Hello out there to all of my family and friends! This is another news report from yours truly Elder Tinkham, broadcasting worldwide live from Tegucigalpa Honduras. Getting bored of reading these yet? This should be newsletter number 50 something, it's incredible how fast the time goes by.
This week was a good week for me. It started off with a wonderful interchange experience that I had. On Tuesday I had the lovely opportunity to go on interchanges with my zone leader, and long time friend Elder Hinckley! We went over to his area, La Popular (the popular), and got ourselves to work. We reminisced about the MTC and BYU and the first year of our missions. With respect of the work that day....well we pretty much had nothing that day. It was a little bit sad, almost all of the appointments fell through, but we didn't let it get us down. That day we worked like "blacks," as the Hondurans say in a common phrase. We even contacted at 8:45 at night until 9 (at this hour, 98% of the Honduran world is sleeping)! We made quite a few contacts and hopefully will lead to some great success in their area, because we really felt good about it.
On Wednesday, Elder Maldonado and I hosted an activity in the chapel called Game Night. Every Wednesday our ward has an activity called "Friend Night," and since it was our turn we decided to convert it into a bit larger of an activity. Instead of playing one game, we played a whole bunch of games. I pulled all of the girls camp games that I remember learning from all of my friends (shout-out to all the Hearthstone girls out there!) throughout the years, and we gamed it up! The object of the activity was that the members could bring a friend that isn't a member to get to know the church and present them to us. Well, that didn't work out too well. Only 1 member brought a reference, but that's okay! A whole bunch of our investigators were able to come, and they got to know the competitive side of Elder Maldonado and I. There were a lot of little kids there at the activity so they were difficult to control, and most of the adults didn't want to play (lame), but we had fun nonetheless. All we can say is that we tried!
This week we had a good experience finding a new person to teach. His name is Jacobo Soliman. We found him contacting the other day and made the appointment for last Saturday. We found out contacting him that on Tuesday his daughter died from Dengue. The whole Dengue thing is getting pretty serious around here, but don't worry I'm doing just fine. Anyways, we went over there on Saturday, ready for what we thought would be a full blown Plan of Salvation lesson to help him cope with the tragedy. It all started out just fine, but with several distractions. Several people kept calling him and all that but eventually we got the wheels going. Well he understood just fine about the Plan of Salvation but began to shoot out questions about the Book of Mormon and the religion. That's when the Spirit told me, "Audible!" (yay football). We began to explain the Book of Mormon, and I left him my testimony that I knew the book was true. I saw his character change when I asked him if he would read and pray about it. He accepted with a smile and said he would do it. I'm excited to go back this week to see how it went.
As with Ingrid and Leonardo, things are going amazing. I can't believe how 360 the change has been with them. We are preparing for their marriage to be somewhere between the 20-27th and for their baptism to be on the 28th of August. Once again the scramble begins in order to find all the paperwork necessary for the marriage, but the real miracle is that they are helping us and are trying to get their own papers. Incredible things do happen.
The returned missionary that we met last week's name is Marlon, and his wife Vanessa. Things went really well this week with them and they are great people. We would already have a baptismal date with them for the upcoming Saturday, but the problem is that she works and her job does not give her Sundays off. We are helping her look for ways to come to church. All other things are going great. She accepts commitments and everything.
As a close, I would like to share with you guys a couple of things that I learned in the Zone Conference we had this week. In the conference we talked for a little bit about Relative and Absolute Truths. A relative truth is something that can be true from different points of view and circumstances. For example, if a car is going at 30mph, how fast is the person going that is driving.... to a passenger within the car it is true that he is not moving. But to someone watching from outside, the person is going at 30mph, both are true (I wish I understood that in my Physics class!). But an absolute truth is something that is always true, no matter from what point of view, and never changes. The gospel of Jesus Christ is an absolute truth everything that we live and teach are eternal principles. I invite each of you to study that. I would like to share a few scriptures...in John 18, verses 37 and 38 Pilate is interviewing Jesus Christ and asks him a few questions. "Art thou a king then?" Jesus answered, "Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear this witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice." Pilate saith unto him, "What is Truth?" We know what truth is thanks to modern revelation, and truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come. (Doctrine and Covenants 93 verse 24). I rejoice in the fact that we live an eternal gospel. I know its true. Jesus Christ lives.
Vaya Pues!
Elder Tinkham
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