Hermana Jessica Hogge's Honduras Adventures!: One Week in Nacaome, Too Many Blessings to Count!

Here in Nacaome it´s been another hot week full of wonderful blessings. I think my faith and diligence is tiried sometimes - like life is asking me how much I really want to go out and work. But Heavenly Father has given us more strength than I thought possible and has helped us achieve more than we could on our own. This gospel really changes hearts, which is why I am always motivated not to give up. It´s true that we are here to help people be baptized, but it´s also true that many times we are here to sew and others are here to harvest. I just received news, for example, that an investigator from my first area was baptized recently. She´s actually the little sister of Rocio, the first person I saw baptized 8 months ago. When we tried to teach her - she was frank with us that, right then she just wasn´t ready and didn´t really seem interested. But, just look at where she is now.

We keep working with the people here and finding new people to teach. Gabriela wasn´t home when we passed by, but we´ll keep trying. We had a lesson with Daniel and his mother - who surprised us by intently listening to what we had to say. As I´ve discovered, there really are miracles in this gospel. They often aren´t miracles that the eye can see, but they really do exist. Little by little, I believe her heart will soften. Kelva is awesome. She reminds me a lot of Rocio in a way because she´s very inteligent and absorbs everything, does the reading assignments we give her. Right now she can´t come to church because of her studies but she´ll be in vacations in a few weeks so - cross your fingers and say your prayers :)

And - best story of the week. We found a family! It´s hard to express just how happy that makes me. The Lopez family we found just by opening our mouths one evening with Hermana Lopez - she was sitting outside the gate with her little girl, we started talking. Then her husband and son showed up. And they´re about to have a 3rd child really soon. They invited us to come back the next day, but when we showed up they weren´t home. We wrote a note and as we left we felt we need to talk to a woman on the street, so we did. As she was telling us how catholic she was, the Lopez family showed up! We knew that Heavenly Father wanted us to share a mesage with them that day. They´re both really mellow, kind people. I admire Hna Lopez for even being willing to listen to us - she´s about ready to pop. (makes me think of my own sister´s belly growying :) The sister of Hno Lopez is actually a member. He´s had his doubts about the chruch in the past, but thanks to his sister´s good example he opened up to us. And we´re very grateful to be able to work with them.

So, other things. Last night it rained. I heard about your storm in Kaysville, which was a lot worse than our shower here. Though it rained pretty hard for about 20 minutes, it didn´t take down any trees.

One day we were street contacting and we began talking to an elderly man - well we were trying to explain what we believe and I started talking about the apostacy, how the church was lost - he cut in and started telling me he wasn´t lost. My companion suddenly developed a cough. We couldn´t stop laughing for about 10 minutes.

We have a little pet gecko in our apartment. It runs and hides whenever we walk in. We should give it a name. I´m rambling because I don´t know what else to say. My companion and I were feeling a little under the weather yesterday (in more than one sense of the phrase) but today we´re doing a lot better today. So - that´s been my week. I hope you all have a good one! I love you all so much!!!