April 15 - A Week Filled with Power Outages, Hitting the One Year Mark, Not Having Light/Electricity in Our House, and One of the Funniest Experiences of the Mission

Queridos Amigos e família,

I don´t have too much time to write but I will givge you a brief overview of this past week.

On Monday evening, a huge rain, thunder and lightening strom blew in, and the power went out in our entire area, so we ended up teaching Isomar and Rhulian in their completely dark house, and the lights flickered off and on as the storm raged on for about 45 minutes outside.

On Tuesday and Thursday I had the opportunity to give trainings with Elder Hobbs, to the other 12 misisonaries in our zone, in our Zone Meeting and Conference. During the zone conference I got a little nervous as President and Sister Cordon and one of the assistents sat in, but it turned out to be a great training on how we as missionaries are all examples and leaders...it doesn´t matter if you had a leadership position or not. 

On Thursday as well I hit my one year mark on the mission...it is super sad to think that the mission is already half way over, I love it here. There is no better work to do than missionary work. Thursday night we arrived home and tried to turn on our lights, but it turns out that the missionaries before us didn´t pay the light bill, so we lived in darkness until Saturday morning and took ice cold showers. I am super grateful for electricity and light after living like a bat for two nights. 

Yesterday morning, we went to pick up investigators in our school bus and when we went to pick up a family, only the 6 kids in the house wanted to go, so we ended up taking them to church without their parents. But before we got on the school bus, one of the family´s cousins told us that the couldn´t go on the bus because he had his bike. We told him he could put it on the bus and it wouldn´t be a problem, but then his other cousin, Elielton cut in and said, ``What about me, I have my horse?´´ We then told them that the horse couldn´t go on the bus so he siad they´d quickly ride home and get ready. Within seconds Elielton, shirt and shoeless, mounted and rode off the horse as his other 14 year old cousin, Hiery, pedeled quickly along side of the horse to go to their house. To saw the least it was a very funny experience. I never thought that I would have an investigator ride on his horse to get ready and go to church. 

This is a amazingly unique, blessed area of Bonsucesso.

I love you all, Thank you for the love and support.

Love,

Elder Jonathan Hokanson

Diego, a boy preparing for a mission, Elder Hobbs and I