August 30

Hello once again to all of my family and friends out there. I hope you are all doing well and that everything is going well at home. The Internet today is not functioning right, so you will probably be getting this on Monday night or Tuesday day. That's good ole Honduras for you…haha.

As a response to a few questions, my companion Elder Menendez is from El Salvador, so I have now covered every country in Central America as companions, the only other country I have left is Costa Rica, but since there are only 3 missionaries from Costa Rica in the whole mission, I think I've hit about all of them. My district consists of 6 Elders. Us, and the 4 Elders from Roble Oeste (2 of them being the Zone Leaders). Elder Menendez and I get along just great, I'm actually enjoying most of our time together.

This week for us was basically a giant roller coaster….filled with moment upon moment of excitement, disappointment, happiness, etc. On Tuesday we had interchanges with the Zone Leaders, and I was able to stay in my area in Pedregal and work with my new zone leader Elder Dahl from Ogden Utah. We had a great time together and worked great. He basically lived the same life as me so we were able to have some fun conversations.

During the interchanges we received a reference to teach someone named Martín. We decided to meet with him in the giant Catholic church right by our house, but he never showed up. We decided to head back home and call him to find out what happened. It turned out that he got held up in traffic (I'm still not used to the concept of "traffic" yet due to my large amount of time outside the city), and was about to get home. We were able to meet with him shortly after, and had a very spiritual lesson. He accepted the commitment to read and pray without any doubt. Sadly we haven't been able to meet with him since, because he has a bit of a crazy schedule, but we are going back today! I'm excited to find out how his progress has gone and to invite him to be baptized.

The roller coaster ride began and ended this week with the family of Ingrid and Leonardo. We spent most of the week running around getting all of the papers ready for the wedding this Friday, and we got it all done. It was a close call, and we even had to bribe the lawyer so that we could turn the papers in one day later. We finally got it all done, and we were all ready for the wedding. But, one day before the wedding, Hno. Leonardo fell back into the addiction and drank again...ugh. Hna. Ingrid said that she couldn't get married to someone that is not committed and hasn't changed. Leonardo lost himself for a day, but I used the Spirit to tell me when he was going to get home. At the end of the day on Thursday, when he arrived at his house, we were waiting for him. I calmly reprimanded him for a bit, and to make things short, he felt really bad afterwards. The wedding was cancelled, and the baptism of Hna. Ingrid....Thursday was one of the saddest days of my entire mission. They used their agency and chose to follow Satan that day, and I was victim of that agency. We did all we could, but things are still looking alright. The Hna. Ingrid still has her testimony and everything, so we're looking forward to the day when the Hno. Leonardo can really find a real repentance. We're going to focus on him this week and really try to get him to change. The good thing is, we still had the baptism of the 2 children of Hna. Ingrid, Allan (16) and Paola (11). It was a great baptism because every single one of the wards that go to our church (there are 4) had baptisms that day. We combined them all and had one large meeting, the picture that I have included is from the combined baptism... isn't that beautiful!

On Friday, I had the opportunity to have my first baptismal interview of one investigator in my district. His name is Efraim, a single man who is 38 years old. I was pretty nervous, but it turned out to be pretty good. He had trouble in his past with the Word of Wisdom, but I promised him that as he knelt down to pray each day to ask Heavenly Father for guidance, he would not fall again into the alcohol addiction. I really enjoyed the interview, and it was really strengthening for me.

Today, Elder Menendez and I decided to contact an entire bus! It was an interesting experience, since all of the buses are blasting rap music all the time, but we did it anyway. I screamed in front of the bus and we passed out flyers of what we teach. We're not really expecting to receive results from it, but we did it in order to get rid of any fear we have of talking to EVERYONE.

Well...I'm not sure if I'm going to be writing next week, because next Monday the leadership training starts once again. So if i don't write, it's for that reason. But sorry that this email is very short and to the point, but the Internet was really bad today. I love you all!

Vaya Pues!

Elder Tinkham

August 23rd, A Week of Surprises

Hello once again to all of my family and friends out there. I hope you are all doing well and have had a great week. This week it has been raining a whole lot (since it's rainy season, haha) and so my clothing is a little bit soggy, but what can you do! This week has been one of several surprises for me, so it's going to take a couple of minutes to explain all of the surprises.

First of all, the transfers were this week, and Elder Maldonado has been shipped out. I received Elder Menendez....if you remember from the past emails, Elder Menendez was the new Elder that was in my district the last transfer who was my "companion" for one week during the leadership conference. Well yeah, all he had to do was cross the street in order to arrive at his new area! It was the most surprising transfer session that I think has ever happened. At first, I was wondering if we were going to be able to work well together, but now I'm very happy to know he is my companion. He only has 2 months in the mission and still has a lot to learn, but I really enjoy that he is my companion. We have a lot of fun together and he is a missionary who is dedicated to learn and teach.

Second of all, I have been called to be the District Leader of the newly constructed district that we are now in. The zone was once again changed and we have switched zones. I am now the District Leader of district Roble Oeste. Roble Oeste is the area where they are building the Honduras Temple. So every time that I decide to do interchanges with the other Elders, I'll get a nice view of how the construction is going! Its going to be a very humbling experience for me to be able to serve in this position. I'm excited to get to work.

Thirdly, we had a surprise baptism this week! Her name is Guillermina Flores, she is the mom of the family that we pay so that they fix us lunch every day. She lives about 2 hours away in an area called Choluteca that is part of mission Tegucigalpa. She has been coming to church with the Garcia Family for about 3 years, but was never baptized. The family told us that the Elders "just haven't been able to throw her in the water." I was thinking about that, and so the day that she arrived once again, I decided to go in for the kill, what did I have to lose? I told her.."Hermana, we've been thinking a lot lately and we've decided to have your baptism tomorrow, we're planning the service as we speak, you're going to get baptized, right?" To my extreme surprise, she said yes! So... I hurried and called the Zone Leaders and told them that we needed an interview for that same day. The next day she was baptized, and it was a very special service. The spirit was there, and when I asked the daughter of the hermana if she could bear her testimony, there weren't very many dry eyes in the room. I let Elder Menendez perform the baptism, his first in the mission. It was a great experience for all of us at the meeting.

We are getting closer and closer to the marriage and baptism of Ingrid and Leonardo. Everything is still going amazing with them, and if a miracle happens, we'll be able to get the work done. We don't have hardly any of the marriage papers yet but I'm thinking it will happen still. I don't know what else to say about them....great people!

Marlon and Vanessa...well Marlon is doing great and working towards receiving his priesthood rights once again. But Vanessa, well we still haven't found a way that she will be able to come to church yet. She is a little bit of a .....how could I say this delicately....blonde. It's a little bit difficult to teach her, but we still have hope that things will work out with her because she has a good husband that has true hope that she can be baptized and they can start working towards a temple marriage.

The weakest point in our work that we have right now is finding new people to teach. We haven't had much time to contact this week, and that time that we have used hasn't worked out too well for us. That's what we really need to work on this next coming week, because if we don't have new people to teach...we're going to have some problems in September, haha.

That's about all I have for you guys this week...my time has run out to write, but I hope you're all doing well! I love you all and be safe!

Vaya Pues!

Elder Tinkham

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