Appreciation for Youth

Hey family,
 
It really was awesome baptizing Christian, I´m really grateful that I had that opportunity. I showed him the picture of me and Emma right before her baptism, he thought it was pretty cool. 

And the guy who sells fruit still needs to get married to his girlfriend, but I think that his testimony of the sabbath day is pretty strong now, when we went to recollect him for church yesterday, he´d already left for the building, more than 30 minutes early.  

I´m really trying my best. There´s nosuch thing as a bad area. There is one young man in the ward that´s come with us on almost every visit to Christian´s house for the last 4 visits with him. Youth really can have a huge impact in missionary work. we also have another young woman who is probably going to be baptised in the near future. 

I am way proud of Michael for being ordained. I remeber my first Sunday passing the sacrament I ran out of bread and freaked out a little bit. I´m glad a couple of good kids have taken him under their wing, Young mens is so much better than primary, and I´m glad Michaels having those experiences.

Yard work here is tough, people here chop the grass with machetes, which is cool at first but hen you start getting blisters and your wrist starts hurting and you start wishing you had a lwan mower.

Elder Marquezado is leaving December 7th, he´s pretty excited to see hs family again he´s been here for more than 2 years already. I think I´ll be able to work with anybody.

Love you guys
Elder Stoddard

 Also we contacted someone really good today.

                                      

 He also invited us for some chicken.

Christian Baptizes Christian

Hey Family,
 

First of all, the baptism was awesome, the name of our 15 year old investigator is Christian. It was a really cool experience, and he asked me to baptise him, so I was just as nervous as he was.

We also got a whole bunch of investigators (including his mom) to come and see the baptism too so that was really cool. It was a big deal for the ward too because it´s been almost two years since the last convert baptism they´ve had. It was an awesome experience.


My stomach´s doing good, the only problem I have had with the food was in the CCM haha. I ate something pretty strange this week, called sopa de mondongo which is the stomach of a cow in a soup.

That was the toughest thing I´ve eaten so far. My companion was really suprised I finished it. He said that usually gringo´s refuse to eat it. 

I did get to play some frisbee today in a gym with some other missionaries. I haven´t played a harmonica solo for anybody yet, but I have learned to play the first line of a bunch of hymns. One time we were teaching a lesson and we were gonna start with a hymn, and Elder Marquezado asked me to demonstrate the tune. I pulled out the harmonica and played the first line. It was pretty funny, but only because of how unexpected it was. 

Something really cool happened this week. We had an investigator who sells fruit out of the back of his truck for a living. He has a hard time going to to church because Sunday he need to sell fruit if he wantas to support his family. 2 saturdays ago we promised him that if he went to church he and his family wouldn´t want for anything in the necxt week. He came to church and kepty the sabbath day holy. Yesterdfasy he siad he sold more fruit during the week than he ever has before. that really strengthened my testimony in the power and authority missionaries have to make promises. Also in the sabbath day.

Love you guys
E Stoddard

Touch & Go

Hey Family,

My time´s even shorter today because we had trouble finding keys to the chapel, and one of the computers doesn´t work. 

That´s awesome that you guys are in North Carolina. I dream about being cold. It is super super hot here, and its winter! 

I cannot belive Trump is the new president. How the heck did he win? 

Also, we´re going to have a baptism this week so I´m pretty excited for that. 

Mom: HAPPY BIRTHDAY

Speaking in Francés

Family,
 
First of all that is so awesome that you guys are going to France! Spanish isn´t so bad, and I don´t think French is either. Plus, you don´t have to learn as much if you don´t want to, and you won´t have to worry about weird church words. If you really want to learn the language i recommend reading a book with a French and english dictionary. That´s how I learn during language study, and during the day when somebody says a word I don´t understand I´ll write it down so i can look it up later. Also you have the internet so if you want to learn french you´re all set.


There´s a bunch of stuff here that´s different. one example of something that was different for me when I go here was that people here point at stuff with their lips. I´m sure when you go to france you´ll see all kinds of different stuff.
 
I miss home foods but I´m feeling a lot better now that I have penut butter. American food is hard to find unless we go to the big super market in the center of progresso, and even the some things are still tough. 

I finished my first change october 30th, so we´re one week into my second change. It was a little weird when we had new people in our district. My companion is going to go home December 8th, so by then I´ll have a new companion. I think it´s very unlikely that i´ll have a gringo companion and it´s also likely that I´ll go my whole mission without a gringo companion. Missionaries from the US are probably more rare now than when Mom and Dad served. I´d say maybe 10% are from the US. The only guy who speaks english in my district is a korean who lived in Utah. There are not sisters in my area, but the member who prepares lunch for us everyday cooks for us, and the elders and sisters serving in the neighboring ward. 
Teaching is going better, I´m understanding way more, there are still words i don´t know, but hondurans use a lot of slang and i´m getting better at understanding that.

During one of our lessons this week we talked about service and i was reminded about how Dad always says that people who are happiest think about others more than themselves. I really feel happiest here when i focus on the work.

Love you guys,
-Elder Stoddard

Eating, Drinking, and Showing Up

Hey Family:
 
I kinda expected the mango juice to be hard to find, it doesn´t exist here in Honduras, but we had it in the CCM Guatemala and it was really good. What I usually drink is called fristy, it´s kinda like a sunny d, I always have a 3 liter bottle of in the house, and I drink that instead of water most of the time. 

I cannot belive how people pound the soft drinks here. Yesterday was way hot and people kept offering us soft drinks. I probably drank about half my weight in coke. 

I found some penut butter so I´ve been eating that or oatmeal for breakfast everyday. For the first couple weeks I did what most other missionaries do, which is buy something called pan semita from the pulperias, I got sick of that pretty fast, so finding penut butter was a game changer. 

I completely didn´t notice today was halloween until I read this email. I´m 100% serious. It´s crazy that it´s already halloween. I´m glad you guys had a good time at the Halloween party, and it sounds like the costumes were really good.
Michael seems like he´s changed a ton since I was there, but also I can see him being a funny outgoing crazy kid. I can't believe he's a deacon. 

A row of trees seperate Palermo and Santa Fe. One more street up from the 1st avenida and there´s a yellow house on the corner of the street we live on.

People will ask me all kinds of stuff. My first week here´s how the conversations between me and other people went: Other person: "How are you?" Me: "...Virginia".

I think that showing up is half the battle. A lot of problems that missionaries have is they don´t follow the little rules like getting up on time and studying. How is the spirit going to help you remeber something that you never knew? 

Love you guys,
Elder Stoddard