Mason's Letter -- March 8, 2010

Hey family,

How is everything this week? I love to hear everything about Callin! I can't believe he is learning so much and so fast.

Yeah I've heard a lot about all the earthquakes and stuff. Everyone here is really pride-full because there was a lot of destruction in Haiti and Chile with the earthquakes, but when the big earthquake hit here about 10 months ago, nothing was destroyed. So everyone says God just loves us more here in Honduras, or that we build better buildings here (which is a lie). haha

I can't believe Liz is coming home soon. Holy cow that went fast. a mission is unbelievably fast.

This week was much better that the last one. Last week was full of a lot of disappointments and my comp was down and kinda frustrated, but he's a really positive person. Yesterday was his 21st birthday and it was really good. A bunch of members made him cake and bought him stuff, and the Martinez family bought him two really nice ties. So I ate a lot of good cake yesterday. he said it was the best birthday of his mission, because people actually have money here in Ceiba to buy stuff.

So things are going great with the Martinez family. Everyones' prayers really worked with them because Edgardo dropped cigarettes completely! He went from 40 cigs daily to having not smoked a single one for 2 weeks. It's amazing and he has a really strong testimony of the gospel and how it can change people. He said now he wakes up early in the morning with a ton of energy and reads the Book of Mormon and is a lot happier.

He's such a stud. He accepted a baptism date for this Saturday! So we will baptize him and his 16, and 9 year old boys. Claudia says she knows she needs to be baptized in the church, but she wants to wait for a bit. We have tried to explain to her that faith is not a perfect knowledge and she needs this now, but she won't accept one right now. So we will just baptize Edgardo and the 2 sons, and then the daughter turns 8 on the 20th, so she wants to get baptized also. It's just a matter of time before Claudia takes that step. But we felt that we needed to get him baptized so that he can have the Spirit and the Priesthood to lead his family as soon as possible. He is so intelligent and the ward is already thinking about giving him a calling soon after baptism. We will see what will happen.

I'm so happy for him and his family. it's incredible to see the change that they have gone through in their lives. It's strengthened my testimony of the gospel and the changing effect it has on God's children. I hope to see them in the temple one day as a family.

With Pedro and Ingris (the couple that we are trying to get married) we had a little set back this last week but nothing that can stop the Lord's Work. They said they know they are going to marry one day and get baptized but they said probably not for awhile, like the end of the year. But like it says in Nephi 3:7, there is always a way to complete the Commandments of the Lord. He wants them to leave the sin of living together as soon as possible. So we have faith that it will somehow work out this month.

Interestingly, Pedro quit his job to be able to come to church on Sundays and is looking for a new one, so they don't have any money. They have absolutely nothing, no furniture, no refrigerator, no beds, no nothing, just an empty small house. So we went to the ward for help. we now have set up a fund to help them get married. The members are going to donate a lot to the marriage so that we can get the Act of Permission.

Other than working with those 2 families this week we tried to find a bunch of new people and had no luck, but we reactivated a lot of people. We have done good work with reactivating some families here. It's so sad to see the reasons why people leave the church sometimes. One woman had a story like the story of Thomas Marsh. She said that one time in Relief Society a member skipped her with a piece of candy. Since then she's had a bad relationship with that woman and won't come back to this ward...and she's a returned missionary!

Thanks for all your emails. I love you all so much. Don't ever drop scripture study or your focus on the end goal of eternal life, When we drop those and lose focus we can risk leaving the church and losing everything. I've seen it a lot here. It's always the small and simple things that keep us on the straight and narrow.

Love, Elder Mason Cardon