Hola y feliz dia de amor y amistad a todos mis familiares y amigos allà! I am wearing a pink tie for this special day! Haha how are you all doing?
This week has been pretty good for my companion and I. We spent a lot of time slimming down our investigator pool so that we can focus on the positive people that we’ve got. We actually have an amazing family that we are teaching right now! They are the Reyes Family. They were a reference of the family that makes us lunch every day. They had just barely moved in to their tiny little house the other day, and so they took advantage of the moments and became their friends and invited them to church. They are really nice people, and it’s a family of 7 people, they have 5 kids! Yesterday they came to church for the 2nd time, and they are learning a lot. On Saturday we placed a marriage date for them for the 25th of February, and the baptismal date for the 26th (Happy Birthday dad!) and they accepted! We are super excited, but also we are hoping for a miracle. We have a lot of work left to do to help them get married and baptized by the 26th. I have the faith that everything is going to work out! I’m so excited to be working with a family again. It’s been some time now, and it’s the greatest feeling in the world.
This week the Lord has decided to guide me to the home of several less actives. I’m not really sure why, but it’s been a pretty cool experience! On Saturday we had one, we were just contacted and we stopped to try and feel the guidance of the Spirit, and I felt the house that I needed to go to. We went and knocked, and it turned out to be a lady named Gisela, who had been baptized about 3 years ago in Tegucigalpa but hasn’t gone to church since she moved to Guaimaca. She wasn’t able to come to church yesterday, but today we are going to have a family home evening with her which SHE is helping us plan. Should be a cool experience.
On Thursday our Elders Quorum President took us over to a tiny pueblo outside of Guaimaca called the Herradura, where the Young Men’s president lives. We paid him a quick visit, and asked him to present us to a couple of his family members and neighbors. We talked to several of them and put appointments for this week. We are going to start going every Thursday...with the ultimate goal to start a small branch over there in the future.
I’m slowly starting to get to know my new zone. This week I went on interchanges with Elder Smith, an incredibly tall Floridian missionary in another city in our zone. It was basically for the purpose of getting to know a little bit better all of the areas in the zone. We had a great time together, and things are going really great right now in our zone. We have plans to have A TON of baptisms on the 26th of February (Happy birthday again dad!), and so Elder Torres and I are starting to plan for that as well.
This week I decided to feast upon the words of the modern prophets, and I read all of the Liahona general conference issue. Absolutely loved it. This time, I broke away from tradition and even decided to read the talks from the General Relief Society meeting, and the Lord definitely blessed me for that! One of the best talks that I read was President Monson’s talk about charity....I want to share a small quote from that talk. Pres. Monson talks about a man who a lady attends to in her small staying house in front of a medical clinic. The man was quite ugly looking, but had a large heart, (I recommend the talk). Months later, the lady had an experience in a greenhouse, where she saw a beautiful golden chrysanthemum growing in a dented, old rusty bucket. Her friend explained that she had run out of pots, and knowing that this one was so beautiful, that it wouldn’t mind starting in the old bucket. The lady then thought: “Here’s an especially beautiful one. God might have said when He came to the soul of the little old man. He won’t mind starting out in this small, misshapen body. But that was long ago, and in God’s garden how tall this lovely soul must stand!”
When I read this quote, my mind is directed to all of the beautiful Honduran souls that I have come to know and love. That is the way that I see each and every one of them. They are such precious souls to our Heavenly Father. If I could one day grow to become such a “beautiful chrysanthemum” as they are, I will have come a long way. I love my mission, I love everything that I do. I love all of you. Have a good week!
Vaya Pues!
Elder Tinkham
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