First Baptism Story

Dear Mom and everybody,

That's awesome about Kristi!!! Not going to lie it really stunk having to wait till today to find out about her. But I am relieved to hear that she is doing fine. Make sure she knows I was praying for her.

Haha I'm glad the kids had fun with the pinata. I actually got to see them made here in honduras. It was fun to see. My first comp went home on wednesday. thats when we had changes. And I got my comp and he is from...California!!!!! Yes, they sent me another North American so I still havent had the whole learn Spanish or die, but the Spanish is coming along alright. I can carry on conversations pretty good now. It was annoying at first. I feel like he thinks I should know it all right away, and if I ask him for help then he tells me like I'm stupid. I'm going to talk to him about that one lol, But he is fun to talk to. Oh and he told me that we CAN use Skype for when we call home on Christmas so I am going to look into that more:)

So I don't think I told you the whole story about my first baptism here. I got to baptize the three youth that we taught. Thing about them...They lived in the house that we were trying to contact my second here when I got robbed. When finally decided to go back two weeks later they let us in and said that they were waiting for missionaries to baptize them and they had been to church a whole bunch of times!! It was good to see some success from perseverance :)

Well That's all for this week,

Talk to you all next week:)

Love,

Elder Neiswender

Hablo Espanol? Almost.

Dear Mom and everyone else,

Well this week has been full of ups and downs. We had two more baptisms, a father and his daughter, this past weekend which makes 8 for this change! It was awesome! We had a cake because it was the birthday of one of the people we baptized. It was his first ever birthday party and he is 53 years old. I know crazy, I remember having a birthday party when I was 9. I love talking with him and his family, I can actually understand them now and talk back with them. It was great because on Friday we did their baptismal interviews, but obviously I couldn't be with them in the interview so I had to just sit outside with the person that wasn't being interviewed at the time. It was fun, I was able to talk with them and when I ran out of things to say in Spanish i figured might as well read in the Book of Mormon instead of just sitting there in awkward silence. It was fun reading the Book of Mormon with native Spanish speakers so that they could help my pronounciation. It was a lot of fun.

Now I would like to apologize for anything negative about the people that I might have said last week. I have a companion who...let's just say he is extremely racist. But he won't admit it. He sits and tells me how proud he is to be an American and then insults the Hondurans for being proud to be Hondurans. He tells me at least ten times a day (no exageration there...honest) how much the people here "suck". He takes all the insults that people say on the street as a personal insult. The kids here always ask if we want coffee as their big joke. The other day Durrant snapped and went up to the kid and said yes he would like some, then he said to the kid "Oh that's right you can't get me coffee because you can't even afford dinner for tonght." I just about hit him when he said that. Then he turned to me and told me not to let the insults bother me. lol...ok? I try my best to tune out all his negative comments about the people and the country, but having to listen to it everyday for six weeks is rather difficult and sometimes (like last week) it gets to me. I love it here and am trying like crazy to earn respect from the people and to love them all at the same time. It works pretty well, especially since I can play the piano:)

Now to answer your questions.

Yes I am getting better at understanding people. Still not amazing at it yet, but I'm getting better. Oh and we found out that we don't have a rat. We have a mouse. That's why the rat trap that is for big rats didn't go off on this little mouse, and of course they don't sell regular mouse traps here. Just big rat traps lol. Oh and I got that first package:) That picture made me and my comp laugh so hard! It was great getting it! Thank you! oh and the chocolate was really good. I have almost run out of the candy that Kristi sent me in the MTC so it was nice to get that candy.

Well that's about it for this week. Until next week family:) Thanks to everyone that wrote:)

Love,

Elder Travis Neiswender

Tom and Jerry

Dear Mom and everybody,

Thanks for the list of all the people that you are sending this too. It´s good to hear that BYU was finally able to win a game and the FSU beat Miami!! I haven´t gotten the package yet, but we don´´t get mail until tuesdays usually. It doesn´t quite make sense to me lol. oh well. I´ll keep you posted on it. As for the internet time, yes I have to pay but it is way cheap. We are talking for 2 hours it´s about a dollar. So yeah it would be easier and faster to just write through emails. That´s weird to think that David is going to be singing with the Tab Choir. Some of the missionaries down here that I know were here when he came and did a special fireside for the missionaries down here. My wrist is doing great. I can still play the piano in church and everything, it´s just when I bend it back real far that it hurts more than it should. San Pedro is way green, but to be honest it´s hard to apprciate all the green when all the streets are covered with garbage and you have to watch your step or there is a great chance of stepping in garbage. It´s not on the beach, it´s actually in a valley so I do get to see mountains, but they just aren´t the same as Utah mountains.

The people...they really like to insult gringos that can´t speak Spanish. Luckily I can´t understand all that they say, but my companion tells me enough of what they say. But I am still trying to love them:)

As for the subject line of this email Tom and Jerry. That´s really how I fell right now. We have a rat in our house that we found last Monday. I actually haven´t seen him but my comp did. We bought a rat trap thursday when we were at the store. however The first night that rat just ate the bread and peanut butter right off the trap. The next night we put a piece of hot dog on it. And the same thing happened. The last night we tested the trap by throwing little pieces of soap at it and it worked great on the soap. So we set the trap with more hot dog. When we woke up the peice of hot dog was gone and the trap still didn´t go off. So now it´s rat 3 humans 0. We just can´t catch this rat lol.

Well that´s about all that´s happened this week. ill keep you posted on the package.

Love,

Elder Neiswender

Ouch

Dear Mom and everyone else,

Things are going well down here. Not a whole heck of a lot has happened the past week. Me and my comp and another two baptisms. It was awesome because they were baptised by their family members.

Yes I did get to watch all of conference and in English too!!! It was great to be able to hear all that they had to say and understand it because all of the meetings that we have down here are in Spanish so I can't quite understand everything they are saying. Just the basics of what they are talking about.

I'm going to take a wild shot in the dark and say thay BYU isn't going to be going to the Las Vegas Bowl this year...Just a wild guess:) Maybe I should come back because they seemed to do pretty good when I was there;) Oh well maybe a miracle will happen and we will beat the ranked Utah Utes and TCU.

Quick question to Dad. They redid the IMAX screen late last April. So are they replacing it again? thats wierd of them lol. I thought I saw Adam in that MTC choir but I wasn't sure because I thought that he had left the MTC already. Chris was in the Guatamala MTC so he didn't get the chance to sing in the choir but I don't know how excited he would have been to sing in another choir:)

Thanks for forewarding the emails from Ryan and Grant to me. it was good to hear about them.

A quick note to Elder Ryan Horne...I'm in Honduras and Elder Chris Horne is in Guatamala:)

Could you send me a list of all the people you are sending my emails to and I will tell you if there are any others that would be interested? Thanks:)

Ok so time for the funny yet really painful story. Between the Saturday morning and afternoon session of conference me and another Elder were sent to get food for everybody. As we walked out of the church I saw what thought I would never see in Honduras. A real basketball hoop. I couldn't resist so I checked to make sure it was just me and the other missionary, then got a nice running start and jumped to see if I could still touch the rim. I GOT IT. I can still touch the rim! But oh man I haven't jumped like that since the first week in the MTC! I landed...lost my balance and fell down. At first I didn't think anything was wrong. My wrist hurt a little bit but not much. So we went through the day and by the end of priesthood session my hand hurt so freaking bad. I figured "great I think I sprained my hand" First thought was to get home and put ice on it...One problem with that is that ice doesn't stay frozen very long here! So thank you mom for making me take that bottle of Ibeprofen with me. It helped a little bit. It was still the longest night so far because no matter where I put my wrist the entire night, it would start hurting five minutes later. Oh yeah and we didn't have anything to wrap it in either. So I had to wait till the zone nurse got to conference Sunday after the first session to get it wrapped up. Luckily it is only just sprained. She wrapped it up nice and tight and after a few minutes my fingers started turning purple. She said it was just cause I was cold (Air conditioning in the Church:)) She finally decided it was too tight when I told her I couldn't feel my thumb anymore. lol. But now it's wrapped up nice and not cutting off the circulation:)

well that's all for this week:) I'll write more next week.

Love

Elder Travis Neiswender