Counting Blessings on Thanksgiving

Hey Moffitt family! 

First I want to say that we have a really awesome family. As a missionary you deal with a lot of people, and a lot of dysfunctional families. If you think Jessica in the morning is bad, you have no idea. Love you Jessica. We have a great Dad who works really stinking hard and who recognizes that he has a responsibility to raise his family with LOVE and as a good example. We have a dad who honors his priesthood and is worthy to use it to bless us. There are a lot of fathers here that have the attitude "Well if my son is messing up it is his fault because I am perfect and I do my thing so he should do his thing. No, I am not going to bring him to church or pray as a family or anything; he needs to figure it out alone". I have really come to realize how great of a dad we have although he regrettably has no hair and makes us listen to Enders Game every roadtrip. The little things you do really do add up, like doing the dishes or packing up all the stuff at the beachhouse in that nasty little closet by yourself so we could have more time playing.

We also have a great mom, who is a great example and a great motivator. She always loves us (except for 23 hours before an imminent vacation) and does so much for us. Thanks for working so hard to get us to school and to church and even to swim team. I know we give you a hard time a lot, mom, but thanks for sacrificing so much for us, sacrifices that we see and don't see. Thanks for supporting us in the activities we want to do and always pushing us to succeed in everything. You have taught us spiritual lessons and have helped us gain our own testimonies.

How cool is it to have an older sister that is serving a mission dressed as a booba and speaking a language with the same letters that the transformers use? A sister that is so talented that she got into Stanford and is a super good singer and knows like 40 languages. To this day she has given me the best Christmas present I have ever received: my fire blankie. She loves to laugh at the little, usually pretty stupid things, but has helped me to recognize the little funny moments that are always passing. She is going to be an awesome missionary in Ukraine.

Christopher is kinda like the butt of the family but he is a really nice butt. Very nice to sit on. Oh man I am so mean to you Christopher. I am sorry. You are a great kid and are really talented and smart. Thanks for always being my lego table buddy and videogame buddy. I know how much potential you have if you stay involved in the church and school and don't let the world get to you. EVER.  

Clara is like the cutest thing ever and she is my epic slug laughing buddy. She is already smarter than Dad and is even cool with her new glasses. She always helps resolve contentions and has always been the one with a smile when no one else has one. Thanks for being an example of Christ and always being so loving, Clara. You are my favorite little sister.

I just want you all to know how grateful I am to be a part of this family. We aren't perfect, but we are trying and that is all that matters. They say that you don't realize what you have until it's gone, and maybe stepping away from the family to look at it from the outside has helped me realize how inspired and blessed we are to be together in this family. 

The mission is pretty hard but it is a place of a lot of personal growth. Some cool/ funny stories from this week- I was feeling super tired and disanimated so to pump myself up I started shouting "bring it Satan, lets go, you and I bring it!" and I took three steps, stepped in a puddle, and my feet flew out from under me and I fell flat on my butt. Luckily I am spiderman so I didn't get super dirty, but it was still a lesson that Satan is a real being and we shouldn't taunt him cause he will mess with us. 

The kids here always ask us for one lempira, they say, "regaleme un lempira." So one time a kid asked me for one lempira and I told him if he gives me two lempiras I will give him one. So he took out 2 lempiras and handed them to me. Luckily I felt bad for the Honduras system of education so I didn't go through...

The wildest news though is that we can't go out of our apartments at all, for anything, not even one step outside, all day Saturday, all day Sunday (except for sacrament meeting), and Monday and Tuesday. The elections are this next weekend, and the church leadership is worried that Honduras might very well break into civil war and or be attacked by El Salvador. It is pretty crazy. Kinda stinks that we will lose 4 days of work, but the church isn't about to put its missionaries in danger. Spend the week thinking about how cool I am because I am in a dangerous country.

I love you all a ton and just wanted to say thanks for being an awesome family. 

Fight On in the gospel of Jesus Christ!

Elder Adam Moffitt 

Salvation is Not a Cheap Experience

Somehow made it through my first week here in San Pedro. Honestly, could not tell you how, but we made it!

Our first few days were super slow and depressing. We went two days in a row with only 3 lessons each day. Basically in 10 hours that we have to work, we could only find three people to teach. 2 days in a row. All of the appointments we had set up fell through, and by the end of the day we were just sliding slowly face first in the mud toward our house. But I decided to hit Thursday running and be happy and excited no matter what. So when everything fell through on Thursday, I just smiled and went looking for someone to contact, and I had a super good day. I felt the Spirit of God so much more. We were guided to people to talk to, we taught powerful lessons, and we had a successful day despite our difficulties. The thing I learned is that our happiness really doesn't depend on other people or everything going our way. If we want to be happy, we need to obey the commandments, know that God is guiding us and taking care of us, and then suck it up and be happy. Laugh when Satan throws a bad day at your face and you’ll be able to shake it off a lot faster.  

Eating choco bananas on p-day. They are frozen bananas covered in chocolate on a stick.
Pretty much the best idea ever. 

I've always wondered why missionary work is so hard. If this really is the Church of Jesus Christ, led by living prophets and apostles, the very same church with the very same power and authority that Christ established on the earth during his earthly ministry--and I testify with all that I am that it is--then why don't we just baptize people all day long? The apostle Jeffrey R. Holland gave a talk about that in the MTC that really hit me hard and I have thought about a lot this week. He posed the same question, asking why isn’t the only danger in the mission field getting pneumonia from standing in the baptismal font all day long. The answer is that salvacion is not a cheap experience. 

Pause for dramatic effect.

SALVATION IS NOT A CHEAP EXPERIENCE!

If it was, it wouldn’t be worth it. We know that when we labor to bring people to Christ, we are taking upon ourselves the same purpose that drives everything that God does, even to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man. Christ came to earth with this sole focus and purpose, and if it was hard for him, why should it be easy? If he sweat drops of blood to give us the ability to return to live with him, why would we think it would be a breeze to take part in the same work? Everyone's road to salvation must follow the steps of our Savior, which eventually lead to Golgotha and Calvary. Salvation is not a cheap experience, but it is worth fighting and sweating and being in Honduras for.

To be honest, the only really hard thing about missionary work for me is that I can’t make these decisions for people. I can teach and I can pray and I can invite these people to make changes in their lives that I KNOW, I KNOW will make them so much more happier, but I can't change their lives for them. I can't make those sacrifices for them. I wish wish wish wish that I could, but I can’t. If they don’t want to read, ponder, and pray, I can't do it for them, and they won’t receive an answer. If walking and working all day and night could help them in some way to understand the importance of what we are saying and to help them make those choices, I would totes do it. But I can’t. So the hardest part of missionary work, for me and I am sure for our Padre Celestial, is to teach and to invite, and to watch someone refuse. To pray, to stop drinking, to go to church, to read the Book of Mormon and pray to know if all this stuff is actually legit, I can’t do it for anyone. But I can invite so that’s what I’ll do, because to work all day and find someone who wants these changes in their life, that wants an answer and is humble enough to look for it, is more than worth it. I don’t think we will actually realize how worth it everything is until after we die and get a look at the whole picture, and then we will realize that every little sacrifice really was so so so so so so worth it.

Anyways, it always seems like I start writing and thinking about the week and then up writing a little spiritual sermon about something to bore you all to death and then my time is up to write. I’ll try and work on telling you all some cool stuff that I am doing and that is happening to me the next week.

Hugs and kisses, 

Elder Moffitt

Some Testigos, or Jehovahs Witness stopped by during our personal study time and gave me some sweet pamphlets, including their famous magazine.
I gave them a pamphlet on the restoration of the gospel, to be fair. :) 

I. AM. YOUR. STEPFATHER!

Hello everyone,

I am no longer in my lovely La Ceiba anymore! I got changed (transferred) and am now in a part of San Pedro Sula, the one, the only, murder capital of the world! I am not even going to try and pretend like saying that doesn't make me feel super cool, because it does. So I have officially survived four days as a gringo with a backpack in San Pedro.

So. Much. Street cred.

Anyways, my departure was pretty sad. What everyone does when they hear they are getting changed on Monday is go around on Tuesday visiting their favorite investigators and members and saying goodbye and bearing some epic final parting words and testimonies. At least that is the idea. So Tuesday I went around visiting everyone and it was super sad because I probs won't see these people for a long time but it was also so cool to see that I had made some sort of an impact on these people's lives.

I headed out of La Ceiba with my clothes wet because we had a baptism that night for the two kids of one of the best families ever. The mom was baptized when she was 14 but pretty much went inactive right after. We found her in an internet store about 2 months ago when she asked us if we were Mormons. We were like yeah! And she said she used to be part of the church. We asked her what happened and she told us that she really liked coffee and we were like, Sister, coffee isn't going to send you to Hell haha. But anyways, super long story short, we helped her reactivate in the church, and she is now super dedicated and has a super strong testimony. And she gave up coffee (atta girl). She wants to convert everyone, especially her husband, and to go to the temple one day and be sealed to her family for eternity. Her kids are the best ever. I wish I could write everything about them but I can't. That night was super bittersweet because a lot of my fav members were there so I was able to say goodbye. One of the children and his mom totally started crying and it was super touching--a little uncomfortable but it meant a lot to me to know that I had helped someone, and to feel that even if I had worked for 3 months and sweated my face off just to find this family and help bring them closer to Christ, it would have been worth it. Families can be together forever, and it is such a blessing to know how they can be sealed in the temple for time and all eternity. I hope they wait until I finish my mission so I can go with them! Despite my protests, she brought lobster on a plate to the baptism for my companion and me. So to celebrate our final night together, Elder Sweat and I went to Wendy's and bought large frostys and ate lobster and frostys. Best night ever.

Our last night in La Ceiba. Frosty's and Lobster at Wendy's with Elder Sweat!

Anyways, so I ended up getting assigned to a branch of the church in San Pedro Sula called San Juan. And I got assigned as a senior companion, training an awesome new missionary from Peru, Elder Curichimba! Definitely took me a few days to get his name down. At first I kept saying Elder Cuchiramba, Elder Chicirumba, Elder Ruchichichibumba, Elder Timon and Pumba, etc. but I finally got it down. In the mission, the missionary who trains you for your first 6 weeks is your padre, and if you get a different companion for your second 6 seeks, he is your padrasto, or stepfather. So I am officially a stepfather! It is a ton of responsibility because I have only been out for 3 months and I am still trying to figure things out, not to mention that little obstacle of everyone-speaks-a-different-language, but I know that God doesn't give us commandments or assignments that we can't handle. We have basically no investigators because we are opening an area, but it is all good. With prayer and with hard work we can do whatever challenge God gives us.

My new companion, Elder Curichimba (next to me) from Peru, and our new roommates from Equador and Guatemala. No English spoken in this home!

Tree of Life in San Pedro

I know this is God's work and that we are here to change lives. I am so grateful I was able to help some people these last 3 months and now its TIME TO GET TO WORK in the infamous murder capitol. BRING IT, SAN PEDRO!!!!

Love you all,

Elder Moffitt