Happy New Year - 12/31/12

Well, today is the last day of 2012. It's pretty weird to me to think that I spent the entire year in Honduras. Holy cow, time goes by really, really fast.

So it has finally hit me that I´m not starting the mission. I´m officially one of the old guys. I hit 18 months on December 29th. Man, this is so weird.
We had a baptism this week, so that was pretty exciting. We had it at the Stake Center, and we had all of the baptisms in the zone that day. We planned on it being a huge activity with like 15 baptisms with it being really well prepared and everything. But sadly, if there is one thing that missionaries are great at, it is procrastinating. Sadly, in our district all of the baptisms fell through except for one, and in the other district, they only had three. But it was okay.

We still made the trip out there, and I´m used to showing up an hour early because Grandpa Hansen always taught me that if you´re not an hour early, you´re late! Ha ha ha, but yeah, things always go bad, so its good to be prepared. We get there, and they hadn´t filled up the pila (font), or set up the chairs.  They didn´t have the keys and there was nobody there. Fun stuff. So my comp and I went to work getting everything ready, last minute, like it always is. It turned out alright in the end. I had to baptism Jahaziel 2 times because the first time I mixed up his first and middle name. It wasn´t really my fault, he told me his name was Jahaziel Henry, but on his I.D. its Henry Jahaziel. The good thing is that it all worked out in the end. The sisters bought some delicious milk cake, and everyone was happy.

 Here in Honduras they have a cool tradicion (tradition) where they make little scarecrows and put them out in the street. They ask for money, and then on new years they stuff them with explosives and set them on fire. Its supposedly a symbol of leaving the bad behind by burning it. I just think that the kids here like blowing things up. Anyways, its pretty comical.  I don´t think we´ll be sleeping tonight. Last year it was like World War 3, so we´ll see how things go.

Thanks for everything guys. I´m happy to be here, and I´m not trunky. Things are going great. Take it easy.

Elder Hansen