Week 70 - Two more in the Books and a Miracle in Honduras

Hey everyone, great week here in the Dirty Hon. Just a quick shout out to my H-town people, for the Texans and Rockets on a good run, but mainly to the A-STROS baby!! Been a fan since I was born, through the horrible 100 loss seasons, and I am just proud to be a Houstonian for sure.

We had 2 more baptisms this week. (Junior 24, and Rosalba 45, Son and Mother, the two I talked about the other week. ) Hermana Rosalba is a success story. Only 2 short years ago she was living in the streets as a crack addict, no job, no money, her kids were taken from her because she couldn't provide, and her life had no purpose. Almost exactly 3 years ago, two elders were able to find her door, and help her be able to fix her life little by little. Shes been sober for more than 2 years, and for a matter of different circumstances, she never could be baptized. That is until this last weekend, Her with her son, whipped completely clean of all the mistakes in their lives. "Born again of water and spirit" as the scriptures say. The testimony she bore after was full of joy and true tears of happiness of how through the Gospel she has changed her life. Its a story of how no matter how far off the path we have gone, we can always return back with the help of our loving Heavenly Father, and the Atonement of his Son, Jesus Christ.

Another Miracle happened in our area. We received a reference from a guy in the United States for a lady and her 3 kids that live in our area. We decided, okay, let go check it out, and maybe we can share the Boom of Mormon with her. Turns out we didn't have to introduce anything, because SHE HAD ALREADY READ THE ENTIRE THING, along with Doctrine and Covenants, and wrote in a huge journal all of her impressions that came to her as she read. Never has talked to missionaries before, but just downloaded the app. She explained to us about all the negative comments she had heard about the church, and was curious. She didn't want to "judge" or "condemn" without investigating. She decided to read the entire Book of Mormon in 2 months. My comp and I just sat there amazed. Tonight we have another visit with her, so pray for them that everything goes right! The Book of Mormon is TRUE, if you have a question about it, read it.


Love you all

Elder Butler

Week 69 - LOL Right

Hola people, hope its been a good  week for y'all, its been a great one for me! Lots of blessings and lots of work being done, but im definitely happy!  This week a lot of miracles happened:

We have been working with a family, who have been investigating the church and coming to church for more than 10 years. WELL, when I got to my area a few months back, I made the goal with them to for real for real get married and then baptized. The Wife was all about baptism, but the husband really had a hard time accepting that Joseph Smith was a Prophet. He believed that Gordon B. Hinkley was a prophet of God (I know, it doesn't make sense), but it all came down to reading the book of Mormon with him and now long story short, They are gonna get married and baptized this week. Ten long years of many missionary efforts, and its finally all coming together. The credit goes to The Book of Mormon, another testament of Christ and the power and peace it brings to the human heart.

Through focusing on purely reading the book of Mormon with people and sharing about it has brought us many miracles and progressing people. When People tell me they are from other religions, I ask them "That's awesome, you believe in Christ then! Have you ever heard the story about the time when Christ ministered in the American Continent?" Some of them tell me for sure, from the "bible", which they obviously haven't read the bible so I politely explain that the bible was written in the middle east, and The Book of Mormon in the American Continents. Some people respond no, and are very interested to hear. One guy was very confused because he thought Christopher Columbus was the first human being to come to the Americas, and that off the Mayas,Incas, Aztecs, came after him. (That one was pretty funny tbh).

Through sharing the book of Mormon, we are gonna end with 4 baptisms (hopefully, pray for us!) this week, 1 the next week, 1 after that, and 3 more in December for right now. I don't say this in a way to say im a great missionary, or a great teacher, because I am neither of these things. I actually fault a lot of things, but what I am is a representative of Christ, and a messenger of the truth. The Truth is simply the truth. For that reason I am here serving in Honduras, to help,  but also to bring the people of the world its truth, and we can find that through the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon.

Love you all, you tha bestttttt

Elder Butler

Week 68 - Rainbows and a model pic

Whats up people!! Its been nice and rainy in Honduras recently, and its great! Unlike the rains of may that come, these rains are cold\cooler rains, so its pretty awesome. Even though I'm usually pretty soaked because I don't pack a jacket or umbrella with me because when I leave the house its perfectly sunny, I try to never complain because for a few months there was no rain and all of the aquifers were empty and there were people without water for weeks, some months, which normally comes once a week so they can fill up a big tub to use to bathe and wash clothes by hand during the week. Its definitely a blessing for sure.

This week A couple of cool things happened, saw a rainbow, tricked a couple of hooligans that asked me if i wanted coffee and I responded "Yes please give it to me, where is it, quit asking me and then lying because I don't see any coffee anywhere". They asked if I was for real, and I said yes (It was like 9:30 at night). They got surprised at my response, and they said "hold up wait right here" and I was like yep hurry go get it, and they ran off. Normally I could have contacted them, but I trolled them and walked up the huge hill to our house. Pretty funny stuff.

Saw this guy wearing McCullough Highlanders Football shirt from my junior high school in The Woodlands, TX! Crazy! Loved it!

We did some pretty hard core service this week, carrying up bags full of wet sand up the stairway to heaven literally, 169 steps. All uneven, some taller, mostly made of rocks and super wet. It was honestly Awesome! I felt like it was a hard push me to the limits workouts that I did in high school, but so much endurance to the legs. You get tired of walking up without anything, let alone 100 lbs bags of dirt.

Today I'm going to talk about the parable of Anton. Elder Anton is a new Elder in the Mish, from a tiny little village in the middle of nowhere in Guatemala, and grew up working poor poor farms, and spoke a tribal language that's not even Spanish. Crazy. Well this kid is smaller than me, shorter and stouter (I know right, shorter than me???) Well all though he was smaller, he was the one taking a little more of dirt in his bag. We were doing a system of carrying the bags up 3\4 the way to the smaller elders who couldn't do as much, and normally we were about dead by that point. Little by little the smaller elders that were helping up were having their legs give out on them. Well Elder Anton saw this, and decided that he wasn't gonna stop, but was gonna push his way up to the top. Me and another Elder saw his courage and strength, and it hit us in our pride a little after we just had set our bags down. When got a burst of motivation when we saw someone smaller than us push that hard, and we picked up our bags and continued behind him. In sports that's the person I always have striven to be, and is the person I want to be in my life. Thanks to a new missionary, that came from a humble background, he gave me the example to continue on. What do we learn from the parable of Anton?? BE AN EXAMPLE, and others will follow. Instead of focusing on the difficulties in your life right now, look for people that are suffering more than you are, and help them!

This is surely a Christ like example that we may all follow, and it will help our capacity to love and be happy grow as well! Christ is the center to all happiness people, This is just an eternal truth! Love you all!

Week 67 - The Son of Man passed under them all, are we greater than he?

Whats up guys, dudes, and everyone else,

This week was another dope one, full of crazy people, weird experiences, ups and downs, but especially more ups! And like every week, full of lots of beans and tortillas.

I got a new comp, named Elder Ramirez from Guatemala, who is 24 and has 9 months in the Mish. Hes a pretty cool guy, and we get along great. Only being 24, he was orphaned as a teenager, losing both of his parents, and the guy basically raised his little sister with no support from anyone. He got baptized at 20, and now is my comp, so we are hittin' the road running!

Conference was great, I think personally Saturday Morning session was my fav, but it was all good. (For those who don't know, we believe in a living God who continues to reveal his Gospel through Prophets and Apostles, and that in today's time we have living prophets and revelation from our Heavenly Father!) Pretty cool how there was a huge emphasis on what our Focus should be: Christ, and Joy. They are two things intertwined. Its something that I've been able to witness personally in my time here in Honduras. Through learning how to love as Christ loved, and putting him in the center of our lives can help up find real and true joy in our lives, even through trial, tribulation, and suffering.

This week was a little stressful. I had someone in my Zone who was mad at me or offended in some way, and threw many efforts of buying him food, and apologizing, still felt like I failed to gain his pardon. Another opportunity came where I got the chance and opportunity to exercise my patience and listen to someone rant for an hour an a half about how every person in her life had offended her in some way, and how the world owed her so much. I just sat and listened, and apologized, but it wasn't sufficient for her. That same day while teaching a recently married couples, 2 young missionaries with zero marriage experience, we were put in the situation to try and counsel their problems that have happened in their relationship. Our answer was Christ, but half of the party didn't want to accept. All of this negative commotion really had me down on a rainy day. I decided to pray. Heavenly Father, I know the happiness this gospel brings, but why do I feel like my efforts are wasted, why wont anyone listen. Then I prayed for strength to carry on. I have come to realize that in life, and through studying and listening to conference, that in life we all pass for difficulties, tragedies, most of the time being no fault of our own. Why does God allow bad things to happen to his children if he loves us? The answer is that we do not see ourselves through Gods eyes, and how he is shaping up and forming us to be the people he wants us to be. Experience is required for us to progress and grow. Our body does not grow without much pain, exercise, falling down. Its a process, we dont see what our potential is looking in the mirror BEFORE we do all the exercise and soreness. The same is with our Spirit. We pass for these things to grow, and the perfect thing is that if we trust in Christ, he can lift the weights and cargo with us every step, "making our burdens light and easy".

I know these things are true personally. God has shown me. In my hard moments in the mission, we were blessed with a guy named Junior who prayed, and has decided with surety that he would like to be baptized this month. Pretty dope.

Love you all, sorry for the short letters, Ill try and share more experiences next week!

Elder Butler