Well where to begin? So at the beginning of this week things were really slow and really sucked. My companion was really down and wanting to go home and whining. Normally there is nothing I hate worse than someone being really whiny, but I found out I hate someone being really whiny in Spanish is even worse. So I applied a little of a tried and true method to get him out of the dumps, it's called work hard. As in I took up and we went to climb mountains. Here in Copan Ruinas it is completely surrounded by mountains and jungle and our area is everything that we can see. He hates climbing those jungle mountains but guess who made/drug their Mexican companion up those stinking mountains? If you guessed this guy then you are completely correct.
So it takes us about forty minutes of climbing, and I mean climbing, to get up into these little mountain villages. The one we go to and are now teaching is called Carrilito but I have started calling it Rivendell mostly because it is a lost village in the middle of a hidden valley in the mountains.
We hike through the jungle and everything to get there and it was so funny to hear my companion just complain the whole time we were climbing. So finally we got there and are now teaching four new families. Yes whole families! And they are really receptive. I think it may have something to do with the fact that a gringo and a Mexican literally had to hack their way through the jungle to get there may have ad something to do with it. Maybe they thought "wow these guys really worked hard to get here maybe they have something important to tell us." It could be that or maybe the act that lots of their kids have never seen a gringo up close like this.
So as you all saw from the pictures I had my first baptism and that was awesome! His name is Cristian and he is ten and he is a total stud. Want to know the crazier news? Well this week we have three more baptisms, the family Perez which consists of Miguel his wife Bertha and their eldest son Luis, and then next week we have one more. So yup the work here is progressing. Yes we baptize in a pool. It was kinda funny actually cause there was a bunch of gringos in the background cause it is a hotel so they were taking a bunch of pictures and really interested so hey maybe it will do something for them later.
Oh so on Friday was pay day for all the chopiadors (the guys who are in the fields with machetes harvesting all the fruit and stuff) so it was like three in the afternoon and there were just tons of passed out drunk guys in the streets. Kinda funny and sad at the same time. In fact some of those guys were dead because they just drank themselves to death. Yeah but here the police take of the dead guys really fast cause they don't want the tourists getting scared off.
My English class that I teach twice a week is progressing and we have new people every time so hey maybe this will take off and get big. Ya never know. As of other Spanish news, my Spanish is now to the point where I can just about say whatever I want to them and crack jokes at the annoying little kids. So progressing is what you could say. Still working hard on it though.
So Grant was completely right, when you're a missionary all the crazies are instantly attracted to you. So the other day we were getting out hair cut and i was done and waiting on my companion when this hombre just walks up and starts chatting it up with me. The conversation started really normal and then he started acting like he knew the U.S. and was trying to quote geography and then started crying and crazy laughing at the same time. Kinda crazy but hey we just finished our haircuts and ducked out and were on the way back to the house when we hear from behind "Hey Elders!" in English. So we turn around and it is this couple who were so gringo it was so funny.
So he was a cattleman you could see it from the fact that his face and arms were tan but his legs were pasty white, kinda like dad's. He still had on his cowboy hat and had a huge handle bar mustache and was speaking with a very stereotypical western cattleman drawl and was using his Spanish that he knew from talking to his field hands. So funny and so they bought us dinner and we told them what stuff was cool to see and what was overpriced and not worth your time. Then we parted ways. turns out gringos are way cooler than I would have thought. Well this is about all I have in the jungle report until next week which will hopefully have more baptism pics in it. Love you all,
Mike
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