Glenis

  Well this had been a great week! We´ve been working hard, especially with Glenis! She is a 21 year old student who loves the church! We have been teaching her a bunch and she understands all of it! We were really worried the fecha would fall because a lot of things were getting in the way. For example, the days that we were supposed to go and interview her and stuff, she was no where to be found. And sometimes wouldnt answer her phone. It was really stressful towards the last couple days before her baptism. But we eventually made it work! She was super excited! And so we planned the baptism at 12 on Saturday. It was the only time that people would be able to make it! And so Friday night we go to the capilla to fill up on the font...and yes, just as you expected.......water came out! For about 2 minutes, and then it just stopped. We didnt know what to do so we called around, and yes, just as you expected....they answered. But had no answers! Bishop said to just wait until the morning and see what happens. If you know me, than you know how easily I stress out abot this kind of stuff. And so we said a bunch of prayers that night and morning. And in the morning we go to the capilla, and yup, no water! We keep calling, but this time, no one answers! The good thing is that there were some relief society people cleaning the church, well trying to... they couldnt without water! And so they are calling everyone as well! The relieft society president was calling everyone on speaker, and you can just keep hearing the phone ring, but then.. no answer. Over and over again. We were just sitting in church waiting for an answer, we were already planning on calling everyone and changing the day of the baptism, or going to another church to baptize. We were worried because it was already 11! But then, finally someone answers! and he rushes over and fixed the water pump. WHAT A MIRACLE! Now its 11:30 and we´re filling up the font! Just on time too, becasue people start showing up. But it was a really spiritual service! Glenis wanted me to baptize her and it all came out smoothly! She is one of my favorite converts so far! You can tell that this is something that she truly wanted to do!
  Everything is going well! We had a bunch of investigators come to church and they loved it! For example, one of Rocio´s brothers has already came twice, and we thought he was going to be one of those brothers that keeps us from teaching their sister, but in fact, he is the one going! haha I guess you never know who you´re realllly teaching. This ward is awesome and they always willing to help us! I feel right at home.

Divisions

Hey guys! 
Well there is not much new this week! We're still working hard like always!
We are finding a bunch of new investigators! This area is pretty awesome! There are a lot of cool experiences here and there but ill just write a couple, and one of my favorite ones was when we went on divisions. Ok, to start off, this week we met a bunch of people right? Specifically a guy in our residential where we live who was blasting some Pink Floyd one day, and i told my comp that we need to go back some other day and contact him, i didnt want to do there and then because he was probably on something since hes listening to Pink Floyd!! haha jk. So anyway, i end up talking to him one day and he completely rejects us saying he knows everything about us already and is not interested. Well fair enough. Ni modo. I didnt really think of him again. Then early the day of divisions we were walking through the Villa Olimpica and we see this guy skating around with his friend, I remember him because I commented his cool shirt to my companion. Ok so now...we go on divisons at Lujos and Akubeze's area. So I went on divisions with Elder Akubeze from London. He is soo cool! He is also from my CCM group! Ok so anyway, he says we are going to a cita to a really positive new investigator. Ok so im excited! So we go and he is awesome! My companion is doing alot of the talking, which is fine because well its better that the investigator gets attached to him because hes in his area. 10 minutes into the lesson... people walk into the house. 3 guys. The guy I contacted that didnt want anything, and the 2 skater guys!! And it turns out they are all like best friends. And so they are super distracting in the beginning, and my companion just kind of freezes...but i was so excited!! Because i knew that it was not a coincidence that at the very moment that I was at that house, these guys from myyy area, who are like 15 minutes away, show up here. So i said, Wellll... Showtime. And i reach in my bag and take out my scriptures and just start teaching. I did a really good job at controling the situation because these guys were suppperr chistosos and distracting. But they ended up liking us and asking a lot of good questions! That was fun!
 The rest of the day of divisions was fun! We stayed the night with them and the next day we had a service project. We helped some inactives shovel a bunch of dirt! Thanks to my previous job fencing with my uncles, i shoveled away!! haha That was fun! So long story short, we finish divisions and we are on our way home. The other elders are with us to because we were on our way to lunch, then correlation in my area. but on our way there we had to pass some portones of the Villa. And we looked in and saw a bunch of people!! like alott of youth! And someone said lets go check out whats going on. But we were really hungry so we said nahhh, and as we were leaving the enterance I hear someone yell 'Elderrrr!!!' And i look over and i see the Presidente Torres  from Miraflores!!! I couldnt believe it! He saw me from far away and recognized me! haha and so i ran over to him and who did I see behind him? all of the Miraflores youth!!! we were all soo happy to see each other!! it turns out that they were doing a multistake youth competition thing at the Villa and at my ward. So it was supperr nice seeing them again!! 

Hmmm.. what else... Well we have this investigator who is really progressing! She is Glenis and she is awesome! We are planning the baptism this weekend! :) Last saturday we had a cita with her and so we stop by, and she said she couldnt attend us :( Why? because she was trying to get everything ready for sunday to keep the sabbath day holy!! hahaha we were sad, but also really happy! And so she went church, and we were supposeddd to have a cita at 3 but she cancelled us againnnn... something about she had to go to a fireside or something? Idk hahah jk, she is so positive!! 

Ohh! Last night we were walking around contacting, and this car goes by and on top of the trunk we see two little kids holding on! And then they jump off and then after a while, we see them jump onto another car secretly and go for a ride!! WHAT?!? those kids are crazy!!! My companion was not surprised at all.... thats Honduras! 

Working hard!

 Well this has been a great week!
 We´ve been working hard! Ill tell you why... The other day my companion and I were looking through our old agendas and comparing them. At first it was funny to see his first couple agendas almost empy right? he had really bad trainers who didnt do much. But as we went on and on, the rest of the agendas werent too great. My other companions have all been district leaders and are now ZLs so ive adapted to their mentality. And Ive learned how the numbers each day should look on an agenda. And I was not satisfied with the datos. Looking back, ive learned that my trainers were truly AMAZING! and ive learned so much from them! Mostly how to work hard! My companion didnt really get that in the beginning, but he is a hard worker. And so after looking at all of the agendas, i am now determined to make a change. I dont want him to look back at the agendas with other companions and see low datos with Elder Madero, I want him and everyone else to say, ´wow, this is a really good looing agenda! You guys worked hard!´ And so this week, we did our absolute best to lograr todos nuestro metas! And we had a lot of success! We met a lot of great people and investigators! And so im going to do my best to keep this going. 

   The area is totally awesome! Last satuday a concert came to Villa Olimpica and no matter how far you get from the area, you can hear the music. Which got really annoying when we were contacting and teaching. I didnt recognize the artist, it was some cristian genre guy. Put the last concert was Marco Antonio Solis, and the time before that was Maná! So im hoping next time it will be someone actually good again! haha But this week we met a bunch of great people! For example, we met this guy, Felipe, actually he contacted usss. He asks us if the church had some drug rehab group, and well we told him we would do some research, but if it were okay if we can stop by his house sometime. He agreed, and then we stopped by a few days later. It turns how that he had a really hard life recently, but because of a near death experience, he changed his life around. He was a previous investigator who was about to get baptized, but then didnt. But now he willing to give it another shot. He actually already had a tesitimony but we´re going to teach everything again. He came to church this sunday and he loved it! He is a really scary looking guy actually, but with a BIG heart! And all of the members did their part to help feel at home and like family. We found another investigator one day contacting, and since we are representatives of Jesus Christ, we always offer to serve people as well. And I was contacting this joven at her doorstep and she seemed really worried, so i asked if there was anything that we can help her with, and after some consideration, she admitted that she had a rat in her kitchen and shes really afraid of it and cant get it out. And so we helped her! My comp was a little scared as well and so I had to do the best I can to be the macho guy and get rid of the poor innocent rodent. We eventually trapped it, and then we taught her! That was a really funny experience. We also met this joven who let us into her house to teach her, she seemed really interested and so we were really excited to throw down some doctrine! But then 5 minutes into the lesson.... three of her really catholic brothers sat around her and started to try to intimate us. It was funny because my comp and I just smiled at each other and said ´showtime´. (we didnt realllly say that, but we thought it)haha and so even with them trying to contend with us, we had a really spiritual lesson! And we have another cita with them soon, mostly to talk with the brothers! haha And well there are so many funny contacting stories that we have but so little time to write all of it. But heres another one! Rewind back to Miraflores... Elder Marin and I were contacting and we found this super postive investigator! he was super pilas and all but the problem is that he can never get to church because of his job, he has really bad hours. And so we kept talking to him about this, trying to make him talk to his boss to change his hours so that he doesnt work on sundays! but he says well theres only like 3 people who work in the kitchen, and the other guys dont want to work on sundays, so i have to. (he works at Little Ceasars) and so We were contacting here and we found a member on accident! She is super awesome! but she is having some problems with her husband, the husband doesnt like going to church and so he doesnt allow her to go to church either. And so we were talking to her about him a little bit more trying to get to know him, and shes well he works at Central making pizzas and has to work alot due to the short staff. And instantly I rememberd our previous investigator from MF! And i ask her, wait, does he work at Little Ceasars? Yes. Is there only like 3 chefs in the kitchen? And does he ask for sundays off? 

Yes as well! DANG IT!! Its this guy´s fault that we couldnt baptize our other investigator!!!! hahahaha that was really funny, and i realized that Honduras is pretty small lol Well thats it for this week! 

Stay Tuned :)

General Conference / Sara

Well it finally happened! We baptized Sara!
 Sara is an investigator the elders found like a week before I got here and she is incredible! She has one of the strongest testimonies Ive seen that has been investigating the church. She is about 22 years old and studies at the universitity, and shes studies Phsycology, so she is super smart! All of her answers to our questions are always really intelligent and she will never lie to us or anything, the point is, is that when she says she wanted to get baptized....she WANTED to get baptized. You can tell that she knew that this is something she truly wanted to do and no one was going to make her change her mind. Even her whole family was against it, but now... her mom is even investigating! We had her baptism Sunday morning before conference and it was a great service! Very spiritual! The best part? When she bore her testimony! 

   Well anyway, I am doing great! My companion and I are getting along great! We are making a lot of progress here. But the next best part of this week was Generel Conference. Since the 4 missionaries in this ward are all gringos. we had a gringo room! (We left our investigators seated with members) So we watched conference in English. ( My second language ;) But man! Conference was amazing!! This is the first time I actually stayed awake for all the sessions haha and the first time I took notes for each talk, and man! It made a difference! Taking notes during conference really helps us to remember what we just learned and helps us apply what we learn as well. I cant decide which of all of the talks was the best. Some of my favorites were: The talk by Stephen W. Owen when he talked a lot about leadership. The main thing I learned from this talk is the the Greatest Leaders, are the Greatest Followers. Just like Jesus Christ. Man that hit my hard! I also liked Deiter F. Uchtdorfs talk in Priesthood Session that mentioned this one line that he said to the men looking for wifes.: If there werrrrre a perfect women out there, do you really think she would want Youuu? Ouch! Of course, everyone laughed here... and I couldnt stop cracking up! I really liked Thomas S Monson speaking as well, even though he didnt talk much, but his words were powerful! ´Choose the hard right, then the easy wrong´. I learned alot from Conference, and I hope all of you did as well. 

   Well whats new? There is not much new this week except for the bapism and conference. Changes was this week and our Zone changed up a little bit. We have a bunch of new people. One of which is someone Ive seen before. Elder McKee. Ok so for those who have wrestled in the Mohave Tournament know of the two best schools that always compete there, Springville and Shadow Ridge. And Elder McKee wrestled at 132lbs like me, and he won pretty much every year! He wrestles for Nevada though so that is the only time I ve seen him. But its really funny because now we are good friends, and back then we had NO idea that one day we would be in the same district in a foreign land as missionaries. 

Its funny sometimes how things work out.  

Well Im doing great guys! Dont worry about me! :)