Painting Progreso Properly

November 30, 2015

Hey Guys.

I hope that you all enjoyed your Thanksgiving. I certainly enjoyed mine. It has been a great week filled with preaching, thanking, and painting. To start, Thanksgiving is not a holiday anywhere but the United States, so people all think we are weird, gluttonous turkey-worshipers. Well, not really, but we couldn't really use it to an advantage to ask people what they are grateful for and stuff like that. However, this time of year everyone seems to have a little more money around here (I think the muggers take the holidays off), and everyone and their dog is painting their house. I am grateful for paint, and I will explain why.

First of all, paint does not come out of shirts. The paint here is supposedly "water-based" and will come out of clothing. While it conveniently washes out of cement and other things, it does not come out of clothing. I have a designated paint outfit now. After our adventure painting Doc's office a few changes ago, people are always a little nervous to see me show up to their house to paint with more paint on my shirt than they actually bought to cover the walls. Stained shirts are a pain, except when you are walking to and from the place you are painting. People see you. As missionaries, we stick out. It's even worse since I am a gringo walking around. They all think we are weird, but they seem to change their thought process when the tie is left at home and we serve others. We have had several people stop us and ask if we paint houses for free. We are always a little hesitant to just straight up say yes, but we take a moment to explain the importance of service in the life of Jesus Christ. Kinda nifty.

Secondly, no one likes to paint. I doubt that the people we pay to paint houses like to paint. This makes it easy to offer help to investigators because they hate it so much that they let go of the idea that they can do it themselves and they let us hop in and help out. This week we painted the house of our recent convert Oscar, and we spent three days doing so. We showed up Wednesday morning to just paint one room, but when we got done, Oscar's mom asked us to paint the kitchen and the outside. We thought that it would be fine, so we hurried and painted the kitchen and decided to go back Friday morning to paint the outside. So, we went back on Friday, painted outside, and she said, "I know that you guys have painted so much already, but could you help paint this one last thing?" as she gestured towards her two rooms she rents out as apartments. We kinda just sighed and agreed, and we went back Saturday morning to finish it up. We spent a lot of time on this house, yes, but she went to church on Sunday. I wish I could show you the smile on Oscar's face as he led his mom into the chapel. It was so cool. He was so excited to be sharing the gospel. We got to spend a lot of time with a convert and his mom just by spending a few mornings painting and making friends.

Being a missionary is such a cool experience. It can get frustrating at times. I don't think I have ever been so sure that I can't go on. I definitely have never lost faith in the human race like I have here, but I also have never been so filled with hope and love for a group of people like I feel for the people of Honduras. They are so humble, irritating, and friendly all at the same time, and I love them. It is a difficult feeling to describe, but I am sure that mothers feel similarly with their children. Haha. I am grateful that we have a loving Heavenly Father who is aware of us no matter where we are.

This week was a rough one as far as finding, teaching, and really anything that can be reported to the Zone Leaders, but it was full of all sorts of other great experiences. I wish you all a Feliz Holiday Season. Have a great week.

Elder Aldrich