The Last Letter: HOME!

Dear Mom and Dad,

It´s so wonderful to know that I am coming home. I love you so much.
It will be great to see you. Two years I completed on Saturday, and
I remembered the day that you dropped me off in the MTC. The many
tears come to my mind, and the courage to walk away from you all and not
look back, which has been a constant theme in my mission: Love God
over all people and all things. I have learned to do (and am still learning)
how to do what He wants and not what I want. In the last week, it has been
a battle to balance all of my responsabilities, asignments, etc., and the idea
of coming home. More than anything, I want to return home with the same
missionary spirit with which the Lord has blessed me.

I have also gained weight this month, too. I expected to lose weight, but
in stead of losing, I have fattened up for the slaughter. In Honduras,
when you say,"I´m fat" or "he/she is fat", some people respond,"You´re
not fat, you´re beeaaauuuutiful." Beautiful is Fat... In Honduras. So I´m
coming home a litte more beautiful.

Maybe, quite possibly, if at all possible, we will have a baptism tomorrow.
Nevertheless, I will have to wait until tonight to find out. Cross your fingers
for good luck! Or bet yet... Pray!

Thank you, Mom, for getting my high school transcripts and, Dad, for the
information on the job. Isabel wrote me and said that her parents are going
to give me a parrot that´s name is feathers and likes to eat chocolate. I hope
it doesn´t annoy you. Supposedly, they are going to visit us on Friday.

See you on Thursday! I love you.

So this is the last letter!  I will miss these letters from both Christopher and Isabel.  It has been adventure and I awaited each letter with anxiousness and excitement.  My Mondays shall become very dull.....and did you know just a little more than 2 days.  Pictures of the Airport to come!!!

2nd To The Last Letter!

Hi mom and dad, Thank you for painting the room and thank you for the money. I don´t know if it would be possible, but would it be to late for Jared to be at the airport?  It woud be neat if he could be there. If not, I would like to go visit him on Friday or Saturday, please. Who all is going to come to the airport?  It would also be nice to go see Aunt Debi, Uncle Mike and Julie,  and Jeff and their kids.  I hope that I don´t have to wait until Christmas to see them. Tell the missionaries I would like to visit with them on Friday and Saturday and Sunday.   I will tell you why.  I had an experience on Saturday.  We went to Picacho to see the Christ statue and there were a lot of members of the Baptist church in Texas who participating on a charity mission. I shared with someone named Blake the Restoration in English and I realized that talking about the gospel in English is slightly different, like more real or something, and I would like to practice a little in English. Also, I started applying for BYU last week.  I need to take an SAT or ACT test, which I will have to practice for when I get home  I need my high school transcripts and... have an interview with my mission president which I am going to do right... now...  I think.  I have almost all of the process completed but the High School GPA stuff. I also need to send a copy of my GED.  Could you find that stuff please? Like, could you go to Roy High and get my transcripts with GPA information (even though it is the most embarrassing transcript on earth.) Anyway, one week.  Here we go! Love you all Bye! Only 9 days left!

Beautiful to be in the Service of God!

TO DAD

Dear Dad,

I would love it if my homecoming talk could be on the ninth. Brother Mike, a friend of mine who was painting the temple here, wants to come. He lives in Utah, but returns to Honduras on the 12th of August. I don´t know if that would be possible. I would like to give a talk in this branch, though. And Mom said that you would like to go to the temple in Spanish. We can do that as well. What do you think about the trip to see the historical sites of the church?

In other news, we took 3 families to church this week! That was really neat. One of them is getting baptized on the 28th this month. It is really beautiful to be in the service of God.

I love you, Dad. See you soon.

Love,
Elder Hill

TO MOM

Dear Mom,

This week we are continuing with the interviews of the Elders in the city. This week I bought something for Grandma that I hope she´ll like. I am looking for a feather of a Guacamaya parrot for Grandpa or something of the sort. I hope that he feels better. Thank you for painting my room. I appreciate that. I remember that story. I think you´ve told it to me a few times. Dad told me that the Spanish branch asked us to give a talk on the second Sunday of August.
Isabel also told me that they are going to go on a road trip to Washington and are only going to pass by to say hello for a second. I would really, really like to go for a road trip to see the historical sites of the church. Do you think we could do that as a family, please?

I love you mom!
See you soon.
Elder Hill

Thoughts On The Future!

TO Dad! Dear Dad, I really liked that picture.  Thank you for sending it to me. What do you want to do in 3 weeks?  I don`t know how, but I have had this thought that it would be incredible to go to do a church history site tour, like from the Sacred Gove to the Hill Cummorah and other places.  What do you think? I also want to come back to Honduras.  I will share with you something interesting.  Currently I attend church in the same chapel twhere I began my mission, which means that I see everyone that I used to know and even some that I baptized.  One of the member families invited us to eat lunch with them.  So, we went to there house, where the Elders from this area were eating as well, and we ate and left.  When we left, I wanted to visit a family that was baptized there.  The dad was a member inactive and we baptized the wife and daughter.  Sadly, they went inactive.  So, on Sunday, we visited them and they are all there still After almost a year and a half, they were all there and had stopped going to church because the members of the church offended them.  But I was so happy to see them. We helped them with their porch they were building and I could actually speak to them in Spanish so much better and actually understand them.  After a few minutes, I had the biggest desire for them to go to the temple.  And I want to do that with all of the families that were baptized here.  And all of the investigadores.  Just like the baptism without the confirmation is nothing, without the temple they can`t live with God.  I don`t know how, but I pray that God will make it possible to be able to take every convert from my mission to the temple. Anyway, love you! See you soon!  TO Mom Thank you so much mom!  I am so sorry that I am bad with money.  I spend money like an idiot.  It is something I need to improve.  So, we have been really busy traveling for almost two weeks.  Yesterday, I got to work in Catacamas!  I had always wanetd to work there...(it is a place where North Americans don`t go, which is really far away from the city, but really beautiful with giant green hill-like mountains.)  The bad thing is that someone took my camera charger.  Haha.  And so now I can`t charge my camera.  I will have pictures, but... few.  Haha.  It will be better to come back to Honduras and visit.  I think that is so neat that you are juicing.  Keep it up.  Don`t give up. I will do it with you when I get home.  Happily.  :)   I want to diet as well. I am a little fat in the buttocks.  Haha.  I like doing exercise.  Maybe I will talk Dad into doing lots of exercise as well.  Things I would like to do: become friends with our neighbors, visit less actives there,  visit the Griggs family to help them go to church, do family home evening. I would also like to take a trip to see the historical sites of the church. And then I want to come back to Honduras to help other get sealed here. How does that sound?  Oh, I also want to study, get married and work. And I want to go to Perù... and Mèxico... some day.  I want to learn Chinese as well.  And German.  And Arabic.  What do YOU want to do? I have to go!  Love you, bye!    From the Mom: Just three weeks left!!!!!!

New President

Mom and Dad,          On Friday night, we picked up President Fortuna and his family. President Fortuna walked out from where their baggage was to ask us a few questions, and when he returned to where their luggage was President Flores took his missionary badge off . I said to him,"The keys were passed."  And he was no longer our President.  The funny thing is that you could feel it.  The authority of the other became known by the Spirit. On Saturday, we had meeting during the morning with President Fortuna and in the afternoon we took President Flores and his family to the airport, which wasn`t difficult but very emotional. Very beautiful.  I didn`t have much time to be with him, because I was running around with President Fortuna fixing some proplems he had with his luggage the night before. Yesterday, we drove President Fortuna around in the afternoon to some meetings here in the city.  And in the night time, he visited two families with us.  He is very direct with people and knows he is a servant of God. You can feel the power of the Lord when he teaches.  I will learn lots from him. In other news, Elder Archibald and I took him to a school to register his kids for school.  And after, we took them all to eat their first baleada!  Haha.  It is like training an already trained missionary. This week we are going to be traveling to all the zones to present  the Fortuna familia.  Next week, we began a tour of interviews driving to every house of every missionary for 10 days.  The last week of my mission we will be doing Leadership Trainings.  We are teaching two families that could get baptized this month.  They are incomplete families.  The Soto family:  The husband, who is a professional doctor, is the only one that is not a member.  This week in Church, he attended for the first time in 3 months or so.  He said to us that Jesus Christ told him that he could not let his family go to church with out him.  He looked rather worried, but it was really neat to see how the Lord communicates with people. The other family is the Silva Alvarado family: Gina, the wife, is the only one that is not a member.  She is putting up walls, but we suspect that she knows this is the true church.  She has even commented that it is better than the catholic church.   But according to her, she is still waiting for an answer.  Pray that the Lord will give them an answer and courage to act upon that answer. The sad thing is that for the craziness in the last two weeks, I spent almost all of the money that was given to me.  Thank you so much.  I don`t have anything for souveniers, but I am calm in that I have enough for what I need. Well, 30 days left...  The time has gone by so fast.  I love you all. See you soon. Elder Hill 30 Days!!!!

Two Days Later and I am Still Alive!!!

These are some of the most special people I´ve known that have gotten baptized.  I hope that they are part of my life forever.  I want to come back to Honduras and help all that I helped get baptized go to the temple.  That would make me happy.

I want to tell you all that I baptized Bill and it was really special to say the baptismal prayer in English.  It is different. I love Spanish, but I feel a need to preach the gospel in English. I remember once we taught a North American pastor in Siguatepeque.  It was the first time that I ever gave my testimony and I felt the Holy Ghost testify so strongly that I cried. I had not felt that kind of spirit when giving testimony for a long time (in that moment of my mission) and giving my testimony in English for some reason helped me remember.

Bill said in his testimony that he wanted to go to the house of his Father.  That has stayed in my mind.  There is no doubt that I will return to go with him to the house of his Father.

I love you all a lot.

(P.S.  Mom, Dad and Grandma & Grandpa, thank you for the money.  It is a great blessing right now.)

With love, Elder Hill

"BuSy-NeSs"

Hi mom and dad, This week and the rest of the weeks of the mission are going to be very busy. We had tranfers this week, received new missionaries and sent missionaries home who finished their missions.  Wednesday, Thursday and Friday we were driving from Tegucigalpa to Talanga to register weddings there because they cost less there.  We took 7 or 8 weddings to register. It takes like an hour and a half to drive there.  Also, we were running errands in the truck to get papers for wedding and visiting with other missionaries so that their investigators would accept a baptismal date. Last week, we had 95 converts in the month of June.  We also had 79 baptisms proposed for this week.  However, about 28 have been canceled.  We have been so busy and working so hard and the results are falling.  If we can achieve more than 150 baptisms we will achieve more converts in one month than in the last 10 years of the mission.  Which could be wonderful, but it is the will of the Lord (not ours).   We pray that we will have more miracles happen today. Today, Bill, Francisca and Suani are going to get baptized.  He is the first North Amercian to get baptized in our mission.  I love these people a lot. And they are all really excited to get baptized.  It has been a beautiful process.  I did receive that package.  I have a little problem.  Right now, I don´t have money at all.  If you could deposit even a little today that would be amazing.  To buy things it would be nice to have 100 to 200 dollars probably.  To travel, I don´t know how much I will need.  The church doesn´t provide anything but pay for the baggage.  It would probably be good to have a hundred dollars.  I don´t know if we have to pay taxes entering the country or not (especially if I bring souveniers).  It would be nice if you could research that.  Also, if you could find out if they would tax me for bringing 25 pounds of cacao into the country.  :) Again, if you could deposit money today, that would help so much.  Also, the people made my new suit are charging me 900 lempiras for my suit pants, which was not part of the deal exactly.  So, I need a little money to take care of that.  I am sorry for asking for money.  I don´t like doing it, but being here I kind of have to.  :/  Sorry. I also think that my life is just going to get busier.  I looked at the schedule for working with President Fortuna (We are going to be traveling for 3 weeks straight!!!!  Whoa...) and President told us that we are basically going to be stuck to his side for the first month.  So, did Isabel get moved safely to Las Vegas?  I am guessing so, but no one said anything about it.  I am sure she´s fine.  But it is always nice to know.  Tell her that I said Hi. Anyway, I love you all.  Oh, do you know that I packed everything today but my clothes?  Weird, huh?  See you soon. Elder Hill P.S.  Tell Will he should move back to Utah and that I love him.           There is also a possibility that when I get home I will work          in building temples.