Chandler's Mission

. Elder Martinez and I stop in the road for a spontaneous study session    A road with a beautiful view that would make for a gnarly sledding hill   A regular neighborhood road The end of this road, which leads into nothing, the abyss of the Central American forest jungle that is constantly just out of reach Another week of working hard and serving the Lord. I know last week I promised an awesome letter, but we didn't end up meeting any general authorities so... Sorry. I'll make this letter as cool as I can. Last Monday Elder Martinez and I got really bad haircuts. It was hideous. Luckily, we had some haircutting stuff back in our house so Elder Martinez fixed mine (because it was absolutely atrocious). I don't have pictures and, even if I did, I wouldn't send them. I learned that in Honduras, anyone with a rusty pair of sisters can put up a sign that says "barber"  But this week we had a lot of good times! Elder Mar...

My first district. Our Chapel Welcome to Espernanza (my first city) Baptisms don't grow on trees Today marks the end of my first transfer in the field, my second transfer on the mission. Woohoo! Time seems to have sped up now that I'm out of the MTC, and I'm really enjoying the mission. Not much happened this week, just a lot of contacting, teaching lessons, making baptismal invitations, etc. It looks like we will be ending the month of September without any baptisms again, however, October looks promising. We already have 3 dates set up and plan on having more. Pray for us. The branch is doing alright. Though it seems like as soon as Elder Martinez and I activate one family, another one goes inactive. It's been great though because there are a couple really strong families out here that help us out a lot. Anyway I've been informed by a few people that I need to take more pictures so... I'll work on that. Also, I...

The inside of his apartment.  This is the living room. Here is the laundry room.  Where laundry is done. Here is a our bedroom.  That's all there is Connor! Hello everyone, we're officially one month into the field! Transfers are nigh upon us, however I'm still being trained so there isn't any chance of Elder Martinez and I going anywhere. Soooo we've been working hard, contacting a lot, teaching lessons, inviting people to come to church, trying to reactivate families and all that jazz, with minimal results. It's real unfortunate, however I know that Elder Martinez and I are really giving it all that we can and that if we stay diligent, we will be blessed one way or another. And besides, we do have a few investigators that have baptismal dates coming up, we're hoping to have our first on September 29th with a dear investigator named Paola (and maybe her sister a couple weeks later!) so... pray for us. This week we had a unique exper...

This is a picture of my district Connor wanted to see pictures of my apartment.  Well here they are!! Another very wet week! It rained every. single. day. without fail. I'm super grateful for waterproof shoes and a good rain jacket, just wish my backpack was a little more waterproof, but whatever :) We've been working hard and diligently to help out this little branch. On Tuesday during companionship study, we had the front door open to let some air in. Then all of the sudden, in the middle of our study, our mission president walks in with a few assistants! It's crazy because the mission office is straight up 4 hours away! But he had been travelling to several areas just to check up on the missionaries and to see if he could help them in any way. So that was pretty gnarly. Then on Friday we had a multizone conference in Tegucigalpa so Elder Martinez and I woke up at 3am to get on a bus and drive the 4 hours to get to the meeting on time. The...

"Preaching in the rain, I'm preaching in the rain! What a glorious feeling, I'm working again!"  -Me as Elder Martinez and I navigate our way through the flooded streets of La Esperanza. It rains a lot here. I mean, it really only rained like 4 times this week but every time it rained, it came down  hard . But it's not too bad, we just get used to walking in muddy shoes. Anyway this week has been awesome! Today marks 2 months in the mission! We've taught lots of lessons and continued our work of helping our little branch grow strong! Elder Martinez and I made cookies the other day to give to investigators and members we've been focusing on and it's amazing to see how far a little service can go! We found our investigators to be more open and receptive and the members more excited to greet us at church. So yea, service is important. This week has really just been a lot of the same stuff, and at times it seems like we've ru...

Another week has come and gone! Elder Martinez and I have been busy, busy, busy! The branch out here has been struggling a bit with inactivity and inattendance. So a lot of our work has been visiting members, working to reactivate members, and, because we're opening this area, knocking doors to find new investigators. We've taught lots of lessons and at this point have about 5 or 6 promising investigators, and a couple families we're hopeful will want to be baptized. We had one really spiritual lesson this last week with a couple named Lenin and Yolanda Alemania-Nolasco. When we first contacted them, we told them we had a message about Jesus Christ and they got really excited and let us in to teach a lesson. They were very nice, and both know quite a bit about the Bible. They loved to talk about and discuss our Savior, but made it clear they didn't want to discuss anything about the Restoration or Joseph Smith, they only wanted to...

What an awesome yet long week it has been! I have so much to write about! Final days at CCM Guatemala: The last week at the Guatemala MTC seems like a distant dream even though I was there just a week ago. I loved my time there, but I am so glad to be out in the field doing some real work! From Guatemala to Honduras: All the missionaries going to Honduras woke up at like  2am   Tuesday  morning to go to the airport to fly to Honduras. Missionaries serving in the San Pedro Sula missions had their flight at like  6:30  so it made sense to get to the airport by  3:00 , but the rest of us didn't have our flight until  10:00 ... so we sat in the airport for 7 hours but it was a lot of fun nonetheless. When our time came to leave, we walked out on the tarmac to the little airplane that would take us all to Honduras. It was so cool! Flying over Central America is so awesome because the landscape is so green and beautiful! The landing was a littl...