Emma in Honduras--Week 1

Emma's House

Selfie Outside

Emma and her companion Hermana Alejandro!

Hello, everyone!

I'm in Honduras!  It's still so crazy to me.  Hermana Alejandro and I will be walking down the street, and I'll look around, and it'll hit me: I'm really here.  

I love being a missionary!  It's honestly been one of the best, if not the best, experiences of my life.  I've only been here for a week, but I already love the people so, so much.  I just love them more and more with each new day because of how amazing they are.  Honduras is a very poor country, and the people here having almost nothing.  It's been a very humbling experience to go in the houses of some of the people here and to see the conditions that they live in.  But though they have so little, their hearts and spirits are big, and they're so kind and giving.

And by giving I mean that they give you a lot of food.  Like a lot.  They feed you, and boy do they feed you well.  But it's all been pretty good so far!  Nothing's been super gross so that's good.  Lots of rice and beans and tortillas and stuff.  And fried bananas.  Always fried bananas.  I'm not the hugest fan of bananas, so I was worried at first, but these are actually really good!  They don't taste like bananas at all.  I want to dip them in ketchup, lol.  Anyway, when they feed you they always give you HUGE portions.  Like so much rice.  And so many fried bananas.  And so many tortillas.  And you can't say no or leave food on your plate because then you offend them.  So yeah.  My plan to lose weight on my mission is down the drain.  But está bien.  Partying in Honduras.  And there's this weird banana pop down here, like calm down with the bananas, Honduras for real.

I can't understand the Honduran's Spanish.  I can when we're talking about gospel related things, because I know all of those words.  But when we're talking about day to day life, it just goes all over my head.  I feel like my ability to understand Spanish is like a roller coaster ride.  There are times when I can understand super well, and then other times when I have absolutely no idea what's going on.  I'm super grateful that I can understand my companion though.  Because it would be super rough if I couldn't.  And I know that I know a lot more than I did last week.  So that's good!  I just wish that I could understand right now.

I love teaching the people!  It's always such a spiritual experience.  There have been a couple times that I've teared up in the lessons because I've felt the Spirit so strongly.  We were teaching this one family and one of the kids is mentally handicapped.  We sang an opening hymn, and the daughter (the mentally handicapped one) started crying.  She can't talk, can barely walk, but I know she was crying because she could feel our Heavenly Father's love for her.  It was amazing.  

This week, Hermana Alejandro and I got 12 new investigators!  12!  In three days!  We're en fuego!  And we had three investigators come to church with us, and we have 2 with a baptismal date!  Casually converting all the people in Olanchito, nbd.

This morning we played soccer with all the missionaries in our zone.  I actually played!  And I wasn't that bad.  I mean, I'm not good, but I wasn't the worst.  It was fun!  We're going to play soccer with them every p-day. 

I'm going to send some pictures of my house!  You all know the drill already.  I can only send one or two pictures per email, so get ready to be spammed.

Love always!

Hermana Holdaway