July 18, 2011

HOLA
How is everybody? First off - HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ANDREW ( it’s a few days late but I hope you´ll still accept it) and HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO KK. I hope that Andrew had a good birthday and that KK will have a good birthday.  Also, thank you Grandma and Grandpa Erickson for the birthday presents.  It means a lot, I love you.  Ok - so there were a few questions that you guys asked to I´ll answer those first.  Mom - you asked if there are a lot of bugs and yes there are.  When I first got to this house it was filled with cockroaches but we did a lot of killing and there aren´t as many now, but we still get some every once in awhile.  Cleveland is all right but we’ve decided to leave him for a while though.  We haven´t talked to him about smoking for a week now and I think we´ll wait another week to bring it up.  Dad asked about my new calling as a branch president and how my Spanish is coming.  Being in the branch presidency gives us a lot more responsibilities but it hasn’t been super overwhelming.  The Spanish is good, but there is always something else to learn or get better at.  And for some reason I always feel like I have to say everything correctly when I speak in Spanish -  haha.  On the island there is a lot of English spoken.  With the islanders, they prefer English.  It´s probably 60/40 (Spanish/English).  We did not make it to Rock Harbor on our planned hike last week on P-day.  It was way too swampy because it rained the night before but we´ll make it another day.  But today we went to these caves (see attached pictures) with one of the members named Lee (Elidas’ husband).  He knows the entire island so he took us to the caves and there were so many bats and bugs and stuff but it was way cool and the cave is really big.  We didn´t go all the way down because we didn´t have enough rope (you have to tie a rope at the entrance so you can find your way back), and plus there´s water down there and we can´t go swimming – haha.  Yes - those are bats in the cave that you can see in my attached pictures.  So this week was pretty tough. Many of the people here really just aren´t that interested to hear the gospel.  The Hondurans just make up excuses and the islanders are just hard hearted.  So finding new people has been pretty hard and many of the people that we always pass on the street are people that we have already contacted so we are starting to run into that problem.  So this week we took a list of all of the branch members and sat down with Maria and found out who is still on the island and who isn´t and where they live so this week we’re going to start searching them out.  Unfortunately, Helen didn´t end up coming to church yesterday so that was a big bummer but we have an appointment with her tonight so we´ll see what happened.  We did find a new guy though named Isaac this week.  He is really cool and really understands.  He came to an hour of church, the problem is he still needs to get married and his wife is on the coast but we’re planting the seed for him.  Sorry this is short but we need to hurry.  We have to talk at a funeral of one of the members that died a year ago.  So today is his one year mark so we have to go do that.
Thanks for everything I love you ALL!!!
Pray for this island.
Elder Kapple

July 11, 2011

Apartment Pictures

Everything is fine and dandy here on our little Caribbean Island.This week was a good one. We have been pretty busy. Being the branch presidency out here gives us a few more responsibilities. We have a camp out coming up this next week so we have been running aroung getting all of the permision slips and then somehow I got put in charge of letting Roatan members know what is going on too.  So that has us a little busy.  Being branch president didn't bring to many changes from what I was already doing as first councilor.  The only difference now is that I do interviews but those don't happen all that much.  I had one this week because a family needs some welfare money.  It's a family of 9 so it's really big.  It's pretty sad because the father doesn't have very much work because there isn't that much work on the island for him. So after a discussion we came up with some agreements that they need to do, but the church will still help them out. Then we had 2 other super duper cool things happen this week.  WE FINALLY HAVE A FETCHA!!!  (baptism date)  Her name is Helen.  She’s the one that has been reading the Book of Mormon and praying but her husband hasn’t done anything so we went and taught her because she couldn't just wait around for her husband to progress.  So we challenged her to be baptized on the 6th of August.  She accepted but is still pretty nervous.  She is awesome.  She is pretty much American.  She grew up in Illinois and does not speak Spanish very well. But she will be a great convert. Then we had a branch conference this week.  We had the oportunity to be with President Veirs for two days.  He came in Saturday morning and left Sunday afternoon.  We took him to visit a few people (which includes Cleveland who promised he wasn’t going to smoke another cigarette from Sunday on and he ended up smoking on Sunday.  I think we’re just going to leave it alone for a few weeks and not bug him about it just to see what he does.  We talked to his wife for a while last night and it is just a really sad thing.  But the conference was really good.  Elder Sommer, President Veirs and I just talked on Saturday and Sunday.  It was just an hour on Saturday and then Sunday was just a normal Sunday set of meetings.  We had 20 people on Saturday (it was kind of scary though because we only stareted the meeting with one person there on time; (Many Hondurans aren't too good about being on time).  Then Sunday we had 30 people, and some of the people were people that haven't been to church for a while.  President Veirs is awesome and it was a fun time with him. Today we’re going to try to make it to the other side of the island to Rock Harbor.  I guess there is a trail but not a very good one.  We told Cleveland if we’re not back in a few days to come search for us but I figure we can't get to lost, I mean  - we are on an island.  Well, I hope everything is good for you guys.  Until next week.
Cuidense,Elder Kapple

July 4, 2011

Adonis and Elder Kapple



Beach Front Activity



Elder Kapple, Miligan, Jones, Harris

Out at Pumpkin Hill

Elder Sommer and Elder Kapple

Hola familia como estan? How is everything going? It sounds like Erika, Andrew, Todd, and Kayli just have been going on a bunch of vactions and mom and dad have been gotten stuck at home doing all of the chores-  ha-ha. Erika, that's crazy that you’re about to have your baby; are you going to name him Nathan? I hope that you have fun in Lake Powell KK, but it probably won’t be as fun as last year when we went for the senior trip - ha-ha. Mom, I got my packages; thank you so very much for sending those.  I still haven’t opened my birthday one yet.  I'll save it for my birthday.  That was terrible news about Seth Pack in Afghanistan; let me know how he is doing.  Well, this week was pretty good.  We left Monday from the island and I had the opportunity to work with the ZL’s for a day.  Then on Tuesday and Wednesday I worked with Elder Villagran.  He came at the same time that I did.  He's really cool and we had some good experiences together.  He's from Guatemala.  Then on Wednesday my new comp. came.  He's from the lovely state of Idaho in the city of Middleton which is right next to Boise.  His name is Elder Sommer.  I have only met him once before in the mision and it was my first day.  He has one change more than me.  I have been made senior comp. which also means that I'm the new branch president. Kind of crazy, I know, but as comps, we still do the same things.  He's been close to the City of San Pedro his entire mision so he was happy to come here.  A little different than me, but I like him.  He's a really nice kid and is willing to work hard. We then worked with the ZL's Wednesday night and headed for Utila Thursday morning.  So we really didn't work much on the island this week.  However, we found a really cool investigator this week named Exel.  The missionaries taught her in La Ceiba but she moved here.  We found her because we were looking for some other guy that wanted us to pass by and we contacted her when we were looking for him.  She has already recieved all the lessons and has a testimony but needs to get married but the good thing is that she already has been planning on getting married.  We have only had one appointment so we'll see how things go.  We really need to start focusing more on the members out here.  We only had 25 people at church Sunday and at the beginning of the year there were 35 to 40.  So that is one thing that we will focus on a little bit more.  President Veirs is coming out next weekend to do a conference so we’re hoping we can have a lot of people make it to that.
Well, I hope you guys have a great week this week.Thanks for everything.  I Love you all!!!Elder Kapple