February 20, 2012

How is it going?

Sorry for the short e-mail last week but we just didn´t have much time but the ruins were pretty cool and a lot bigger than what I thought so I’ll send you all of the those pictures.  This week was a pretty good one.  The Lopez family is really doing great but we’re still having a hard time teaching all of the men in that family.  All of the women want to be baptized though.  This last week Hermana Lopez, (she is the mom of everyone in the family) told us that she wants to be baptized.  I guess that was kind of our fault for not setting a date with her to get baptized earlier.  We were focusing too much on her daughter and trying to get her married.  But her daughter Norma really wants to get married but she is pretty scared to do it and then there is another daughter that wants to get baptized and she is working things out with her husband right now so that they can get married.  It´s been a cool process with them and seeing the desire that they have to follow Christ.  This is what happens when people really do their part to know the truth and really are willing to do the will of God and do their part.  As missionaries all we do really is provide them the knowledge and just teach them the doctrine and help them feel the spirit and the rest depends on them.  This is a gospel of action and there are a lot of people here that are used to having everything done for them by their pastor.  So it´s a little hard for them to understand that they have to do things but when they do them is when they can really have that change of heart.  The other investigators that we have are doing alright but they still need to stop smoking, get married and some other things so we’re still working with them.  We do have some other investigators but right now the members of this family are the ones that are progressing.  The branch seems to be doing well too and people are starting to change.  I think some big things will be happening here in Copán in the future.  It´s just a district here now but I think in the next year or so it may be changed to a stake.  We have a district conference in 2 weeks that they planned just 2 weeks ago.  The 2nd counselor from the area presidency is coming here and he´s a member of the Seventy, so I think that they might be doing some big changes here now.  The meeting will be a good experience. The mission is great and I love it. 

Well, I hope that you are all doing just great.  Thanks for everything that you all do.  I Love and Miss You All!!!

Elder Kapple

 PS  Sorry, I totally forgot to tell you guys that Reina got baptized this last week.  It was a good baptism and she was pretty excited.  Then this weekend we have another baptism.  It´s hermana Lopez.

February 5th 2012

Hello Familia,
How is everything going?  It sounds like everyone is just doing great. It´s all good here in Florida and this week was a good one. I think this was the first time that I actually stayed in my area the entire week - haha.  But it was good and we worked really hard and it really paid off.  We were pretty stressed about how we weren´t having people come to church so we fasted this last week and on Sunday to really have more people come to church.  The most I think that we had here in this branch was 3.  So this week we really worked hard to get these people to church and fasted for them and it was really worth it.  We had 16 investigators at church yesterday which was awesome.  The attendance in total was only 66 so we still have work to do with the members.  But we were really blessed with all of the people that came to church.  We had Familia Lopez, Familia Castillo, Jose and his wife, Reina and a few others.  We have a baptism for Reina on the 18th.  With the majority of our investigators we have to help get them married or they have to quit something like smoking so we still have a lot of work to do with them so that they can keep on progressing.  Keep them all in your prayers.  My new comp is doing well.  He gets nervous a lot he says but he is getting better.  He teaches great when we’re just answering questions or just talknig about a gospel topic but when it comes to teaching the doctrine in a lesson he gets pretty nervous.  He is a great missionary and really wants to learn.  He is 20 years old and is the oldest in his family.  His dad is a bishop.  Elder Guaran wants to be a engineer.  I’ll fill you all in about him more. This week we really have to work hard and set baptism dates with all of them.  The mission is great and I love it.
I Love and Miss You All!!!
Elder Kapple

January 30, 2012

Elder Guaran

Elder Kaahuie, Elder Haernandez, and Elder Kapple

Hello family,
How is everyone dong?  Things are good here in Florida.  We had changes last week and I didn´t tell you that last week because we didn´t know until Monday evening that my comp had a change.  I figured he would because he had already been here for 3 changes with 3 differnt comps. So this week was a little slow because Elder Gardner had to say goodbye to members etc. and all of that good stuff.  My new comp is a good guy.  He is from Guatemala and I am training him.  So this is his first area.  He is a cool guy and really humble.  His name is Elder Guaran.  I’ll tell more about him next week.  I´m still getting to know him.

So we really only had like 3 full days to work in our area because we had changes on Wednesday; then on Thursday we had to go to la Entrada to do an interview.  Then the same day we went up to Copan Ruinas to do some more interviews and we had to spend the night up there.  It will be a little harder now because as leaders they want us doing divisions a lot and I can´t really do that now because my comp doesnt know our area yet and when we have interviews he just has to come with me so I’ll have to teach him the area really fast.
This Sunday we only had 2 investigators at church and we were hoping to have 6.  It was a pretty big bummer for us.  Reina and a guy that lives super far away that is going to the states next week came.  Reina is doing well and progressing.  We just need to help her find new work and keep her coming to church.  We really need to work hard this week so we can get some more investigators to progress.  We have some good possibilities but if they don´t start progressing more we will have to move forward looking for new people to teach.  We did have 58 at church this week and the branch seems to be changing a little bit so we are happy about that.  We just need to keep working with the members too.
Doing baptismal interviews is a cool experience and can be really spiritual too.  It´s kind of strange to me that the people trust us as teenagers with all of their problems and feel free to tell us anything.  I really do enjoy doing the interviews though.
Well, sorry it´s a short one this week.  Nothing too much new really happened because of time spent with the changes. Thanks for everything.
I Miss and Love You All!!! Keep our investigators in your prayers.
Elder Kapple

PS The pictures are of me, Elder Kaahuie (He´ll probably be calling you this next week because I sent some stuff home with him) and Elder Hernandez.  Then the other picture is of my new comp., Elder Guaran.

January 23rd, 2012

What’s up Family?
How is it going? It sounds like everyone is just doing great. ERIKA - HAPPY BIRTHDAY.  I hope you had a good birthday; 27 is getting up there.  This week was alright.  We had 3 at church.  One of them is a guy that we invited to church on the street and he ended up coming. He lives super far away and leaves to the states next week.  Another investigator came and he says that he knows the church is true church but he has a drug problem to overcome still.  I have never taught him before but we just stopped by and invited him and he came.  We´ll start working with him to see if we can get him to progress and help him out a little bit.  Another investigator came too.  He buys lottery tickets.  He has about 30,000 limps put in to one number and his number hasn´t been played for a very long time so he says he is just waiting to win.  He won’t win all of his money back but he said he´ll win about half.  He´s not really willing to leave it right now.  President Viers said that he can still be baptized but José doesn´t feel too good about that yet. So we´ll see what happens there.  We’re also teaching his daughter Riena who has 2 kids that are members.  One lives with her who is inactive and the other lives in New York and is preparing for a mission.  Riena wants to be baptized.  We also found a pretty cool family this week.  La Familia Lopez, but we just call them the “brick” famly because they make bricks for a living.  It´s a big family business and around 4 families live there.  The problem is that we have only taught the wives so far, so we need to start teaching the hombres of this familia.  They’re great because they keep the commitments they make to us.  They always read what we ask them to.  They didn´t go to church this Sunday because they had to run someone to the hospital.  So right now we don´t really have any baptisms coming up for this next week but we’re working with a lot of people.  We just need to keep on working hard and I know that this branch will change.  Last night we had an appointment with Kady (Nancy’s sister) and it was really good and a great testimony builder.  She really has a desire to learn and was really wondering how to get a testimony.  Her mom is super evangelica and it was cool because Kady was defending our church and the gospel.  It was just a cool experience for us.  The bad part is that Kady goes back to Tegucigalpa this week so I’m praying that she´ll go to the church there.  Right now I´m reading the New Testament and I’m in John.  My goal is to finish it this next change.  But I had never read the New Testament completely before and I have really learned a lot from it so far.  It is really helping and really just supports all of our doctrine so well.
Sorry  - this week’s e-mail is kind of short but I’m doing well here.  We just have a lot of work to do here in Florida.
I Miss and Love You All!!!
Elder Kapple

January 16th, 2012

Hola familia ¿como están?
How is everyone doing? It sounded like Ogden really had a big event this week with the death of the officer; that’s pretty crazy and sad.  This week was alright for us.  We really started focusing on previous investigators and inactive members here.  Every area has a book with all of this kind of information.  So we updated it and got to work but we still have a lot more to do.  We really haven´t had too much success in finding new people lately so we decided to try this method.  This area is a pretty tough one but we just need to keep working hard.  The problem is that the members aren´t the strongest yet but they try to attend church.  I know that´s not an excuss and we really just need to help them strengthen their testimonies of the gospel. This week we really need to find some new investigators though.  Right now we have a few that are progressing.  Familia Vasquez; we’re still working with the dad.  He understands everything but I think he is just a little scared to make a commitment.  We have an appiontment with him tonight so we´ll have to see what´s up.  Then we have an investigator named Jose.  His wife is a member and he comes to church every once in awhile.  He just uses a lot of excuses.  We we’re going to stop visiting him but then he ended up coming to church yesterday so we´ll see what we can do for him.  Then we have Nancy´s sister (Nancy was that first baptism that I had here).  She is really cool and understands everything; her name is Kady.  The problem is that she is a medical student that is studying in Tegucigalpa and leaves next week I think.  So we´ll have to see what we do there with her.  We have another family that we’re teaching right now too.  On Saturday we had a really rough day and no one wanted to listen to us.  So we had one more appointment at 7 pm with this family and we thought this was going to be our last one with them as they really didn´t seem too interested.  But we taught about the restoration and it went really well and they understood the message.  He is a lawyer and she is a teacher.  They didn´t go to church but they said they were going to pray to see if it was the truth.  It was just such a big relief after such a long day to get to teach someone.  Well, that´s pretty much what is going on here in good old Florida de Copán.


Thanks for everything
I miss and Love You All!!!
Elder Kapple

Copan Zone Conference

January 9th, 2012

What up fam?
How is everyone doing? Well first off, I want to thank Grandma and Grandpa (both sets of them) for the Christmas presents; it really means a lot.  So this week was a pretty good one.  We had 3 baptisms, Pedro, and the mom and daughter from familia Vasquez (Orbelina and Katherine).  The baptism went really well except for the cold water part and we had a lot of support and these people will be great converts.  The problem was that there wasn´t enough water at first.  Well there was a little bit.  We filled it up like a foot and then we had to do the rest by hand, carrying water from the water tank that the church has to the pila (font).  So we had to do that for about 2 hours.  Also, just like last week, a lot of this week was spent traveling.  On Tuesday I went to Las Ruinas to do an ivterview up there.  The lady was awesome and was ready to get baptized but now her husband doesn´t want to get married (and he´s a member) so we’re going to have to go up there and discuss things with them.  Then I came back Wednesday and was able to work in my area for a little bit but then that night I had to go to La Entrada because we had to leave at 5 in the morning to go to San Pedro the next day for the leadership meeting.  It was really good and I learned a lot.  The mission has really been having a hard time lately so President Veirs changed a few things, like the time that we leave the house and some other things to focus on.  President Veirs is one smart guy and knows a lot of doctrine.  He talked a lot about death (yes - kind of a different subject) but it was really good and I learned a lot.  Then I wasn´t back in Florida until Friday and Elder Hernandez had to come with me to my area to do interviews.  So I really didn´t even get to work with my comp all that much this last week but it was still a good one and we got a lot done.  The district is doing great right now too.  We had amazing contacts this last week, but now we just need to get some more people committed to be baptized and become members.  We have a lot of work to do in our area to get some more people progressing.  We have 2 good people progressing but that’s about it for now. The problem here is the branch (I know I really shouldn´t complain) but this branch really needs to change a little. There is so much contention at times between some of the members here. The Branch will never progress much unless it changes so we’re going to do all that we can to help be a positive force to change it.  Today was fun - we went to some Mayan ruins.  Not the main ones in Copan Ruinas - just some here between Florida and La Entrada.  We got in for free because one of the members in La Entrada works there and we were the only ones there today.  It was pretty fun and it´s fun to think about all of the people that used to live there and if anything from the Book of Mormon took place there.  Well this mission is awesome and im learning a lot and have some great experiences.  It´s crazy how fast the time flies and I get a little scared thinking about it.  But thanks for all of the love and support that you all give me.  It really means so much.

I Love and Miss You All!!!
Elder Kapple