March 15

Hello once again to all of my family and friends. A very burnt and tired Elder Tinkham is writing you today. Lets see what I can pull out of my tired brain to recap you of my week.

This week has been mostly normal for me. On Wednesday, we had a lack of service to provide, so we decided to climb the large mountain that is just behind our house to do some contacting of the mountaineers that live up there. I won't lie, the idea to contact was a little bit overshadowed by the fact that we wanted to take pictures at the top of the mountain because you can see all of Juticalpa from the top! So we hiked on up there, and took us some nice pictures, but on the way down, we also had a great contact! We met a guy named Santiago, who is quite poor, and he is building his house right there on the steep hill. We began talking about the gospel, and offered to help him build his house this next week, so we should be going over there to help him out if all goes well. So we ended up getting something good out of our hike!

The next day on Thursday, we had our monthly Zone Conference, and once again I made the long bus ride to Tegucigalpa. I must say I really am getting sick of making that trip, but I'm not sick of learning all that we learn because it was awesome! We learned a whole bunch about how to teach the commandments, and the frequent errors we commit when we teach things like the Word of Wisdom and Keep the Sabbath Day Holy. We learned about obeying a higher law of standard, and not just sliding by by doing whatever we want as long as its not IN the scriptures that its banned. All in all I enjoyed myself thoroughly, that is until I had to make the bus ride back haha!

Other than that, we have been chugging along teaching all of the investigators we have, with a lot of hope that we were going to bring a lot of people to church. We had the baptism of the daughter of Hna. Denia this Saturday as well. It was a really great baptismal service because we tried our very best to have a spiritual service so that the Hna. Denia could feel the Spirit and feel the desire to be baptized. We still haven't been able to go back to ask how she felt, but I really hope it touched her heart. But I do know that she was very happy to see her daughter baptized, and she continues to come to church every week!

With respect to our efforts to bring many investigators to church, it went very bad. We had a lot of plans to bring 6-8 people to church, but only 1 ended up coming. We went on divisions in the morning to hit up the 2 sides of our area at the same time to bring people to church, but for various reasons and excuses they all dodged us. I felt pretty bad at church for this reason, because I really thought we were going to bring tons, but I'm just going to have to try harder this week right? I'm starting to feel like my baptisms are running out here in Juticalpa, because I have a feeling I will be leaving in a month since I have been here awhile. Our investigators aren't progressing as fast as we wanted them too, but I'm not going to stop spreading the ¨seeds for the other missionaries.¨ But all in all things are still going good for me here.

The reason I am very burnt today for P-day is because we as a district went to a farm property of a member to help him work on the farm. He only brings missionaries that he really likes to the property, so we scored! We thought we were really lucky to be going, but then we regretted it because he put us to work! Haha we worked all up and down that farm and so all of my city boy culture is now lost. Juticalpa is farm central of Honduras, so anything any of you would want me to do on a farm, bring it on. Cows, horses, dirt, poop, chickens, turkey, pigs, dogs, bring it on!

Vaya Pues!
Elder Tinkham