August 16th

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

August 9th

Hello once again to all of my family and friends out there! My time is short this week so it's time to type like the wind!

It has been a long time since I have received mail from anyone, but last Wednesday the Zone Leaders brought the mail to our area, and I was overwhelmed with such a large amount of mail that I was bamboozled! My heart was filled with joy and I was glad to be able to receive such a great amount of love from family and friends. I was so excited after reading all of it, that I had trouble falling asleep that night, I think I fell asleep around 11 instead of 10:30 (and trust me, a half hour is a LOT of sacred time lost haha), but I'm doing fine now! Thank you so much everyone that sent me letters and pictures, Especially the Simpson Family for the Oreo's!

Anyways, this week has been a week of good experiences for me and I feel truly edified as I remember each and every one of them while typing. On Tuesday I once again had the opportunity to go on interchanges with the greenie missionary Elder Menendez, but this time I went to his area, Zorzales. Our experience was....a little bit difficult but overall edifying. The afternoon highlights in Zorzales included... nearly being utterly destroyed by a 60 pound Rottweiler (seemed to be that big), being approached by drunks claiming to be Joseph Smith and walking up and down stairs. We spent most of the day looking for Former Investigators but didn't have much luck. The success finally came in the evening when we went to visit one of the investigators named Ever. Ever is a cousin of an investigator that they have who lives about 1 hour outside of the city, but is visiting for about 2 months here in Zorzales. He had been attending church over there (in a city called Talanga, where, wouldn't you know it, is working my son Elder Hansack), and said that he like it a lot. We were able to have a spiritual lesson and talked about the blessings of baptism. At the start of the lesson, he told us he wanted to be baptized, but next year! Well little by little we talked him out of it, and resulted that he asked us during the lesson, "What do I need to do to be baptized?" To my knowledge, the elders of Zorzales have a baptismal date set for him.

On a side note, in the tiny little piece of spare time that I have during the week, I have begun to study Italian. I really like the Italian language and would love to be able to speak it well some day. Interesting how your interests change so much in the mission!

This week has been a long week of fasting and prayer for Elder Maldonado and I. I have learned the true meaning of goal setting and working to accomplish my goals this week. Before, I would always think that goal setting was only for Pharisees who wanted "numbers! numbers! numbers!" But truly I have changed my opinion. Our baptismal goal for Pedregal in the month of August is 3, and beforehand I'm positive that I did not have sufficient faith to be able to complete that goal. But I changed my mindset and began to pray, and fast, and pray, and fast, and the miracles of the Lord are beginning to take its place. Let me explain.

The most positive investigators we have right now are Ingrid and Paola. They have really taken a turn for the better this week, since we were about to drop them due to lack of progress. Last Saturday, we had a special lesson about prayer and how it helps us in our lives. I asked them if they had sincerely prayed and asked the Lord if the things were true that we were teaching. To my surprise, they told me that yes they had, and were working hard on changing their lives in order to put them in harmony with the Lord's gospel. Ingrid's less active alcohol prone husband is also making a great change. He has been fighting his temptations to drink, and the Lord has also answered the prayers of this family so that they can come to church together. Ingrid's husband, Leonardo, drives a taxi, and he could not get work off on Sundays to come to church. This week he spent a lot of time praying, and miraculously he found someone to take the car for him on Sundays so that he can come to church. Ingrid and Paola will be expecting a baptismal date soon.

Seydy has stopped progressing for the moment. She could not come to church due to her injury, and also is not taking well the Word of Wisdom, she does not want to drop the coffee. So that leaves us with only 2 baptisms for the month of August....

But miracles do occur. This Sunday in church, a returned missionary showed up and told us that he is new in Pedregal. He had been lost in the world for a little bit, and has decided to come back to church. His wife isn't a member, and he wants us to teach her so that she can be baptized. She already had been going to church in the other neighborhood they lived in. Our first appointment with her is tonight....and we are going to invite her to be baptized this very Saturday if the Spirit indicates it.

I love this gospel, it's incredible how miracles happen when we have the sufficient faith to let them happen, and are diligent in our work. I bear my testimony that miracles exist.

Vaya Pues!

Elder Tinkham

Elder Maldonado and Elder Tinkham

Today we played zone against zone soccer...awesome...I scored 4 goals!

August 2nd

Exactly one year ago, I was finishing up my MTC experiece....wow...it's amazing how fast the time goes by. This week I will have completed one year in Honduras, and it seems like I arrived yesterday.

First of all...HAPPY BIRTHDAY DALLIN!!! 18 years old...I'm speechless...cant believe it...where have the years gone?

Hello once again to all of my family and friends out there, I hope you're all doing very well and that you had a good week. My week has been pretty normal...but I always have plenty to say, so lets get started!

This last week we went on interchanges again, since we have been putting a lot of emphasis on the new things we need to learn thanks to the leadership training meeting that was held the week before. This time, I stayed in my area once again, and had the opportunity to work with Elder Menendez, a brand new missionary fresh from the MTC. It was a good experience for me because I had the opportunity once again to feel what it was like back in my trainer days with a new missionary. Things are done differently, because you are always used to the 2 companions knowing the lessons, but since he is new, he is still learning the lessons. So I would teach a part, then let Elder Menendez teach (he would talk for about 30 seconds and look back at me...),and then I would teach again haha. But he has an amazing spirit with them, and the investigators could recognize that, so there wasn't any problem. Everyone passes through those moments when they're new, I still vividly remember my first lesson that I taught in Honduras, and how I nervously stumbled through my testimony and tried to recite the first vision by memory, and that was about it. So I've been there, and I really loved working with him that day.

We also had interviews with President Flores this week as well, combined with a training meeting on how to improve our teaching. The world missionary program is changing their views on how the missionaries need to be now a days, and so we are focusing A LOT on how to be the Great Teacher, like Christ was. We focused on How to Begin A Lesson, and How to Teach the Person, and not the lesson. I learned a whole bunch, and we began immediately to put things into work in the lessons in Pedregal. In the actual interview, I learned a lot about what President Flores thinks of me as a missionary, and how I can do better, so obviously it was really great. He told me that my group that came in last August is one of his favorite groups of missionaries, and that we are now beginning to form our positions as the missionaries we need to be in the mission. He told me not to worry about leadership positions, because sometimes missionaries have different callings in the field, and that mine is unique. He told me that with my strong character, he feels that it is necessary to put me with missionaries that are struggling with problems so that I can help them out (sound familiar dad?). I was never worried about a leadership position, so that's not a problem for me.

With respect to the investigators in Pedregal, Seydy is doing pretty good, but there is one problem. On Saturday when we went over to her house to teach and make sure she was going to come to church, we found out that a couple of hours earlier she had fallen down a group of stairs (there are an extreme amount of those in the city, since Tegucigalpa is VERY filled with hills) and twisted her ankle. We were able to talk to her for just a brief moment, and they took her to the hospital to get a boot put on....Ugh. Well, she couldn't come to church for that reason, and it looks like the baptism is going to be delayed, but things are still positive for her. We are still focusing on her testimony, and how can she receive it more strongly. She has doubts about coffee and a couple of other things, but really, all of the doubts come down to one thing....whether Joseph Smith was a prophet or no. We explained to her that if she prayed, everything would work out, and her decision to be baptized would be confirmed.

This week Ingrid (investigator) and her daughter Paola came to church. We have 4 progressing investigators, and each one of them have come to church on a different Sunday. We are working on that so that we can bring ALL of them at the same time, because that's how its supposed to be isn't it? Ingrid is a great lady that has a lot of respect for the missionaries. The problem there is that she is not married to her less active "husband" who spends a lot of time drinking. She has told us that she doesn't want to be married because of the whole drinking problem, she is afraid that he might lose control, and that the marriage will be all for nothing. But, I have faith that everything will work out, we are going to be very serious with the husband this week.

Cristian and Mayra are doing well, supposedly Mayra went to the lawyers office this week to talk about the divorce from her former husband, so the progress is coming. A little bit down, a lot more to go!

I would just like to take the time to say that I love being a missionary in Honduras. I don't think I say it enough that I know that this church is true and that everything I'm doing is according to Gods plan. I find great joy in the scriptures and each day as I study I find out more for myself that all of these things are true. There is one scripture that I love in the New Testament (this is going to be a rough translation since I have no idea how it is in English) where Christ talks about repentance. He explains in Luke that there is much more rejoicing in the heavens when a repented soul arrives instead of a soul that had no need for repentance. I have received a confirmation of that truth, as I see the repentance process working every day.

I love you all, and hope that everything is going well.

Vaya Pues!

Elder Tinkham

July 26th

Hey there once again to all of my family and friends out there. I hope that you are enjoying your summer breaks and that the heat isn't bothering you too much! I can't remember the last time that my internal system felt "cold," in fact I think it's been erased from my memory at the moment, but oh well...some day the snow will return to my memories!

This week has been quite interesting for me, as I had the experience to be in a trio for about half of the week, let me explain. This week in the mission, all of the leaders that are located in the city had a meeting from Tuesday-Friday 8am-4pm for leadership training and all that. My district leader Elder Ramirez had to go, so that left me with his companion Elder Menendez, a brand new missionary from El Salvador. Every morning we met in the chapel at 6:20 to meet up and send off the leader missionaries, and headed back to the area in a threesome. I had the wonderful opportunity to be with 2 newer missionaries this week and learn a lot from each of their great testimonies. Every morning for companionship study I took advantage of the extra missionary and used the time to help them out. We did role play examples where I would be the investigator, and I tried to help them learn all of the things that I wished I knew when I was a greenie missionary. We had a good time together and it was a great experience. We spent 2 of these days working in the area of Elder Menendez, which is called Zorzales. It is the smallest area in the mission (about the size of Hearthstone {Tyler's neighborhood in South Jordan}, just that it has WAY more houses packed together), and sometimes very difficult to find new people to teach since everyone in the neighborhood already knows what our deal is. We were able to find 1 new investigator named Juan, and it was really weird teaching with 2 companions instead of 1, but we got used to it and enjoyed the learning opportunity.

After the couple of days we had working in Zorzales and making our way to the chapel and back 2 times a day, we didn't have a lot of time to find a bunch of new investigators, so we decided to really focus hard on the investigators that we have so that they can progress. One of the part-member couples that we are teaching have made a lot of progress. Their names are Mayra and Cristian. Mayra is a less active member, who went through a wicked separation with her first husband, and since the occurrence hasn't returned to church, and Cristian who is not a member, is her new husband who isn't a member. We are working hard with them so that they can come to church, divorce from the first husband, and get married so that Hno. Cristian can be baptized. It's going to be a big challenge for us, since we have a lot of "paperwork" to do, but we're up to the challenge. If I could do it with the "unbaptizable" Hno. Franklin in Ciudad España, why can't the Lord help me to accomplish another? We scheduled an interview with the bishop for the 2 of them, so that the bishop could instruct them about the importance of marriage and keeping the Sabbath Day holy. Hna. Mayra is a little bit embarrassed to come back to church, since the brother of her ex-husband are members of the church and she thinks that they're going to say something to her. But, with the help of the bishop, he was able to convince her. But, what happened with the Hno. Cristian is what really shocked me.

The next day when we went to visit, we asked them how it went. Cristian told us that he had a really great experience, and that something happened that he couldn't explain. He told me that when they were saying the opening prayer, he felt something really strong, burning type feeling in his heart and he felt like he was going to cry. We took advantage of the moment and were able to explain to him that what he felt was the Holy Spirit testifying to his heart that what he was doing was right. He felt that what we were telling him was true, and told us that he has an extreme desire to come to church. Sadly, his work called him at the last second and told him he had to come in on Sunday so he couldn't be there, but he told us sorry like a million times and that he will be there next week. What a champ!

The other investigator that has begun to progress is Seydy, a seventeen year old girl that the missionaries found contacting a couple of days before I got there. She had troubles reading the Book of Mormon, and at first it really didn't seem like she had the desire to know if these things were true, but we had a powerful lesson about studying the scriptures and how it can bless her life. Afterwards, she committed to read, and what would you know, she did it! And not only that, but she also came to church with us yesterday! We are happy to see that the progress is coming slowly but surely here in Pedregal, and I hope that we can continue helping the people here find the true gospel of Christ.

To answer the questions of you mom, with respect to the laundry, I'm back to washing all of my clothes by hand...ugh, haha. And the food, we pay one of the sisters to make us lunch every day, and for dinner we just go around asking members if they will give us free food, and if there aren't any takers, we go back to the house and eat a Cup o Noodles Instant soup or Grilled Cheese Sandwich. :)

Vaya Pues,
Elder Tinkham

July 19th

Hello once again to all of my family and friends out there. I hope everything is going masizo with you guys. I am still accustoming myself a little bit to the big city, because right now I am writing you from a large metromall in a large cybercafe.....weird!

Due to the large amount of people that have asked me for pictures this week, I'm sad to say that I have forgotten to bring my camera today, but next week I commit to send a bunch of photos! I haven't really even taken a single picture of Pedregal yet, so I'll have to work on that one too! But anyways, I'm sorry.

Like I said last week, President Flores seems to have a tendency to send me to areas that are deemed "dead" when I arrive, so right now I'm working on resurrecting the area. We have very few investigators at the moment.... well scratch that. We have plenty of investigators, there is just a large problem...we can never find them. Every time we try to meet up with our investigators, they are almost never home. It's a little bit disappointing, but what can you do. Elder Maldonado and I decided that if the people were really committed to listen to our message, they would make time for us to meet with them. We are always going to try and find them, but we decided to dedicate more time this week to find new people to teach. I think it will help us out a little more. Pedregal is very small, and only divided into 3 different neighborhoods, Izquierda, Derecha, and Las Faldas. Translation being: Right, Left, and The Dresses of Pedregal haha. The contacting comes difficultly since it's small, and a large part of it is through referrals of the members, so we're doing what we can and being creative looking how we're going to find new people to teach.

Last Tuesday I had interchanges with my district leader Elder Ramirez, and we stayed put in my area of the Pedregal. I had a really good time with him and he is a good friend of mine. He is one of the few rock music likers out of the Latins I've met, so our personalities match up pretty good! It's too bad he's not my companion haha....but we had a good time on Tuesday. At the end of the night, the appointment that we were going to go to fell through, and while we were looking for a couple of contacts, we were approached by a drunk guy. Now just to clarify, that's not a rare occurrence around here, about twice a day we have the lovely opportunity to talk to drunks on the street. Here in Central America it seems like the drunk people are more religious than the normal people since they talk to us more :) Well anyways, we started talking to him for a second, and felt like we should keep talking for some reason. He was with his wife, and we ended up asking if they could show us their house. We went to their house and gave them a small message. This family has an incredible amount of problems, their kids are involved in drugs and gangs, the husband has been an alcoholic for about 20 years, and the wife almost can't take it anymore. We told them that we have the answers for them, and if they were willing to commit themselves to do the things we tell them, they will be blessed. We left with a strong desire to help them out. We were only able to see them once more this week, and that was yesterday. The appointment that we had with them fell through because they were in the hospital. Their oldest son had been shot in the jaw area, and miraculously was almost unharmed. We found them in the house yesterday and were able to give them a lot of council. I hope that this week we can help them out to progress even more.

Other than that, this week we had an activity on Saturday where we passed out warning flyers for dengue together with pamphlets of the Word of Wisdom, in order to get a couple of contacts here and there. It was actually semi-successful, so we're going to keep working on that this week as well.

The majority of the people that we are working with in Pedregal are part member families whom one of the spouses are inactive, and the other one is not a member. We are working on the wedding of 2 of these pairs, and hopefully they will be ready to be baptized soon as well!

I hope that everything is going well at home, please be careful and enjoy the "cold" weather that's going on over there. Love you all!

Vaya Pues!

Elder Tinkham

Country Bumpkin turns City Boy- July 12th

Hello once again to all of my family and friends out there, I think the secret is already out of the bag according to what my mother has told me, but I think I'm just going to tell you anyway.

After 1 year of being here in Honduras, for the first time in my missionary career I have been transferred to the city. I was really sad to hear the transfers because I was almost positive that I was going to be staying. Elder Vasquez and I put a lot of heart, sweat and prayer into the work in Ciudad España, but I'm starting to figure out that when that happens, when a companionship works so well like that, they change quickly. I wish all the luck to Elder Vasquez so that he can continue the work in Ciudad España, and I'm going to miss all of my beloved friends there. The hardest part was saying goodbye to the family of the Hno. Franklin. They were all very sad to see me go, and it was rough for me as well, but I will never forget that lovely family. The mom told me that I was the greatest missionary that she had ever gotten to know, and that just brought tears to my eyes. Adios Ciudad España!

Well, enough of the sentimentality....anyways! I have been transferred to Pedregal, an area that is part of the new project zone La Peña. Elder Hinckley is my zone leader, and his area is called La Popular. Once again I am working in the smallest zone, as I have done 2 times previously. My companion is Elder Maldonado, from Honduras! My first Honduran companion, its really exciting. He is from Choluteca Honduras, in the southern border, and he has about 5 months in the mission (he is from the same group as Elder Vasquez). I only have 4 days with my new companion, but so far things seem to be going pretty well, just that I have to help him out a little bit more than Elder Vasquez (but that's not saying much since Elder Vasquez was a genius). Pedregal is a ward (woohoo my first ward!) and part of the strongest stake in our mission, so let me tell you, this is a very odd experience for me. Our area is very small, nonetheless, there are a ton of people that live here. The houses are literally stuck together and really packed in there and the streets are really narrow haha, so it's going to take a little bit of getting used to. From our area there is a pretty good view and you can see a large part of the city, so one of these days I'm gonna have to ship out a nice pic or two. The members here are really awesome, and I am amazed at the amount of church membership that there actually is here in Tegucigalpa. On a side note, Pedregal means "area with lots of rocks." If you remember from my first area, Piedras Bonitas, also referred to rocks. Interestingly enough, I'm having a pretty "rocky" mission right! Haha, cheesy I know.

With respect to investigators, well...let's just say that once again, I haven't been left with much to do. It's a little bit more difficult to contact here since the area is small, and I'm pretty sure that the entire area gets contacted about every 4 months, but it just takes a little bit more intelligence. The biggest challenge for us in Pedregal is having secure appointments with people, because a lot of times the people aren't home. So we spend a lot of time scaling stairs and walking around finding people that are at home whom we can teach. It's a little bit of a challenge, but with time I'll figure it out!

Elder Maldonado and I, together with the ward missionary leader (a recent convert who is already becoming one of my best friends over here) planned an activity for this last Friday. We collected a ton of Liahonas from all of the members, and made our way to the entrance of Pedregal to give them away for free. It was similar to the activity I did in Ciudad España 2 weeks ago, and once again I played the role of "chase the guy down and find out where he lives!" Not in the burglar sense of course, but in the sense of messenger of God, haha! We had the chance to pull out about 15 good contacts from the activity, and we are going to work on finding them and teaching them this week. We already contacted one, and things went pretty good!

The other activity that we did this week is we volunteered with the Medical Center to help revise the pilas, and all the containers of water that people have in their house. I'm not sure if you guys have heard, but there is a large epidemic going around here in Honduras right now called Dengue. I have no idea how to say it in English, but it has to do with mosquitoes, so maybe it's West Nile, but I doubt it. Anyways, there are a TON of people that are contracting Dengue around here, and we have been taking a lot of precautions in order to prevent it. Every time we leave the house we have to spray ourselves with OFF all over, in order to protect us, and we are also sleeping with a mosquito net around the bed every night. It's really weird, haha and I feel a lot like a princess when I sleep with that thing, but I'll get used to it. Anyways back to the activity. We volunteered to examine all of the things that contain water in the houses, because the water is the breeding ground for mosquito eggs. We helped them realize all of the dangers of Dengue and how they can prevent it, and used the time wisely in order to talk a little bit about the Word of Wisdom and all that. It was really fun and we even had the opportunity to put a couple of appointments with the people, just that they weren't for us since we were working in the area of our District Leader, but oh well!

I would like to take the little time I have left to thank my Grandma Tinkham for all of the letters she writes me every week. She is by far the most faithful writer, and for that deserves a big thank you. I really enjoy receiving those little cards, and I often receive multiple cards at once! So for that, thank you!!!

Well, that's about all I've got for you guys this week, we will see how my time goes in the city, right! Love you all!

Vaya Pues!

Elder Tinkham

July 5th

Hello once again to all of my family and friends out there. First off...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MEGAN! I cannot believe you have already turned 13, I remember when I was holding you in my arms as a little baby!

HAPPY LATE BIRTHDAY MOMMY! I had said that last week, but the first email I had written deleted itself, and I forgot to put it in the second time!

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY EVERYONE!

I would also like to give a special thanks to my mom for correcting all of my English grammatical errors that I commit every week, as I have literally forgotten how to speak English. Thanks mommy!

On Saturday I received the pictures that you had sent me mom, and wow! Everyone looks so much different to me. It was really great to receive the pictures because I almost haven't received any in the mission, and its amazing to see how much everyone has grown. I may not recognize you all when I get back!

This week the rain calmed down a little bit, so we received a little bit more of the usual sun pounding. I got a little chance to rest the raincoat and to dry out my shoes haha. Also, I have arrived at another end of transfer this week..and I'm a bit nervous that I might be taken out of Ciudad España, as usual haha. Once again i'll say it....the Lord knows where I need to be!

Our branch president has been suggesting to us for the past week that we need to do an activity around here in order to encourage the members. Well, for the last week Elder Vasquez and I have pulled a complete blank on what we should do, but this blank space in my brain was eventually filled! I remembered from my time in Juticalpa that every Thursday we had something that was called Noche de hermanamiento (night of friendship), and I remembered all of the success that came from that. So, we suggested to the branch president that he call someone in the branch to be the branch activities president, or something like that, whatever its called. On Sunday he was able to call her and she accepted; we immediately met with her in order to plan 2 weeks worth of activities so that they can be well-organized. We're excited to get started because we have a lot of good ideas for activities and hungry for members to get reactivated!

This week was a bad week for our recent convert Marino. The other night we got an emergency phone call at about 1:30 in the morning, and as a missionary, when someone calls like that in the middle of the night, you know its something you have to worry about. Well come to find out that his brother had been hit by a car in Tegucigalpa (we have never met his brother because he lives away from home) and was placed in the hospital. We told him that we would pray for him and do all that we could to help. Later on in the week, we found out that his brother had died. We feel really bad for him and want to do everything we can to help out their family. Yesterday, we went to their house in order to counsel the whole family; only his dad was home, the others still hadn't returned from the funeral in Tegucigalpa. When we entered his home, I know that this was the moment we had in order to start teaching Marino's father. We taught the plan of salvation, and I felt the spirit very strongly in the lesson. We gave him his own Book of Mormon and invited him to read it, and he accepted. I pray that he well let the true gospel of Jesus Christ enter into his heart this next week.

On Saturday, Elder Vasquez and I, together with our district leader and his companion, had a small activity in Ciudad España. We put a table out at the only bus stop of Ciudad España and loaded the table with church material that we had collected and started to give it out for free. We ran up to everyone that walked by and persuaded them in with the line, "Hey! Don't walk by because you need to take something for free before you leave!" Or something of that effect. Well, it lured the majority of them in, and that's when we attacked them with the gospel (in a gentle sense). We were lucky enough to come up with about 14 referrals, and we're going to work hard with those this week. All in all I thoroughly enjoyed the activity.

Update on Yasmin and Cesar, they came to church again this week! We were really excited to hear that they wanted to come again, because honestly we thought they got bored the first time. But when we were having the activity, Yasmin walked by and the other missionaries were talking to her. They asked her if she was going to come to church this week and this is what she said, "I had the pleasure to go to church last week, and yes I'm going to go again because I liked it a lot!" Elder Vasquez and I wanted to cry of pure joy at this moment. The only problem is that Cesar is progressing like an ancient turtle. We're going to commit them to baptism and marriage this week, so it's do or die for them! Cross your fingers!

Hno. Titi, the inactive returned missionary that we brought to church last week, came to church again! I have been working really hard with him ever since I have arrived, and so help me by the time I leave he will be active again. I had made a goal that every time I find myself in an area were there is a returned missionary who has lost his testimony, I'm going to shove it back in them! It breaks my heart to see someone like that who had such amazing blessings as a missionary, and has forgotten everything as they were lost once again in the real world. We went over to his house this week and helped him with a service project. We built a cement wall and carried a bunch of cement bricks. Ouch my hands hurt, but it was worth it. Also, Saturday night when we finished teaching a lesson with a DVD, I strategically dropped by their house to leave the DVD there because the church was "locked," so that he could watch the movie before coming to church on Sunday, and it worked!

Well, that's about all I have for you guys this week, I hope everything is going well with you guys back and home, enjoy the heat! Now you will know how I feel all the time haha!

Vaya Pues!

Elder Tinkham

Elder Tinkham at the waterfall baptism