Conversion and General Conference Review

[from April 4, 2017] 

Sorry about not being able to send this yesterday.  Crummy computers, but I'm sending this from the stake family history center because I have district meeting today. It's a place where the computers work... But nobody ever uses them hahaha.  

Hope everythings going well in France!    

Eating at the Embassy sounds fun.  There's probably all kinds of American food there huh?  Something kinda weird about Hondurans is that they get their knickers in a twist if I say I am American.  They start to say we're all American!  So I always say I'm from the united states.

I have been out for quite a while... Today I'm completing 8 months as a missionary woohoo!  

Anyways....  Honduras is going great, and I think this week we ARE going to see some baptisms.  But what's crazy is that baptisms aren't the goal of missionaries.  The goal of missionaries is to convert people.  To be converted means you have a testimony for yourself that the church is true. So... You can be baptized but still not converted. Missionaries teach all types of people, even people who have been baptised a long time to help them to become converted to the gospel.  So missionaries do a lot more than just baptize people, but it IS very very cool to help someone to make that huge step to be baptized.  I hope that makes a little sense.  

Our area is pretty much mountains and beach... there´s no in the middle. Either you can walk in the sand or up or down a mountain.  Pretty cool actually, but we do get tired sometimes. Elder Reyes and I get along pretty great, he´s a good companion. He hurt his leg playing soccer and so in the mountains these last couple days we´ve been a little slower than usual.  

The people that stood out that se taught this week were the people that we are hopefully going to baptize this Saturday (we hope/pray). One is named Aylin and lives literally on the beach (she´s garifuna) and Keidy who lives about as far up the mountain as you can get.  Pretty crazy having a Keidy visit directly after an Aylin or an Aylin directly after a Keidy.  Lots of walking, but it´s really good that they´re progressing like this. 

Nelda and Jesus are doing really good.  The only things they have to work hard on are like sometimes they´ll say weird things in church that don´t make any sense unless you´ve been a member a long time.  Milk before the Meat right?  Just stuff like that that I think converts anywhere have to get used to.  

As far as conference goes... it was so much better to watch it this time cause I actually was able to understand it this time!  My last one was in September and I remember trying so hard not to sleep cause I couldn´t understand a thing they were saying until I got to watch priesthood session in English.  This time I was able to appreciate all the talks.  

In my mission there´s a slang word thats used super commonly between missionaries: "machete." It´s used basically whenever there´s a good talk or zone conference or basically anything in the church.  A good lesson with an investigator can be a machete just as much as President can machete you in an interview with a good scripture.  

With that being said I want to point out some of the biggest machetes of this last conference (at least for me haha).  The talks I thought were machetes in time order  1.) Cordon- talked a bit about how we need to practice the gospel language 2.) Causse- A frenchie...liked his story about his boss promoting him because of his values.   3.) Uchtdorf- I liked especially one thing he said he who is the best of us is our servant... or something to that affect 4.) Eyring- Our calling as priesthood holders is to walk with him but in his way.  5.) Christofferson- this hit me like a brick because I had read that watchmen scripture that morning and thought it was pretty cool.  We´ve got a responsability to blow that trump (as in trumpet not our president) 6.) Costa- we had an investigator there and this talk hit him pretty hard.  awesome machete for an investigator and for a missionary too I suppose.  It hit me hard cause it hit my investigator (Abner) hard. 7.) Palmer- I think this was my favorite talk of the conference... how we should look at others as christ does.  A great big machete.  A machetezilla if you will. 

Ranking order: Palmer Cordon Christofferson Costa Causse Uchtdorf Eyring. 

I love you guys 
Elder Stoddard