A New Mission‏

Hello once again to all of my wonderful family and friends out there. I hope you all had a happy Halloween, frankly I forgot completely about it until I was reading some emails just barely. That's the mission for you! Everything is really boring, and yet the best 2 years of your life.

Anyways, my new companion is Elder Diaz. He has 13 months in the mission and just came from the city in Comayaguela, but has the majority of his mission in pueblos (like me!). He is incredibly obedient, and a really good missionary who is focused on the work. Things are very different with him, because he doesn't know anything about the area. So basically I was senior companion this week and still am, and this is really difficult. I am basically being forced to talk a lot more with the investigators and members. Frankly I don't like it at all, but I know that this is helping me a whole lot to become a leader in the mission eventually. Elder Diaz is from Panama, and I don't understand him nearly as well as Elder Cobo. Haha Panameños speak a heck of a lot faster and its difficult to understand, but in case you guys didn't know, every country in Central America has their own type of accent in Spanish. At first, I could not tell the difference (since I couldn't understand any of it haha), but now it sticks out to me. There are a lot of things like that for me now haha, before I could not tell the difference in taste between the different types of frijoles (beans) and tortillas, but now, boy strap me up blindfolded and I´ll tell you what is black bean and what is red and any other type! But anyways, I am still in the same area of Piedras Bonitas, and I´m happy about that. This companion switch sure is a trial for me, but its a good trial that only good can come out of.

Anyways, things have continued the same here for me in Piedras Bonitas. Josè and Maria and their daughter Jasmyn STILL haven't been baptized. We are still waiting on the darn papers for the wedding. Its a really frustrating thing to go through, but I am learning patience. We are asking for help from the members, and I'm not making any promises because things are still up in the air, but in the next email there should be some good news. With the sister of Noè, Familia Ramos, they are really receptive to the lessons we have taught. Sadly, they still haven't come to church yet, and this is something that is really holding them back. But we have hope for them, and are going to do the best that we can. All I can say is, we have a mountain of work to do here, and there just isn't enough time to do it all.

One thing that Elder Diaz wants to do and we have committed ourselves to do is that we are going to work much harder with the members. There really aren't a lot of members here, and the average attendance is around 60. But with the little faithful members that we have, we are doing all that we can to utilize them and ask them for their help. Whenever an appointment falls through, we try to go to a members house to train them on how to teach lessons, how to approach their friends or neighbors, etc. and how to preach the gospel. So we are really hoping that with their help we can perform miracles here.

Today we played soccer on a field with grass, and it was great. I'm actually improving my skills a bit and becoming a decent player! I didn't think it would ever happen but we will see how good I can get.

Well folks, that's about all I have for you this week. I hope you are all doing well, I pray for you and miss you and love you all. I wish you a happy winter, and wish I could witness the snow too, you are all lucky. As for me, I will continue burning (but loving the mission).

Love,
Elder Tyler Tinkham