and happy late birthday to jonas!

 

     This week has been amazing. I really think it could have been one of the best weeks i have ever had in my mission. I feel like I am becoming the best missionary i have ever been on my mission and i am LOVING the work. This area is absolutely amazing...it kind of had a bad reputation before for not being able to baptize here, but now i realize the the missionaries before me just werent being really smart about how they were working haha. We are teaching about 8 families and a few individuals and they are ALL so positive! we are working really well with the members and are trying to have the members invite the investigating families to get married on specific dates rather than us extending the commitments. and its working! we have a date for the 17th with la familia Zamora...and we have about 3 other families that want to get baptized, we just have to teach them the doctrine of the law of chastity and they will come around. Ive never loved my investigators so much and i know they can feel that love too, and that makes it a lot easier to talk really directly to them and they can trust in what we are teaching them. we had 12 investigators in church yesterday too! everything just seems to be falling into place. My companion and i are really able to compliment eachothers teaching skills. Elder Weaver is a great listener and asks really good questions. i wish i had more time to write about each of the families, but ill keep you updated in the future. Im having the time of my life.

   before i forget, I got the package from dad! thank you! im trying to make the chocolate last as long as i can...those strawberry things are SO GOOD. Im really liking the zone here. its great to be back in the city actually...theres a lot better shopping and a lot more things to make life a little more comfortable. The ward is really great, we have about 3 or 4 times a week when we eat with the members. My favorite is on thursday night, there is a lady that has a bakery and she gives us really good food and gives us a bunch of freshly baked bread and cake to take home. Her son is in the tampico mexico mission, his name is Elder Pineda...not sure if Cole knows him.

    On tuesday we did exchanges with the zone leader Elder Harding from pleasant grove. I didnt know the area very well so we spent most of the day contacting, but it we still had a lot of fun with each other. I didnt like contacting before in my mission, but i realized you just have to enjoy meeting these people and you can hear a lot of funny stories while doing it.

 

 Well my times up! sorry for the short letters, ill try to write more next week. I love you all.

 

Con amor,

Elder Archiabld

Week 68

Hey family!

 

     well i am writing you from my new area! its called Lempira and its the Comayagûela Zone. We got the phone call on tuesday letting us know that I had transfers. Elder Quiñonez is staying there in Guaimaca for another change. I was honestly a little sad to leave to be honest with you; we had a lot of investigators progressing families...but all well! gotta keep on keepin on. Im excited to get to know the new area and new people.

    we had to wake up really early the next day to catch the bus from guiamaca to tegus. There werent any mototaxis that early in the morning so we had to walk with my stuff SO far to get to the highway where we wait for a bus to pass by on the side of the road. Then we had to stand up on the bus the whole way to the city. Then at the meeting i found out that i would be in Lempira, which is where we have the change meeting every transfer. The area is right in the heart of the city again, i can see the office from the window in our house. The house is actually pretty nice, we have a washing machine!!!! but the only bad thing is that there isnt running water :( haha so we have to fill up our big concrete tub thing with water to wash dishes, shower and everything. Im the district leader here and so that will be a good new experience. My companions name is Elder Weaver from Cedar city and he will be going home in January.

   So far the area is pretty nice and im really excited. It is a super nice chapel that is brand new it has an elevator haha.

 

alright well im out of time! ill talk to you later. Love you all

 

con mucho amor,

 

Elder Archibald