Mason letter -- April 5, 2010

Hey family,

Well this week was pretty normal. It was great to watch conference this weekend too. It seems like the last conference just ended for me when I was in the MTC, so time is just flying by. It was fun because the stake set up a gringo room for us for conference since there are so many gringos in the zone, so we got to watch it in an air conditioned room with nice seats in English. It was really awesome and uplifting.

My MTC comp Jackson is here in La Ceiba now. I guess he is on the island of Utila, so i didn't know until he came here on the main land to watch conference. It was cool to see him. I don't get to see anyone out here in La Ceiba. It was cool to see our converts there, they really enjoyed it. Bro Martinez and his sons came to 4 of the 5 sessions, the sister didn't cause she has an infection in her leg right now.

That's a big deal to come to almost all of the sessions here in Honduras. The members here don't really understand the importance of it all, they seem to think conference weekend is more of a week off. Everyone just comes to the Sunday morning session, and maybe 20 or 30 will come to the other sessions.... not even the bishops or stake president usually. Some people watch it at home, but a very select few. so it's pretty sad. But he was there the whole time as was Jackie. She went to all of the sessions that she could have gone to. It was cool to see that.

Other than conference this week it was Semana Santa, and the hottest week of the year. It was really unpleasant and sweaty the whole week. Their easter celebrations are a lot different than ours. They celebrate Easter the whole week and basically just go to the beach everyday. It's a lot like the spring break of Honduras. Also the Catholics usually have some kind of display walking around the streets. Like one day they had people re-enacting the Crucifixion of Christ while walking the streets, Another day the ladies walked around carrying a huge statue of the virgin Mary while shouting things about how Mary will save them...so really different. It was hard to find people in the house or that wanted to listen to us this week.

We went over to the family of the guy that was healed from his blindness last week to teach them and his cousin wants to get baptised this month. She is really cool and had some problems in the past but really loves the gospel now and its healing effects it has on us. We encouraged her to read the Book of Mormon when she was struggling. She felt temptation this week but then saw the book and started reading and suddenly she felt good and the urges left quickly.

Ewings (the man that was healed) is still in Roatan. He called his cousins here and told us to call him, so we contacted him over there and he said he wants to come back this week to learn more from us and everything. He also said how before the accident, when he had the tumor, he could never really run or walk long distances. But he has been testing his strength and he can now run and exercise without any effects from the tumor. He has been completely healed. We really want to work to get him out on a mission. That family has seen the physical and spiritual healing effects of the gospel in their lives.

Funny story. We were all watching conference and were listening to Pres. Monson talk. Out of the window to the room we saw 2 teenage kids. One of them I recognized as one of the sister missionaries' investigators. Well the windows on the church are like a 2 way mirrors, you can't see in from the outside. Anyways the one boy lifted the girl up on the window sill and they started making out hard core. haha we opened the window and yelled at them and they ran off. We told the sisters and they had to go outside and figure it out. Wow it was nuts, the window was right next to the TV screen so it was the last thing I was expecting to see during conference haaha.

Well that's all for this week. I love you all.

Elder Mason Cardon