Brownies and Ice Cream and Hot Showers, Oh My!

Dear Family and Friends,

This week went very well. Elder Duncan, the Area President from the first Quorum of the 70, came and we enjoyed a multi-zone confernce on Thursday. And then on Friday, my companion and I went to San Pedro Sula to stay the night in the AP house with the other zone leaders before our meeting the next morning. Elder Brimly, Elder Clouse, and I, all three from Arizona (!), decided to take advantage of the OVEN that is in the misison house and make BROWNIES. Like no one here in Honduras has an oven (and if someone does have an oven, it is always broken or they don't have gas for it). So we made like 5 tons of brownies and bought ice cream and ate hot brownies with ice cream until we puked! Then I took the first actually HOT SHOWER that I have had for almost 600 days in which there was warm water falling from the wall onto my body. For 600 days I have either dragged a bucket of freezing cold water into my house and repeadedly dumped bowlfuls on my head while scrubbing myself (yes mom, I use shampoo) and weeping profusely -- or stood and cried under a freezing cold stream of water pouring from an open PVC pipe in the wall. Both ways are far from ideal. But actually, my hot shower surprisingly wasn't all that satifying. All this time I have been dreaming of a nice warm shower, and when I actually took one again, it was like, yeah? that was it? The thing I learned is that the work that I am doing is a lot more important than hot showers, and so, yeah, cold water stinks for an Arizona boy, but it is worth it for the Lord. 

The next morning we had a leadership meeting with Elder Duncan in which he called us all to repentance and taught us about how we have to know our sheep, like Christ knows his sheep. Our sheep are not just our investigadors, but also the investigators of our missionaries in our zone, and also the missionaries themselves. Lots of people to be thinking about!!!!  We need to know if our missionaries are progressing or not. Also, one thing that the spirit taught me in the conference was the difference between our baptismal date as missionaries and their baptismal date as investigators. Sometimes we try and force baptisms to achieve monthly goals. We give dates based on our own desires. This week, we felt that we should explain to one of our investigators that she could choose her own date. The lesson started with her telling us that when we first met with her, she was not living the law of chastity, but when we mentioned it in the first lesson, not teaching it but just mentioning the importance of not comitting fornication, she stated that she felt something that she had never felt in all her years of hearing other churches preach against fornication. She talked to her boyfriend, ended the relationship, and said that she felt peace and she felt free now that she had left that behind.  We were very impressed and felt that her repentance was sincere and told her that she was ready to be baptized this next week, which was the date we had set with her, or choose her own date. She looked at the calender, thought about is, and decided she would like to be baptized on the 28th of March. The spirit flooded the room in the church (we were teaching the lesson in the chapel). It was tangible. We asked her if she felt it and she smiled and nodded and said that she felt it. It was a lesson and testimony to me of that principle, of the importance of letting the investigator DESIRE to be baptized, like the people that heard Samuel the Lamanite  DESIRED to be baptized and went to look for him to be baptized (Heleman . I would love to just sit outside my apartment and wait for people to come to us to be baptized, but it is not always that easy; we have to look for people and help them gain that desire, but when they have that testimony and that desire, we need to let it work in them and let them use their agency to work their own salvation.

Yesterday we taught a sweet quick lesson with a great college kid named Hector. We taught about the Book of Mormon and I felt the impression that we should watch the Mormon Message about the Book of Mormon with the black bishop in England. Being the high tech missionary that I am, I whipped out my handy dandy usb that my awesome mom sent me, and him being the awesome college kid that he is, whipped out his laptop and we watched it. It was super cool because he liked it a ton and gained practically an instant testimony of the Book of Mormon and said that he was going to share that video on his facebook wall.  He commited himself to really study the book today and tomorrow and we will visit him on Tuesday to talk about what he has learned and felt. Really, the Book of Mormon has so much power.

Check out this sweet video about the story of Alma and Korihor in the Book of Mormon that is super aplicable to our society today: 

https://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2012-08-2257-all-things-denote-there-is-a-god?lang=eng

We have a lot to do in our area and in our zone. We will be working with our district leaders this next week to devise a plan de zona and put it in practice.

Hurrah for Israel! 

Elder Moffitt

This is Elder Castillo de Nicaragua, my companion, and me taking a photo op in La Ceiba on the way to our conference. I have had companeros de Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Guatamala. I just need a companion from Honduras and one from Panama to cover all of Central America!