La Catracha, la nueva mexicana y la chapina‏

The last few weeks I´ve been saying "your mom..." a lot just because I know it irritates Hna Diaz and we laugh about it. The other day I making a bunch of your mom jokes and she was saying "ahh. Presidente Klein! Cambiame!!" So I said, "Tu me amas. Tu me amas y lo sabes." ( You love me and you know it.) Hernana Diaz just looked at me and said, "your mom lo sabe!" I´ve never been more proud.

I got gripe this week. I don´t remember what that is in english... I think it´s the flu. My nose was all stuffy, my throat hurt and it wasn´t fun. I was thinking about how much better it is to be sick when I´m at home and I can sit with a blanket and my mommy will bring me apple sauce. But I can´t do that here. I have to go out in the heat and find, teach, and baptize. It really wasn´t that bad, I mean, I didn´t throw up in the grocery store like Sierra did. ;) Zing!

According to the Republic of Honduras I am a man. My companions won´t stop laughing about it. I was showing them my awful picture on my Honduran residency card and Hna Stott noticed that her card has an f for feminina and my card has an m for masculino!!! I never noticed before because I think it was m for mujer (woman). The office Elder who filled out my paper work owes me big!!!!!

We were teaching this jewish lady (the only latin jew I´ve ever met) and I wasn´t thinking and said Can we sing a christmans hymn? Face palm. She then explained to us that although she doesn´t celebrate christmas we were welcome to sing a christmas song... she then explained to us that christmas trees are satanic. It was intersting.

There is this family with two teenaged sons. They told us that one is 17 and one 16, and that the one who is 16 is going to complete 17 this month. I instantly did the math and realized that if this is true they were only born 5 months apart... That makes no sense. So my companions and I went home and looked at the baptisimal registro for their dad to find their birthdays. We did the math and realized that the one who is 17 is actually 18!!! We have no idea why he is telling us the wrong age.

There is this christian church right by our house and they play their music really loud like all the churches here, except the catholic. We were in the middle of planning and I was singing along to their evangelical music. Hna Diaz laughed and said, "You know the words??" I said, "Hermana I´ve lived here a year. Yes I know all the wrods to all these christian rock songs." Then Hermana Stott (who has 15 months) said, "it´s true" Then start to clap and jam out to the christian rock. 

On saturday we visited one of my favorite investigators and I almost cried because she told us she specifically went and washed all her laundry that day so she would have time to go to church on sunday. I was so excited! ...she didn´t come to church yesterday. Thus is the life of a missionary.

We had interviews with Presidente Klein this week. It was great. The first thing he said to me was, "I forgot to bring you what you know I was going to bring you." Which means I didn´t get my traditional bag of twizzlers, but Jesus said to gorgive everyone, so it´s all good. I asked him where we are with opening Yoro. He said there are two missionaries he thinks of when he thinks about opening Yoro: me and Elder Moffit. So I was excited but then he explained. That although in the last year the mission has had 1,000 baptisms with 60% retention we aren´t seeing 600 more people in sacrament meeting (which means 600 people went inactive) and the area seventies don´t want to open Yoro if the church isn´t truly growing here. I still have fe. One day I´ll make it to Yoro.

I love you all. Don´t get dengue.

Love,

Hermana Odekirk

Firstly, everyone who can look it up I need to know if the french fries at McDonalds are actually potatoes or if they are yuca. Because we were all talking before DIstrict meeting about how we hate yuca and Elder Navas claims that the french fries are yuca not potatoes.

Being in trio has been. Good it is super fun, but it is also harder. Teaching doesn't flow as smoothly bacause you don't always know who is going to speak next, but it's all good. We are working both areas now so our area is super huge. We are still trying to get our schedule organized so that we aren't wasting tons of time walking all over the place. This week will be better.

On wednesday night (it's important to note that it was already dark) we contacted this lady. We were teaching her but she said she had to go down the street to watch the store so that her daughter could go run some errands. She said we could go with her and keeping teaching in the store. We went with her and when we got to the store we realized it was a liqour store!!! I thought, are we allowed to be in a liquor store? She told us to sit in the chairs in front of the store and that she was going to bring us juice. She brought a carton of juice and said she was going to get us some paper cups. We laughed until we cried at the fact that we were drinking Sula orange juice at the liquor store. Diaz wanted to take pictures but we told her taking out her camera with all these drunk people around wasn't the best idea. The lady came back with paper cups that had the Salva Vida logo on them!!! Salva Vida is the biggest beer company in Honduras. Hermana Stott started telling me to hide the cups in my bag so no one would see them. We were talking about whether we should just leave when this super drunk guy came up and tried to talk to us. We ran inside left the lady a pamflet and told her we would come back another day. IT was crazy, and scary, and super funny.

A lady taught me to use an old fashioned sewing machine. It is really hard to make the machine go only forward and not back and forth. 

Stake conference was this weekend. It was really good. Noris, one of my investigators who still isn't married, came and she really liked it. Pepe my convert came with his older brother Ezequiel, who is an investigator. 

On saturday the bus wasn't going back to Santa Rita until after the priesthood session so all the women just to sit around and wait. We were in Progreso so Stott, Diaz and I went to Little Ceasars!! Woo Do you know how long it had been since I had eaten little Ceasars? I don't even know!! It was so good. Then we bought two more pizzas and took them to the church for all the other women. I love Little Ceasars and it's super cheep. I am totally going to eat it more when I get home.

Right now I am in Progreso. We crashed the activity of the zone here. We went to a super pretty garden up on the mountain and played games and ate sandwiches. It was fun.

These last couple of weeks I've been thinking a lot about repentance and about it is our purpose here on the earth. We aren't perfect beings but we are trying to be. Repentance is the way to do that. When we have faith in Christ and his Atonement, repent, are batized, receive the gift of the Holy Ghost and endure to the end we can return to live with our Heavenly Father. Sometimes as missionaries we think that baptism changes people's lives, but it doesn't. It the preparation- the repentance that changes people. Baptism (or partaking of the Sacrament after you're baptized) is just the last step to repentance. Everything we do in the church: read the scriptures, go to church are simply just ways to help us live the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Love ya'll. Have a great week. Enjoy the "white death" that I love so much.

Love,

Hermana Odekirk

Trios

One of the hermanas I live with is from Choluteca Honduras and has been here waiting for her visa for Mexico. She got the call today and the secrataries are coming to pick her up so she can go to Mexico tomorrow. That means that her companion Hermana Stott is giong to be in a trio with us until the end of the change in december when they can get another hermana in here. This will be first time in trio and my first and probably only  time with an American companion. I´m exicted for this new experience.

Before my mission when I used to babysit my nephews I used to measure time by how many episodes of Mickey Mouse club house I had watched, "I´ve been here for three episodes of MMCH so Katie should be home in about two more MMCH. Last week my mom wrote me and told me that my family went to go see the third Hunger Games movie. I´ve now decided when people ask how much time I have in the mission I´m just going to say, "Two Hunger Games movies have come out in my time in the mission."

I´ve been feeling a little frustrated this week. I feel like I´m finally becoming the missionary I should be, I´m talking to more people than ever, I´m challanging more people than ever, I´m more obedient than ever and yet I´m not seeing any more fruits. I´m seeing less. No one is even close to getting baptized. Keep Swimming.

I made a goal this month to in PMG Charity and Love everyday. As couple days ago I read it but didn´t feel like I really learned anything new. Then I read in lesson three about repentance. It talks about how repentance changes how we see God, ourselves, and the world. Repentance helps us feel more love for God, oursleves, and the world, or sea more charity for God, oursleves, and the world. 1 Peter 4:8

I have eaten 321 baleadas. I love beleadas so much. 

I got  a bunch of music from my ZL and one of the songs is You Are Loved by Josh Groban. Any of my old roommates will be able to tell you that I love that song and that I cannot sing it quietly. Whenever we are listening to music in the house and that song comes on I have to turn it up and sing as loud as I can. Hermana Diaz keeps laughing at me. 

That´s all folks. I love you. Listen to You Are Loved, watch Hunger Games, cahllenge someone to be baptized.

Love,

Hermana Odekirk

1 year, "miracles" and spirits‏

This week was really good. It is an interesting experience to be training for the second time because this is a completely different experience. I´m having to apply Teach People, Not Lessons in a new way, because how I an training Hermana Diaz is not the same way I did with Hermana Andujar. 

I recieved the following email from my lovely old roommate, Amy: "Sister Odekirk!!

I can't believe you just hit your year mark!! Remember when we went to Mission prep together and you couldn't even out your papers in for like a year?!" Why yes, I do remember when the teacher asked me where I was going on my mission and I told him that I couldn´t even start my papers for another eight months. This is crazy. That was two years ago.

Yes, I hit my year mark this week. It´s weird because sometimes I think about what I was doing a year ago: finishing my first semester of school, or that super crazy day I found out I was going to Honduras. But now when I think about what I was doing a year ago I was in in the CCM.

Also, I just realized the other day that Abby Spencer and Melanie Stark and all those girls are now Laureles!!! I was the weirdest moment of my life. I remember when they were first years at girls camp and taught them how to make knots. We are all getting super old and it´s werid.

It´s been cold this week and I´m saying that without the quotation marks because I think it was actually a little cold. I´ve been using my sweaters a lot. It has been raining a ton, we are walking through pure mud all day long. 

I was worried because my convert Pepe told us he wasn´t going to be able to come to church this week, but when we were waiting for sacrament meeting to start Pere walked up and shook my hand! And then 20 minutes later he passed the sacrament to me. Nothing is better than seeing converts use their priesthood. 

A couple of weeks ago Elders Marsh and Navas from La Sarrosa were walking through Santa Rita (because Sarrosa is so small there is no bank so they have to come here) and a man flagged them down because he wanted to hear more about the church. They called me so we could go talk to the guy because the elders didn´t know whose area the guy lives in. We took down his dats and told him the zls would contact him that night, since he lives in their area. This man came to church the next week and paid to go on the temple trip even though he couldn´t go inside and has a baptism date for the coming week. This man is a miracle!!!! BUT the story continues! dun dun dun Turns out the man is already a member!!!!! He got baptized about thirty years ago! He doesn´t know that we all know.  We are pretty sure he is pretending to be an investigator so he can try and get some money but we have no idea. I can´t wait to see how this all plays out. 

We were talking with one of my favorite investigators, Rosa, and she told us she would have been baptized a month ago if she didn´t have to get married. I cried, because her husband wants to get married and they have the money to do it, she just simply feels like she is too old to get married. She is just being stubburn. I´ve seen so much change in Rosa and I´ve seen that this gospel and her family bring her such joy she just feels like getting married is only for young people. The mission is the most frustrating experience of my life.

In Gospel Principles yesterday we were in lesson 41 about the Spirit World and I read that our spirits all have the form of adults. When a child dies when their spirit get to the spirit world it will be an adult. I looked up and said, "huh, I didn´t know that." and the sister that was teaching the class, "that´s why this is my class, not your class, my class." IT was super funny, and super facinating.

Also, in that class a guy was asking how we know if we are worthy to go to Celestial Kingdom and it turned into long conversation about how we aren´t perfect but we need to be perfect and it was really complicated, but the point is I thought about something really important during the conversation. A friend once write to me, "In order to get into the Celestial Kingdom, and live with God, we have to be perfect. (Or at least perfectly clean, maybe not perfectly developed.) So in order to enter the temple, which is a type of the Celestial Kingdom, we have to be perfect, right? NO! We have to be repentant. Basically, the point of this idea was that living a perfect earthly life is actually living a repentant life.

God never asks us to do any certain thing all at one time, it's all gradual. Especially when He asks us to be perfect. So when I'm actively and constantly repenting, I am fulfilling that commandment to "Be ye... perfect."" 

 God doesn´t ask us to be perfect, He asks to be perfectly repentant. I think about this email a lot, almost everyday, every time I want to sleep in just five more minutes or I think a not Christlike thought about someone. I just need to be repentant. That´s why God sent Savannah Odekirk to this earth. 

I hope you all have a great week. Wear some jeans and super cute boots! Because I can´t. Eat some ice cream. Repent.

Love,

Hermana Odekirk