I'm grateful to be here in Tela, with the best companion ever!

 

 Today is officially my 2 month anniversary on the mission! Pretty crazy... This week has been full of all kinds of emotions! Today we went fishing out on the pier and only caught shrimp, but it was way fun and I always love going to the beach! This week a Hermana taught us how to make Baleadas and fed us dinner. I ate a fish! All of it, even its eyeball!! Also there are tons of crabs here and they are always scratching at our windows! We were walking one day and everything was normal, when we heard a strange banging noise 
slowly getting louder and louder. I was starting to freak out, then realized it was the rain on the tin roofs. We always have a 20 second warning when it's going to start raining. We had one lesson that was in a humble home and we were outside yelling trying to hear each other. It started thundering and lightning without any warning, a second between each other. You could feel the thunder in your chest and there we were sitting under a metal roof. What an adventure! We started laughing a couple times, but it's all worth it.

During sacrament meeting, I had to direct the music. The conductor normally sings the first line to give the right tone because we don't have a piano. Everything was all good until we had to sing a certain Sacrament song that I had no idea how it went. I definitely butchered it and everyone was all confused and giving me weird faces. The entire song was a disaster and I couldn't stop laughing. After Sacrament meeting everyone came up to me and shook my hand. The people here are so nice and understanding! Everyone was laughing with me and it was hilarious.

In the beginning of the week, my companion and I were super excited and ready to baptize everyone we came in contact with... well long story short, we had to drop 3 investigators cause they weren't progressing and felt like the Gospel isn't something they need. Not going to lie, there were a couple times when we walked away from a door in slow motion with our heads down and I sang the Charlie Brown song. One morning our companion study was all about faith in finding people and being directed by the spirit, we felt so much better. Afterward, we were trying to find a reference and his name is Fausto. So we were knocking on every door trying to find him and we started giving up and walking away when I saw a cute old man gardening and I waved and asked how he was. He immediately got up and started walking towards us and it turned out to be Fausto!!! OOOhhhh, it was glorious. Miracle of the week. He is awesome and loves to joke around and is really receptive to what we have been teaching him! 

One morning my companion told me that I was going to ask an investigator to be baptized and it was all me. I was getting so pumped, thinking and practicing what I was going to say and it got to our lesson and the timing was perfect, the Spirit was there, my heart was pounding and I asked her if she wanted to be baptized. She said,¨ Ohhhh, uuhhhh I was already baptized when I was 12.¨ I have no idea what my face looked liked, but my companion had a good laugh about it afterwards. It turns out that Gladis (is her name) was baptized really fast and only went to church for one week and was forgotten. She doesn't remember anything. but we have amazing discussions with her. We learned that our focus needs to be on reminding the nonactives the covenants they made and helping them feel the spirit again, it's not forcing them to come back to church. By helping them remember it will make them want to come back on their own. I also learned that I'm not here to baptize as many people as I can. Everyone needs time to truly convert and make the changes in their lives. 

I'm grateful to be here in Tela, with the best companion ever! I love this Gospel and I love learning about it more and more each day that I get the opportunity to study it. It truly is perfect. Thanks for your support and I love you all! The church is true!

Love, 

Hermana Sherman