February 9th

Hello out there to all of my family and friends who take the time to read this newsletter every week. Who knows how many people really read it, but really thanks!

Anyways I am writing this today (Tuesday) because yesterday I spent the whole day in Tegucigalpa in the immigration or migration center, whichever of the 2 is correct, applying for my residence card. Now that I have more than 6 months of being here in Honduras, I qualify to apply. It was really annoying going because I don't know if I mentioned that I do not like traveling to Tegucigalpa because its quite the trip (7 hours of travel if you combine the journey and return journey). So my P-day was completely wasted, and I'm scrambling to accomplish all the things that I need to this morning. But, the one good thing was that most of my good ole MTC district boys were there and we got a great opportunity to chat for awhile.

Anyways, about my week. Once again, this week was a very difficult one where very many challenges appeared. But, once again, it all turned out to work out for good. Funny how that always works out right? Basically the majority of our investigators live really far away, so we have to spend a lot of time walking each day to get there in the burning sun. We had a lot of challenges because after sincerely trying to put appointments with them that I would know they'd be at home, it still worked out in vain. We walked a whole bunch this week without being able to teach a lot of lessons. But, this week I'd like to focus on the amazing blessings, or good things, that have been going on lately, by explaining our 2 best investigator families.

The first is Denia and her daughter Sharon. They recently moved here from the capital. They are related to a few members here that we like to call the "Relief Society Corner," because on this street corner live about 6 strong members of the Relief Society and only 1 guy lives there, haha. So she moved into the Relief Society corner, and is family to the sisters. Easy baptism right? That's what you'd think haha. The members are doing a great job of getting her to come to all of the meetings though. She has already been to 2 sacrament meetings and 2 baptisms! The only problem is we have had a hard time being able to teach since we can't manage to find anyone male to accompany us around here. If I didn't mention before, I would love to see the stats of boy girl ratio here in Juticalpa, because I am positive that its HIGH above the norm of women percentage. Anyways back to the story haha, we have finally been able to teach her 2 times, and the lessons have been great. After a bad week of failure, Elder Hansack and I decided to have our fast that a miracle could happen and we could find some success that night. I did the best I could to follow the Spirit, and I invited her to be baptized with her daughter. She said YES!!! So there will be a lot more information on that to come, to see how I do to help her out with that.

Anyways, but that's not all of our success. Let me tell you about the Ruiz Matamoros family. They are extremely poor, but let me tell you I just love them to death. They are the nicest people I have ever met in my life. They give us food even though I know they don't have much, and with all the gratitude in our hearts we accept the food and pray that the Lord will bless them. The mom, Wendy, had a baby about 2 weeks ago and can't leave the house for about 3 more weeks. So we have a problem getting her to come to church. And the Dad, Jose Ramòn, has a meeting every other Sunday in the government building of Juticalpa for all the people that vend things. It has been a great struggle to get them to church, and I really felt bad about that. But I was guided in other ways in how I can help them. Josè Ramon can´t read, but we are leaving him with the scriptures on CD and he is loving it! I also put a baptismal date for them yesterday, but not until March because we have a lot of work to do with them before they can get baptized. We are helping them get married, and then they need to come to church as well. But all I can say is, amidst all the heartache and struggle we went through throughout the week, somehow the blessings came through again. I always seem to doubt that they'll come, but the Lord proves me wrong every week.

That's about all I have for you guys this week. I love you all and miss you all, take care of yourselves!

Vaya Pues!
Elder Tinkham