Teaching by Day; Praying by Night

Hey Family...

It´s crazy how much I´ve improved.  Sometimes I´ll make a grammer error, but when I came her I was saying mostly memorized phrases from the CCM.  In another change, I´ll look back on today and think I was horrible.  But the lessons are going way better, I can respond to questions and understand when somebody gives a long answer to a question.

It is really fun teaching younger people.  We teach so many people during the day that I take notes of who we visited in my planner, because it´s hard to remember at the end of the day.  

I´m meeting a lot of people who have lived or have family who live in the united states.

We live in Santa Fe, which is technically outside Palermo, but just barely.  Theres a paved road called the 2 avenida, then 2 more avenidas and see if you can find pulparia willy we live 1 calle away from that pulp.  It´s tough describing stuff but hopefully that helps.


I´ve started saying Michael length prayers here, my companion commented about it yesterday that he falls asleep every night watching me pray. 

That´s really cool about your Elders quorum lesson, Dad.  I love the idea that He´ll rescue us no matter what.  I also love the idea from your other lesson that I am an undershepherd of Jesus Christ, and that I too can have a part in the rescue of others.  Next week I´ll send a picture, but there´s a shepherd here who always herds his sheep around in our area, and gets in the way of cars and stuff. 

Love,

'Elder Stoddard (Elder Estudar) 

PS if you can find naturalisimo jugo de mango on amazon or something you will not be disappointed.  It was what was in the CCM and is quite possibly the most rich juice I´ve had in my life.

Pictures!

Hey Family-

I tried super hard this week to take pictures. I did what I could ... it´s not really in my nature to take a bunch of pictures!  Hopefully this is a little appetizer for next week.  

 

I´m serving in a regular ward here.  Attendace yesterday was 108 people so it a pretty good sized ward.

 

The church

 

 

My clothes are holding up ok, this week we washed the clothes ourselves (yeah without washing machines) that was actually not so bad, the only problem was it took a really long time. 

 

It rains a lot of the time...
(The building my companion is in front of is a prison)

A little bit of shaky cam

 

Yesterday we taught a ten year old kid and his twelve year old brother, it was crazy the kind of questions this 10 year old (Anthony) was asking us.  It was like he´d practiced lesson plans too!  I was amazed the kinds of really deep spiritual questions he asked. Children really are closer to god.

 

Our house

Our street

There´s definately been some stuff that´s kinda hard here, and I do try to just stay focused on why I´m here.

It's a little hot here in Honduras...

Love you guys

Being in the Right Place

Hey family!
 
Here in Honduras it´s pretty weird to be a gringo. The only other white people are missionaries, so when i´m walking down the street, people will look at me and yell the little bit of English that they know, it´s always funny to me what people here pick up from movies, songs, and video games. 

In Honduras there´s a lot of bikes too. Akmost nobody here has a car, most people have bikes or motorcycles. 

Here the water is dirty and muddy but there isn´t raw sewage sloshing around. It really depends on the day about the water, sometimes the streets become rivers and we really can´t avoid it, and sometimes when it´s just a little rain we can jump from dry spot to dry spot. 

We´re teaching lots of people, one day we had 7 new people start recieving visits from us in the span of probably 2 or three hours. Sometimes we get a lot of visits, sometimes less. 

The mission does have some hard stuff, but it´s also really fun and I know this is exactly where God wants me to be, and I´m so happy to know I have a family who cares about me and thinks about me. A lot of people here (And in the United States too) don´t have that, and I´m so grateful for the blessing I have of a loving family.

It is cool knowing that you guys were watching the same exact conference as me. It was a other side of heaven kinda thing.

I always promise to send pictures and I never do! I feel like such a knuckle head! Next week I really will send pictures, I took a couple this week but left my camera at the house. 

Love you guys,
Elder Stoddard

The Water Never Bothered Me Anyway

Hey family, things are still good here. I need to get better at taking pictures, I´ll make a better effort to take more pictures this week.

Palermo is a city, the larger area is called Progreso. We´re about 15 minutes south of San Pedro Sula.

My companion is great, but sometimes I do miss english a little bit. There are 3 gringos in our zone though, and a lot of the latinos are in various stages of learning english, so I do get to hear a good amount of it. Plus, a lot of songs and t-shirts and writing on storebought stuff is in english, so everythings good on that front. 

It rains a ton here. I thought it rained a lot in Virginia! The water doesn´t really bug me too much, and I´ve heard that in Ceiba, it can get to be chest deep. Usually it rains in the afternoon and I put my wet shoes outside and by luch the next day they´re dry. Maybe if I go somewhere with a lot more rain I will get some rainboots. 

I will say some of the most valuable things I brought with me are the umbrella and the flashlight. Sometimes I worry I´m like that guy from dad´s mission who always had an umbrella, but it´s so nice to not be completely soaked. And when the power goes out (which it has more often this week) it gets way dark and so the flashlight´s getting a lot of use. 

I did get to watch conference and sometimes I even got to watch parts of it in English so that was pretty cool. I liked Uceda´s talk and his cliff story. I especially liked 2 things he said ¨God listens to us, even when we don´t listen to him¨ and Äre we really praying or just saying prayers?¨

Love you guys

-Elder Stoddard