Here she is celebrating with Hermana Molina at Pizza Hut in Honduras. :)
Here is the email we received this week:
When you have faith, you must also have hope. And when you have faith and hope, you must also have charity. -Mormon
So, last week I realized I was trying to have faith without having a lot of hope - hope that if I do my part, Heavenly Father will do His. Hermana Molina and I went over the promises in our calling and I can already see some of them coming true - that when we are obedient the Spirit will be with us and testify to others our words are true. If we strengthen our own testimonies we won't be confounded and our love for the Savior and His Atonement will grow.
We contact people in the streets and we have short visits with members to build trust and friendship with them, and we invite them to pray and think about people in thier lives that need the gospel. We don´t knock doors, but we are always very busy!
We are still working with Indira and her cousin Isis (who is about 15). They have a friend who comes sometimes too. Indira and Isis made my birthday! They gave me a hand made card and some candy, but you can tell they took their time with it. It was so sweet! We think they are grateful for the lessons becuase they are humble and never really had anyone to teach them these things. It´s hard for Indira to come to church on Sundays because she has class, but we have high hopes for her. I really need to take a picture with them! I`ll do that soon.
Hermana Molina and I also had a very interesting experience this week. We contacted a family in the street and then returned to their home a few days later. Hermano Mohano carves wood and has a great family. Hermana Molina noticed a book on their shelf.
As it turns out, it was the Koran. For the first time we had the opportunity to teach a Muslim family! We were there for a while learning about their beliefs. Hermano Mohano taught us why Christmas trees and birthday cakes are evil pagan traditions from the book of Nimrod in the Bible. He knows the Bible very well, but sadly does not believe that Jesus Christ is our Savior.
Ì`m learning more and more every day about why we need both the Bible and the Book of Mormon.
Don´t worry, this story gets better.
During the visit, a friend of the family came in and sat down. He was quiet and reverent. Hermana Molina and I didn´t know much about him when we bore our testimonies of the Savior and of the Restored Gospel and the Book of Mormon as another witness.
As we got to know this other man, we found out that he´s a pastor.
I was thinking about inviting all the other religions to the house too, but then it wasn´t my house.
But the beautiful thing was there wasn´t much contention there. It really was a very reverent and respectful atmosphere. And the pastor, Antonio, said that he could feel the Spirit when I was talking. He asked for a Book of Mormon! He doesn´t live in our area but I hope he reads it!
We ended with a prayer on our knees. Hermano Mohano´s daughter (about 7 or 8 years old) said the prayer. It was beautiful. And I think Heavenly Father was happy.
We have another progressing investigator named Rosio. She´s 15 and is very smart. She went to church last week but not this week (her family isn´t very supportive and didn´t make much of an effort to wake her up when she slept in) But she talks about her baptism like it really is going to happen. Her mother doesn´t like the church, but I think she will let her get baptized.
This week the ward is going to the temple. Hermana Molina needs to pick up her updated passport in Tegucigalpa. It´s a four hour busride but we will go with them and pick it up - we won´t go in the temple but we will probably get to see it! I came here on a bus from Tegus with all the other missionaries going to the South. I was kind of sick by the end but the other missioinaries were very nice. I stopped at my first pulperia (the little stores on every street - you don´t go in you just ask for what you want. They don´t have much more than water and milk and snack food) And I had my first bag of water. we didn´t get here till dark, where our Zone Leaders loaded up our stuff in a taxi and took us to our new apartment, which had nothing becuase we weren´t replacing any missionaires in this area. It´s had missionaries before, but not right before. So most of our investigators and contacts are new. (There you go Dad, that´s my first day story!) La familia Pool - we had one lesson wiht the mother this week. But we were guided to the key to getting Hermano Pool involved - family history! His family is from England and a lot of other places. I think this will be a blessing for them and others, and open his heart. We´re also working with another family that has a lot of problems, but they have relatives in the ward and that is such a blessing! They are still working through things but at least they had family prayer!! It´s super important. Thanks all for praying for me!
As for the language - planning ahead what to study is important, and I didn´t do very well at that this week. I´m understanding more, but talking is still hard. But I know I´ll get it eventually.
We have exchanges tomorrow. I´ll be headed for a place called the Obrera. It´s about an hour away.
Here it doesn´t rain as much as it did, but it´s still green and hot. The people´s houses are bright and small and most of the roads are dirt. It´s flat here surrounded by green hills. Right now I´m in the ciber, which is an internet cafe basically. It´s about 20 Lempira an hour (to us that´s like less than 2 dollars) I should be able to skype for Christmas but I´m not sure how that will work yet.
Thank you for keeping me posted! I love you all very very much. I know Heavenly Father is happy when families love each other and stay together.
Oh, and thank you for the birthday wishes! it was great. I told you about part of it, but Hermana Molina and I also went to Pizza Hut and had pasta, salad, and pecan pie! No one smashed eggs on my head (which is apparantly a Honduran birthday tradition) but we´ll see if that happens this week. Or next year. That would be fine.
Con Mucho Amor,
Hermana Hogge
Here is our sweet Jessy washing clothes at the pila!
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