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

There Can Be Miracles, When You Believe

Hello everyone! 

This week was straight up awesome. Elder Sweat (my companion) and I were pretty disanimated because we have been working really hard the past few weeks to help the people we are teaching, many of whom are in super tough economic positions understand that the only guaranteed way to have happiness and to secure that everything is going to be okay is to keep the commandments. Yeah it is going to be a sacrifice, yeah it won’t always be easy, but God has promised us, many times, in the scriptures that if we keep the commandments, we will prosper in the land. 

So for weeks now we have been doing all we can to help these super special people help themselves, and their situations still haven´t really changed. Feeling a bit disanimated and wondering what we have been doing wrong, or what we could improve to better bless the lives of these people,we read in Mormon 9 and Moroni 7 about miracles, and how God has been, is, and always will be, a God of miracles.

In Mormon 9 we read:

18 And who shall say that Jesus Christ did not do many mighty miracles? And there were many mighty miracles wrought by the hands of the apostles.

 19 And if there were miracles wrought then, why has God ceased to be a God of miracles and yet be an unchangeable Being? And behold, I say unto you he changeth not; if so he would cease to be God; and he ceaseth not to be God, and is a God of miracles.

 20 And the reason why he ceaseth to do miracles among the children of men is because that they dwindle in unbelief, and depart from the right way, and know not the God in whom they should trust.

 21 Behold, I say unto you that whoso believeth in Christ, doubting nothing, whatsoever he shall ask the Father in the name of Christ it shall be granted him; and this promise is unto all, even unto the ends of the earth.

Elder Sweat and I decided to try and do more fully the three things that verse 20 says are required to see the miracles of God in our lives:  we need to have strong belief and faith, we need to be obedient, walking in the right way, and we need to know the God in whom we should put our trust.  Kneeling in fervent prayer, we asked to see miracles in the lives of our investigators.

We did indeed see many miracles these past few days, and it has been awesome. I want to share one in particular with you all. I have been working with and teaching a family for almost 2 months now. The father is the taxista that found us in a really cool way that I think I told you about several weeks ago. Anyways, the father has great faith and really wants to come closer to God. He has great desires to be baptized and to marry his wife, but he has been struggling with unemployment off and on for the past several weeks. We are waiting for the legal papers necessary to get him married to arrive, but he still hasn’t been able to save the 400 lempiras necessary to pay for them when they arrive. There are members that are willing to help pay for them, but we feel that it would be best if he and his wife really made the sacrifice to pay for the partidas as part of the repentance process. He just lost his job as a taxista again last week, and they are once again literally penniless, just like when we started teaching them. To make things worse, we have barely been able to find the dad to teach him the past few weeks because he is always away from home looking for work and the appointments we have set he has not been able to make. I have worried and prayed a lot about this family because I know they could be great members but they are just suffering so much. One of the miracles we prayed for was just to be able to find him in his house and to teach them. Long story short, we miraculously found him and went with him to his house to teach him. We felt inspired to teach him about tithing, and about the power of obeying the law of tithing. That day, he had walked around practically all of La Ceiba looking for a job with his 3 year old child, and someone had given his child 23 lempiras. After teaching Javier about the law of tithing, how God requires that we give him 1 tenth of all the money we earn, not to pay church leaders but to build the kingdom of God (church buildings, temples, humanitarian aid etc.) and in return he promises to bless us incredibly, he promptly took out the only money he had to feed his family of 5 kids and his wife, 23 lempiras, or about 1 dollar and 15 cents, and handed us 3 lempiras, embarrassed at how small it was but wanting to do all he could to have God be pleased with him. We taught him how to fill out a tithing form, and as I watched him put his 3 lempiras, 15 cents, into the tithing envelope I felt the Spirit so so strongly. I couldn´t help but start weeping at the incredible feeling of the Savior´s love for them and their desires to follow him and I promised them that I did not know when the blessings would come, how they would come, or what they would be, but I knew that their faith and obedience would open the windows of the heavens and that I knew that the blessings would come. Javier and his wife also began to cry as we all felt the powerful witness that these changes that they are making in their lives, these sacrifices, are indeed true. 

I know that the things we teach really are the words of a loving Heavenly Father that wants to bless us so much. He is a God of miracles, and all we need to do to see those miracles in our own lives is have as much faith as we can, to do the right things and follow the commandments, and to put our trust in God.  I am so grateful to serve as a missionary and for the first and most powerful time so far in my mission I felt the extent of the divinity of my calling, that these commandments really will call down the blessings of heaven and that these blessings WILL come, even though it may not be until after I am transferred from the area.

I love you all and know that miracles are real and possible in your lives as well if you do your part to see them happen!

Love,

Elder Moffitt

Waterfalls and the World Cup

Buenas!

So for Pday last week we went to the mountain behind La Ceiba as a zone to hike up and see a few AWESOME waterfalls. Needless to say, it was incredibly beautiful, very humid, super green, and there were even cool rotting Indiana Jones bridges to cross. I was pretty sketched out because the movie Predator was filmed in Honduras, so I was just waiting for Arnold to come storming out of the underbrush covered in mud or to just get jumped by a super advanced alien assassin.  

We went to Pico Bonito, the big mountain behind La Ceiba. We went with all the missionaries (sisters and elders) in our zone. It is always so cool to be all together. Everyone is so great and so powerful.

The hike. We were keeping our eyes out for Bird Eating spiders and Maya warriors
and Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Predator.

Not going to lie; walking over this bridge made me feel more than a little like Indiana Jones.
One of the steps even broke as I walked over it but I am lucky that I am spiderman
because I didn't fall to my death in the snakey undergrowth below.

I used to be afraid of bugs, and then came HONDURAS.

Luckily, we survived the journey. Although we had to run the whole way back because we got attacked by a giant tribe of biting bees that chased us out of their bumble abode. 

haha. bumble abode. heh heh.

That was actually a typo but then I reread it and liked it a lot. 

Anyways, the work is progressing over here in El Iman. We just keep chugging along and teaching lessons. I don't really like writing the details about our investigadores, partially because I don't have the energy to write specifically about the people we are teaching and don't know how to describe their situations in just a few sentences and because I don't know which of them are hiding from government forces and don't want to be identified through my blog posts. And saying that about my investigators shrouds them with a curtain of intriguing mystery and intense secrecy so you should all really want to know about them now. Maybe I will let a few details slip throughout my letters back. Don't let the suspense kill you.

Well, Honduras qualified for the World Cup, so everyone of course went crazy and fired every bullet within reach into the air. I have always wondered what happens when you fire bullets into the air. When they fall back down you think they go fast enough to kill someone? Food for thought. 

At church we taught the Gospel Principles class for new converts and people that are getting to know the church and we showed the Restoration video. It was really powerful and several of our investigators afterwords told us that they felt the Spirit of God super strongly during the video. One young guy we are teaching said all the hairs on his arms stood straight up during it and that it answered all the questions he had from reading the pamphlet we gave him the day before. I know that there truly are answers out there if we have the desire and the faith to look for them or wait for them.

Our District: The awesome missionaries here in La Ceiba!!!!!

A place Elder Sweat and I found where we really want to baptize people in the river.
Doesn't that look super legit?

It is easy to get discouraged as a missionary, especially when we don't have many people to teach, so members, GIVE MISSIONARIES REFERENCES! Last week I wrote my Dad talking a little about the difficulties and challenges of life and especially life as a full-time missionary and he replied with the following wise words:

"Dear Son,

It could be worse.

You could be being hunted by an alien life form that comes to earth for sport hunting!

Think about it."

May we always recognize the blessings before the hardships we have in our lives. No matter how hard your problems may seem, no matter how strenuous the mountain before you may appear, always remember that you are not being hunted by a Predator in the jungles of Honduras. Well, probably not. If so, stop reading this letter and run!

Love you all,

Elder Moffitt

 

Come and See!

Querido Familia y Amigos,

I am really tired, and it is super hot in this little internet cafe, and it is about to rain so it is super humid, BUT I AM GOING TO WRITE YOU GUYS A LETTER DANG IT!! GET PUMPED!!! GENERAL CONFERENCE!!! WOOOOOO!!!!! 

This week we had the AWESOME opportunity to listen to the living prophets and apostles that guide our church through ongoing revelation! FOR 10 HOURS!!!! Don't worry it wasn't all at once, it was spread out through 2 days and 5 different 2-hour sessions. And it went way too fast. I filled out 13 pages of notes and DIDN'T FALL ASLEEP ONCE DURING IT. And I am so glad too because in every single talk given I learned something that I needed to learn to become a better missionary and a better person. 

We worked so hard to get our investigators to understand the awesomeness of having a living prophet with the exact same power and right to receive revelation that Moses and Noah and the ancient prophets had, and we were rewarded by having 11 investigators showing up to the Sunday morning session with us in the stake center. That was such a blessing for my companion and I because we worked our bu... super hard to get people to come and Saturday night we were both pretty despondent, wondering what more we could have done to get people to come. To see the Lord´s hand in these people´s lives the next morning and then to watch conference and hear the inspired words of the men and women I KNOW have been called of God to lead his church made every sweat bead during the week worth it. 

Click here to read, watch or listen to the inspired messages of General Conference

One of my favorite talks was by Dieter F. Uchtdorf, the second counselor to the President of the Church, Thomas S. Monson. In his talk he talked about how someone seeing the insane number of things that we Mormons do for our church--going to church for 3 hours every Sunday, reading the scriptures every day, serving 2 year missions in crazy places, fulfilling callings as leaders of the church (yeah we have a lay clergy), cleaning the church, weekly activities, early morning seminary, the list goes on and on--in addition to the commitment we have to keeping commandments that the world has long since abandoned. One would have to wonder, why would anyone want to join your church?! The answer is that this church was restored in our day by Jesus Christ himself. The church doesn't require anything of us, its members, but Christ asks that we give Him everything. 

Too often people think that belief or faith is just that, belief, but 

NO!!!!!!!!

Our belief is NOT passive. Our daily walk with our Savior, Jesus Christ, brings incredible peace and lasting, pure happiness but we need to WALK with him. Sometimes it is downhill, sometimes it is uphill, and sometimes we just want to sit down for a bit, but if we truly are converted and if we truly love the Lord we will keep walking, not to get ripped calves, but to obtain those blessings that the world just cannot give us. That being said, this church honors agency so much that its restoration began with a boy who questioned what he believed, who went looking for answers. Our belief is active in its practice as well as in its birth. We cannot expect to gain a testimony from just sitting down and staring at the Book of Mormon, or saying a mindless prayer, or telling ourselves we will go to church next week. Jesus at the pool of Bethesda asked the afflicted man, "Wilt thou be made whole?" Only we can decide if we want to receive the blessings that this church and this gospel has to offer us. And, yes sometimes it involves stepping off, or falling off, our comfy hammocks and walking to church when it is hot outside, or reading the scriptures even when you are tired. Do you really think Satan is going to make it easy for you to find answers to questions of the soul that will tear you from his grasp?

The message we carry as missionaries is meant to change lives. But we can't change anyone's life for them. 

But we can invite, and so invite we shall, using the same words as the Savior in his ministry on earth, even "Come, and see." 

And we will continue to invite, for, as the Prophet Joseph Smith has said,

"The Standard of Truth has been erected; no unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing; persecutions may rage, mobs may combine, armies may assemble, calumny may defame, but the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent, till it has penetrated every continent, visited every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear, till the purposes of Gad shall be accomplished, and the Great Jehovah shall say the work is done."

I love epic quotes.

I hope we can all try a bit harder to do the things we know are right, and if you don't know what is right, 

(drum roll please)

COME AND SEE!

Con amor,

Elder Moffitt

Life is Hard, the Secret to Happiness, and Send Letters!

Let's have a moment of silence for the recent tragedy that occurred in the Sun Devils Stadium at the USC - ASU game this past week.

...

There is a lesson we can learn from that game, and it is that sometimes, bad things happen in life. Sometimes life is just hard. Sometimes all we have to eat is rice and beans. Well actually that is always only what we have to eat here in Honduras, but sometimes we don't even have that. This week we have had a lot of problems with people that are just in rough situations. A family of seven with a Dad who can't find work and can´t even afford food or pills for his fever-laden family. Single moms who can't work and who have no idea what to do. Men who get drunk just to forget about being left by their whole family and being completely alone.

But the thing is we are never alone. Yeah sometimes life stinks, but the point is we aren't in this by ourselves. Life isn't just a rat race or a game of chance. Happiness isn't reserved for the rich and successful. Mosiah 2:41 in the Book of Mormon reads, "And moreover, I would desire that ye should consider on the blessed and happy state of those that keep the commandments of God. For behold, they are blessed in all things, both temporal and spiritual; and if they hold out faithful to the end they are received into heaven, that thereby they may dwell with God in a state of never-ending happiness. O remember, remember that these things are true; for the Lord God hath spoken it."

The "secret" of life is right there!

All we need to do to have a guarantee of happiness in this life is keep the commandments of God! We keep the commandments, and we are blessed in ALL things, both temporally, with the food to feed our family, the money to pay for a decent home, everything, and perhaps more importantly, spiritually, with the peace, comfort, and joy that accompanies a moral and religious life. The world offers us a myriad of short pleasures, mere experiences that come and go, but simple obedience opens the heavens and allows God to shower us with blessings. We have shared this message like three times every day this week just because we are teaching so many people that are struggling with various difficulties, and I know it is true. The above mentioned Father without work received an offer to work driving a taxi for the day on Sunday morning, but even though his family hadn't eaten in over a day and he had no diaper for his 6 month old baby, he refused the offer, saying he was going to go to Church and observe the Sabbath. Wow. And you know what? The very next day he got a job working in a higher paying taxi and now has the money to buy food and medicine for his family; now his family is all healthy again.

These blessings are real! No matter what your situation, it will improve if you put your trust in God and obey his commandments. What this gospel does, what God does, is replace the good with the best.

Favorite experience of the week: We were walking kinda aimlessly at 6 pm at night because a teaching appointment had fallen through and we were waiting for a few minutes to go to a different appointment when a guy stopped in front of us and stared at us sadly while smoking a cigarette. We said hello, and, feeling prompted to do so, started to talk to him, asking him why he was smoking and why he had been drinking. He quietly told us that he was doing so because he was having family problems. We told him briefly about how these things can give us pleasure for a moment but only that, and that we can help him change his life if he wants to to have the blessings of happiness in his life. He said he really wanted to change his life, and promptly took the cigarette out of his mouth and chucked it on the ground and asked us to follow him to his house to teach him. Along the way, tears flowed quietly down his face as we told him that he is not alone, that he is a son of God and is loved, and that there is a way to change his life. I LOVE BEING A MISSIONARY.

Just a gentle reminder to everyone to SEND ME LETTERS OR EMAILS OR WHATEVER!!!!! I want to hear from you people! Even if you just send me your email or address so I can send stuff to you, DO IT.

Love you all!

Fight on!

Elder Moffitt

Fight On to my football team and trumpets from the rivers and jungle of Honduras

Exploring on our P-day with Elder Moreno

Mail Day! Thank you for letters!!!!!

My favorite haha

My companion Elder Moreno

Whom He Calls He Qualifies -- and Putting on the Armor of God

Ho to the La!

Well well well what to write, what to write. It was a crazy week this week, and I know that I write that like every week but pretty much every week is crazy here in Honduras serving a mission.

Despite all our expectations, my companion, Elder Moreno, was changed to a different area this week, leaving me to welcome 3 new missionaries (my new companion and 2 more that are going to work here in the barrio of El Iman in La Ceiba) and introduce them to the area and the ward and the investigators and the members and yeah. It was a ton of responsibility and I was kinda nervous about how it was going to go down, especially because I would have to pretty much be a senior companion to 3 missionaries completely in Spanish for the rest of the week. But I want to testify that those whom God calls, He qualifies. I was able to speak a level of Spanish I have never been able to speak and, more importantly, understand people that I have never been able to understand well, like the Bishop. I know that God does not give us any challenge that we cannot overcome.

My new companion is Elder Sweat, which is super fitting because we do a lot of that here! He is a gringooooooooooooooo which means we can make inside gringo jokes that Latinos just don't get, like about how powerful Old Spice bodywash is. That and we get doubly targeted to be assaulted and robbed and are twice as likely not to understand what people say in Spanish. But we work really well together and I am super excited to work with him. We have a ward with a ton of promise and are ready to go to work!

I just asked Elder Sweat if we did anything cool or memorable this week and he hesitated and said, "Well, we bought a mop head."

And there you have it folks. We bought a mop head, and we taught the word of God to the dear citizens of La Ceiba, Honduras. Doesn´t get more awesome than that! We did a lot of contacting this week to find new investigators because we are dividing the area, which pretty much consists of just walking up to people on the street or in their houses and sharing a little bit about what we do and trying to get them to let you teach them. For a guy that didn't like Subway because he was afraid to go up and tell the worker what to put on his sandwich, that's a big step. But I really have come to develop the courage to share the gospel without fear because I really do know that it is true and that it will bless the lives of folks more than they could ever imagine; so when I think about that, I'm not afraid to go up to someone and just start talking to them. God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power.

In our missionary activity this week we talked about the armor of God in Ephesians 6 and helped the members and investigators make their own armor of God out of cardboard. It was super sweet! I learned that the loins also means like the area around your spine on your back. I thought the loins meant like your pelvis area. My entire life has been a lie.

Teaching the children to put on the Armor of God

I know that this is the work of God and I love it. I learn so much every day. As my mom has often said, if you want evidence that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the true church of God on the earth today, just look at the fact that they have been sending out 19 yr olds as their primary representatives to preach the gospel, and the church still exists.

Thanks for all of your prayers and continue to Haz lo Justo!

Elder Moffitt

Haz lo Justo (Choose the Right)

Kid Month in Honduras

Dear Family and America,

So here in Honduras they have a holiday just for kids called Dia de los Ninos, and I am pretty sure that most Latin countries celebrate it too, just on different days in the year. Pretty much what they do on Kid Day is just give their kids things. Not only that, but this whole month is Kid Month too. At first, I was kinda thinking "Shame on America for not having this magnificent holiday!!" But then I stopped and thought about it and everyday in America is give-your-kids-things-day, so it’s all good.

What’s more, yesterday was Dia de la Independencia for Honduras, so I got a good taste of the Honduran national anthem. That and like everyone ditched church to go march in parades haha so we only had 39 people in Sacrament meeting--and 16 of them were investigators that we brought!  

I love Honduras and it’s cool that they have an Independence Day. But they don’t have a movie with Will Smith and a white guy with a once-Jewish dad and a courageous crop-duster and an epic speech-giving president fighting aliens in the name of America and saving the world on July 4. Man I love that movie.

So with Kid Day and Independence Day and everything, this week was pretty weird. We are getting ready for 2 new missionaries to arrive on Wednesday, bringing the number of missionaries here in our area of El Iman to 4. WOOOO! We are going to do some serious work here with 4 elders.

We are teaching a lot of people. The thing I like about our area is that we don’t ever go tracting or knocking on random doors or really looking to find people; people just fall out of the sky and ask us to teach them. Like literally we have to constantly be watching the skies or else we get crushed by falling investigators. No, just kidding. But really the Lord just keeps leading us and placing prepared people in our way for us to teach. Doesn´t mean that these people don´t have problems we need to help them with or spiritual struggles they have to fight, but we just always have something meaningful to do.

For those who are curious, our missionary work is not to focus on baptism. Our mission president has instructed us to teach not to merely baptize, but to convert. If we were just looking to baptize, we could baptize five people a week easy beans. Almost everyone here knows that baptism is necessary and so they are totally willing to be baptized. The thing is that we want people to know that this is the true church in which to be baptized. We want them to receive a testimony, for themselves, by the power of the Holy Ghost through study and prayer of the Libro de Mormon, which is the evidence we have that the church and authority that Christ established really was lost and then restored through a prophet of God named Jose Smith. If they gain this testimony, and are willing and desirous to act on it and do the things they have to do with that knowledge, then we will baptize them. For example, a convert here is a girl that is investigating the church that we helped move out of her house with her one month old baby and a few changes of clothes on Saturday night because of serious problems with her boyfriend and, despite all that (and not knowing what she is going to do to earn money to live now that she is alone) goes to church the next day, and is one of only 39 people here. When we are converted, we recognize that we need this gospel, not just that it is an interesting little organization, and we do all we can to exercise our faith.

Jesus Christ is the bread of eternal life. By following Him, remembering Him, 

and having faith in Him we can change and become what we aspire to become

President Klein, our San Pedro Sula East Mission President

We passed by a school twice this week when their band was playing “Brooklyn,” a rock chart of my dear Trojan Marching Band, in preparation for independence day here. Naturally, I stood in the middle of the street and air-trumpet solo'd the whole thing to passing cars. Both times.

Love you all and thanks for your prayers!

Elder Moffitt

P.S. Annie Ortiz--Thanks for your letter! You’re the best. Buena suerte en Argentina!