In our Guaimaca branch, we had 9 baptisms Saturday
Monday, February 28, 2011
February 28th
My dear beloved family and friends, I am pleased to greet you this fine day, we are about to enter into March (my favorite month) and things are looking great. I’m just as happy as usual, and also, I have a lot of things to talk about so, let’s get started!
The week of miracles, in reality, turned out to be a miracle. I marvel at the Lord’s mercy sometimes, and why it is that he plans such great things for such insignificant people like me. We were able to have the baptism of the Reyes Family, and it was one of the most memorable days of my mission. Just check out the photos to see haha! I’m totally burned up in the pictures due to the sun, stress, and happiness haha!
Being extremely nervous for the weekend to come, we planned a zone meeting for Tuesday so that we could relax a little bit and feel the spirit as we studied various themes. We let the sister missionaries teach this time (knowing that they always have the spirit with them, and are much better than Elders). A great friend of mine that I have gained in the mission, from Draper Utah, Sister Cutler, gave a wonderful theme about the power and authority of our calling, which really had a great effect on me. I truly believe that what she said helped me get through the week like I did. We planned the baptismal interviews, weddings, baptismal services, confirmations, and all of that stuff so that we could have everything totally organized. Right now I am totally out of money due to the extensive amount of travelling that we have done to interview, etc. I anxiously await tomorrow to get some more haha! All in all we had 22 baptisms in the zone this weekend, and 24 throughout the month of February. In the Guaimaca branch, we had 9 baptisms. 4 from us and 5 from the other Elders. It was something that has never been seen before in these parts of the mission, so let’s just say that it was a little bit stressful. Last night I slept like a little baby!
On Friday we had the wedding of the Fam. Reyes. We had a wonderful attendance. We planned it to be in the church, and everything was very cute. The family was super happy, and they were very thankful for the effort we put into it. The members in the branch were all fighting over bringing the cake and refreshments to the wedding! We ate a lot that night, and took lots of pictures. The next day we had the baptism. President Flores came to the baptism (I think he just wanted to make sure we weren’t lying about the stats we were reporting) and gave a wonderful talk about the Holy Ghost. The members of the Fam. Reyes are Edy (dad), Miriam (mom), Edis (son), and Melvin (son) who got baptized, and then they have 3 more kids as well that are younger. I was able to baptize Miriam and Edis, while my companion baptized Edy and Melvin. We had as many people in the baptism as we usually do in sacrament meeting.
To answer your questions mom, I’ll talk a little bit about my living situation here in Guaimaca. There are 4 Elders here in Guaimaca, but we each live in separate houses, so Elder Torres and I live in our own house. It’s a modest house, but very nice. We have a water heater on our shower, but it only half works so we just have lukewarm showers, it satisfies me! With the food, we pay some members who live right by our house to make us lunch, and for dinner, we don’t ever hardly have time to eat, and so not much happens for dinner. For laundry, the same lady washes our colors and we pay her. And for our whites, our neighbor has a washing machine and so we borrow it to wash in there...awesome!
The only person that we couldn’t get baptized was Kenia Guerrero. We found out that she didn’t have the right intentions to be baptized. She basically fell in love with my companion haha, and so wanted to be baptized for that reason. So....we are staying away from her house for right now for that reason. She knows that the church is true and everything, so hopefully one day she will come to her senses right?
Well, that’s all that I have time to write this week. Thanks everyone for all of your support. I hope that you have a good week. Be safe, Be Happy, Be Mormon!
Vaya Pues!
Elder Tinkham
Monday, February 21, 2011
February 21
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
Monday, February 14, 2011
February 14
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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