Mason's Letter -- January 31, 2011

Hey familia,

So here I am sitting in a nice restaurant in La Ceiba writing my email on an iPad. Haha it would seem to many that I've got it made. And I guess I do. So we just got back from Roatan. It was 100 times better than Utila. I couldn't even believe how nice it was. I will send you some pics of the resort that we checked out earlier today. It was amazing.

On Saturday we got to the island and just worked with the sisters. Then we had a fireside and just the Pres spoke, after that the sisters had a baptism of a young couple. It was really awesome, the sisters have really been working awesome over there. They have had like 10 investigators in church almost every week. They are teaching some families as well. Then on Sunday me and my companion had to talk in the branch. I spoke on doing missionary work by your example to others, and I told the story of when I went back to Colorado to visit before the mission and we went to a party. At the party some people showed up with alcohol but nobody offered me any because they remembered that I was a Mormon. And then my friends said they weren't going to drink as well because they were with their Mormon friend. It went really well and there was a great turn out of 105 people...Which is great for the branch. At church, a recently married young American couple arrived. They were on their honeymoon. Haha it was funny and made me super jealous, I am soo doing that as well. So it was really hard to be there without actually getting into the water... But I withstood the temptation. I'll send some pics soon.

So other than the amazing trip to Roatan we have just been doing interviews of the missionaries. To interview them all takes about 3 weeks since it's a big mission. While Pres Viers interviews we have to revise the area books, so it's a tedious and slow job. And as always there are some problems that come out in the interviews with companionships and stuff. So now this weekend we will have to make some emergency changes, which is a huge headache. You asked about disobedience the other week I think because you saw something about that on mission mom stuff. Well there are a lot of disobedient missionaries here. We have cleaned a lot of it out, well Pres Veirs has anyways while he's been here and it's gotten a lot better. When I got to the mission I would hear of crazy stories that missionaries would do, like kissing girls and more. But now there's basically none of that. But yes in these weeks my comp and I have had to make quite a few calls to chew some elders out. I always hate doing that, but sometimes it's necessary. It's just part of the job I guess.

And yeah we get to do some real missionary work. We really try to get all our stuff done before four o'clock and we then go out and do divisions with random missionaries to help them and teach them. We do that maybe twice a week. Then other days we go to that one branch where there aren't elders and we work there. So yeah we baptized that one lady and her kids and also 2 kids whose parents are members but the dad is inactive and left them and the mom went to the states. So they live with their grandparents who aren't members. Well they got baptized and right now we put another baptismal date for February 12 of the aunt of the kids that lives with them. So the ward is pretty excited about these baptisms that we've been blessed with.

Well I've gotta run cause my comp needs to also write and we only have a few minutes. But I love you all and thanks for your support and emails even when I can't write you. Next week should be more normal.

Elder Mason Cardon