An Interesting Spiritual Experience

Monday

We did laundry, the phone call, apparently Elder Nuñez knows how to play monopoly deal (needs help on the action cards), and we were at the church all afternoon. Really boring. There was just nothing to do at the church.

 I played star realms by myself like 8 times (learned a couple of interesting strategy tips).

Tuesday: An Interesting Spiritual Experience 

We taught Esperanza on Tuesday. (Wants to go to church and be baptized but family is pushing back hard).

An appointment fell through so we taught someone else about modern day prophets and we sent her a conference talk by President Nelson.

Later that day we had an interesting experience. Elder Nuñez's back was hurting so we headed back to our apartment but on the way back he felt like we should visit an inactive member. We went to her house, but no one was there. We were a bit confused and we felt like there was a reason we were there. We started knocking on doors and found 3 new people to teach. It's always interesting to see what happens when we follow spiritual promptings.

Wednesday

Our only appointment fell through again so we knocked on doors. We found some more people to teach (By some I mean 1) We went to go teach a lesson to someone (13 yr old boy) but they were out working. (No age restrictions on working. I've seen really young vendors and bus staff.) We were able to teach his older sister. She expressed interest in going to church on Sunday.

Later that day we watched the RM at the church while we were waiting on the Branch Mission Leader. We had our weekly meeting and then finished the movie.

Thursday

We had intercambios with the DLs. We got pizza and had to wait because the DLs were just finishing a intercambio.

We visited La Mata again. Taught the investigators there. Had a really great lesson on the restoration. Typically only one of them is interested but around 3 people were interested that day. We hurried back to El Carmen for a lesson only for it to fall though. We had dinner with a family. It was pretty good. Plantains with meat, lettuce, dressing and salsa on top (sound familiar?). 

Friday

I had to got to Comayagua to get Elder Nuñez. We had lunch and traveled back. We had another lesson in La Mata and had to hurry back to pick up his new quadruple combination from the apartment owners before they left for the night.

Saturday: Church of Paul + 2 Catholics + 2 Member families

While we were walking we ran into the Church of Paul guy again. As he was talking we realized he couldn't read and didn't know the scriptures at all.  We shared with him Ephesians 2:20 (Written by Paul). "And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone". The church of Paul believes that Paul was the only apostle Jesus called so this blew his mind.

Later that day we ran into a Catholic who we taught and he had a lot of questions. Particularly why people think alcohol is bad. His reason why was that Jesus drank wine in the Bible and is part of the sacrament in the Bible. Later that day we discovered that there is no evidence of Jesus drinking wine and each instance of the sacrament says cup and doesn't mention wine. Apparently the Catholic Bible is slightly different during those verses and it says wine in Corinthians in their Bible but not the King James or Queen Valera (Spanish Bible that the church uses for Spanish. Very similar to the KJV).

We walked 40 minutes to an appointment just for her to give us the Book the Mormon back that we gave her. Familiar reasons was her excuse. She was the second Catholic that day. Luckily a member family  was her neighbor so we went and talked with them.

We visited the Relief Society President's family. (It's her, her sister, her parents and her brother). That was where we looked up the sacrament references. One of the members of the family speaks really good English but can't understand the scriptures in English because it's so different. (Doesn't help that the grammar is slightly different. Shall is the same as will but both of those words don't exist in Spanish. They have a different way of expressing future actions. Thou, thee and thine are also really weird for people who speak English as a second language)

Sunday: Seriously? 

Long story short: everyone that expressed interest and wanted to got to church didn't go. We even got a member to drive us to one of their houses just to be told no. After a fun morning of 3 hr church (The teachers here have a problem) We went back to our apartment and each took a nap because Sundays are slow here. The streets are empty and no one is home. We visited our perspective baptism person but his mother wasn't home. We then visited a less active family with the relief society president, her mom, and her sister.

About Fasting

They skip out on dinner and breakfast the next day so that's strange.

Bibles

There's variety in the bibles here. We see the  Jehovah's Witnesses bible which is really because every instance of God is replaced with Jehovah, even in the New Testament which not great 

The Catholic Bible is only slightly different and we see Bibles in Modern Spanish which is fine.

Because the KJV is in English (an overly precise language) and was translated really well it is preferred for questions about wording. Spanish isn't a precise language (one word 3+ meanings) but it stil works fine for doctrine.

The 3 things that are the hardest (not including language)

1. Commitments- people are not great at keeping commitments
2. Distance- this area is huge compared to the rest of the mission and we should really be using bikes or a car to get around.
3. Families- religious pressure from Families often gets in the way.

Ps: we get people who are interested but always something gets in the way of them progressing. Hopefully our perspective baptism (Jonathan) goes well.