Mason letter -- Feb 15, 2010

Hello fam,

How is everything going? Yeah I didn't even know it was President's Day today or that the winter olymipcs were going on. Nobody in Honduras cares about the winter olymipcs, only the world cup.

This week for me was really good. This family (fam. Martinez) that we have been teaching is doing great. We were planning on them getting baptized this weekend, but I don’t know if that will work out because we had an impression to go over the Word of Wisdom with them. We had once quickly covered it with them one time before, and we had never seen any problems with it so we figured it wasn’t a problem. But anyways we found out that they have some serious problems with cigarettes. I knew there had to be a problem because this family was just too perfect.

So anyway Sister Martinez smokes about 16 cigarettes every day and bro martinez smokes 2 packs per day (about 40 cigarettes). We found that out and they want to quit and they have tried before. So we gave a really good lesson on repentance and made them feel like they could. So we made a plan for them to stop smoking and she was super on board, but he wasn’t so much. So we weren’t sure what was going to happen and we were kinda bummed. But we went over to their house last night to watch a movie with them and she smoked only 1 cigarette the whole week! And he smoked only 2 packs all week! So the very first week they almost eliminated smoking. They really want to get baptized and their testimonies are growing.

It is so amazing to see the change in their family. It's cool to see the change the gospel can bring to people. I love it when people are truly repentant and humble enough to accept their faults and change. But also we were there last night and bro martinez shared a cool story with us. I guess he was driving in the car with his uncles and cousins and stuff when they passed us walking on the street. Well I guess his uncles started making really rude comments about the missionaries and about how we were out making money. Well I guess he flipped out on them and told them all about how we pay our own missions and like he bore his testimony to them about joseph smith and stuff. I guess they felt really ashamed after he said that and they didn’t say anything else. Haha the family is really cool.

Also this week we sent a couple that we have been working with to Tegucigalpa to take out her papers for marriage. She needs to get her mom's signature and a bunch of papers because she was born there. To get married here is a pain. But anyways they have wanted to get married and baptized for a long time but they haven’t had the money to travel down there and get the papers because they are pretty poor.

So we prayed and fasted for them last week a lot. Anyways we went to the bank a couple weeks ago to get money off of the church card to pay for stuff for the month. And I got on my card and I had 2 thousand extra Lempiras on my card (about 100 dollars). So I told the zone leaders and they called the secretaries and stuff to figure it out. Well I hadn’t touched it for awhile. But last week they told me it wasn’t a mistake from the church and wasn’t the church's money, I guess it was the bank's mistake. And it wasn’t something we could give back to the bank for some reason they told me, so they told me to find a good way to spend it. So we knew right then that this money was for Pedro and Ingris (the couple). So we paid for them to go down there finally. She is going to get back tonight with the papers and we will marry them and hopefully get them baptized this week! It was a huge blessing from the Lord. It just shows how powerful prayer and fasting is.

So really this week was just full of miracles. Me and Elder Brown are always commenting on how much the Lord is blessing us right now because it seems like everything goes fine when we are in a crunch. We just have to be obedient and diligent and have faith, and the Lord will shower his blessings upon us.

So we will need another miracle to meet our goal form baptisms this month, which is 8. we set it high this month and we only have this weekend left to baptize because of this worldwide broadcast next Saturday. But we have faith that we can do it.

I love you all family. I hope everything there is going great! Have a great weekend together.

Love Elder Mason Cardon