Man. Good times. But yeah, this week I had my first baptism too. I did the baptism and the spirit was really strong. We have been teaching her for about 2 weeks. The hardest part was remembering her 4 names, that's how many people have here. But I felt that what I was doing is the right thing and she almost cried when she came back up. That was cool. Also a family was baptized by members this week. (The family that I speak English to sometimes). I really like them. They are good friends to me. The dad said to me that we have a very good relationship in broken English.
I am doing jumping jacks and ab workouts every morning so that I don't get fat. If you want to eat something Honduranian that is veeeeeerrrrrrrrry common, just get a tortilla, beans, some eggs, and butter and roll it up. It's called a "baleada" and I love them. They're delicious. You can put some meat in there too but that's what we eat quite a bit. The butter is really thick and greasy here, it's different than good ol' USA butter. It comes out of bags.
I got to go on splits with E. Ruus twice this week. One of the splits, he came with me to my area and I had to find all the appointments and stuff. Freak. I had to do as Nephi did when he was looking for Laban, "I was led by the spirit, not knowing the things I should do beforehand.":) I got lost a couple times but I found all the appointments eventually. That was helpful. E. Ruus did most of the talking but we had one with the inv. who smokes and helped him know the importance of baptism and that he can't be baptized if he smokes. We talked to him about goals and I told him he can do it little by little. He's still smoking right now and I don't know what more we can do to help him. We try calling him every day or two and check up on him, but smoking is a hard habit to kick.
I'm learning more and more spanish each day. I can understand what people are saying actually pretty well, it's just a matter of expressing what I want to say.
It rained really hard yesterday for Sunday. I don't have a rain jacket, but I don't want one. Freaking hot all the time, so rain is a tender mercy.
I almost was eaten by a freaking spider this week too. Freaking heck. I was done eating my breakfast when I saw it staring me down on the window screen. It was about the size of my fist. I had Rivera take some photos which I will be sending you and then caught it in a bag and I was closing it when it started crawling up to the top to try and eat my hand! I screamed like a little girl and batted it to the bottom and squashed it in my journal. E. Rivera was quite entertained at this. But it seriously almost ate me. Its fangs were huge. It is in my journal dead right now. I have a pretty sweet collection of bugs in my journal.
But did you hear that they announced a temple being built in Honduras in Tegucialpa? It's scheduled to be finished in 2 years. I'll definitely have to return if it isn't finished when I am here. Wanna schedule a road trip?
This week we had a really cool district meeting. Our DL Elder Tuimauga from New Zealand (he can speak English) told our district a really neat story he had heard before his mission. A geneneral authority gave it I believe but he said that we were all waiting in the pre-earth life for our calls to the earth much like a mission call. To see if we were going to be born into the church, or if we were going to have to find it, to see if we were going to be born into poverty or riches, etc, etc. But there were 2 really good friends who got called to completely different parts of the world and one was going to be born into the church and one wasn't. The one who wasn't going to be borned into the church was very sad and asked his friend what he should do. His friend promised him that he would find him on a mission and bring him to the truth once again. He would guide him back to our Heavenly Father's presence. He promised him that with all his heart and the other one was comforted at this fact. E. Tuimauga said that we are these people who are bringing our frineds in the pre-earth life to the truth again. I really felt that this is true and that I have known some of these people before this life very personally. Awesome. It pumped me up to get to work.
Oh yeah and tell him Honduras is the place to go if he ever needs basketball shoes. I saw some very sick Jordan's for $30 bucks today. I was going to buy them just because they were $30 dollars but I talked myself out of it. You gave me this illness! I have to take advantage of good deals when I see them. They have all sorts of awesome, random shoes here that are way cheap. The most expensive you'll see is like $50 and they have pretty nice ones.
Yeah I have power and sometimes I have running water. Sometimes, I just have to use a bucket. When alot of people are trying to use the water at once, it just comes out in little drops.
Google maps doesn't have Honduras? Whaaaaa? Man, I am in a sweet mission.
I had an interview with Pres. Cruz this past week and it went well. I understood what he was saying! He just told me to have patience and keep working hard. Great advice. That's about all I can do right now, huh? I am still learning all the duties of a missionary and all the responsibilities for a baptism and am overwhelmed at times but still just rolling with the hits. I know the Lord will sculpt me into a great missionary if I just keep doing my best.
Family, keep living life and keep praying for me. I really miss you all, but I'm learning to love everything here. The Lord knows what He's doing and He's in control of our lives if we're living the Gospel. Let Him take over.
People get baptized in Honduras quite often. If someone shows any sort of response or gets an answer we are encouraged to not plan to challenge them to be baptized but to challenge them right on the spot. I learned this from E. Ruus and a talk he gave me. It's called "A Challenging and Testifying Missionary" see if you can find it on the web. It's really awesome.
Hasta proxima semana, adios mis amores!
Elder Goodwin
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