OOiiii! Como estan mis queridos amigos que tanto leen mis cartas? A big howdy to all of you from Guaimaca.
This week has been pretty darn eventful, so I better get going.
The Reyes Family is still doing great! They are going to be married in the church at 5pm on Friday, and then the baptism will be the next day, along with another family that the other missionaries are teaching! In total we are going to have 10 baptisms that day. 5 from the other elders and 5 from us. 4 of them are from the Fam. Reyes, and 1 is named Kenia, who I will explain in a moment. We have had some great experiences with the Reyes family as well. The one thing that we were worried about, in other words, the only other challenge that was facing us was to get them to stop drinking coffee. When I was on interchanges, my companion went over there with my old companion Elder Menèndez (awesome) and taught a powerful lesson. At first, they were a little bit defensive and didn’t think that it was going to be important to stop drinking coffee, but after carefully explaining the doctrine, they understood that the Lord wanted them to stop drinking it. They left the lesson with a lot of hope that they understood the true importance of the Word of Wisdom, and I’m pretty sure that they did. The witness that they did was, the next morning as I was arriving once again in my area, they called us and asked for a priesthood blessing to help them avoid the temptation to consume it. It may be such a small thing, dropping coffee, but by small things, great miracles come to pass....and that was a small miracle. I really love this family, the experiences are countless.
We also have the baptismal date of Kenia. She lives in the Herradura, that super small town that I explained before that we wanted to start working in. Kenia is the sister of the Young Men’s President, and she has been receiving the missionaries for a long time, it has just been difficult to get her to progress due to the long distance of where she lives, but we have been working with her, and she has the desires. We’re going to prepare her so that we can have one more member in the future branch of the Herradura!
On Tuesday, we had the zone conference! (My 2nd to last one in the mission....I think I’m going to be sick). President Flores talked about our favorite theme...Repentance! I learned a whole bunch, and took some really revelation-based notes as well. President took some time to answer a bunch of questions about repentance from a bunch of the missionaries, and it helped a lot of us. We mostly talked about what it means to abandon your sins physically as well as spiritually and mentally as well. Many times, people don’t feel like they have been forgiven of their sins and wonder why, since they haven’t committed it physically in such and such amount of time. But, true repentance and forgiveness comes when we abandon our sins mentally and spiritually as well. That’s when the Lord “remembers (our sins) them not.” Afterwards, the Assistants gave us a ride home because they wanted to work with us for a couple of hours before they headed back to Teguc. I worked with Elder Christensen, and we went to visit the Reyes Family. We talked about comparing word to a seed (Alma 32), and we also talked abut eternal marriage. Elder Christensen gave them a photo of the future Honduras Temple. After the lesson he thanked me for the marvelous experience that he had. It truly was marvelous.
I also had a very unique opportunity to go on interchanges with Elder Wheeler. Elder Wheeler is the Branch President of a small branch in our zone called Campamento (where I thought I was going). I was able to travel to his area and see the way that he managed his branch, while working as a missionary at the same time. I truly admire his work, and we had a good day together. I had some good mediation time while he was doing a few interviews, and then afterwards we went finding. We found a couple of people to teach, and we also gave a priesthood blessing to the man that is going to get baptized this weekend. He is worried about his health and thinks that it will restrict him from being baptized.
On Saturday, we held a very special activity in the church called “Pioneer Activity,” it was a great turnout. The members even brought a ton of friends who aren’t members, and less active members. We played old pioneer games, like the stick pole Joseph Smith style (I was the champion), something called Stick your nose in the flour and pick out the dime or something like that haha, and etc. We had a fire in the middle of the soccer field, and we also enjoyed some Honduran Tacos. It was a very enjoyable experience.
I am definitely seeing the hand of the Lord in our zone at this moment, because we literally have 24 baptismal prospects to be baptized in the zone for this Saturday. I am super nervous for this week and for all of the work that I have to do, but I believe that the Lord will concede us the miracles that we need. But, I am also seeing the influence of Satan who knows what is happening. We had a bad experience with our branch president this week. We don’t know exactly what happened, but in the pioneer activity something got him really upset, and his family left. They didn’t come to church yesterday, and he only showed up to complete his duties. We could feel the tension and it was quite uncomfortable. He is quite angry with the majority of the members. We attempted to do an emergency visit with a bunch of the members yesterday afternoon, but it didn’t work to well. We’re just going to let him be for right now. We’re going to pray really hard for him and his family, so that it can all work out. He is a really important asset for us at this moment, with all of the baptisms we are going to have. I pray that everything goes okay.
Well everyone, my time has run out, and this has been quite the long letter. I love you all, and hopefully I’ll have some good news for you next week! Thanks so much for your prayers.
Vaya Pues!
Elder Tinkham
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