It is 70 degrees and raining in Honduras. I brought one hoodie on the mish and ocassionaly I wear it around the house when it´s cold and today is the first day of my whole mission I¨m wearing it outside, with the rain jacket my mom mailed me last year. Two years ago in Logan I went outside in 32 degrees because I felt so warm and now it´s 70 and I feel cold. Yep. Bienvenida a Honduras.

This morning I had some extra time so I was using the coloring book my mommy mailed me. There are these pages where it gives you a picture of a reindeer and you have to copy it but I wasn´t doing them because I can´t draw, but then I realized I´m always saying I want to learn to draw!!!! What am I doing??? So, I copied that picture of Rudolph! and you know what? It turned out really well. :) Guess who has two thumbs and is completing her purpose on purpose on his earth by learning and growing. This girl.

In the liahona in Decmber there is a story about a potatoe for the teacher and it is REALLY good. You all need to go read it and then take action.

Last monday in our emergency meeting Presidente Klein talked about how we need two relationships: love God and love our projimo (other people). He explained that loving God is faith and loving your projimo is charity. I thought it was cool, but then it got even cooler on thursday when this member was singing the primary song "How could the father show the world..." and in spanish it says "what does He ask of us? Faith and charity." Boom. That´s what God wants of us: we strengthen with Him and love others. It´s so simple.

Hermana Holdaway goes to BYU and the other day asked me who BYU´s rival is. She didn´t know. So here is my thing, if you´re going to be a cougar, BE  cougar. If you going to be an aggie BE an aggie. If you´re giong to be mormon BE  mormon. If you´re going to be a catholic BE a catholic. I don´t care what you do with your life, but do it right. Do it with your whole heart, might, mind, and strength. If you go to BYU learn that your rival is the Utah Utes.

We went to Turjillo on divisions this week and it was great! I love Trujillo. On the way there this preacher got on the bus and started preaching (which is normal here in Honduras). He said a lot of things I agree with. He came by asking for money so we gave a few lemps, and said thank you for his words. Then hermana Zamora offered him a Book of Mormon and he not only took it but asked us, "Can you mark the scripture where is says if it´s a church of moses it would be called the church of moses and if it´s a church of Christ it would be called the church of Christ?" So we marked the chpater for him and offered him more pamphlets and then he got off the bus. He was a really good guy.

We had ward council yesterday nad it rocked! The area of central america is starting a bunch of new stuff that I think is going to be great. One thing we talked about it is that things like presidency meetings are not just to plan activities. I remember when I was Laurel president we just planned mutual activities but THAT´S NOT THE PURPOSE. THe purpose of ward council or whatever meeting we go to in the church should be about how to help the people in the organization. Recognizing specific needs of specific people and specific solutions. Great things are going to be happening in central america soon.

"Peace and blessings. Peace and blessings."

Love,

Hermana Odekirk

I'm Busy

Yet another week of being super super busy but not get a lot of work done haha.

I´m Sister Training Leader now (apperently Sierra didn´t know that, so I´m stating it explicitly, in english) so this week we did divisions in Roatán. There are two companionships of hermanas there so we were there three days. We had to take a two hour ferry over to the island. It is super cool. 

When you are in the streets where turists walk it is the cleanest Honduran city I´ve seen. There is no trash in the street. But if you go back to where the locals live all the houses are wood and everything is muddy and wet and it´s the dirtiest city I´ve seen and it´s sad. 

While in Roatán I completed one of my mision goals! I met gringo tourist members! One of my goals has been get stopped on the street by members who are here on vacation and it finally happened. Twice! One family was from salt Lake and the other from Idaho. Yay for a world wide church!

There are tons of cruise ships that stop in ROatán and seeing them all made me trunky. (This is the part where everyone convinces my  dad to take us on a cruise this summer *wink wink*)

In Honduras men only play soccer. That´s it. Hermana Zamora and I were laughing because in Consejo de Barrio we found out that the Bishop gave the young men a goal to learn a new sport and they didn´t do it. hahahaha

Preisthood session and general women´s meeting are not that same thing. In women´s conferences it´s all about "you´re beautiful daughters of God, don´t be so hard on yourselves,  you don´t need to be perfect..." but I was reading "Lord, Is It I?" by Utchdorf in the priesthood session and the differnce was apperent. He said to stop thinking about other people need to improve and really ask yourself what you can do better. It´s a really good talk, but the differnce makes me laugh.

Today is Tuesday. I couldn´t write yesterday because Presidente Klein called us to an emergency meeting to plan the trainers meeting. You know what that means: four hour bus ride to San Pedro!! We spent 7 hours talking about retention and how we can use the area book more affectively and improve the way we are training new missionaries. It was a good meeting. and I ATE MCDONALDS!! I hadn´t eaten McDonalds in over 14 months.

I frequently ask investigators, "For you personally, who is Jesus Christ?" the answer I receive most is "Jesus is everything, Él es todo" My purpose as a missionary is to invite others to come unto Christ, so I ask people, "what did Christ do for you? How does He help you?" and it breaks my heart to hear everyday that peopel don´t really have a specific answer, they don´t really know who Christ is. They say, "he died for me" but they have no understanding of how his dying actually helps them. So here is the thing, Jesus Christ is your savior. He died on the cross to pay for your sins, so that you don´t have to pay for them. All you have to do is have faith in Him, repent, be baptized, receive the Holy Ghost and endure to the end. Jesus Christ made it possible for you, YOU specificly, to become a better person, to overcome your faults. He loves you and wants to help you. Jesus Christ is your Savior and he loves you. Never forget that and never forget that it is only repenting and APPLYING the Atonement in our lives that we receive all the blessings of the sacrifice that Christ made for us.

Now I am going to bring up a question that will cause conflict at the next Erickson family dinner. I´ve been trying to mark in Book of Mormon every time is makes refernce to Jesus Christ but I have hit a snag: the word, "the Lord." In my understanding the lord can be used to refer to God or Jesus Christ. The Bible dictionary only makes refernce to Jesus Christ. So here is my question, in 3 Nefi 1:12 Nephi is praying to "the Lord" and "the voice of the Lord" says to him, "on the morrow come I into the world." THis is clearly refering to Christ, so the question is, in Nephi praying to Christ? All my knolwedge tells me no, but the wording of the scriptures make it seem like yes. I´m confused. Help.

Sometimes being a missionary makes you feel really bad about yourself because you are constantly hearing about how great the missionaries before you were. ALWAYS, but you never get to hear if the members in your old areas say good things about you, you just continue constanly hearing about how wonderful other missionaries are.

Have a great week!

Love,

Hermana Odekirk

P.S. 386 Baleadas

Do IT!

Yesterday at lunch Elder Clouse was telling us his plan to convince India to go war with China and somehow rule the world, so naturally I said, "The world is a mess and just want to rule it!" No one got the refernce!! I miss home where people get my jokes!!!!!

Happy Birthday to Hollie yesterday.

THis morning we watched Kungfu Panda 2 in the High Council room then we played Monopoly Deal and ate pizza. THings are getting exciting here in Las Colinas! *sarcasm hand*

Presdidente Klein dropped a bomb this week. From now on there will be no Reunion de Cambios. Now you just go straight from you old area to your new one. No traveling to La Lima, no seeing your friends or hearing tesitmonies of the missionaries who are leaving or seeing the presentation of the new kids. Nothing. It wil be interesting to see how things go this next change.

Also, the mission department cut the size of our mission. Now we´ll only 170 missionaries, so we´ll probably only have 20 or 30 hermanas in the whole mission. It´s going to be weird.

On Tuesday we woke up at 2:00am to go La Lime for Leadership council. The meeting was good, but the best part was when Klein LET US WATCH MEET THE MORMONS!!!!!! It was awesome!!! And he brought the twizzlers he owed me. Meet the Mormons is really good and ya´ll should go see it.

We finally left Lima at about four. We jumped in a rapidito to go to Progreso and find a bus to Ceiba. Normally from Lima to Progreso is about 20 minutes but there was a HUGE traffic jam. Our bus driver decided to go on the OPPOSITE side of the road to pass all the traffic. It took almost an hour to get to Progreso. We finally got to Progreso and waited on the corner for a bus to pass by. On came but before we could decide if we wanted to take it the driver got impatient and left. As they passed by the ZLs from Tocoa waved at us form inside the bus. I realized the elders from Tocoa left at like 2:00! They were in that traffic for THREE HOURS!!! We laughed until we cried, but ELder Brimmley pointed out that at least the Elders from TOcoa were in a bus and we laughed even more. We didn´t make it back to Ceiba until about 9:00 that night.

I am so excited to more Family HIstory when I get home! I was reading a talk called The Book, and I really like how he said that family history should be a part of our personal worship, the same as prayer or church attendence.

Have a great week! Do family history work.

Love,

Hermana Odekirk

CHANGE YOUR LIFE

This week we are teaching a girl about how babies can´t be baptized because they don´t have sins and she looked at me and said, "Christ didn´t have pecados but he got baptized." Hna Zamora and I were both stunned. In my whole mission no one has ever brought up that point. But the differnce is that Christ had the ability to sin, a baby doesn´t.

WE did divisions twice this week. Once I went with Hna Turner it was super fun, but we should never be companions because we spent way too much chit chatting. haha

The second divisons were in OLANCHITO!!! Go ahead Hermana Holdaway, be jealous. ha ha It was wierd to go back there after eight months and yet not at all. It felt totally normal. I got to see Monchito and Edgardo. They are still both strong converts. Remember that little girl in march who said she prayed about it and God said she shouldn´t get baptized. She got baptized over the summer. I got to see a couple of members and it was really great. The Hermanas there are both super pilas.

While I was in Olanchito with Hna Morales (who is a missionary that I had only met once before) said to me, "I hear there is a sister who likes to dance in the street. You wouldn´t know who that is?" I have a reputation in the whole mission now. I may be a missionary but when I here that evangelical music with good beat I have to dance.

All of my companions can tesitfy to the fact that I NEVER remember that I am fasting. I start my fast and then someone offers us food or I eat breakfast in the morning and accidentally break my fast. So this saturday when I start my fast (latins fast dinner satruday and breakfast sunday, then they eat lunch. It´s better this way) I specifically prayed really hard that God would help me remember that I am fasting and I remembered the WHOLE TIME! I didn´t eat once. It was a small reminder that my Heavenly Father loves me and the He gives me exactly what I need when I need it. No more, no less.

On Tuesday we had district meeting like normal, but I was so confused. Elder Hansgen got up there and asked what we think CHrist did for fun? Then he started to tell us that our lessons need to be more fun because we are all broing teachers. Esta bien. I thought he would then proceed to give us some better teachign skills, but htat didn´t happen. He said we need to change. So I raised my hand and asked him what exactly it was he wanted us to do and he didn´t really have an answer. At one point he was all just have the spirit more. Then ELder Larson raised his hand and basically said "have a stronger testimony." At one point the DL was all, "I don´t even care about this district. I just want to you guys to make it to the Celestial Kingdom." I spent the whole day confused. That night Hna Turner and I were planning what we were going to study the next day and we dicdied to study "how to change our lives," and when we prayed I asked Heavenly Father to help know how we can get better and Turner almost laughed in the middle of the prayer. So we called the DL to tell him that we wre still confused and we had no idea what he was trying to say in the meeting. I felt really bad because I could feel the emotion he felt. I felt excited to change but I didn´t know how. He basically just told to get some personal revelation and make some new years goals. "Dicember 30, 2014 Distrito Miramar. That´s that day I changed my life" - my DL So we are changing our lives this week.

Also we went to Tela today and it rocked like normal.

The Church is true. Have a great week.

Love,

Hermana Odekirk