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!

NEW FAMILY

Alright so I will start off this email by saying Happy Birthday to my Dad and shout out to Tiff for getting engaged!! And for Lexi W for cheering in her first cheer game! Abel cannot get baptized. So he is so awesome. He is 100% converted and wants to get baptized. BUT. It turns out he doesn't live in this area. We just figured that out when we were going to do the baptism interview. He is always at this house because he is best friends with the guy that lives there (that's where we were teaching him). So we called the APs and they said they were going to talk to President Dester. Well the news came back and it turns out we can't baptize him. It has to be the missionaries in his home ward. But guess who is serving in his home ward? Elder Chapeton! My first companion! I thought that was so dang lucky! But when we broke the news to him he was super sad. He wanted one of us to baptize him so bad. He said he is going to wait til' the changes to see if one of us gets transferred to his home ward so that we can baptize him. It's almost impossible but it is possible I guess! But the good news is that he will get baptized and that is all that matters. He said once he is baptized he is going to keep on going to this ward cause he loves it so much! Our ward is pretty sweet:) So that was sad news but in the end all that matters is that he is baptized and makes those sacred covenants with the Lord. Alright so Elder Ririe and I were knocking doors. We had divisions. We came across this one family that is so awesome! We knocked on the door and she was just like "OH come in" we were so confused. I turned to Ririe and said "uh are they members?" Because they were acting so casual. We started talking to them and they just straight up told us that they think our church is true and that they were waiting for us to knock on their door... So I was so dang happy!! They went to church and we have another lesson planned. We are going to talk about the Libro de Mormon and talk about lesson 3 (Baptism). So I'm so excited to get back to that family and start teaching them some more. Today we went to this huge Waterfall for P day! That was Legit. I'll show you guys pictures below!

Love Elder Hess

MUSIC ACTIVITY

Had one of the most spiritual experiences of my mission this past week. Two wards in the Stake and my comp and I put together a music activity. I'll explain what we did. So every person in the Ward got an invitation and were suppose to hand it out to a friend or family who was not a member of our Church! The whole idea was to get a whole bunch of NEW investigators coming so we could get there information and start teaching them! Anyways, the Ward did a great job inviting people! Like 200 people showed up! So we got a boat load of new investigators! So that is so great cause we didn't have that many! Anyways the activity went so perfect! The Mission President gave the whole zone permission to go and watch the activity and to have a mini choir and sing the song "The Army of Helamem" (but in Spanish). So the whole activity was just singing and in between every song we would show videos of all of our lessons but in great detail yet still simple for our investigators. The songs that the wards sang went super well too! The were practicing everyday for 3 weeks because they knew how important this activity was. So right before the activity started President Dester walked in. I don't know if I've talked to much about him to you guys. But he is the most Holy and Spiritual man that I have ever met. He carries this Spirit with him that is unreal. I promise that he is a future General Authority in the 70. I had no clue he was coming so I got pretty nervous cause I didn't want him to think I was the worst singer in the world haha! He gave a talk and the Spirit was so strong! (If you've served a mission or serving right now you know how big of a deal it is if your Mission President shows up) Anyways at the end of the activity we played our last video Because of Him. If you haven't seen this video stop reading this and go watch it. The second the video came on I got the chills and when it showed Christ in the Tomb I could not hold back tears. The Spirit was so strong. I have a good feeling about all of our new investigators because they've been to the church and they know exactly what we believe in and I know without a doubt the Spirit was testifying to them that this church was true. I'm so happy that I got to be a part of such an awesome event. Something funny that happened this week is that Elder Perry and I (Gringo) went on splits. He is a blonde so the whole world knows he's American. Any how we came across this drunk guy and he said that he wanted to learn English! So we taught him the words "Bling Bling", cause he had a bracelet on hahah! It was so funny cause he was so Drunk and he was just screaming at people "I've Got Bling Bling!!!!" way loud. We gave him a word of wisdom pamphlet and left. But it was so funny I was laughing for 20 minutes haha! Ok so those are the highlights of my week! I love you guys! Remember Go Jazz Go Utes and Buffalo Wild Wings is the best restaurant in the world.

ps I found a Dunkin Donuts!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And it's so cheap!!!!!!!!!!

Love Elder Hess

Elder Martinez (my comp)

Donuts are his favorite!

THE GOOD OL' MISSION

So this week was Halloween and I hope all of you ate 684 pounds of American candy for me cause all the good candy doesn't exist down here hahaha. So we had a good week! On Monday we had a Noche de Hogar and it went so well! These little girls put on a talent show for us and they sang "Let it Go" from Frozen! It was the cutest thing ever! Its called "Libre Soy" in Spanish. I actually got a little teary eyed just seeing how happy the whole family was. They live in such a small house without a kitchen and they were all just so happy. It was weird but the spirit was so strong when they were singing Let it Go. At the end me and all the little girls did a little concert but I sang the song in English. It was super fun:) Also the ward down here really wants to learn English. So once or twice a week I am going to have an English class at the church. We are telling all the members to bring non member friends because everyone wants to learn English here. They are going to make invitations that say free English Classes from a real Gringo hahaha!!!!! So I'm excited for that. We have an investigator named Abel and he has been progressing really fast. He's bien pilas ha. But he now has a baptism date in two weeks and he said there is no doubt in his mind that this church is true! Other than that we have been knocking a lot of doors to try to find new investigators. It's actually pretty fun. We always switch off days that we decide where we're going to contact and I always choose to contact in the craziest places haha! Like on Friday we were literally contacting on a cliff just because I knew that missionaries have never been up there. And because I feel like I'm in a movie. It's so cool. Well I just want to say this. The blessing that I have seen serving a mission leaves no doubt in my mind that this church is true. The only true happiness on this earth exists in this Gospel. While I've been out here for these 6 months I have seen how much God and Our Savior loves us. I've learned a lot about the life of our Savior Jesus Christ and how he gave his life for us. His love is unfailing. We never have the need to feel that we are alone or unloved because we never are. We can Always feel the Love of God. I love this church and I am so happy to be a missionary.

Love Elder Hess

The Picture with the Girls at the Talent Show:)