Hey Fam and Friends!
Ah such an amazing week! It was hard to make a list of things to say but I have pictures and thats all you all really care about anyways right?? haha Um we learned how to make baleadas from our Relief Society President this week because she promised she would show us how before changes, which are next week. Mainly because we dont know who is going, and who is stayin and me and Elder Broderick have been learning all kinds of cheap easy things to make for lunch so we mine as wall add to the recipie box mom sent and make my future companions, family, and family when I get home proud and learn how to make some legit Honduran food! Oh its sooo good too! Simple... but good!
So anyways just an update with us here in SabanaGrande... we are alive. But something interesting, we found out that our only investigator... this Golden Hna Laura Avila. Well her sister turns out was baptised into our church when she was 14, had her first kid when she was 15, and is now living just up the hill aways from her house so with the help of Hna Laura we got her to church again for the first time since her baptism and shes almost 21 and braught her little son with her to church. I had planned to teach the lesson for the second hour but when they showed up our branch president decided to take over and ended up teaching for like two hours and he is famous for his shaving teachings... if you dont know what that means its just like really chastising teaching where he just shaves the people of all their wrong doings and brings them to repentance! So I was just dying and felt so bad for Laura and her sister there but i just prayed and prayed that they wouldnt take it the wrong way, but that was last sunday and everything is still good with them so it wasnt to bad! Um yesterday at church we had 18 total, including us as missionaries and the branch president. 8 when sacrament was gven! It never fails that its just so disapointing. Especially when me and Elder Broderick wake up at 6 to shower and leave by 7 to hike up to Aposonigua to pick up 3 youth boys, 2 of them being the two baptisms that we had last week, because without us they wouldnt come. Its a tough life out here, but ugh i just love it so much! The mission is so great, I litteraly and understanding everything and speaking with a tounge that I never though i would be able to! Spanish is so much fun and i love speaking it!
Our goal right now and lately because contacting just hasnt been working for us so we have been doing all we can to find the other 200 inactive memebers that we supposedly have here and just trying to figure out what we can do for them. They day we set out to do that we ran into 2 on accident just at a Pulpuria buying water and turns to find out she was baptised like 30 years ago before the chapel that we have now was even there, she was baptized in a river. But believe it or not, the church up and just left the area. We dont know, or probably will ever know what happened but there was over 60 members at that time meeting in a little house and having the 3 hours of church and everything. I just wanted to cry when I heard her say that because she said she just wept when she had no where to go, lost her book of mormon and all this kind of stuff. She started going to a baptist church and has been there since but she says she has pictures of the day of her baptism and of the missionaries back then so we set an appointment with her to see them and see if we can rebuild her testimony! Its just so sad what this area has been though, and no wonder the people and members are so hard here, the church up and left them for 7 or 8 years is what we heard. Ugh its tough and I feel so bad and have a hard time blaming them but ugh please pray for us and for the people here because they are so stuck on the traditions of their fathers, and their fathers fathers that they dont want to change nor listen to us!
I have such a strong testimony of this church and of all the teachings but theres not a day that goes by that I dont wish on everything that I could just show these people here, espially the members... what the church is really like in the states, and in Utah for example because they just dont know and understand, and for that are not able to appreciate the things that I know we sometimes take so much for granted! I feel that I am experiencing my own conversion right now in the trial of my faith here, but nevertheless... I know its true becasue I have, and had before my mission, a testimony of this gospel, and of the Living Christ. He lives and he loves us... just look around at the blessings that we have, and soak that moment in! Live in the moment... for a moment and share the good word of our amazingly true church with someone every day! One of the stakes here had a stake conference entitled CADA MIEMBRO UN MISSIONERO, EVERY MEMBER A MISSIONARY. This church is true and the book is blue! Thats my testimony and I sure do love you all so much and am so greatful for the support of each and every one of you!
Thank you so much! Keep prayin!
Dont forget how much I love you all!
Love your servant of the Lord,
Elder Gardner
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