Baptism, Beaches, and Blessed

June 22, 2015

Hey Guys,

We had another great week out here in Miramar, La Ceiba. It has been another eventful week in Honduras. Well, kinda.

To start, we had a baptism this week. Her name is Yetisley (good luck saying it), and she is another in the huge family that we are baptizing one at a time. Now there are only 3 more, and two of them will be getting baptized July 11th. It should be really cool. She was hoping to wait to get baptized with the other two, but it is taking more time than we had planned to get them married, so she decided that she didn't want to wait anymore and we dunked her. Haha.

We have been focusing on asking for references this week and received a whopping 9. Haha. We have been focusing on finding in really anyway possible. We had a pretty good week and even one of the heavily fortified houses (this thing was like a bank vault, 3 iron doors and 50,000 cameras) opened up to us. They didn't let us in because their dad is a lawyer. Lawyers here are way different than lawyers in the states. Here, lawyers have unfortunately short life spans because they are always against someone, and one side always loses, so someone is always mad at the lawyers. We stood outside and talked to these two guys, one is 19 and one is 17, and I just couldn't help but see myself and Tyler in these guys. They are religious, but they don't go to any specific church because their dad won't let them leave alone.

As another, somewhat similar, note, our cocinera's son got robbed this week behind his house at 5 in the afternoon. They shoved a gun into his stomach and went through his bag. Then he just walked into the house and was like, "hey mom, I just got robbed again." Like, no big deal. It's just everyday life down here. He started to talk to her about it, and he said, "they didn't take anything, they saw my Bible and got spooked." He kinda chuckled and made some comment about how lucky missionaries are to be protected because EVERYBODY knows that we have a Bible. Haha.

The two experiences together have been really eye-opening to me. I was so blessed and so lucky to be where I am, and who I am. I got lucky that I was born in the States, that we aren't begging for food, and that we have the Gospel. Talking to these two kids stuck behind metal walls all day, and the one who gets robbed and just goes on like nothing happened, really put some things in perspective for me.

I hope you all have a good week.

Elder Aldrich

These are just some pictures of the beach in my area. I am livin it up here in La Ceiba, and I don't have plans to be leaving my beach behind anytime soon.