GOOD SUNDAY

Hey everyone! Hope everyone is having a Merry Christmas back in the States! They don't really celebrate it down here:( But that's OK cause I made a Christmas count down chain in our house so I can count down the days haha! 10 more days!!! OK so this week went really well! We had a baptism for one of our investigators and had a HUGE church attendance! I was so happy! It was the most people at church that I have ever had! It was awesome! If all goes on the 27th we have a date for like 6 baptisms! SO I am just praying that all of it goes well!! One of our investigators with a date is like 75 years old. She is so funny! She's been to church 4 times now and she really wants to get baptized! Every time she has a lesson she asks "How many days til my baptism" haha! She lives really high up in the mountains and basically lives in a little Hut. Her whole house is less than half the size of my room:( but she is really happy so I guess that's all that matters! Now we just have to get her family too! Her 2 kids live like 1 minute from their house. The lessons with them always go really well but they never go to church:( So it does make me pretty sad. We even go to their house in the morning and they always fake like they are sick or something like that. I think it will help a lot once Victoria is baptized though! (that is the grandma's name) So this week we had a lot of fun too! We cooked dinner for 3 families and painted one of our investigators houses! We painted it like neon orange because it was his favorite color haha! It is so ugly looking but he likes it so that's all that matters I guess! The baptism that we had went really well too! I had the honor to actually baptize her! But that does not matter. All that matters is that she was baptized! A lot of the ward showed up and gave their support. EVERYTHING is going well down here in Good ol Honduras! Still hot but I'm getting a little used to it:) Oh yeah the water went out here, and it is still out. So we can't really take showers and wash our clothes.. SO that kind of stinks. HA who got my Pun! But the rumor is it is going to turn back on tonight so that's the best news ever! Well that will do it for this week! I love you all so much! Merry Christmas!!

EL ES LA DADIVA

So for Christmas this year the First Presidency of the Church told all the missionaries throughout the world (90,000+ now) to tell everyone about this new video that the Church has made. In English it is called "He is the Gift" in Spanish it is called "He is the Dadiva" it is so spiritual. Our mission president gave us these cards and we are suppose to hand them out to everyone so they can search the link and find the real meaning of Christmas. I think it's such a good video:)

So this week Elder Lopez and I went contacting in some really cool places. We went high up into the mountains and tried to find as many new investigators as we could! It is so crazy how some people live. We found people that live in little boxes basically. Dirt floors and walls made out of branches and mud. I'll have some pictures of where we contacted below. We found some new people so I'm excited to see where they go! This week Elder Lopez and I worked so hard. I swear we have walked an average of 20 marathons a day hahaha. But the Lord always blesses us with strength to press on. There is a video about mission work that talks about what we are to do when times get hard and when we want to sit down and take a rest. It talks about Christ. How his mission on earth was never easy. That when he was crucified and went up to the Spirit World he was determined to come back to earth and continue his glorious work. Christ was and will forever be the only perfect missionary. I will always look up to him and ask for help from him when times get hard out here on the mission. I'm not sure if you guys watched the Christmas Devotional the Church had yesterday but it was awesome. We could only go if investigators came too. So we invited all of our investigators and just about all of them showed up! But one awesome story was we have this family that we are teaching and we invited them to come to the Devotional. The Mom said she could not go because her 3 month old baby was sick. I promised her that if she went God would bless her baby and he would start recovering a lot faster. Well after the Devotional the lady told me... His fever is gone.. She couldn't believe it. I just smiled at her and said, "God loves his children more than we will ever know" That was an awesome experience!! Well I love you all! I'm going to send a lot of pictures for you guys! Oh yeah Elder Lopez and I are getting along really well!! We are always laughing and we teach really really well together. The APs went on divisions with us and they said that we are one of the best companionships in the Mish:) So that's good! I love you all

Love Elder Hess

Nice View

President Dester

Elder Martinez, Elder Chapeton, Elder Hess & Elder Lopez 

NEW COMP AGAIN

So first off this week I got a new Companion. His name Is Elder Lopez! He is form Guatemala! He is super short like my other comps too haha! He is unreal at soccer. We played today and he beat me so bad that I wanted to sit down and cry haha! We play pass all day long in the street (with our feet) with rocks! It's fun! I think I'll be better than Matt Coffey by the time I get back;) He teaches in a different way than all of my other comps so I am learning a lot! He's way funny too!! The only problem is that he can eat a lot:( So he never has left over food to give me:( But we are getting along really well!! I was sad to say good bye to Mart but I think I will enjoy this next change! If I make it through the Change. Something very scary happened that could give me Emergency changes to get me out of the area. I wont say what happened though. I don't want mom to come pick me up haha! So we started teaching this new guy who is very interested in the Church. He asked us if all sins are forgivable. We told him yes. He then said, even if I've killed people. We were like uh yeah... Why? He then told us that he had killed more then 50+ people in El Salvador. And for that reason he moved to Honduras. My comp wants to stop teaching him but I want to keep on going. He wants to change and I know that we can help! He was part of MS13 back in the day. He showed us all his crazy tattoos. So that's cool. I hope that we can baptize him! This week was thanksgiving as you all know so I would just like to tell all of you what I did. I'll keep it short and simple. We got permission to go to Wendys (Yes the Wendys in the States) and bought 25 cheeseburgers... And then we went to Dunkin' Donuts and ordered like 20 donuts. I have pictures but I forgot my camera:( So I'll send them next week. I didn't finish all the food but I ate all I could. It was a rough night after we were done eating. I felt like I was going to die. But after throwing up for 20 minutes I felt good again haha. So that's twice now on my mish that has happened. I love all of you and I am so happy to be out here on my mission. I will never forget these two years. Carl Budge sent me a letter when I first got to the MTC. He told me something that I will never forget. He said "When your mission is over your going to want to look back and say Lord, I gave it my all." That little quote has pushed me every single day of my mission. And I know that It will continue to push. I love y'all!! Merry Christmas!! Remember the real reason why we celebrate this amazing holiday!! 

Love Elder (10 pounds heavier) Hess

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

So as most of you know. This was the week that Chandler Webb passed away a year ago. At times throughout I would get upset and just think why did all this happen. I was reading a lot of scriptures to calm me down. I found a lot of scriptures about missionary work in the Spirit World. I know for a fact that Chandler is doing missionary work on the other side. He is making our Heavenly Father very happy right now. I am very proud of him too. I know he is Preaching the Gospel in such a fun loving way:) If he was willing to give his life for this Church I can definitely give up 2 short years for our King.

Ok so this week was good. Not to much happened. Most of our investigators are improving a lot! The only sad thing is that Elder Martinez is probably going to leave this change. Which is really sad:( We had a lot of fun during these last 6 weeks. (Man times goes by so fast) I'm going to share a really funny story that happened this week. So a couple of days ago we were walking back from a lesson and this drunk guy started yelling at us! A lot of crazy things that I can't write haha! But he loved us so much. He kept on telling us that he serves a mission everyday in the Morning at 4. I could not help but laugh the whole time. So we kept on telling him we had to go but he never listened to us haha. So I shook his hand to say goodbye but he would not let go. So I just started to lean back while he held on to my hand. I looked like Michael Jackson doing "the lean" but going backwards. If he would of let go I would of landed straight on my back haha. Martinez honestly was crying he was laughing so hard. So later we asked him if he could take pictures with us so I'll send those all to you guys haha. We were about to take a picture with him and he just fell over!! And when he was on the ground he was just yelling take the picture!! So that will explain the picture when he's on the dirt. So when we finally were about to leave we gave him a a Pamphlet. And he just got so serious and wanted pictures with him and the Pamphlet so I'll send those too hahaha! It was a funny day. And oh man did he smell bad when he hugged me. Ok I got to go But I love you all!!! AND Happy Thanksgiving!!

PS he kept on showing us how much money he had haha. All that money in front of him all adds up to be less than1$

Mitch with the drunk guy!