May 31

Muy buenos dias a todos en esta semana. Espero que todo esta bièn, y que se estan cuidando. Creo que debo empezar de escribir todas mis cartas a la familia en Español verdad? Porque tengo 1 AÑO en el campo misional!

Anywho, this was a very interesting week, you guys will get a lot of laughs out of this one, but that's what I'm here for. This week we had transfers, and as expected, I am staying in Ciudad España. Elder Torres was shipped out, and I have received Elder Vasquez. I must say, he is one of my favorite companions yet! As some of you may know, President was previously using me as a "helper" of companions that needed encouragement, help, and discipline, so I've been with that whole deal for awhile. But I must say that Elder Vasquez has none of these problems whatsoever! He is a new guy, I am his second companion. He is from Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, the 2nd largest city in Guatemala and site of their second temple. He is a smaller nerdy looking guy with glasses, and is an utter genius. I do not feel like senior companion with him, in fact I feel quite inferior, but all I can say is, I'm enjoying it!

Elder Vasquez and I worked really hard this week, and received a lot of progress. I have been working a LOT on my goals that I have set, and on the ones that Elder Clark and President Flores set for us. We had a good experience and lesson about obedience as well. We received a phone call from the zone leaders on Tuesday that said that they wanted us to visit former investigators that had previously attended sacrament meeting, and put a baptismal date for that SAME Saturday to end the month of May on a good note. Well, knowing the area and it's history, Elder Vasquez and I were like "Ha! Like that will ever work here!" but we pressed forward, and nevertheless did what he said. So we searched through the area book and found a family that had attended church for about 2 months, and were about to be baptized, but had problems and eventually fell away. We used the spirit and chose to go and visit them, and it was awesome! Well, we didn't put a baptismal date because they still aren't married, but we did find out that all this time that missionaries hadn't visited them, they had still been reading the Book of Mormon! So we are going to start working hard with them to see what we can do with them.

We also had the chance to put a baptismal date this week with one of the teens we are teaching as well, but later on that week it fell through. His name is Marino, and he is a really cool teen. He really likes what we have been teaching him and believes through prayer that it is true. He is also working on dropping the coffee, the only problem is that he hasn't come to church yet. He has a special needs brother that keeps him up all night sometimes, and so he has real trouble getting up for church. This week he didn't come due to the weather. As some of you might have heard, there has been a tropical storm around here in Central America this weekend, and that really affected us. It has been raining every day and every night this week, and on Sunday we got flooded! The church meetings were almost cancelled but we convinced the branch president to let us have it. Only 25 people came due to the rain, but it was still a good meeting. I used my raincoat from Mr. Mac for the first time in my whole mission this week! Mom you would be very proud of me. But don't worry about me now, the people are saying that the flooding will continue in these 2 days, but we're doing alright, nothing too bad in my area.

Funny story of the week, Elder Vasquez and I locked ourselves out of the house 2 times! It was quite a funny experience. With our house, there is 2 parts, the main part of the house, and were we sleep is in the back. The first time, I set the keys on the ironing board, which is close to the window. So we took out the glass part (this was at 10:30 at night in pajamas) and with a mop, carefully dragged the ironing board towards the window and grabbed the keys! You would think we learned, but with another large chain of events, we semi-locked the keys in the house again. I had the keys, but not all of them, and the key to the back door I didn't have. The front door was locked from the inside....ugh. So, this time we took the glass off of another window, and jimmied the door open with a metal rod. But now yes! I have officially learned how to keep track of the keys and I will never lose them again!

Well, that's about all I've got for you guys this week, hope everything goes well!

Vaya Pues!

Elder Tinkham

May 24

Hello again to all of my family and friends out there. I feel like I am always giving a weather report to start out, but I'll continue with the tradition...it's hot. There you go! Haha

I have realized that my emails to you guys are getting a little bit lazy and uninteresting. I have officially repented of that, and I'm going to try and do better this time. Let's see how it turns out.

The old guy Josè Aparicio that we found last week is doing great. He came to Sacrament meeting for the first time yesterday, and he absolutely loved it. It took him about 80 minutes to walk there with his crutches, and I was incredibly grateful to see his smiling face at the door when he got there. He is what you call a golden investigator. There is just one problem, big problem, and it's the same problem that is happening with the Hno. Nicolas. He lives in his house with his wife...and they are not married. The problem is that they don't even like each other at all, so it will be quite difficult to convince them to get married. They sleep in different rooms, she sometimes leaves for periods of time to who knows where, but doesn't want to leave the house. And he, being a man of many years, can't really leave the house because it would be very hard for him. I feel really bad about that, and it's quite frustrating. All of the people in Ciudad España that want to be baptized, can't...and those that can....don't want to. But we are going to be working continually with him, because he is a really great guy. The biggest problem that Honduras has is that about 95% of the couples, aren't married. It always causes a large delay in the baptism, and more work for us, but we're always willing to do it.

We have also been helping out another member family get married this week. The whole family are members, except the Dad. We have been teaching the Dad, Franklin, and he has an amazing testimony. He already read the entire Book of Mormon, Principles of the Gospel, and is starting Doctrine and Covenants. We spent most of the week running from place to place, spending a large amount of money, and doing all that we can to have all of the marriage papers turned in this week so that we could have a large marriage baptism celebration (I was even going to bring the cake that Camille gave me). But at the last moment, the very last paper we needed, the birth certificate of the wife....caused problems. When we went to the government building of registered persons, they told us that the book that contains the week in which she was born, had been destroyed. She will have to re-register herself, a process that delays about 2 months, and then we will finally be able to obtain the paper. I am really starting to see the power of Satan and how he does not want the chosen ones to be baptized...but we haven't given up. Sure we were quite discouraged, but the towel hasn't been thrown! The fat lady has not sung!

Today is transfer day, and they will be telling us the transfers sometime tonight. I seriously doubt that I'll be leaving, since I just got here. But it's extremely probable that Elder Torres will be leaving since he has been here a good time. So who knows what the Lord has in store for me this time! I'll inform you about my new companion, if I receive one, in the next email. But all I can say is, this has been the fastest transfer of the mission!

On Tuesday was the long awaited meeting with Elder Clark, president of the Central American area. It was absolutely amazing! I can't even begin to tell you all of the things I learned there, I would be here all day. He gave us all a good shaving up and a whipping, but we all enjoyed it. I think one of the reasons I'm going to try and make these letters better is because Sister Clark told us that we were doing a crappy job at writing our family emails, and we need to do better! So sorry about that family! They also mentioned that every future wife of missionaries has to call their mission president and ask them how great of a missionary he was, and they will know how great of a husband he will be. I thought about that a lot, and thought...Uh oh....haha....if my future wife is going to call my mission president....I need to change from a good missionary to an extraordinary missionary! So that's what I've been trying to do lately. All in all I really loved the meeting and it gave me a boost of spiritual energy.

I had a really spiritual experience this week with respect to Priesthood blessings. One day, as we were leaving the house of Josè Aparicio, his daughter, a member from San Pedro Sula (other mission), came outside and unexpectedly asked us for a blessing. I told her of course, but what do you need the blessing for? Silence broke out, and she began to cry. She told us that she was here in Tegucigalpa because in recent testing by doctors, they told her that she might have cancer. I was about to tell my companion to anoint and I would bless, but for some reason I felt that I should anoint. Something incredible happened as I did it, when I was anointing, the spirit came over me so powerfully that I don't even know when I finished or if I said the correct words, but the next thing I knew my companion was giving the blessing. Now, I don't know how she is doing at the moment, we haven't heard from her since...but all I know is, that was one of the first experiences in my entire life where I was absolutely positive that the Spirit was in that room. I had been studying a lot about recognizing the Holy Spirit in order to recognize it more often, and I have no doubt in my mind that it was present. I know that this church is true, I know that the work of Jesus Christ continues to be carried out in this day, and will continue until the Second Coming. The Book of Mormon is true, that I know. I'm so grateful for all of your prayers, believe me, I feel them often, thank you so much. I'll talk to you later!

Vaya Pues!

Elder Tinkham

May 17

Hello once again to all of my family and friends out there. Another hot day is passing me by in Honduras, and I must say I dont feel it that much....wow I must be getting used to it all I guess.

Anywho, we'll see if I have a little bit of information for you guys this week from what I can remember. Things are pretty rough out here in Ciudad España, and when I mean rough, I ain't jokin'. But we're always working hard in order to improve. The majority of the families that we found last week, kind of rejected us this week and don't really want to listen any more, but you know how that goes. I'm trying to keep up the faith and really work hard so I can find the people that Heavenly Father has chosen for me to find here in Ciudad España.

Tomorrow morning we have a special conference with Area President Don R. Clarke and I am really excited for it. We have been doing a lot of spiritual preparation for the meeting, and I hope it really helps me out to become an even stronger missionary. Elder Torres and I have been having better studies, and trying to do the best we can to prepare ourselves spiritually for the great meeting we're going to have. President Flores has also sent out a new challenge for all of us missionaries, and has asked us to read the entire Book of Mormon in 3 months. It's going to be a challenge for me since I am still finishing up 3 Nephi for the first time in Spanish (I'm reading real slow), but we'll see what kind of marathon reading I can get done next month!

With respect to the work that's going on around here, we did find a pretty positive investigator this week that we are working hard with. His name is Josè Aparicio and he is 86 years old. His daughter is a member that lives in San Pedro Sula, and came by to visit. We decided to go by and visit her so that we could see how her family was, and it turns out that her dad is really something. He has read the Bible from front to back several times and practically has it to memory. He had previously been attending an Adventist Church, but months ago the missionaries visited him, gave him a Book of Mormon, and never came back. When we found him, we found out that he had read the chapter assignment 3 times, while reading all of the footnotes to the Bible and comparing it word by word with the Bible. He told us that he really likes the Book of Mormon and wants to get baptized, but to be baptized exactly how Jesus was. I told him, "That wont be any problem!" Here in Ciudad España there is no baptismal font, so we either have to make our way down to Tegucigalpa, or hit up one of the nearby rivers. So if everything works out how we want it to, towards the end of the month we'll have a river baptism. I really like the guy and he makes my day, he's just silly sometimes. Due to his age, he says a lot of silly things and makes us laugh (sorry if I offended any senior citizens out there). He still has a bit of false doctrine in his head due to the large amount of years he has had in other churches. But we are doing the best we can to help him out.

This week Elder Torres and I have been a little bit sick. I don't know what happened but I think it was something we ate. We have not had an appetite for about 4 days now, and until yesterday I started eating again. It didn't affect any type of work, just that the beautiful treat that is "food" was taken from me this week. I hope to compensate for my lost meals by eating double this week in order to rebuild my equilibrium.

Other than that, the majority of our investigators just plain don't have a lot of interest. Sadly the only one that does, the Hno. Nicolas, can't be baptized due to problems with the Law of Chastity. We feel bad for the guy because he wants to be baptized and marry the woman he is living with, but she doesn't even like him. Well, they don't like each other at all, and the only reason he doesn't kick her out is cause she doesn't have anywhere to live, and he feels bad for the kids. So, thats on pause for right now, but we're always looking for ways to help him out. Other than that, things are slowly but surely going along for me. I hope that I can figure out more ways to have success...but Im alright! Don't worry about me! Love you all!

Vaya Pues,

Elder Tinkham

May 10

Hello to one and all on this brisk cool day of 80 degrees, I hope everything is going alright with all of you. I have quite the interesting newsletter to write this week, so lets see how it turns out.

This week was definitely a roller coaster one, filled with sadness, anger, happiness, and hope. The week started out good on Tuesday, and I got the opportunity to work with Elder Cruz, my district leader, in Ciudad España. I didn't go over there, well, because I'm not allowed to haha. It is 100% prohibited for white missionaries to be there in his area after about 4pm, and I'll just leave it at that haha. But anyways, Elder Cruz is a great guy from Honduras, the coastal area. We had a lot of fun working together, and found success as well. For the first time in all of my time here in Ciudad España we were able to find a family that was interested in hearing our message. It was an interesting and strangely rare experience, we actually got a little bit nervous in the lesson haha, but it all turned out well. I learned a lot about the principle in Preach My Gospel "Talk with Everyone" in the interchanges. We really focused on that and basically talked with everyone we passed by on the street that day, and look what happened...success! That was a good day for me.

And now for the bad news...well...we were supposed to have a baptism this Saturday of a 13 year old girl named Yamilet. You guys don't know about her because of my failure to speak about it before, due to laziness and lack of time. But yeah, she is part of a family that have already been baptized, but she hasn't due to a problem that the mother and her have between each other. The mom is a little bit...of a special person, and so we have been working a lot with Yamilet so that she will have the strength to ask forgiveness of her mom. After a long time of work, she finally agreed to do it, and she did it. We were about to have the baptism and everything, and when we went to pick her up to go to the baptism, the mom came out and said..."If you baptize my daughter today, I will never speak to her again, and she ceases to be my daughter." She had already signed the paper and everything, but told us that the signature didn't mean anything, her opinion is what mattered. So, we couldn't go through with the baptism. I was thinking about it a lot, and came to the decision that I'm not here to separate families. Sure, I could have baptized her, but what would it have served for? The real work we are doing here is to bring people unto Christ, so that one day they, as a family, can go to the temple, be sealed, and one day achieve exaltation, not to cause a war in the family. I felt really bad for what happened, but that was not our intention. We are now working with the mom and the whole family so that we can hopefully one day bring all of them into the fold of God. It was a bad day for us, but we got through it.

I really enjoyed talking to you guys yesterday, it was an edifying experience for me. The best news is this...immediately after I hung up the phone, Elder Torres and I set off to contact...and found a family! His name is Pedro (the dad) and he has 4 kids! We taught the plan of salvation and he really enjoyed it. In the end, we asked him if he would pray to know if the words we have spoken are the words of God, and are true. What he told us brought joy to my heart, "Hermanos, I know that prayer is important, but I already feel that what you are telling me is true." I'll give more updated news on that as we continue to teach them.

Well, sadly my time has run out, I never really have time to tell you guys about everything, but I hope you enjoy what I could write. I love you all and hope you're doing well!

Vaya Pues!

Elder Tinkham

My district in Juticalpa, including our faithful friend Rony Figueroa. I'll never forget all my time I spent in Juticalpa.

The "Elders of Israel"

This was on my 20th birthday in Juticalpa when the Figueroa family (members) bought me a cake to celebrate, and then cordially shoved my face in it! But it tasted good, so oh well!

Letter written 4/25/10 received 5/8/2010

Dear Family,

Well, it has been a really long time since I sat down and wrote you guys. I'm sorry about that, the only excuse I have is that there are lots of things to do around here, and in the nighttime we just get hit with such laziness haha, but tonight I'm persevering! How are you all doing? I miss you so much, but of course I could never be happier than I am right now serving the Lord.

Right now I'm still a newbie in my 3rd area. This has definitely been by most difficult area to work in due to the extreme lack of members to help us out and increasing opposition to the Church, so I need to increase my faith a lot in order to do the work the Lord has required of me.

If my memory suits me right, Dallin will be graduation high school in about a month, hitting up summer classes at SLCC, then heading off to Utah State (with my car !?!?). I can't believe how ancient I am becoming if my little brother is graduating AND my little sister is going to be turning 13 and be in 8th grade! I'm not even going to recognize you when I get back, you old farts, you!

Here in the mission I have learned more than I have in any type of learning institution, and I still have a long way to go. I'm starting to get close to being the missionary I want to be, and with daily repentance and a lot of hard work, I know I can achieve my goal. I am no longer scared to talk to anyone in Spanish, because I'd say that right now I know more Spanish than English, as I am finding it hard to write this letter! If something sounds weird or is wrong, it's because I'm translating from Spanish to English in my head.

I love you guys so much, and I'm so grateful for the opportunity that we have to be an eternal family sealed by the priesthood power. Before the mission I never really understood nor appreciated that, but now that I do, it couldn't bring me more joy than it does now. If we all do our part to obey the commandments in this life, we will receive our eternal gift.

This gospel is true, I don't have a doubt in my mind about that. Although people may challenge me or dispute with me, they may be able to take away everything I have, but they cannot separate me from my testimony of the truth. Thank you for showing that to me from the beginning mom and dad, I owe you a lifetime of debt. I love you so much, and I'll see you in one short year! ;-)

Vaya Pues,

Elder Tyler Tinkham

May 3rd

A very sweaty hello to all of you back home and throughout the world, I hope everything is going well with you. Things are heating up once again here in Honduras, though the rainy season is looming. To start off, I'll answer a few of my mom's questions. First about the shower...yes, I finally have a shower that works. But the problem is, the water temperature is about negative 80 degrees. Every morning I feel like I'm in the navy SEALs taking my resist freezing water temperatures test. But all is well with that. And with the laundry, there is a guy that washes our clothes for us so we're good on that aspect as well!

Anywho, this week has been pretty normal for me in Ciudad España. I'll start out with the good highlights of the week. First of all, we had interviews with President Flores this week, and that was so awesome. I don't know what it is about him but even if you feel like you're perfectly clean, you always leave the interview with him after a good hefty repentance, but there is nothing wrong with that. I have learned a whole lot about repentance on my mission here and all I can say is it's the best thing there is on the planet! I left the interview feeling really great and extremely uplifted.

Elder Torres and I have been working really hard in order to find new investigators these last few days, but sadly we are just coming up with nothing. Being in Ciudad España is definitely the hardest thing that has been put forth for me so far in the mission. We are working as hard as we can so that, at least the area doesn't get shut down for failure on our part. It's difficult to work in my area since it's a small residence about an hour away from the city, and everyone has to work in the city because there isn't anything in Ciudad España, just houses. The bosses in Teguc don't want to hire the people because they live so far and the transport is limited, so things are difficult in that respect. All the members have work and are gone all day, so it's nearly impossible to receive help from the them because they are working hard enough just to provide for their families. But all I can say is, we're doing the best we can.

I wanted to take the time to talk about the Hno. Nicolas this week. He is an investigator of ours, an eternal investigator as they call them, because he is not able to be baptized. He isn't divorced to his old wife with whom he lived with, nor is he married to the current wife he is with. The problem is that he wants to divorce and marry so that he can be baptized, because he has a testimony of the church, but the 2 don't want to do it. He is in a very difficult situation, and I feel really bad for him. This week in testimony meetings, he got up and bore his testimony, and it was incredibly spiritual. He said that he knew perfectly well that he was not doing the right thing disobeying the commandments of God and that he should be baptized, and he was going to try his best to change. He then testified of the truthfulness of the Gospel, and my heart was opened. I really love the guy, and I was so grateful for his testimony. It was a good moment for me, and really helped me out with my desire to continue working hard here in Ciudad España.

We are having a lot of problems this week finding new investigators, especially families. It seems like all the people that want to be baptized can't, and those that can don't want to! We're doing all that we can, and I am very grateful for the prayers from every one of you that I know you are saying. I hope everything is going well with you. But, I don't want you all to get worried about me, I'd like to refer you to a page of PMG where it talks about success (see page 10). It says that although we might not have success in our areas, we can know that we are a successful missionary when we are worthy and doing all that we can. All I can say is, I hope I am planting seeds here, and that one day they will flourish.

Vaya Pues,

Elder Tinkham

April 26

A big hola to all of my family and friends out there, how is everything going? I hope well. Sadly I am no longer cold because the rainyness has stopped, and once again it's hot (when I say that it was cold that means it was about 75 degrees). Things have been rolling along for me around here, let me tell you about my week.

Well, this week we had our transferly Zone Conference, and once again it was quite amazing. I really respect President Flores, it seems like every time he speaks, spiritual knowledge just shoots out of his mouth and heads directly to our brains and heart. Every time we leave a conference, we all feel like vile sinners and great missionaries at the same time, if you know what that means. The doctor of the Central American area also came by and gave us a message about stress and how to manage it as a missionary. He is a hilarious man and we all got a great kick out of him. Also, in the conference I got your package mom! Thanks so much for the new shoes, I still haven't even touched them because they are so clean and shiny, I'm afraid to get them dirty! But basically all of the candy and the mashed potatoes are already long eaten. So thanks!

To answer a few questions that my mom had about the food situation. There is a member that we pay to give us lunch, but all of the breakfast and dinners are house made, so we do a lot of cooking around here. Elder Torres and I get along just fine, he is a quiet type, but I don't have any problems with that.

As for the work here in Ciudad España, it's starting to come, slowly but surely. I have never seen so much opposition to the church as I do here, and its taking a little bit of time to get used to. In the pueblos I could just go up to any random house and say, Hi! We're missionaries and have a message about Jesus Christ! Can we come in and share it with you?! And about 85% of the time we go in. Here in Ciudad España it's more of the United States type deal...¨Hi hows it going! Were missionaries of the church of ...slam!¨ so yeah...the finding comes slower than usual, but I'm working on it!

We did find this one family of 4 that we are currently teaching. Its a mom (Juana) with 3 kids (Evelyn, Josè, and Jimmy) and things are going pretty well with them. They didn't come to church this week because Hna. Juana works in Tegucigalpa (like everyone else here), and she didn't have the time because she was over there working. But they are good people, they sure do talk a lot, but they do listen haha. The second time we went over there to visit we had a funny experience. We were asking them if they read the Book of Mormon and then prayed to know if all of these things were true. The daughter Evelyn said...I read and I liked it, but I didn't pray. Why? We asked...Because I'm scared I'm going to receive an answer like you told me. We laughed a little bit and asked her why, then we explained that it is a GOOD thing if she receives an answer to her prayers. The Hna. Juana also began to explain how she had had a horrible experience with an Evangelical church, were they baptized her and she told us that she does not believe in it at all. She asked us how our baptisms are and everything, and after we explained it, she said straight up. Well then looks like I'm going to be baptized! We laughed, Okay but you have to go to church first!

Anywho, that is pretty much the highlight of the week. In other news, I have been experimenting all of the different ways I can eat a Slim Jim this week due to the large mountain that my mom has sent me. I especially like the Slim Jim mashed potato mix, and the grilled cheese Slim Jim sandwich. Everything else...mas o menos. But I hope everything is going well with you guys, and I hope to hear from you soon!

Vaya Pues,

Elder Tinkham

April 19

Hello on this lovely new day to all of my family and friends out there. I hope you are all doing well and are safe. I would like to start out with some great news....Tengo Frio!! (I'm cold!!!!) As you might have discerned, its true, I have been transferred. So I have a lot to explain about my new area, lets get going.

Well, I have been transferred into the city finally, but it's not really the city. I am in a city zone, but my area is still outside of the city about 30 minutes. My area is called Ciudad España, and for those of you Spanishally challenged ones, that means Spain City. My area is very interesting, it is a community that was built about 12 years ago by the Red Cross when Hurricane Mitch hit. Then later on more people came to live there and expanded the community. Everything is paved, I have running water in the house, and....its cold! I even got a small fever the other day due to the large climate change because it has been raining like the dickens in my area. All the houses look pretty much the same, and it's just a nice community. But yeah, if you think I can rest now, think again.

The attendance in Ciudad España has a norm of about 45 people, and there is no church building. We meet in a house, which shocked me at first, but I'll get used to it I think. The Branch President doesn't live here, and comes every Sunday as a special calling from the stake. My companion and I are the counselors in the branch presidency, and I am the 1st counselor. We also teach seminary, give talks about every other Sunday, and bless the sacrament, so yeah....I have a lot of work to do!

Speaking of my new companion, his name is Elder Torres from Guatemala. He has just over a year in the mission, and he is a good humble guy. I don't really know why he hasn't been moved up to Senior Companion yet, because he is a good missionary, but I'm not worried about it because we need 2 good experienced missionaries here in order to have success. This branch has almost been closed down several times, because the members are very few, and the branch just hasn't progressed. President has told us that he needs us to save the branch because he does not want it to close down. I'm determined to do all that I can in order to help the branch.

Right now we are having trouble finding genuine investigators who are willing to progress. We have a couple of investigators who are decent, but very involved in other churches, and they just don't understand why they only need to go to one church. Here in the community there are A LOT of crazy churches, and most of the investigators who have gone to church say that we are boring because when we sing hymns we don't jump around, clap, and yell. They say that we don't have enough Spirit in our church because we don't yell and scream and heal people on the spot every Sunday. We have been trying to teach them that God is not a God of disorder and absolute loudness, and are looking for ways to help them understand. We will see how that goes this week.

As for Juticalpa, I was sad to let all my beloved friends go. I hope to find out soon if the baptisms are still on and how the branch progresses over there. I made some great friends and hope to see them one day again. I'm going to send a picture of part of the house I built with Hno. Santiago and Hna. Ana. I love you guys!

Vaya Pues!

Elder Tinkham