August 15, 2011

WOW - so this week has been pretty crazy. I went from far away to even farther away! - haha.  I am now in the city of Trujillo.  It is the area farthest away from the headquarters of San Pedro Sula in the mission.  It’s right on a big bay.  It’s where Christopher Columbus landed and there is an old naval base here.  The area is huge.  The closest missionaries to us are 2 hours away.  But I like the area so far.  One race of people living in Trujillo are Garifuna.  (They are the descendants of African slaves and island people).  They are a darker race than the main Honduran people.  They speak a different language but they also all speak Spanish.  I took the place of Elder Berrett who was with me in the MTC.  It’s kind of a civilized area.  All the main streets are paved but all of the side streets are dirt.  But there are only like 2 main streets - haha.
My comp is pretty cool.  He’s just a little guy from El Salvador.  His name is Elder Ortiz.  He has one change less then me.  We get along well.  He comes from a big family and he’s the first missionary in his famly.  He really likes to play soccer and he was in a band at home. He knows a lot because he served a mini mission before his mission here.  He served it in El Salvador for 6 months.

Well this week has been long because of all the traveling that we have been doing.  Plus, when we were on our way to San Pedro Sula there was a big protest in the street and they blocked the entire road so we had to walk with all of our suit cases and everything for like 2 or 3 miles.  It was not fun.  Then I got right back on the same bus that night to come back down to Colon.  Then the next day when Elder Ortiz and I were going to Trujillo, another protest was going on but it was little so we just had to walk 1/4 of a mile this time.  But we finally did make it to our apartment.
The area is cool and there are some good investigators right now. We have a baptism planned for this saturday, and we should have some more this month. The dedication of the El Salvador Temple is this Sunday and investigators aren’t allowed so that isn’t going to help.  Sorry Mom - no pictures of the house this week and I don’t know if you want to see it anyway.  The house is probably the only let down to this area.  It’s kind of gross and there is no running water so that makes it inconvenient, but other than that, I like the area.  Today we went down to an area called Santa Fe.  It’s part of our area.  We heard that the beaches are really pretty so we went there and just walked around on the beach.


I love you all!!! Thanks for everything.
Con Amor
Elder Kapple

August 8, 2011

Hola Como estan?
Things here are going well.  It sounded like you all had a good week.  I'm glad Henrycito is doing well and just sleeping and eating.  I loved the pictures of him and of Colter Bay (I love that place).  I'm going to answer your questions from your and e-mails first. Mom- Only a few people call me president - actually I think just one, haha.  Just our cooks kid.  We did cook that cake, it's the one with the “20” in candles - well those were the brownies.  You really don't have to worry about sending a package every month.  It costs way too much.  If I need anything I’ll let you know.
KK- Happy 3rd anniversary.  That's crazy that you and Todd have been married for 3 years.  I would have never guessed that its already been that long.  Sorry your plans kind of fell through (that happens every day to me) Erika- Thanks for all of the pictures.  I loved them - keep on sending me more.  I'm glad that Henrycito is doing well and just a calm baby.  Tell him hi.

Ok - so this week was good mainly because we had 38 people at church on Sunday.  That's the most that has ever come in my time here and for a little while I think.  But it was really cool.  Not too many investigators showed up.  Just 3; Elida, Siomara Murillo, and Jefferson Murillo.  Elida is the one waiting to get married and the other two are familia Murillo.  Familia Murillo should be getting baptized in 2 weeks.  The only sad thing is that I won’t be here to see it. Yep that's right, I have another change.  I really did not want to leave but I have to do what the boss says, right.  I really thought that I would for sure be here for at least one more change but I guess not.  It will be sad to leave.  There are a lot of good people here that I am going to miss.  I guess we'll just have to come back and visit Utila after the mission.  It's a lot different because as the branch presidency we build strong relationships with the members.  The investigators are kind of different here.  They tell us that they'll come to church and not many do.  Hopefully Elder Sommer and his new comp. can change that.  This week we had the opportunity to be on TV.  Utila has a TV station and we asked the guy to put an announcement on for our Spanish and English classes but he told us that we had to do it so we were on TV - haha.  He's kind of a different guy but he was very nice.  He just does local news for Utila 4 times a week - Mon-Thurs 7-8 at night.  He also has a lot of land just in case you guys want to buy some here.  We found a new guy this week that is really nice and always happy.  It's kind of funny, his wife is the same way.  We only have had 1 appointment with him because the 2nd time we went over he was drunk - but he really wants to get baptized.  He says his name is Nelson and hers is Alma??  This week was crazy because of all the people that have been here.  It was Sun Jam on Saturday and so many people came to it.  It was gross. We just stayed away from main street. There are a lot of confused people in the world.  All we have heard is bad things that happen at that party so that made the work a little bit harder this week.

Well, I hope you are all just doing great.  I'll let you know about my new area next week.
I love and miss you all!!!
Cuidense
Elder Kapple

August 1, 2011

Taking down the tree house

Driving Lee's boat

Hola familia,

How among you (haha -  Utila speaks their own kind of English) I hope that everything is going well and that you had a great time in Colter Bay without me.  It sounded like you all did even though it was only the 4 of you this year.  I was pretty jealous that you guys were there.  That is definitely my favorite trip! 

Well, this week was alright.  We're still having problems with some of the investigators. Familia Murillo didn't go to church nor did Hermana Helen and those are the 2 people that we have baptism dates for.  It was fustrating that Helen didn't go because we were there the night before and she said she was going to go but she didn't. We need to go and stop by today to find out why.  But we do have a really cool guy right now that we're teaching. His name is Isaac. I think that I have already talked about him.  But he really wants to get baptized and does all of the things that we ask him to.  But he still needs to get married. That's one of the big problems here is that a lot of people come just to work here on the

island. So their familia is still on the coast, and so we can't get themmarried very easily.  But we did find a really cool lady this week.  Her name is Ardys. We were putting out invitations to our classes and we started talking to her and she said that she had talked to missionaries before so we told her we'd come back the next day.  She first helped us with some stuff for our English class because we have no idea how to teach English and then we got to talking a little bit about the gospel and she said that she has
read the Book of Mormon and that she knows it's true so we challenged her to get baptized and she accepted. The problem is that she didn't go to church but she is someone that understands all of these things so she will be a great strentgh to the branch when she gets baptized.  Our classes this week went well. We had 9 in the English classes and 6 in the Spanish one.  But all the ones that came to the Spanish class all smelled like they had smoked right before they came in - haha.  I hope we can get a lot more to get coming because it will be a great way to get to know people. 

Today we had fun destroying a tree house.  Our neighbor asked us to take it down so we spent a few hours doing that.  It was fun but I got really tired.  I need to do some more physical work here.  All of my calluses are gone so I have a bunch of blisters now. 

The birthday was good.  I ended up having 4 cakes and 2 of the people didn't even know it was my birthday; they just had cooked a cake that day -  haha.  We ate so much though.  Maria and Dilia and all of their familia made a cake and we went over there for dinner.  I never thought that I would eat beans, eggs and bread for my birthday dinner but don't worry - I loved it - haha. Well, thanks for everything

I Love You All!!!

July 25, 2011

Cleveland

Hola,
Well - first off, tell Henrycito hi.  I'm glad that everything went well and that he is a healthy baby.  You guys were all saying that he was going to be huge, and he doesn't even compare to what I was! - haha. I hope Lenna will be alright with having someone else in the house now.  We have a lot of birthdays in July now. 
Well this week was kind of crazy.  We had a campamento (camp out) this week for all of the youth and we had to get everything ready for it (part of branch presidents responsibilities I guess).  So this week we were running around all over the place, getting the food, permision slips, seeing who was all going (many in Honduras are kind of flaky, so one day they'll tell us that they’re going and the next day the opposite), and pulling all of the money out.  But the youth ended up having a great time.  They went to Tela with all the youth from Roatan, Copan, and Colon.  We ended up sending 9 including the 2 leaders.  They only had 2 problems there.  1) With a lot of religions it is a bad thing to dance, and they had a dance at the campamento, so one of the youth got mad and was saying that it is from the devil and all this stuff. 2). So we sent a lot of food with them because we didn't want them going hungry, and we sent food that is easy to make because they’re camping.  Makes sense, right?  We sent sandwiches and cereal.  Well, Honduran people aren't really used to food like that so when the youth opened the cooler and saw what they had to eat they said they couldn't do it - haha.  Good thing we sent extra money.  We were just glad though that they made it there and back in one piece.
Well this week was really good because we had 35 people at church.  That is the most that we have had since I have been here.  Five of them were visitors but still that is a good number and we had 5 investigators.  The bad part was that Helen didn't come.  She's the one that has a baptism date for the 6th but it's looking like that will change because she hasn't gone to church yet.  This week hopefully we will have a lot more time to work with the less actives.  This last week was busy and plus this week we are starting classes, but not just English classes; we are also going to be teaching Spanish classes.  I didn't ever think that I would be teaching Spanish in a Spanish country.  But Jon ( he's our tourist friend from Europe) said we should do that because there are a lot of people on the island that don't know Spanish.  Most of them are tourists.  But the tourists here stay for like 3 months at a time so that is plenty of time to teach and baptize them.  Well if you guys have any other ideas to find more people, let us know.
Try not to have too much fun in Colter Bay without me this year.  But I figure I can't feel too bad.  You guys get ice cold water and rocky beaches and I get nice warm water with sandy beaches in the Caribbean Sea. (That doesn't really matter to me much being a missionary and all but still)
Make sure you all eat an extra Dusty Glacier for me too.
I Love you All!!!
Con Amor Elder Kapple

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