Primeramente:
HAPPY ANNIVERSARY MUMSIE AND POPS! :) I was telling my comp
the other day about how y'all are going for 35 years together and she was like
[Holy Guacamole that's great!] I'm glad y'all are enjoying time together as a
little family-doodle-doo there on the home-front. Sounds like all them chillins
and granchillins are doing good. :) Elise sounds like a little ball of fun. :)
Also, I´m glad Debbie is enjoying doing family history work... I may be serving
a full-time mission, but she´s serving a mission that is just as important and
just as difficult. Tell her to keep up the good work and that I´m proud of her.
:)
Secondly: Maria got baptized! :) She is one of the smiliest
people I´ve met in Honduras, but, sadly, the Catrachan frown came out in all of
her baptism pictures. Let´s not judge her excitement for the baptism based on
that, ok? Also, the sun was in our poor little ojitos. The member with us is
Betty Hernandez. She rocks. Love her! (also, she´s the one who introduced us to
Maria... members are such an important part of missionary work!)
Birthday suggestions: I would love nothing more than a
Spanish verb book (as seen in the picture I´m going to attach) and $2 to buy
delicious arabian chocolate bars from this one mercado. Also, pictures of or
from the family. Crayon drawings are more than acceptable. Maybe also that one
guitar hymns CD I sent home from the MTC hahahaha. But if not, I´m happy with
whatever.
Where I am staying: I am currently staying in the nicest and
most expensive apartment in the mission (minus, of course that of the mission
president and his wife), although we are currently looking for new
accomodations. We found a beautiful and relatively inexpensive place to live,
but when we proposed the place to our leaders, they refused it, saying that
they want us to find something bigger and nicer (and more expensive... how
often does someone tell you that?!). haha. We´re trying to move as quickly as
possible, though, so I think they´ll have to take what we can find. I don´t
actually live in my area... in fact, I live on the opposite-ish side of town.
We have to travel about 30-45 minutes each direction to get to our working
area, but it´s not so bad. My area includes what they call the ¨zona viva¨ and
a fairly good-sized part of down-town SPS. We start in more or less the area of
the office and go up toward the Coca Cola mountain.
Grandma and Grandpa!!! :)
Boy, it was sure good to hear from the two of you. I went to
a market today in Guamilito (it´s a colonia here in SPS) and practically everything
I saw, I kept thinking, ¨my grandparents would love this!!¨ I wish I could send
you all little gifts, but sadly the mail system hardly ever lets anything
escape from here. We´ll see if I can work something out one of these days, but
as of right now, it´s not looking so good in the ¨sending stuff
home¨department. hahaha.
I´m glad you got to go to Grace´s baptism. It sounds like it
was absolutely lovely. It´s such an important and wonderful step in life. How
great that you could share it with her.
I didn´t know Grandpa fell. That´s never good, but I´m glad
he´s feeling a little better. I pray for the both of you all the time and
always hope that you´re doing well. I´m so grateful and so proud to have
grandparents as great as the two of you. Take good care of yourselves and have
a great week. I sure do love you both bundles and bundles!
Okey dokey. Let´s just talk about animals for a minute.
Remember how much I liked animals before the mission? Well, I still mostly
really love animals, but Honduras has a way of making me think I don´t. For
example:
-I like chickens just fine. I especially like baby chickens
(se llamen pollitos acá). However, I do not like when baby chickens peck the
bug-bite-scabs off my legs. It IS NOT acceptable baby chicken behavior.
(no worries, that happened in Olanchito... I won´t ever see that horrible
little baby chicken again)
-I like birds quite a bit. For a short period of my life, I
even considered studying birds for a living. However, I do not like when they
splatter their Honduras droppings all over my favorite chapter of the
scriptures (and when I say Honduras droppings, I mean diarrhea, because let´s
face it: Honduras means diarrhea).
-I like horses a little bit. I like the way they look when
they are very far away from me, but I can still see them. However, I do not
like when they poo all over the road and I have to walk through it.
-I like rodents more than the average boy scout. However, I
do not like when I am sitting on a couch and suddenly the cushion behind me
starts moving and crawling up along my back. Nor do I like when I´m walking in
the very heavy rain and a jumping mouse tries to attack me. Nor do I like when
I´m walking in the street and I step on a fly-covered dead rat whose last act
was to bare his teeth in a horrifyingly ferocious way
-I like cats only a little. However, I do not like them at
all when they are covered in chicken blood, scratching my legs and playing with
the hem of my skirt. Sorry kitten-lovers... that ain´t cute. Also, I don´t like
when I have to dispose of the dead cat that the pet dog killed.
-I love all of the exotic birds and lizards here. However, I
do not like when they peck and\or scratch me.
-I like pigs just fine. However, I do not like when they
plop their very hairy very fat selves on my feet and fall asleep (thus trapping
me beneath their pigginess)
As you can probably see, I have fairly decent reasons to
feel a slight lack of excitement for the animals here in Honduras. However, I
have one more animal I would like to mention at this present time. An animal
that I thought I would never come to dislike. Man´s. best. friend. (Let´s not
get crazy, we all know I still love dogs, but just hear me out). Yesterday we
were walking along the street on our way back from an impromptu visit with
Marina. There´s a dog on that street that has always been fairly friendly, but
has recently become very vicious and ferocious. I was walking alongside the
metal bars in front of the house where this dog lives, whistling a merry little
tune, when suddenly something flew into my field of vision just as I heard a
horrible snarl and felt a very wet and very strong mouth clamp aroud my free
hand. That sneaky dog had hurled himself against the metal bars hard enough
that his snout rocketed through just in time to bite me. If I hadn´t been
shocked and annoyed and in pain, I would have been very impressed with his
timing and calculations. However, with things as they were, I was slightly less
than impressed with this furry little friend. Happily, I don´t think he broke
the skin... he just left nice little dog-tooth shaped bruises, but considering
how vicious he´s become in the last two days, I´m going to keep an eye out for
him for a week, just to make sure he doesn´t have rabies (a dog can´t live more
than 7 days with rabies, so if he´s still alive next Friday, I´m cheke).
Needless to say, I am no longer friends with said dog.
On a more spiritual note:
*We had a lesson with someone in whom we haven´t seen very
much potential. We weren´t very excited, but we decided to give her one last
lesson before we left her. We arrived and she asked us why we hadn´t come to
her house to take her to church on Sunday. She said she was waiting. She also
said that she had realized since our last visit that when we´re there talking
to her, she feels good and happy, but when we leave, she feels like something
is missing again.
*We had an amazing lesson with Rolando on Sunday. We held it
in the church in the room where the baptismal font is. At the end of the
lesson, I challenged him to be baptised on the 24 of August (I think that´s
this Saturday) and he said yes. We´re going to work really hard to get him
there, and we´ll see what happens. :)
*We had another inspiring and beautiful lesson with Rigo
yesterday. He said that when he left the church, he started going back to his
old church. He told us about how he never quite felt the same, but he liked to
go and pray. He told us he would go every single day because he felt so empty
and lonely, but that now that he´s returned to the church, he goes once a week
and feels more full than remembered was possible. :)
Welps family, I believe that´s all I´ve got for right now.
Enjoy a non-rainy day for me. Love yáll ooberly-gooberlies.
-Hermana Bayles
p.s. We have changes this week, and I suspect that someone you know will be doing a lot more nursing in the near future. I´ll let you know what happens. ;)
p.p.s. Let´s all just admit, the baptismal picture isn´t the
best, perhaps, but it´s the thought that counts. hhahaha
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