11/10 E-mail from Honduras

Hey!
OK. I’m in Honduras and am in my first area! The zone is Copán and it's southwest of San Pedro Sula. It’s the coldest place of Honduras, but it’s not too cold. No worries. My area is called Dolores. My compa is Elder Flores, a latino from Peru who knows Spanish, English, Portuguese, French, and Spanish sign language. And he is fluent in all 5. He’s about 5 foot 4 inches tall, so we look pretty funny walking up and down the streets.

This place is incredible! All the people are so humble and nice. We had a baptism yesterday of an investigator named Carlos. He’s pretty awesome. And we have two families that are thoroughly investigating, as well as two young guys who live together and also a 12 boy who will be baptized this Saturday.

This place is nuts. Everything is mega cheap. Like today I wanted to get some "oreos" so we went to the pulperia (QT) and I got 3 small packs of 4 and a Gatorade for 30 limpiras, about a dollar fifty. Sweet.

The one thing I’m really amazed with is how many stray dogs there are. Everywhere we go there’s like 10 dogs sniffing around and barking. They’re usually not mean, but when they are I have figured out that all you have to do is bend down like your’e gonna pick up a rock and they scamper. (Haha.) When we teach lessons (this week 14-ish), I teach just as much as my companion, but when they talk to me I don’t fully understand. I’m getting better at hearing, but talking is not bad at all.

We live in a place called Boulavard and our area is probably about 5 square miles, but we also have a “second” area called San Juan. There’s a small branch in San Juan of about 15, and in Dolores the branch (with the nice church building) has 100 people, but only 50 or so show up.

We have a cook, Sister Soreano (members, but the husband is inactive), and they have 3 kids. One is about 5 and looks exactly like the actress Raven when she was on the Cosby show. (Haha). The president of the branch in Dolores is really nice. He served his mission in Guatemala and speaks no English at all. Actually it’s super rare to find people that know English, except that we have a gringa investigator called Sarah Leng, who is 71. She has an enormous house by American standards and also owns quite a bit of land, all for less than 90 thousand dollars. She says she couldn’t afford to live in the states any more so she moved here where she is living off welfare.

All and all, I love it. The food is great, and I haven’t gotten sick yet which is supposedly strange...

See ya next week.
Love, Elder Arntsen.