December 26th, 2011

Feliz Navidad y Prospero Año,

Well, first off it was really good to talk to you all yesterday and you all sound like you’re doing just great.  I hope you all had a great Christmas.  My Christmas was good but it really isn´t a big difference from our work on any other day in the mission field.  The only difference is that I get to talk to you all. They celebrate Christmas here more on the 24th and more in the night.  They light off a bunch of fireworks and last night was the same too - haha.  This week was a pretty good one for us and we are getting the area to progress a little bit here.  Right now we are teaching 9 familias and 3 of them are progressing.  The goal is to have 10 teaching and 5 progressing so we need to get a few more.  Right now we are teaching a guy named Pedro.  He is super cool.  He is about 65ish, his son (inactive) and daughter are members which helps us a lot.  In our appointments when we’re teaching him he seldom ever looks at us when we’re talking so we never think he´s paying much attention but he always answers all of the questions and understands everything; it´s pretty funny.  He does drink coffee but understands that he needs to leave it and he´s getting better.  He has a fetcha for the 7th.  Then we have familia Peña Vasquez.  It´s a familia of 4; 3 of them being of baptismal age.  Yesterday was the first time that the dad went to church but he really liked it.  His wife has already been a few times and wants to get baptized so we just have to work with the husband right now.  We went there last night and they’re having a few problems right now.  We just told them that Satan is trying to destroy their familia but we have the fetcha for them this next week too but we still need to work with the husband a little bit more.  Keep them in your prayers.  We have some more possibilities but we need to work with them a little bit more.  Right now we’re trying to work with the members a lot too because this branch has a lot of potentual and could be a really strong ward one day but we need to activate some people and do a few more things.  Pres. Orillana (the branch president) really wants us to work with the inactive members, and working with them is actually a great way to get investigators through their families.

Well, it was really great to talk to you all yesterday and thanks for all that you do and all of the love and support that you all give.
I Love and Miss You All!!!
Con Amor
Elder Kapple

December 19, 2011

Hello,
How is everyone doing? Well, this week we had changes.  I am now in Copan in the area of Florida.  It is a pretty cold area right now being this time of year and it has been rainy everyday - haha.  I never thought that I would be cold in Honduras but I guess I have just gotten way to used to the heat.  The area is super muddy too, and there are a lot of mountains.  My comp is a really cool guy named Elder Gardner.  He is from Columbus, Ohio and this is his 1st area, and his 3rd change, and I’m his 3rd companion.  He is 19 years old and went to BYU for a year before he came on the mission.  He has 2 sisters and a younger brother, and his older sister goes to BYU too.  It´s kind of been a slower area in the past but were going to try to change all of that.  There are a lot of Catholics hear and everyone and there dog likes to drink coffee.  It´s kind of funny, when we pass by a lot of the houses everyone will start talking about coffee.  And all of the members here always drink hot chocolate.  I´m also the district leader now and the district in the past has been kind of a slow one so we’re going to change that too.  I have the Mayan ruins in my district too. My ZL is Elder Hernandez again.  He lives like 5 minutes away from our house.  The house here is alright.  There isn´t running water right now but in the morning the water comes for a little bit in a house that the owner of the apartment has.  But I have to heat water to shower because of the coldness.  Well, I hope that answered all of the usual questions - haha.  We did have a baptism this last week.  Her name is Nancy.  She is 24 years old and will be a great convert.  We were going to have 4 baptisms this weekend but none of them came to church on Sunday which was a bummer but we still have the possibility of 2 others but we´ll see this week.  The mission has some new goals for us now as well.  We need to be teaching 10 familias with 5 progressing and 2 baptized every month.  Right now we have 10 familias that we’re teaching but we need to get some more progressing.  Only 2 of them are progressing and we have one more that is prettty much progressing but they didn´t go to church on Sunday.  The members here are really good too and seem to be really helpful.  The attendance here is usually about 50 or so people so not bad.  Well, I´m super excited to talk to you all on Christmas.  I still don’t know when I’ll call.  I think church is only an hour here for Christmas but I have to check the time still.  My companion said that he is going to call in the mornig because his family has church in the afternoon so I’ll probably call in afternoon.  I am an hour ahead of you all but I think I’ll call around 11:30 your time which is 12:30 my time here.  But I’ll probably call a night or two before like I did last year to set things up.  Well I hope you’re all having a fun time now that Todd and KK are in town.  Tell everyone hi for me this Christmas.
Thanks or everything. I Miss and Love You All!!!
Elder Kapple

December 12th, 2011

Hello,
How is everyone doing. This week was long and really short at the same time. We had to do a lot of traveling this week.  Tuesday we went to La Ceiba for our Multi-zone conference.  It was really good but just more of a laid back/fun conference. We had some activities, talent show, and played some games.  But it was good and we had a lot of fun.  Then on Wednesday we had a district meeting in Tocoa, then Thursday we did divisions.  I stayed in Tocoa with one of the ZL´s and then on Friday my companion ended up having to go to San Pedro to a meeting because he´s going to train or is going to be the 2nd comp of his new comp.  So yes, I do have a change.  I went back to Trujillo on Friday because we had an activity.  We did an activity and played soccer (everyone loves soccer here) with the Elders Quorum and the YM because in the other activity that we did, we recieved a lot of references but they were mostly girls. There were a lot of people that weren’t members but most of them were a bunch of kids that always come to the church to play soccer.  But we did recieve a few good references. Then on Saturday we had to go back to Tocoa to pick up my comp. from there and we did have 2 baptisms on Saturday.  Marlon got baptized and Hermana Perez.  It was a good baptism.  Hermana Perez will be a great convert; she just needs a lot of support from the members.  She stopped going to her old church because the members never visited her so we have told a lot of the members to always go and visit her.  The really good thing about her is that she does her part.  She always reads; from the first day that we invited her to church she has always come.  Now the missionaries will have to baptize the husband. This area will continue have success.  There are a lot of great possibilities here, especially for these next few months.  I really enjoyed my time here in Trujillo and it was a great area. I really learned a lot. Today was really fun. We went to a zip-line course.  We got permission I guess for being zona celestial in October. It was really fun. Some of the parts were kind of scary and I don’t think president Veirs would have approved it if he would have seen it but it was fun.  There was one zip-line where I did get pretty wet.  It goes really close to the water and there were waves that went up to my waist (as missionaries we probably shouldn’t do things like that).
Well, I hope you all have a good week.  I’ll let you know about Christmas next week.
I Love and Miss You All!!!
Elder Kapple

December 5, 2011

Wow, it sounds like you guys all had a super big storm this week that did a lot of damage. That’s sad about Lenna’s trampoline. That´s one thing that I do miss is the snow, but it will be hard to get used to the cold again. Well this week was alright for us.  We ended up not having any baptisms but we have some great investigators right now.  Marlon didn´t get baptized this week because his sister didn´t come from Roatan but I guess she´s going to come this week so he´ll get baptized this weekend.  We also have the familia Perez.  They’re the parents of Audelina, a convert that we have here.  I remember one day their names came to my mind so we decided to go and visit them.  They have gone to church ever since.  The wife is going to get baptized this Saturday and the husband hopefully soon. They both drink coffee but she said that she´ll leave it but he was a little skeptical about it. The hardest part is helping them understand the restoration of the gospel but little by little they’ll get it.  We also have a really cool familia right now. The familia Mendez. They’re a really poor familia but they really want the change the gospel can bring. The kids are members (my old companion, Elder Harris baptized them) but now the parents are going to get baptized at the end of this month.  I don´t know if I’ll be here though.  It´s likely that I will have a change this next week but I won’t know until next Wednesday.  But I´d be fine either way.  We have a lot of possibilities with investigators right now so I wouldn´t be sad about staying a little longer either.  So this week a crazy or weird thing happened.  We went to one of the references that we recieved from the activity we had to teach a lesson.  But when we were about to start this one guy (her son) walked in that is super evangelic so we teach lesson 1.  Right when we say the name Joseph Smith (José Smith) it just went bad from there.  He was asking where the name of Joseph Smith is in the bible and all sorts of stuff.  So when we finished the lesson and asked one of the ladies to say the prayer but she told her son to do it. So he stood up and made us stand up and he started praying in a normal evangelic way and then he started shouting.  So I opened my eyes looking around and at my comp trying not to laugh when the guy opens his eyes and starts talking to us as if Christ was talking through him and telling us to believe.  Then he started speaking in tongues.  It was so crazy and weird, and his mom is over crying and praying and me and my comp are just looking around confused.  A lot of the time the evangelic people will fall to the ground and stuff so I think he was trying to make us fall to the ground or something.  He finished his prayer and then we just left.  We probably should have made him stop but it was crazy and very different.  So that´s the crazy story of the week.  We’re going to La Cieba tomorrow for the multi-zone conference so that should be fun but I’ll fill you all in on it next week.
Thanks for everything that you all do. It really means a lot.
I Miss and Love You All!!!
Cuidense
Con Amor
Elder Kapple

November 28th, 2011

Hey how is it going?
This week was a good one. We started it with a meeting with President Veirs and the AP´s. As a mision now we are really focusing on familias. The goal is to be teaching 10 familias with 5 progressing and 2 baptized each month. It sounds like a lot but it really isn´t. Right now we have 4 familias progressing and 2 of them have fetchas for this month. The familia Perez has a fetcha for the 10th and the familia Paguada for the 24th. They’re not solid fetchas but those are the goals. This will really help us to have more baptisms also because if a familia gets baptized they usually give a reference of another familia so it is just like a chain reaction to have more familias to be teaching. So that is what we really need to focus more on now is familias. After the meeting, President Veirs took us to eat for being zona celestial and I don’t think I had eaten that much for a long time, but I just counted it as my Thanksgiving dinner -  haha.
This week we also had our activity which went AWESOME.  Our goal for the people to show up was 75 and we had 86 with like 16 non-members.  It was really good and all of the members really liked it. All of the programs did a little act and talk describing their program.  They all did a good job. Right now we have some great possibilities for December. We have one for this weekend named Marlon, he is Gloria’s son. Gloria got baptized about a month ago and also the Perez familia for the 10th and the Paguada familia for the 24th. This week we need to really focus on the people that we have and help them gain a testimony. This morning we took down a wall in our cook’s house.  It was kind of fun but we’re super tired - haha.
Well, I hope you all had a good Thanksgiving, we just bought a pizza for dinner. - haha.
I Miss and Love You All!!!
Elder Kapple

November 21st, 2011

Hey how is it going?
It sounds like all of you guys are doing well. This week had some ups and downs for us. But I learned a lot.  Right now we have a lot of good investigators and we found some really good new ones this week.  But one thing that we have really been focusing on too much is numbers.  We always have to focus a little bit on numbers, because we have goals and we need to do everything that we can to try to complete the goals that we have set, but this month I focused way too hard on the numbers and not the people and what they really need.  I think it was because last month we had 15 baptisms and we really thought that this month we could have another 8 baptisms.  But we really need to focus on what the person needs to progress, not just the baptism itself.  I was just focusing on how we could convince them or talk them into getting baptized and I wasn´t giving them time to have the spirit work in them.  But this month I have definitely learned my lesson on how to focus more on the investigators and their needs.  This will really help throughout the rest of my mission.

We didn’t have any baptisms this week and I don’t think we´ll have one until the 3rd of December.  We still have a possibility with Precede and Pastora but we won’t know until tonight in our appointment with them.  But I think she wants to wait a little bit longer.  She has a really strong testimony but she feels like she needs to wait which is fine.  We found a really cool family this week.  We were walking to an appointment and this one guy called us over and told us that he wants us to visit him and his family and that the missionaries had passed by there before. We searched for their teaching record and found out that 2 of their kids are members.  They live like 30 minutes from the church and up in the mountains but we searched and finally found the house.  The appointment went great and they want to get married and baptized.  He went to church yesterday but she didn´t because she had to wait for her kid.  It really is a great family and they live very humbly. We need to do a few things though before the wedding and the baptisms.  He works on Sunday (not right now, he has like 3 months off) so we need to talk to his boss and see what we can do there.  So keep the familia Mendez in your prayers.  We also have a few more possibilities coming up for December.  We have a zone meeting tomorrow with President Veirs in Tocoa so I’m really excited for that but I think he´ll be correcting a lot of things that are going on because we only have 3 baptisms as a zone right now so hopefully he won’t be too mad – but I don’t think he ever really gets mad.
Well, I hope you all enjoy your Thanksgiving dinners this year; I will definitely miss it.  I really like Thanksgiving; mostly for the food.  I don’t think that they celebrate it here in Honduras but maybe me and my companion will go and eat - haha.  My kind of funny story of the weak - well I don’t think I should call it funny; but yesterday we visited some members where the mom isn´t a member and we always invite her to church but she has never come.  She goes to the Catholic church.  So we were sharing with her a little about baptism and how we should be baptized and maybe I was a little too direct because I said they baptize without authority and some other stuff that didn’t go over well because she got mad and told us to leave and not come back.  So I’ll have to go back and apologize in a few days but I had never had that kind of experience before.
Well, I hope you all have a good week.
I Miss and Love You All!!!
Con Amor
Elder Kapple.

November 14th, 2011

Hey everyone!
How is it going?
This week was a pretty good one for us until Sunday came around - haha.  We really worked hard and found a lot of people and had a lot a good appointments.  That´s one thing that I love about my companion - we don’t waste time doing things that we don’t really need to do.  We had a bunch of possibilities for the end of this month too.  But then not all of them came to church on Sunday. We only had 3 investigators in church this Sunday.  Sofia’s daughter and her niece and then a new kid that came too.  It was kind of a bummer because we had 9 baptism prospects for the end of this month.  After church we went to a great investigator’s home who was going to get baptized on the 26th but she told us she doesn’t want to right now.  She says that she wants to wait until February when she´ll be more busy.  She is afraid that if she gets baptized right now she´ll make some mistakes and sin or somthing because she´s not going to be very busy these next few months.  So we helped her set some goals to read and to pray so we´ll see what happens there. Then Sofia didn´t come to church this week either. So hopefully she´ll be able to get baptised on the 26th.  This next week we have to really work hard and change a few things.  We have the goal of 8 baptisms this month and we had one on Saturday (Yordina).  She´s really cool and has a strong testamony.  She´s from Gracias A Dios but will be studyng in Tocoa this next year so she´ll always have a church close by.  We were going to have the baptism of Marlon this last week too but his shoes got ruined so they didn´t come to church.  So we’re going to look for some shoes for him - haha.  So this week was kind of a hard one with the investigators that we have but it was still a good one with the work that we did; we just need to keep on searching to find some more that have been prepared and help the investigators that we have progress a little more.  Keep them in your prayers this week. If anyone has any ideas of how we can help them keep progressing, please feel free to share.  Sorry this is kind of short but we don´t have too much time and I want to try to send some fotos.  But this week we’re going to turn things around.
Thanks for all that you all do for me. It means a lot.
I Love You All!!!
Elder Kapple