President Nelson in Honduras

Photo by Sister Klein 

August 24, 2015

Hey Everyone,

This has been another great week here in El Progreso, Honduras. I can only say, "I love being a missionary." This week has been so spiritual and exciting and I can't wait for this next one.

This week we had a surprise visit by the president of the Quorum of the Twelve. Talk about awesome. On Monday last week the DL called us to let us know that the zone conference for the next day had been cancelled and that we would be listening to an apostle of Jesus Christ speak to us on Saturday. We were so excited, especially since Elder Andersen came in March, only 5 months ago. We showed up to the stake center and found out that he was actually in Tegucigalpa, and that we would be watching him speak over satellite, so that was a momentary bummer. His talk was incredible. He spoke in English, so it was a little slow with the translation every ten seconds or less, but it was awesome. I could feel the Spirit so strong and I learned so much about how to be a better missionary.

He talked about the importance of knowing the basic doctrine. Like why we build temples, the importance of the Abrahamic Covenant, and why Family History is so important. He left us a list of all the things that he thought Hondurans needed to hear in order to remain active in the church. He pointed out the same thing as Elder Andersen, people here are very easy to baptize, but very difficult to retain. He told us that if we would study and apply these things (there were like 10 in total) that our converts would stay in the church and be converted to the gospel (or maybe visaversa haha).

I got to go on companionship exchanges with the zone leaders this week, and that was a blast. One of our zone leaders was in my first district in Olanchito, and at the time, he was one of the more disobedient missionaries I had met, so it was a surprise to hear that he was a zone leader. I got to spend a whole day with him, and he is not the same missionary that I knew back in Olanchito. The guy works so hard, and he knows what he is doing. We had a good talk about how his mission had went, and there was just a moment when he realized that it was just time to grow up and serve like he knew the Lord expected of him, so that's what he did. It was just a cool experience to see how the Savior's atonement helps all people from investigators, to members, to missionaries.

My companion and I are just pluggin along here in Progreso. I love the work and we are finding a ton of new people to teach. We even have people coming to church! I can't wait for this upcoming week! Have a great week, everyone, and share the word with someone new this week.

Elder Aldrich