Mason's Letter -- March 12, 2011

Familia

Hey sounds like things are going great there. haha that's funny that you all are in love with Elder Andersen. I'll do my best to hook you up with him--and yeah he's single. Oh mom, by the way yes I like receiving your Dear Elders with the updates from Beanz and Layne. they are way cool.... and the other day I found John Mays blog on the internet and read those as well. It's super crazy how different our missions are. He was talking about how nice his house was and that it has marble counter tops and a grill and stuff. haha And I'm here living in the super ghetto. This week on divisions I showered outside from just a hose basically.... haha good times. Oh, and mom you've mentioned a couple times about the senior couple missionaries. Well I hardly ever see them. They're job is not really at all related to the mission. They are in charge of the job and resource center here in San Pedro, so they help people find jobs. They don't help us with errands...if anything we have been running errands for them. So things sometimes get a little more complicated, but they are way cool and we are grateful to have them here.

So this week was a ton better than last week. I had sooo many awesome experiences. I'll start from Monday. We had an appointment with the famous soccer player and his family, I had told you that we ate dinner there on Christmas Eve right? Well his wife called me the other day and she invited us to her family home evening. So Monday we did that. Unluckily Carlos (the soccer player) recently had surgery and was feeling sick so he just stayed in his room. But we did a FHE with the family. We just talked about how we can be missionaries and we thought of some things they can do to help their dad come unto Christ. It was a really good lesson. But the best part of it was that when we rang the doorbell (yeah it's like the only home with a doorbell in this whole country) a lady answered the door that I recognized from La Ceiba. Do you remember when Elder Brown and I gave a blessing to that blind man and he was healed? Well yeah, his aunt was the one that answered the door! She was the one that we saw in the street and helped her out with her grocery bags and we found out that she was inactive. So we went there and gave her nephew a blessing and healed him and baptized her niece. So yeah apparently she is cousins with Carlos´ wife and now she lives with them and is their maid. They are all from Roatan. So when she answered the door and saw it was me she got super happy.

We started talking about that whole experience and she told me a lot more of the story. Then Carlos´ wife (Emy) said that right after we had healed him, she received a call from this aunt (Gwen) who told her all about it. So she has heard a lot about me already, she just didn't know that I was that person. Also they started telling us that we are famous on Roatan haha. Because when we healed him he went back to the island the next day and told everyone about it. I guess the whole island now knows. Apparently the doctors had only given him 6 months to live. but he is still alive and perfectly fine and healthy still. So amazing!!! So I'm going to write him some letters and I'm gonna try to call him so that he can come back and we can teach him. I know that God healed him for a reason and I need to be able to explain that to him. So once again God is making the pathway so that we can get back into contact. Such an amazing story.

Tuesday was normal. Wednesday we decided to go to Copan for a few days and work there. The zone is pretty dead right now. So Wednesday we did a zone meeting with them to excite them and train them a bit. After that we did divisions for 2 days. I went with a new elder to his area that hasn't had a baptism for a while. And this new elder is really struggling with his comp and wants to go home. So I went with him. We worked really hard and basically didn't rest at all cause I wanted to find a lot of people. We taught like 9 lessons the first day and this elder was way excited. We found some good people I think. The second day was also really good and we taught another 10 lessons and put a baptismal date for the end of this month. I talked a lot to this elder (he's from Guatemala and is like 4 feet tall haha) and he was willing to stay in the mission and stick it out a bit with his comp. He's like the nicest little guy ever. So I felt like that was a successful trip.

Well on Friday we had to zone leader council...so we stayed that night with the ZL's from Copan and had to get up at 3:30 in the morning to catch the bus to San Pedro Sula. So we got back here and went right over to the chapel to set everything up for the ZL's. The council went really well and we talked about a lot of things that we can do in the mission to improve. We have felt really positive with them all lately. Right now we don't have that many baptisms in the month in the mission, but from what it sounds like there are a ton of possibilities.

Well that night we worked in Carmen a bit. Well the baptism that we were gonna have for this weekend fell through. He went to Choloma to look for work and said he doesn't have money to come back to SPS this week. We are a liitle worried and think he might be running, His sister also thinks the same. But we will keep the hope. Maybe we will have to do it next week. But after that we went to the secretaries' area with Elder Guzman and Mancia to this awesome family of 9 that we 4 are teaching there. I dunno if I told you about them but my comp found them with Elder Mancia a few weeks ago while contacting. We 4 have been visiting them the whole time. We go the 4 of us because they always have way deep questions and there is a lot of them, so it is necessary to have a lot of power there haha. One night they had a ton of doubts about baptism and we used like 15 scriptures between the 4 of us to resolve the doubts. It was awesome.

So we had the baptism date set for the end of this month because they wanted time to prepare more. So last night we went to teach them the Word of Wisdom. They have been progressing really well, and at the end of the lesson the 16 year old girl asked what was holding her back from getting baptized tomorrow (today). We said nothing just that we would like to baptize the whole family at the same time. Well they all started talking and the date we had set wouldn't have worked out for the whole family. So we decided to do it today!!!! It was so awesome and spiritual. Then they all decided who they wanted to baptize them. I'm baptizing 2 of them and Mancia 2 of them and Guzman 4 of them and my comp Rodas 1 of them. So we are super excited for that. We are gonna do it at 5 o'clock today. They already had 2 baptisms planned for today and the other 2 secretaries have 1 baptism planned. So basically today at 5 will be a super baptism. There will be 17 people participating and dressed in white (either getting baptized or baptizing). It will be sooo awesome. So this morning we sacrificed playing soccer and my comp and I did the 9 baptism interviews, they all passed. So right now we are in the process of planning it all out good.

Well this has been a long email I think, but it was a great week. I hope everything is good there and I will talk to you next week!

Elder Mason Cardon