Email from Monday, 1 November 2010

Hey family. Thanks for your letters. I really appreciate all the letters that you send me. They really help me. I am having a very good week. We baptized two families this week! They are amazing! I bought them scriptures today at the distribution center. The oldest daughter never decided to get baptized, but I know eventually she will get baptized. She went to the baptism on Saturday and she went to church on Sunday to see her parents and brother and sisters get confirmed. They are really special. The dad is going to receive the higher priesthood next Saturday. I'm really excited for this family. I hope I stay in this area for another transfer. I like it here. The members are really nice. We also found a really positive family yesterday. While we were teaching the mom was so interested and the dad as well. I can't wait to see them in the water. Our district reached its goal of 10 baptisms this month. I can't wait to see what we can do next month. We didn't reach our goal this month for baptisms in our area. We had a goal of 8. We only baptized 6. In our zone we only baptized 14. So half of the baptisms that our zone had, were in our district. Yeah, so I'm enjoying the mission right now. It's really fun when we have success. My companion is doing well. We didn't do anything for Halloween. We didn't know when Halloween was. So yeah, they don't celebrate Halloween here in Honduras. Some parts of Honduras celebrate it, but in my area Halloween is like an evil holiday when real demons come out and attack people. Well, sounds like you all had a good Halloween. I wish I could have been there. OK, I love you all. Have a good week.

Email from Monday, 25 October 2010

Hey family. Thanks for your letters. It's nice to hear from you all. I've had a good week. Well, I´m enjoying the mission. My companion is great. He likes to play soccer. I started using that book Adrienne sent me and I like it. It has really good ideas. We wash our clothes with a pila, and it always takes up a lot of time, so I was reading in the book and it has a few ideas about washing clothes, so I used the technique, and its amazing! I wash my clothes in a bucket instead of washing it by hand in the pila. Its much faster. So, my area is new to Tegucigalpa. It's about an hour away. It's a nice area. The members actually cook for us. I love it! I'm starting to gain weight. I'm not used to getting fed by the members. We are having success in our area. My companion and I don't speak very much English. I don't like English. I'm not used to speaking it. I gave a talk on Sunday. It went well. I didn't know I was going to give a talk. The bishop told me in the middle of the meeting and asked me to speak about something. So I decided to talk about repentance. I made a really good joke before I started my message. There are two Elder Smith´s in our ward, so I said that I was the original Elder Smith and that I was better looking. They all laughed. We should marry and baptize a family this week if everything turns out well. One of the missionaries in the office is managing our wedding and he hasn't taken out the birth certificate for the dad, and the office is closed right now because of strike, so my companion and I have been doing a lot of praying and fasting. I hope we can baptize them this month. Keep them in your prayers. Well, I love you all and I miss you.