Mason's Letter -- September 5, 2011

Hey fam,

Well this week was a really good one. First off I will answer mom's questions though. Well, my comp Elder Peterson is from Orem Utah.... U-tard to the max. haha he is a good worker and is obedient. He struggles with talking to people and knowing what to say just in conversations. He can teach fine, and we have been practicing a ton every morning all of the lessons and I've been giving him a bunch of tips. When he teaches he never makes eye contact and fidgets a lot and says ummm like a billion times. So I've been helping him get rid of all of that. Some of it is just inexperience, and I hope I'm not too hard on him, but every time he says umm or fidgets while we are practicing I just give him a ¨beep¨ that means wrong (like in game shows and stuff).

He's been getting a ton better and I think one day he will thank me for it. My trainer never taught me how to teach or do stuff like that, so it will help him. Also I have been just throwing him into a bunch of situations. I make him start lessons and challenge people and start talking to people on the street, but he is never scared and he just does it. But sometimes he starts to talk to people and then doesn't know what to say and just sits there staring at the person and the person just stares at him and kinda looks at me like what is going on here. So I usually jump in, but he told me the other day that he doesn't want me to jump in so that he is forced to learn. But I like him and we get along, it's fun to train because he does everything I do, I mean everything. So I have to put a good example. We don't have a lot in common, he doesn't like sports and was just kinda into like books I think. But he has a ton of faith and will be blessed for his obedience and hard work.

And about that little kid. He's actually 24 years old. He's from Guatemala and he had some hormone problem when he was a kid, so he stopped maturing physically. He's fine now, but yeah he looks like he's 12. I'm sure he's had a hard time with it and it said in his carpeta that he was made fun of a lot. But he came to the mission and all the missionaries gave him a good welcome and we tried to make him like the star of the show, so it was cool.

About my birthday. Well I haven't got the package yet, hopefully tomorrow I will get it in our zone meeting. On my bday we just worked like normal. There aren't any restaurants here because we are in a little village. At the end of the day though our cook bought me a cake and they surprised me and threw confetti and stuff all over me, so that was nice. But I guess you can say it was my last crappy bday in Honduras haha jk. Serving the Lord is the best thing someone could do.

Ok, so this week we got our 2 families married. Our one fam was good to go cause we got the papers in on time, but the other fam wasn't so sure. But we pulled some strings in the municipality and got them married as well. It was a huge free wedding of like 34 couples...we were there from 2pm until 6 pm...and the power went out in the middle, so we were sweating our....heads off. So our one family will get baptized on Friday, but the dad of the fam is being difficult and there are some problems there, so he can't get baptized yet. And then the other fam will be on my last weekend here. Other than that we have a few more possibilities. We are working with a bunch of couples, but it seems to be that in every single couple that we have either the husband or the wife doesn't want to progress. so we are fighting there. But we continue to work.

I'm not baggie (trunky), but i do feel some anxiety about getting home and starting my life. I have made some goals and I think I know pretty much what is going to happen. But I don't want to talk too much about that. We still have work to do here, but making plans for the future is always good.

Thanks for everything, I love you all.
 
Elder Mason Cardon