Old Friends, Mission Calls, and One Cool Meeting

March 16, 2015

Hey Everyone,

I hope that you all have had an amazing week. My week has been incredible. I got to spend the night in the murder capitol of the world, I got to shake hands with 5 of the most important people in the world, and we might be having a baptism this Saturday. What? That's right. This was journal-filling week.

So on Wednesday I got a call from the mission office, and they told me that I had to go to San Pedro Sula to finish up my immigration papers. I hopped on a bus with four other missionaries at four in the morning and took off for the most violent city in the world (don't get too worked up mom, I made it back alive haha). We got there at about 10 a.m. and boarded a "rapidito" to get to the immigration office. Those things are INSANE. They go 200 mph and do not stop for anything. There were a couple times that I was sure we were gonna wreck, but since we are missionaries, we didn't do much more than a little tapping. Haha. We made it to the offices safe and sound and I finished up my papers.

Afterwards we went to another area in San Pedro to help some missionaries contact a new invasion that showed up about a week ago. We found a family of 14 people! How crazy is that? That is going to be a really cool baptism. After four hours of contacting, they shipped us off to the Mission Secretaries' House where I got to hang out with Elder Adams, my companion from the MTC. We took a few hours to just sit down and talk about mission stories. He's been on the other side of the mission these last 7 months, so it was cool to hear about how it is out there.

At 9 a.m. the next morning the entire San Pedro Sula missionary force was seated in the biggest chapel in San Pedro waiting intently for the guests of honor to arrive. We had the COOLEST meeting I have ever been to. We got to listen to Elder Ochoa (area presidency), Bishop Davies (President Bishopric), Elder Maynes (Presidency of the Seventy), and Elder Neil L. Andersen of the Quorum of the Twelves Apostles. It was truly incredible. They all spoke Spanish, they have all been mission presidents, and they all shook the hand of all 450 missionaries! It was seriously amazing. There was a power in that room unlike any other, and I was so lucky to be in the audience.

Afterwards, my companion had a meeting in the mission office for retention, so I got to go and hang out with some of the missionaries there. Elder Diaz, my first companion in the field, was there, so we went and ate some lunch at Burger King with him. It was fun to be able to finally talk to him in Spanish that wasn't broken and slow. He kept commenting on how weird it was to see me talking so with so little effort. It was fun, but we were with them longer than we had planned and barely caught the last bus to La Ceiba, so we didn't get back until real late.

This week is changes. My companion now has three changes here, so it's really 50-50 on whether or not he's out of here. I honestly hope that he sticks around another change because we have a large number of people that are going to get baptized (hopefully) during this change, and I would hate for him to miss it. Whatever happens, it's going to be a great change. I am so grateful that I can be a missionary hear in Honduras, and I love being a missionary. Thank you all for your answers to my questions and thanks for the support. Have a great week.

Elder Aldrich