OK, first and foremost, another baptism! There’s a member of the church here who is a returned sister missionary. She has a boyfriend that at first was coming to church because of her. But two weeks in a row she was in San Pedro, and he came by himself. So this last Tuesday we taught him for the first time, and I felt the spirit to challenge him the first day to get baptized last Saturday. And he accepted excitedly. We taught him everything during the week, and he understands and loves and has a large testimony of the church. But when the branch president interviewed him Friday night, he couldn’t tell him that he felt ready to get baptized. So they postponed the date for May. Saturday night we visited him so he wouldn’t get discouraged--just talking about this and that, not really teaching, and he asked what Roni had told us (branch president). We talked about how he felt and he told us, "If we could talk to Roni right now could I get baptized tomorrow (Sunday)?" So we went to talk to Roni, and he got baptized and confirmed yesterday. I baptized him, and he reminds me of Cesar (from my other area).
Eddy is going to be a leader in the church here in Roatan, and in a year there’s gonna be a marriage and sealing in the Guatemala temple! So the great news is that I know why I came here, and that I can now leave feeling good about the work I’ve done here. And, yes, I am leaving. I have a change. Tomorrow I go back to the coast to stay, and Wednesday I’ll find out where I’ll be going from here. I don’t understand why the Lord wants to change me so often, but there’s no problem. So that’s all the news. We'll see where I end up.
Love ya!
Monday, April 20, 2009
April 13, 2009 E-mail
Hey all!
Well this week we had another baptism of the 17 year-old daughter of the first councilor of the branch presidency. The rest of the family are converts of 3 or 4 years, sealed in the temple, married in order to get baptized, goldens, but the 17 year-old daughter, Belkis, has been receiving and rejecting the discussions for these 3 years. We taught her about a month ago, and dropped her in the same lesson ‘cause she didn’t want anything. But 3 weeks ago she told us she wanted to get baptized, so we gave her all the discussions real quick, and now she is a part of a nice mormon family. haha. In that family there’s still 2 that need to get baptized, but they live in other parts of Honduras.
So that’s awesome. A few weeks ago I bought some hemp and am making hemp-tied CTR/HLJ rings for missionaries. That’s pretty sweet. It takes like 30 minutes to make one, so I do them at night before bed. Yeah, that’s pretty much it.
There’s only one week left in the change, and I think I might get transferred already, but I really don’t want to. This is the best area of the mission hands down. And I can definitely see grandma living here. haha
See ya later!
Well this week we had another baptism of the 17 year-old daughter of the first councilor of the branch presidency. The rest of the family are converts of 3 or 4 years, sealed in the temple, married in order to get baptized, goldens, but the 17 year-old daughter, Belkis, has been receiving and rejecting the discussions for these 3 years. We taught her about a month ago, and dropped her in the same lesson ‘cause she didn’t want anything. But 3 weeks ago she told us she wanted to get baptized, so we gave her all the discussions real quick, and now she is a part of a nice mormon family. haha. In that family there’s still 2 that need to get baptized, but they live in other parts of Honduras.
So that’s awesome. A few weeks ago I bought some hemp and am making hemp-tied CTR/HLJ rings for missionaries. That’s pretty sweet. It takes like 30 minutes to make one, so I do them at night before bed. Yeah, that’s pretty much it.
There’s only one week left in the change, and I think I might get transferred already, but I really don’t want to. This is the best area of the mission hands down. And I can definitely see grandma living here. haha
See ya later!
Friday, April 10, 2009
4/6/09 E-mail
Thanks for the birthday wishes, and I send them right back to the girls. haha. 15 years old, how quaint and young...hahah
Everything’s going good in Roatan. We had some problems with the Priesthood session on Saturday, but other than that conference was awesome. With priesthood, we didn’t have permission to access it because the branch was newly organized, so we made some emergency calls and after an hour we got to watch for 15 minutes. 5 of Costa, 5 of the song, and 5 of Uchdorf and the power in the island went out til 8:30, so that was fun. We have 5 more people with a baptismal date for this Saturday. Right now just working hard. And right now I’m in divisions with a ZL on the island (week long, we finish on Wednesday). It’s all good here. It’s starting to get pretty hot here. In this country the hottest time is always "semana santa" Easter Week (well literally 'holy week'), so here comes the heat baby!
Love, Elder Arntsen
Everything’s going good in Roatan. We had some problems with the Priesthood session on Saturday, but other than that conference was awesome. With priesthood, we didn’t have permission to access it because the branch was newly organized, so we made some emergency calls and after an hour we got to watch for 15 minutes. 5 of Costa, 5 of the song, and 5 of Uchdorf and the power in the island went out til 8:30, so that was fun. We have 5 more people with a baptismal date for this Saturday. Right now just working hard. And right now I’m in divisions with a ZL on the island (week long, we finish on Wednesday). It’s all good here. It’s starting to get pretty hot here. In this country the hottest time is always "semana santa" Easter Week (well literally 'holy week'), so here comes the heat baby!
Love, Elder Arntsen
3/29/09 E-mail
Hello, Everybody!
March is finally over, and it has been a long, long month. We ended up with 11 baptized and confirmed and one that still needs to get confirmed. We’ve been working way hard. For this week I have a funny story: a few days ago we were walking through a neighborhood called el swampo. Just walking, nothing funny or bad, but this neighborhood is full of drunks, and every now and then they get to shouting at us. Well this time a short, black, drunk (very, very drunk) man with a cigarette in his hand comes up to me. He looks like he’s been living in the street for several years and hasn’t showered in about 5 years. He comes up to me walking with me and says, "Hey white boy!!" I kinda just ignore him when he stars saying things like "what you too good to talk to a black drunk?!" "Huh stuck up pretty boy!" (all in english of course) And just keeps yelling. About a block later he stops yelling and says "I’m really sorry for yelling at cha forgive me?" and offers to shake my hand. So I shake it and said, "It’s ok I forgive you." When he grabs my other arm and says "YOU WANNA FIGHT!?!?!" "I’ll kill you flippin white boy!" "let’s fight" and he still hasn’t let go of my arm so I pretty much just keep walking ignoring him while he holds onto me. And after another block he gets tired sits down and passes out. That’s about it. Good story huh? Now if he were to have hit me I probably would have acted on instincts and beaten the tar outta him and then I’d have to leave the island cause all the black people would then hunt me down. So it’s a pretty good thing he didn’t hit me.
Anyways everything is good here. The soonest I’ll get those packages will be the 22 of April so I look forward to them at that time.
All right gotta go. Talk to you in a week!
March is finally over, and it has been a long, long month. We ended up with 11 baptized and confirmed and one that still needs to get confirmed. We’ve been working way hard. For this week I have a funny story: a few days ago we were walking through a neighborhood called el swampo. Just walking, nothing funny or bad, but this neighborhood is full of drunks, and every now and then they get to shouting at us. Well this time a short, black, drunk (very, very drunk) man with a cigarette in his hand comes up to me. He looks like he’s been living in the street for several years and hasn’t showered in about 5 years. He comes up to me walking with me and says, "Hey white boy!!" I kinda just ignore him when he stars saying things like "what you too good to talk to a black drunk?!" "Huh stuck up pretty boy!" (all in english of course) And just keeps yelling. About a block later he stops yelling and says "I’m really sorry for yelling at cha forgive me?" and offers to shake my hand. So I shake it and said, "It’s ok I forgive you." When he grabs my other arm and says "YOU WANNA FIGHT!?!?!" "I’ll kill you flippin white boy!" "let’s fight" and he still hasn’t let go of my arm so I pretty much just keep walking ignoring him while he holds onto me. And after another block he gets tired sits down and passes out. That’s about it. Good story huh? Now if he were to have hit me I probably would have acted on instincts and beaten the tar outta him and then I’d have to leave the island cause all the black people would then hunt me down. So it’s a pretty good thing he didn’t hit me.
Anyways everything is good here. The soonest I’ll get those packages will be the 22 of April so I look forward to them at that time.
All right gotta go. Talk to you in a week!
3/23/09 E-mail
We’ve been working like mad and have tons of possibilities and are changing the area of Roatan. We just had interviews with president, and last Sunday president came for a little visit.
Tell Tyler and Stevan that the mission is the best decision I have made in my entire life. You learn and grow so much. It’s not easy, but the best time of anyone’s life.
And that if Tyler meets an Elder Sebrero from California he lived in my hall in BYU.
uhoh. outta time cause of stuff... I’ll write more next week.
love ya
Tell Tyler and Stevan that the mission is the best decision I have made in my entire life. You learn and grow so much. It’s not easy, but the best time of anyone’s life.
And that if Tyler meets an Elder Sebrero from California he lived in my hall in BYU.
uhoh. outta time cause of stuff... I’ll write more next week.
love ya
3/16/09 E-mail
OK, well this week was rough. For starters I got real sick. Monday after emailing I started getting sick. We still don’t know what it was, but either food poisoning or dehydration. On Monday about 4 I pretty much passed out. So we went to the house where I slept till 7. A member came to the house to take us out to dinner to say goodbye to my comp. and then he saw how sick I was and wanted to take me to the hospital. So we had been calling the nurses, but they weren’t answering. But the member said he’d pay for everything. And not to worry. So we went. They gave me an I.V. so I was on a drip for an hour and a half and finally the nurses picked up and freaked out ‘cause we went without permission, but I was dying so they pardoned me. Really hectic. We got permission to take a plane direct to San Pedro for changes, but there weren’t any so I suffered on the yacht a little. But all good. I received my new comp. He’s from Mexico. Cancun. The only Mexican missionary in the mission. It’s awesome ‘cause he’s practically a gringo. haha.
So, we baptized the last of the Zelaya family, and the parents are getting married on Friday and baptized on Saturday. So I don’t know if you put an extra 25 bucks in my account so we can pay for the marriage or not but if not that’d be good. Thank you. So right now we have 7 baptisms, and one that only needs to be confirmed. Plus three with baptismal dates, and four that will have baptismal dates by the end of the week. We are changing the area here.
love you!
So, we baptized the last of the Zelaya family, and the parents are getting married on Friday and baptized on Saturday. So I don’t know if you put an extra 25 bucks in my account so we can pay for the marriage or not but if not that’d be good. Thank you. So right now we have 7 baptisms, and one that only needs to be confirmed. Plus three with baptismal dates, and four that will have baptismal dates by the end of the week. We are changing the area here.
love you!
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