Conversion

I learned something about conversion this week.  I heard in conference, then tried it out, and I´m just a little more converted than I was before.

On the way home on the bus I got the feeling to stand up and present a message to everyone.  It took me nearly a half an hour to act on it.  I finally told my companion to get up, and did so very willingly.  When feeling the need to do it, I felt two things.  If you do, you´ll feel very happy afterward.  If you don´t, you will carry regret for it.  So after finally doing it, it really happened.  God fulfilled His promise, and I felt a peace confirm in my heart that I did the right thing.  That spiritual confirmation has converted me to believe that I need to do the things that only missionaries can do while I´m still a missionary.  I´m going to stand up on every bus from now until the end of my mission.  It´s better than waisting my time.

that´s how we become converted.  Every time we win a battle, and do the right thing, the Holy Ghost confirms in our hearts that we have chosen the right.  And God blesses us with love.  I have a hard time telling the difference between God´s love and happiness.  I think that it´s the same feeling when it´s true happiness.  This comes every time we read scriptures as a family, even if it´s too late, or the kids complain.  It´s what happens when we finally ask God if the Book of Mormon is true.  It´s what happens when we make that tough decision to go back to church even if it´s been a while.  Or perhaps when one of you who are not of our faith makes the leap of faith to visit us for the first time.  God wants you to be there, and He will let you know.

I´m converted to this Gospel.  It´s so much more than a testimony.  I´ve met inactive men with stronger testimonies than mine.  But that won´t save them.  It can´t save anyone.  Actually, all a testimony does to those who don´t live the gospel is condemn them unless they repent.  But I´m not the same as I was before.  I never will be.  I know what it takes to be happy.

Rosita is also converted.  She´s a recent convert who might be the best missionary I´ve ever met. 
She presented us to several of her friends this week.  She´s practically dragging the missionaries everywhere.  I think she walks more than we do, and I think she´s about 60 something.  Of all the investigators that went to general conference this weekend, she brought about 70% of them.  Amazing this woman!
I testify of the power of one converted member missionary!  It´s not necessary to have this badge to be a missionary.  I love this work, and if God ever said that I couldn´t participate, then this church wouldn´t be true!  I will share this gospel with every living soul to the day I die.

Love to you all.

Elder Thalman

Conference was a major boost for me this week.  We are working, but the inactive are a little tougher than I wanted to anticipate.  But we'll keep at it.

Sharpening the Blade for the Harvest

We worked tons this week with less actives.  We even got a few of those priesthood holders to go to church!  It was cool to see them there, and I really think that the little branch is going to grow a lot soon.  We have been finding a few of those people that are just too good to be true.  One is Martha, an investigator that used to go to the church actively but never got baptized.  She moved away, and they killed her husband.  Then she remarried and then she lost him a few months ago, so she´s pretty shaken up.  She didn´t know that the church even existed here anymore.  She accepted baptism with a date in the first visit.  Same with her daughter and grandson.

We´re teaching a young lady named Aby, a reference from her best friend (a member).  She seems really golden for baptism, but her grandma is pretty anti.  We went to teach her yesterday, and it was her aunt´s birthday.  I asked if it was that very day and she said yes.  I said, "me too!" ..... big mistake.  Note to missionaries around the world.  Don´t tell young latinas that are your age that it´s your birthday.  The typical response is a hug and kiss on the cheek! She was like, "congrats" and started in to hug me and I freaked out just ducked my head and stuck my hand out.  haha.  So rediculous.  She figured out that I really didn´t want her to hug me, and shook my hand.  I think I embarassed her.  But it was pretty funny.  There were two RMs with me; a couple; so they thought it was great.  What do they know?  They´re dating each other.  haha.

We feel like there are far too many men here to not have a couple dozen of them in the church, so we´re going to teach a doctrine class in the house (yard) of an inactive family.  We´re going to print off tons of invitations and then go old school and preach in the main center of town where there are always tons of men walking around.  Whoever shows up to the class will be a new investigator with, in my opinion, a high chance of progressing.

We are activating a young man who should be a preist named Roberto.  He went to church and brought his inactive mother.  They both seem really comitted to keep with it, so we´ll reteach the doctrine, and help the members love them into activity!

The mission is the best!  I love it here and I love Morazán.  Such a great place to serve, and pray that we´ll really be able make a huge difference here.  Love you all!!!!

Elder Thalman

 

P-day! (Preparation)

A very healthy meal!

Taken from under the water with Elders Stewart and Rodas.

Falls in Morazán

 

 

Morazán, Yoro

backstory... As of over a year ago, I was in Copan with Elder Young from Idaho.  We were talking about where I might end up in the mission.  He said that there was this place in Zona Progresso where the zone leaders worked every now and then.  They even baptized a young woman there.  There were apparently a bunch of super stalwart members down there that just were dying for missionaries.  I didn´t ever go there, but did open the area and sent two missionaries six months ago.

With Elder Young in Copan

View from Apartment in Morazán

 

Flash forward until this last Wednesday.  I packed my bags.  I am thinking, what zone am I going to go to?  I was looking at the zone leaders and not many had changes... they don´t normally drop you to lower position in this mission, but this mission president is a fireball, and has been throwing curves like crazy.  I love it!  Elder Limatu goes to Morazán 2 with Elder Thalman who is trainer and opening area...

The Morazán 2 District

 

It was like a blur.  I wasn´t expecting to hear my name.  Not expecting to train again.  But here I am!  In that same area that Elder Young predicted over a year ago, and I´m opening half the area and training!  It´s so awesome!!!!

Morazán chapel

Morazán is the coolest!  Honestly, who cares about being a zone leader!?  I´ve always wanted to train again, and Elder Limatu is the man.  He´s really really smart, and totally into working.  No complaints.  And thank goodness for him, because I´m horrible at direction, but he´s like a human computer, so he pretty much already memorized the area.  Amazing really.

The members here are golden.  I love them all already, and I feel like since Wednesday that I´ve developed a relationship with all of them.  They are giving references up the wazoo, and were just working with all inactives.  We went with a young man on Saturday to all the inactives and on Sunday they tell me that 53 is a record for this place!  That´s great!  We just have to double that before I´m gone.  My goal is honestly to leave the area with an attendance of over 100, 10 elders (or active future elders), and a more centralized church house just for meetings (not the home of a member).  I honestly feel that we can and will do it.  I feel very called to be here.  It´s something I´ve truly never felt before in my mission until now.  I love it here.

We found Emil, a less active man in his twenties.  We shared with him about how we were sent by Christ to him to invite back to full activity in the church.  We explained that the Sabbath day was a commandment from the beginning.  He accepted and was in church Sunday.  Our branch pres. interviewed him after so that he can know what to do to repent and get the Melchizedek Priesthood in November.  He is the first of many priesthood holders that the Lord is preparing here.  It´s a miracle!  No one even knew who he was.  The young man who told us about him said that he was a lost cause that he´s visited a million times.  haha.

Elder Limatu is really just a sponge.  He´s from Guatemala and a major in electronics.  He was teaching teenagers mathematics before the mission, and is only 18!  Just a baby.  haha.  But the best comp ever.

I love you all.  Happy birthday Grampa!!!  You´re the best and I love you.

Elder Thalman

National Pride = no one in church

Hurrah for Independence... boo for iniquity.  Basically, because of the iniquity of this nation´s high schools, the whole zone died in church attendance.  They obligate the youth and children to march or they suspend them... I told them all to still go to church, but most of them didn´t listen.  But there were still lots there, and after church was cool.  The ward members all got together and split up to give our tons of invitations to ward conference next weekend to the in actives.  I was happy to see that.  Elder Ficklin and I both asked ourselves, "why don´t we do this every week?"

Hogan and Vanessa gave Elder Ficklin dinner (baleadas and cake) for his birthday.  I love being able to see the love of investigator families.  It gives me a lot of hope for their progression.  Hogan went to church with his dad who came into town from the Cayman Islands because he´s going to Tegucigalpa to visit the temple for the first time.  He´s a cool guy with a very strong testimony.  Hogan is really really tall, so it was funny to see him put his head on his short chubby dad´s shoulder during Sunday School.  

We had to move a ton of stuff into new houses for the areas in the zone that are being opened... it was horrible.  So hot.  From noon to 4pm carrying furniture and stuff up and down stairs.  I was so dead afterwards, and so sweaty and dirty.  We didn´t have time to eat lunch that day, and I got sick randomly in the stomach.  And yesterday and today, I´m super dooper sore!  I´m so old and out of shape!!!  I look it a little, but I feel it a lot.  I just want to eat a room full of vegetables and fruits.  haha.

President Klein called us last night and scared us to death.  He calls and says he wants to talk to both of us, so we put him on speaker.  He says, "well, I´m going to talk to you two about something that I don´t want to talk about... you two are going home."  I almost died when I heard that.  It freaked me out so bad.  My mind went racing, thinking, "what have I done!?"  Then he says, "you two are in the same group for December 10th, right?"  Wheww!!!!  We both thought he was sending us home like Wednesday!  haha.  He just talked to us about having a life plan ready and stuff.  What a guy.  He´s super funny even when he doesn´t want to be.  But that wasn´t funny... it was scary (until afterwards, then it was like nervous laughter).

Thanks for your love, and I´m looking forward to those missionary experiences that I know are coming my way soon! :)

Love,

Elder Thalman

Más... y más... y MÁS!

Please imagine a crazy scientist saying the title of this blog, and you´ve got a good idea of my mission president.  He cracks me up so bad.  He´s possibly the funnies man on the planet.  But basically that´s the goal.  The goal is more than last time.  Improvement.  I dig it.  So that´s what we did this week.

On Saturday, we went and visited pretty much everyone that we wanted to go to church on Sunday.  Some of them were like, "yeah, we´re going!"  So we shared something spiritual, reminded them that they were now committed with God to go, then left.  The ones that we like... "uh... we´ll see...." we just barged into their house and shared a quick run down of what it means to sanctify the sabbath day.  So that seemed to work well, because there we exactly 29 more people in church this week than last week, which is like dropping your 5k time a whole minute.  It was great!  And we have so many great investigators in church now!

Hogan and Vanessa are a couple that we´ve actually been looking for.  Hogan´s dad always calls us and tells us to go teach his son.  He´s a member from the USA, and really want´s his kid to get baptized.  I know that the missionaries had taught them before, but we lost them.  They moved, and we couldn´t find.  In the end, they landed right next door to where they were before.  haha, jokes on us.  But they pretty much were dying to hear the missionaries.  They expressed desires to get married and baptized and everything.  Alright!  That´s what I like to hear!  :P  And the best part was... they went to church!  Yipee church!  I love church!  Especially when people go!

Moncha´s whole family went as well.  They are progressing much better, and we found Franklin afterwards reading the Book of Mormon with his mom (who can´t see well enough to read), and explaining it to her verse by verse.  He seems to be wanting to get married a lot more now.  I think that he´s truly starting to repent in his heart.  I love that whole family so much!  We taught them in Salamaleco´s house after church, and Salamaleco really turned on his "most interesting man in the world mojo" on.  He´s so funny.  He´s like the only person in the galaxy who has seriously been involved in pretty much all religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Catholicism, etc).  He was born Catholic, and never renounced it ever, even though he like experimenting with other religious beliefs.  He´s a big fan of Gandhi.  But he explained to them that through reading the Book of Mormon like a mad-man, he´s 100% convinced that this truly is the very church of Jesus Christ (who was also a "revolutionary pacifist" as he says).  And of course he slipped in the details that he knows Japanese and he´s reading the Book or Mormon in English as well.  haha.  I love all of these stinkin´ people!!!!  Why do I love them so much!?!?  I´m gonna explode!

Anyway... being a missionary is way cooler than whatever you´re doing.  Unless you´re being a member missionary!  Which is also awesome.  (I consider Mother and Father among the member missionary work that we do).

I want to hear personal missionary experiences from all of you for my birthday.  that´s it.  but good ones!  

I love you!  (you know who you are... yes you) 

Elder Thalman

Like 240 days of Summer

So, that title is a movie reference... don´t see it, but I thought it was cleaver.

Summer is now a member of the church!  

We realized on Thursday that we had no paperwork in the municipality building to get them married, so we had to go nuts to get it all in.  Our cook and her husband ran us around all over in their dying truck to get the papers in on time.  There were several miracles in that journey.

    Hermano Carias is a real example to me of someone who resorts to prayer quickly.  I realized that I really needed to follow his example and become more prayerful.  A small thing, that I´m sure will help me dramatically improve the Spirit of this work.  

    So we got that all done and they got married on Friday!  Then we got the interview done, and he got baptized yesterday (Sunday).  My favorite, favorite, favorite part of being a missionary is after the confirmation.  You can just see the difference in their eyes.  They truly are new people.  The Holy Ghost really does purify and sanctify us.  No doubt about it.

 

 

I´ll send lot of cool pics, because I don´t feel like there´s that much more to write.

 

Elder Thalman, Summer, Elder Ficklin

Summer and his beautiful family.

Elder Marin. 1st. Peruvian to

                                                                          serve in   Honduras.

I love you all!

Elder Kent Thalman

Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise... I might only qualify for one of those.

This week I´ve been healthy!  Yipppeee!  We started working... and the members too!  they seriously just kicked it into gear this week.  We had lessons in the homes of members, left with the young men all week, and there were even visits going on without us even assigning them.  A couple of relief society sisters visited a family of 6 and did a birthday party for her.  She said that pretty much no one would have done anything for her on her birthday had it not been for them.  I´m filled with love and gratitude for those two sisters!  We even had less active young men going out with us, and recently activated members ask to do lessons in their homes.  So great!  I think that this next Sunday we start to see the results here.

Friday, we´re going to start teaching a super dynamic doctrine class, and a member wants to teach it for us.  He never ever ever has worked with any of the missionaries before.  We´re the first.  He loves computer graphics, so I talked to him about all his projects on Blender, and all that just made him love me.  And he wants my companion to teach him piano too.  haha.  They all think that we´re going to end the mission together, but that´s pretty much impossible.  haha, but we´re trying to convince them still to let us train a newbie together.  We´ll see...

The miracle this week was with Summer.  He´s been having problems getting his papers for marriage due to a divorce.  He´s been going to church and visiting with the missionaries for over 6 months.  This week we´ve been praying that he´ll be able to pay to get his partida de soltería, and then Friday he got paid!  No one was paying him even though he was working.  This was a major miracle because if it had come any later, costs for getting him married in September would have been more than double, and he´s pretty poor.  But now he´s really excited to get married and then baptized this Saturday.  I know that he´ll be a great member and that he´ll magnify his priesthood.  And soon he and his wife (reactivated member) will be able to get sealed with their little girl.  We really love him.

I love you all, and hope that you all share the gospel every single day!  I´m never going to stop being a missionary!

Love, 

Elder Thalman