September 27- An Unexpected Change

Hello once again to all of my family friends out there, how are you all doing? I hope that all is well and that you're being safe. Things are going alright for me, let me tell you about my week.

First of all, Hurricane Matthew passed through Honduras on Friday and Saturday. We received a warning for that and we were ready to take action, but it turned out to be a pretty big buzkill actually and ended up just drizzling for 2 days straight. Well, I guess that's a good thing right! I'm not sure how it affected other areas to be honest, but here in the capital nothing really happened.

Last night I got a phone call that I was not expecting anytime soon. On Wednesday I will be leaving Pedregal and I have been transferred to the area called Comayaguela, and I will be serving as a Zone Leader. Just as I was getting used to the whole District Leader thing, President decided to take it up a notch haha. I'm actually a bit nervous, but also excited to see how that's going to go for me. My companion is going to be Elder Ortiz, and it's probable that I will be "killing him," in other words, I will be his last companion before he heads home. Comayaguela is the most city of all city areas, and it's the literal market where I'm going to be working. It should be quite the new experience for me, something that I am not used to at all, but the Lord prepares people for these types of things, and so I trust in Him. I'm a little bit sad to be leaving Pedregal now that we have a lot of prospects for baptism, but oh well what can I do.

On Sunday afternoon, we were able to find a Golden Family to teach. We received the reference at church in the morning, and in the afternoon we asked the members to take us to their house. They have just barely moved into Pedregal, just barely got married 1 year ago (Hallelujah), and have a baby that's 4 months old. They were really awesome when we were teaching them and I don't see any problems that's going to stop them from being baptized. The only challenge I see is that they have been receiving the Bible Study from the Jehovah's Witnesses for 1 year...so that might put a stumble or two on that, but a good testimony borne will take care of that issue. I'm going to ask a full report from Elder Menèndez on that family when I see him again. Speaking of the changes, Elder Vance from my group will be taking my place in Pedregal. He's got a lot of work to do! But I trust him that he'll do a good job.

On Friday I got a little bit under the weather, and right now I'm actually still pretty sick. I fear I might have a parasite, but the good news is that if I do, the mission has good medicine that destroys every type of parasite. Let's just say that around here the whole parasite thing occurs often...the question isn't if but when. But don't worry about me with that one. It didn't impede me from working that much.

Let's see...with respect to the investigators....everything is still pretty much the same. Ingrid and Leonardo are still struggling with a few problems, Vanessa is progressing a little bit more and should be baptized soon. Mainor still has his baptismal date, but he has kind of disappeared....we haven't been able to find him for a couple of days now. I'm a little bit worried about that but I hope we can come into contact with him soon.

These last few weeks have been quite the learning experience for me. It's hard to believe that the time goes by so fast. I'm reminded of a quote that was given by President Dieter F. Uchtdorf when he said, "Life (the mission) goes by flying, but you are the pilot." As we learn to pilot our own lives, and stay on the correct course, with our mind set on the final destination, we become better people and better missionaries. This is what I have been trying to do these days, and what I will continue to do.

I hope that you can all be safe this week, my prayers are with you.

Vaya Pues!

Elder Tinkham

Statue of Jesus Christ in El Picacho City Park overlooking Tegucigalpa.

Another view from Picacho

This is a view of the city of Tegucigalpa from El Picacho City Park.

Elder Tinkham and Elder Menendez

September 20

Hello once again to all of my family and friends out there wherever you are. I am excited to be able to write you all today and tell you a few more of the experiences that I am having here in Honduras. First of all, I would like to say that the news about Grandpa getting married has got to be the most shocking of all the news I have received from home in my entire mission! Congratulations Grandpa! I'll be excited to meet my new Grandma when I get back! I would love to know how the wedding goes.

Anywho, this week has been somewhat normal for Elder Menèndez and I, with a few good points. This week we have been working to get the rest of the zone filled in on all of the stuff we learned in the training meetings, and so we have been having 2 zone meetings a week so that we could practice with everybody the new tactics and everything. I had to teach on Tuesday, but on Friday I was free to kick back and just listen. We're going to finish training this week after we have a couple of other meetings, and then the whole mission will be filled in.

I've been a little bit worried about my district lately. This week has been a rough one for them, and I have been doing all that I can to help them out. The area of theirs, Roble Oeste, is where the temple is going to be, and as most of you know, where the temples are, there are large houses surrounding them. Their area is the richest part of Tegucigalpa......and it's pretty rich. On Friday I went over there to do interchanges with one of the Elders, Elder Jimenez, to try and help them out a bit. We went over to contact pretty much all day in a mansion neighborhood called Las Uvas. Let me tell you, contacting from an intercom and camera on the doorbell is NOT something I am used to. I'm used to knocking on doors of tattered wood or painted iron and having pleasant conversations with the people at their doorstep. It was a little more difficult, but I managed to help them at least a little bit. We didn't find anyone to teach, but we had some good contacts of families that accepted, that we could come back on the weekend. I hope things work out for them, because I'm worried on what I can do to help them out. I taught Elder Jimenez that even in contacts, we need to do all we can to teach them principles. These principles are the things that are going to intrigue them enough to let us in and tell them more. Now I know how the missionaries in the U.S. feel...yikes!

Good news...we have been blessed with an investigator that accepted a baptismal date this week! Mainor, the black guy from the Mosquitia accepted to be baptized on our 2nd appointment that we had with him. It was a really great experience. I told my companion that he should put the baptismal date, since he doesn't have much experience doing it. He was really nervous when the moment came, but shone through like a champion and came out triumphant. He accepted! If everything goes well, he will be baptized one week after General Conference on the 9th of October. Mainor came to church for the first time on Sunday, and he told us that he was moved because of the kindness of the people there and how well they received him. That sure made my day!

Since we were able to find a ton of new investigators last week due to the extra boost of missionaries, we have been working hard this week to try and teach all our newbies with the Spirit so that they will desire to read the Book of Mormon and come to church. It's been interesting teaching them all, because each of them are SO different in every single way. Some of them will rise to be worthy of mention in the next email I'm pretty sure! The most positive we have so far is the mother of Fransisco, a 12 year old investigator that we have been teaching. His friend is a member of the church and has been bringing him along, so we decided to give it a shot with his family as well. At first we never thought that his mom would even listen to us, but turns out that she is extremely interested in what we have to say. The second time we went over to visit her she had a ton of questions and convinces us to give her a copy of the Book of Mormon so that she could investigate for herself (usually we have to convince THEM to read it!).

On the 15th, it was Independence Day in Honduras.....ugh. I'm not a big fan of holidays in the mission, it's quite difficult to get anything done. Sure, everyone is at home with their families, but they are all celebrating. Parties here are nothing like Utah parties so...yeah....almost everyone invited us in to "teach," but in the end nothing productive occurred. Oh well, I've made it through that day and everything is back to normal.

This week our ward had the chance to go to the temple, and so a whole bunch of people were gone, leaving us almost completely alone to work in the colony. On Sunday I had a really great spiritual experience in sacrament meeting. The bishop invited everyone who had gone to the temple for the first time to stand and bear their testimonies. It was such a heartwarming experience for me. These people sacrifice so much so that they can make the long, expensive trip to Guatemala in order to perform the holy work. I felt overcoming joy when I heard the testimony of one family that was sealed together for time and all eternity. The family was sealed together, and one of the children was sealed to his brand new wife whom which he had just barely gotten married to. It was just the cutest (sorry for using that word...shiver), most amazing testimony I have heard in awhile. I miss the temple a whole lot, and cannot wait to return and revisit the House of the Lord when I return. I especially hope to return to the dedication of the Honduras temple when they finish.

I know that this Gospel is true, and that Jesus Christ is my Savior. He invites all of us to come unto Him. I love Him more than I can describe and know that this is His work. I love you all, and want you to know that my prayers are with you. Thank you for all of your prayers in my behalf, because I feel them lifting me up every day.

Vaya Pues!

Elder Tinkham

These are 9 of the 11 Elders from Tyler's MTC District that went to Honduras on the same day. Here they are attending the Leadership Training Meeting Tyler speaks of below.

September 13th. Picachu....no not the Pokemon

Hello once again to all of my family and friends out there! Yet another week has passed by, and I'm having trouble believing that in only 9 months I will have returned to Utah. It's shocking and....well it's better I don't talk about it. Let's move on to what your all waiting for (well, I assume so)!

This week was the infamous week long leadership meeting. We spent Monday through Friday from 8-4 pm in the church holding meetings with ALL of the District and Zone Leaders in the entire mission. There were about 48 of us, and it was quite the fun experience. 2 Elders from the pueblos came to stay in our house for the week so that they wouldn't have to be traveling back and forth every day the large distance. Every night we would take advantage of the extra bodies and we went on divisions to bulk up the amount of lessons. I got to work with Elder Summers, a Zone Leader who is about to finish his mission at the end of this transfer. It was really awesome working with him because the bonus about working with older people in the mission is that they actually know the lessons! The new guys that I normally pick up don't know much about the lessons or the scriptures and of course it's our job to help them out. So this week I felt like it was some type of mini vacation. Elder Summers is from Idaho and let me tell you, he is the poster Idahoan....potato farmer, white skin blond hair, buff, mountain climber, football player...yeah. But we had a great time together.

In the training meeting, what we would do is we gathered together and explained about 8 different points that we are now going to focus on and increase the effectiveness of as missionaries. What we would do is discuss the doctrine, learn it well, watch the new Preach My Gospel video for a real life example of how the missionaries do it, then we would practice it, and to finalize we would discuss how we are going to put that particular point in practice in our districts or zones. My most favorite part was the delicious catered lunch that we received every day (mmmmm). 9 out of the 11 Elders from our group attended this meeting, so we had an immense amount of fun together and reminisced about good times from the MTC and good experiences about the mission so far. I thoroughly enjoyed the training.

Sadly, we haven't been able to get in contact with Ivonne Ruiz this week, but I'm not done looking yet!

Ingrid and Leonardo are still doing good. This week I put a new baptismal date for Ingrid, and she said yes. She is going to be baptized as long as her husband repents. The only problem is I haven't yet established exactly to what point she wants him to arrive with respect to repentance, but I'm going to figure that out today. I know that she will be baptized shortly.

The 2 single guys we`re teaching, Martin Lopez and Mainor Gonzalez are really awesome. If I could combine them into one person, they (he) would be the perfect golden investigator. Martìn came to church yesterday, and Mainor was about to come but at the last minute his dad got sick and he had to take him to the hospital. We plan on placing baptismal dates with both of them this week. I am seeing Mainor as a little bit more positive than Martìn for a couple of reasons. Even though Mainor didn't come to church, I could tell he really wanted to come. Martìn came to church, but I feel like we have a little bit more work to do with him. There will be more updates on them next week.

Today for P-day we were able to go to El Picachu City Park, one of the most famous points in Tegucigalpa. Almost all the missionaries go in our mission, and after 15 months I finally had the opportunity to visit. Picachu has nothing to do with the Pokemon, and it's actually a giant stone Christ statue that stands atop Tegucigalpa. I will try and send photos next week. At the Picachu they have a soccer court in the middle of the forest, a small zoo, and an INCREDIBLE view of the entire city. It was a really awesome experience and we had a great time as a zone. Highlights are, we saw a plane take off on the runway and it goes RIGHT above the statue, like seriously if I would have thrown a rock it would have hit the plane. A monkey almost stole the bag I was carrying, and we played dodge ball. All in all I liked it a lot for a P-Day activity.

Well...that's all I have for you guys today. I hope that everyone is doing well and I share my love for you all!

Vaya Pues,

Elder Tinkham