Dear mom and everyone else,
First things first. I feel very ashamed by my family. They go camping, have a fire, and hotdogs...And what do they do???? They grill the hot dogs instead of roasting them over a fire!!! lol. I love you family. Sounds like you had a fantastic week filled with lots of fun activities. The week here was pretty bland. I pretty much already knew that I am going to leave Santiago on Wednesday because I have been here six months. But now it is official. Next email I send will be from a spot of Honduras where I have never been.
I have a fear and I{m pretty sure that it is a fear held by any missionary that ever cared for anybody in an area that he has been in, that after I leave, the people that I have come to love will fall away. It is a pretty big problem here in Honduras. The missionaries make great friends have lots of baptisms, but when the missionary leaves, their converts slowly fade away into inactivity. So since I have been blessed to have a pretty good idea that I was leaving beforehand (unlike the last two times I got transferred as complete surprises) I have been busting my brains out trying to think of a way to keep this from happening to the people that I have come to love. After much soul searching, studying, and praying, pondering and a lot more ...ings, I finally came up with the answer which was monumentaly...simple. It{s what we learn in missionary training 101. Day one in boot camp. The very key of our religion. We had convince these people of the importance of the Book of Mormon. Easier said than done in a group of people where to them the BOOk of Mormon is a mere side note to the Bible and other books. Heck these people would read any other LDS book they could get their hands on except the Book of Mormon. But after 6 solid weeks of shoving (I mean inviting) The Book of Mormon into their lives...I think it might have worked. At least with one person. Every week we hold a class for the new preisthood holders in the branch aka all the priesthood holders in the branch and allow them to ask questions and then help them understand things. This last week Elder Beus and I had a wizbang Book of Mormon class ready using the whole arch and the keystone example, and were even going to have one of the members try to prove our religion right without the Book of Mormon. So we get to the class on Wednesday and we got a grand total of 3 priesthood members. But we did it anyway.
Oddly enough the brother who volunteered to try to prove the church right was Natalio Paz. A convert of 11 months but had just been married and baptized that week. Complete stud. Anyway he gets up and is talking to me about how this is the true church because of charity, love, and he even used the church organization and everything except what we were looking for. Poor guy, I thought he was going to cry. Finally he mentioned in passing the Key. So giving him a break I let him end there. After that we explained the importance of the Book of Mormon to these 3 men. We invited them to put the Bible down for a time and read the Book of Mormon instead. Leaving the meeting we did not think that it had worked. Then two days later, Chino, great guy, comes up to us and starts asking us questions that he had during his first two days of reading the Book of Mormon. He said that he has put the Bible down for a time (short time becuase the Bible is still important) and is reading the Book of Mormon. Hopefully he will keep reading, but I won{t be there to find out.
I love you family, and give you once again that there is a God, and He is a Loving God, and that there is a book that can change your life called the Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ. Read it. If you already have...read it again....and again....and again.
Until my next area,
Elder Neiswender
