Carnival

May 25, 2015

Hey Guys,

This was a great week. We had some really unique and interesting things happen to us this week. First of all, we had a surprise baptism. That isn't something that seems to happen very often, but it was cool. She is a little girl from a member family, but she just never had gotten baptized. Her mom finally decided that she wanted to baptize her, so she called us. We taught her a twice just to make sure that she could answer the interview questions, and then we baptized her on Saturday. Boom. Haha.

Last week, we found a family that was in need of a little bit of help. They are super poor. Like ridiculously poor. When it rains, all the water fills their house, forcing them to sleep on top of tables and chairs to keep from getting too wet. To solve the problem, they somehow got someone to give them a TON of free dirt to fill in the sides of the house to create a drainage system. However, the lady is 80 something years old and her daughter is 60 something. When we found them, they were sitting in front of their house staring at the dirt that had been dropped off an hour earlier. We asked them if we could help them out, and the old lady (who is very catholic) starting getting very excited and telling us how grateful she was to her Heavenly Father that we just happened to show up. We ended up helping them move dirt with buckets for two hours, leaving enough room for cars to pass, and we worked four hours on Saturday, and four on the following Wednesday. It was a ton of dirt. The two ladies probably won't progress or get baptized (mostly because when we challenged them to baptism, one said to the other "we might as well. We baptize ourselves everyday when we shower because our water is holy."), but they have a 13 year old boy who lives there. He is friends with a recent convert of ours, and the Gospel could really help this boy out, so we will see how that goes.

This week was Carnival here in La Ceiba. Supposedly it is the biggest carnival in all of Central America, and it was evident. Not a single person was home. Not even the pulperias had people to sell stuff. It was crazy. Of course, they did it Honduran style. They payed for really big-name reggaton artists and free alcohol. From what I have heard, the death rate out there is high, and the morals are not. The missionaries stayed far, far away from that area. Haha.

The mission is always coming up with new ways to keep me on my toes, and I am so grateful for the opportunity I have to be a servant of the Lord. I hope you all have a great week.

Elder Aldrich