Playing Racquetball

This last week, went pretty good,  However a little slow as far as investigators go.  We've had a hard time recently maintaining our investigator pool.  So right now, once again were kind of in a finding stage.

On Fri/sat. we had several service projects planned that we did.  On Friday we helped one of the members clean up some of the trash in his yard so that he could mow the lawn.  But before we started, while we were waiting for bro. Cruz to get ready, one of his sons has a guitar, so he let me play it for a few minutes.  However, this was the first time that I have played a guitar probably since I was in Raleigh, and I couldn't hardly any song.  I had to give it a few tries to play "sweet home alabama", and I couldn't for the life of me figure out the song by Boston that we used to play all the time (I don't remember the name of it) [Peace of Mind].  It was somewhat embarrassing since I had claimed to have played the guitar for so many years, and then could hardly play anything.

Then Saturday morning we went over to another members house to help him with some yard work.  And then in the evening we went to go help a part member family with some work that they said that they needed to get done, but once we got there and changed clothes, we found out that they didn't need the help after all, but we did get to eat some pretty good food at their house. 

This last weds./thurs.  I our district leader went on exchanges with me to our area,  and elder lake went with his companion.  The exchange went pretty good.  We had an awesome contact with someone during the exchange.  We saw her outside her house, she had just gotten home, and her kids were getting out of the car,  so we started talking to her about her kids, and related that back to eternal families.  She then told us that just a few days she was wondering about that, what would happen to our families after this life, and what happens when we die.  So we taught her the plan of salvation.  The amazing thing is that she really didn't have much time, I think that she had to go to work or something, but she allowed us to teach her for a few minutes,  which is amazing.  Because most people could easily make the excuse that they don't have enough time.  But that really showed that she was prepared, and that she was honestly wanted to learn and seek truth.

Convert Receives the Priesthood

How are you doing?  It sounds like everything went well at the wedding.  Thank you for the packages that you sent me.   I got a compliment on one of the ties already, so good choice.  I didn't know that you were going to put the pix of me wearing the tie up at the reception, hijoles, if I would have known that I would have taken a better pix.

I told you last week, but this week was transfers, but they didn't effect me or elder lake.  

We have been teaching a family, well, part of a family.  It's the mom and her daughter, were hoping to start teaching the dad, but we haven't been able to get him to sit in on any of the lessons.  The mom hasn't been able to read in the Book of Mormon because she can't read the words on the page, so we ordered her a copy of the Book of Mormon in large print so that she could read it.  She was pretty excited to have that copy of the Book of Mormon, and has started to read in it, so that's a good sign.  They were supposed to come to church yesterday, buy I'm not sure what happened.  We talked to them the day before and they said that they were planning on it, but they didn't show up.  We called them at about 9 05 (church starts at 9) to see where they were at.  we got a hold of the husband and he said that they thought that it started at 10, so we thought that they were just going to end up showing up late.  But they never did show up, so we'll have to see what happened there.

This last week [new convert], the person that we baptized recently received the priesthood as well as his friend will, who was his friendshipper that had been less active, but reactivated when we began to teach [new convert]..

It's kind of a short letter this week, but I just can't think of anything to write,  But I'm really enjoying my mission a lot.  And I've learned/am learning a lot, and I'm grateful for how my mission has "opened my eyes" and made me really understand and internalize why were her on this earth.

Rainstorm and Pictures

Did you ever get in contact with that person you were going to do FHE with? 

• We did, but we dropped them.  There were two different people that were going to come,  both of them told us that they didn't have enough time right now.  But it was really intersting what happened with one of them.  Because she has read part of the book of mormon, and prayed about us, and has told us that she felt the spirit testify to her that is is true.  So it was kind of dissapointing when she said that she didn't have time for it.  But as we talked with her, we testified about the restored gospel of Jesus Chris, and reminded her about the answer that she had received from the spirit.  But as we talked to her about that you could see in the expressions on her face that the spirit was reprendiendola [scolded] because she had a smile on her face at the beginning and then you could see her face get real serious as we talked to her and we knew that she didn't feel comfortable at that point in time and that she knew that she really does need to continue preparing for baptism.  But I'm quite certain that maybe she's not ready right now, but probably in the future, she will be ready.

This week was a pretty busy week...well every week is busy, but it wasn't your tipical week in the mission field.  On weds. we called one of the members to see if he could come on exchanges with us.  But we found out that his mother in law (who had already been bedridden...is that how you say it, when they can't really get out of their bed to do very much.  But anyway she's been that way for about a year.)  But we found out when we called this member that she wasn't doing very well, and it was very likely that she might die.  He invited us over to come visit with them, which we did.  then the next day, we found out that she had passed away that morning, they invited us to come over again, so we wen't over to visit with them for a while.  Then the funeral was on sunday,  so we spent most of the day after church doing things for the funeral.

I sent a pix of a rainstorm that we got caught in.  Which isn't an uncommon accurance.  We were on our way to a members house to teach them a lesson, and it started raining, so we decided to stop and get out of the rain for a little bit.  Normally I just ride through the rain storm,  but I decided this time, that the members wouldn't want us in their house if we were wet, and if we're knocking doors, it's really difficult, because nobody wants to let you in.  So we stopped there for a while and thats where I took the pix.  I'm not sure if the pix serves it justice, but it was raining really hard.

This week is transfers, but nothing is happening with us.  I'm staying here.

 

El Guapo Sapo

Waiting out the Rain

Still....Waiting out the Rain

North Carolina Rain

 

Wet Potholes

On Friday we had a really awesome surprise.  We were supposed to eat dinner with the verdin family, however they live about 40 miles away from us, and it was the end of the month and we only had 50 miles left to last us to the end of the month, and we still had two 25 mile trips out to magnolia.  So we figured that we were just going to have to bike it out to magnolia a couple of times.  But about an hour before we were supposed to go, a member called us up and said that he was headed over to the members house, and asked if he could pick us up and bring us there!  That was one of those tender mercies of the lord.

I was a week that makes for some pretty good stories.  Here in wallace there are a lot of interesting people that you meet, and this week was no exception to that.  On Saturday we were in magnolia riding our bikes and there was a guy that called out to us, so we stopped by to see who it was.  It was an older guy with his wife (We were out in th boonies/fields) and the have a little piece of property and it looks like they just live out in the woods with their truck.  But we started to try and talk to him, but we soon found out that he wasn't all the way there,  first of all because we could smell beer on his breath.  But I've talked to many drunk people on my mission and there had to have been something more going on with him than just being drunk, I think all the drugs that he had done in his life had pretty much fried his brain.  So he started talking to elder lake and said to him " hey man have you ever been hungry man?"  and elder lake said "yea".  Then this guy started going of on him saying, "then man if you've been hungry man how do you spell hungry man, man tell me how to spell hungry man!"  (he went on like that for about a minute, then elder lake said H-U-N-G-R-Y.  Then they guy said " ok man well if you've ever been hungry man than you've probably been angry before man.  Because when you're hungry you're angry man because you're not happy man...(and once again he went on for another minute or two on that)."  At that point elder lake just about couldn't hold it and and started laughing, but finally he spelled angry and we gave the guy a card and rode off.

It was pretty exciting on Saturday also, in the evening we went to a trailer park to teach a lesson,  and in this trailer park, the roads are horriblisimos.  They aren't just a little bumpy, some of the bumps literally drop down 3-4 feet.  So when it rained some huge puddles were made.  So it was the end of the night, and we had already been soaked and we got to a puddle that covered the entire road, so there was no escaping it.  So elder lake, who was in front of me, stopped, turned around, got some space to get some speed, and hit the puddle head on in the biggest/deepest part of the puddle.  I'm going to attatch a pix that we took at the end of the night.

This week has kind of been a struggle to teach our investigators.  We always have a lot of appointments set up every day, but not a lot of them go through.  So there's not anything too exciting happening with any of our investigators.

 \

Disappointing Family Home Evening

Are you guys getting hit with some of this East Coast heat that we are hearing about?

 

• Yea, it's been pretty hot recently (up towards the upper 90's/100), but it hasn't effected us too badly, we've managed to be able to use the car and get inside teaching lessons, so it hasn't been to bad.

 

How did your family home evening go last week?  Sounds like you had great plans.

 

• Not quite how we planned it.  We had talked to the investigator three days in a row (fri, sat and sunday) and every day she said that she was going to come, but on monday, the member called her to see if she was ready to pick her up, and she said that she had to leave for  "mandato", or something like that I'm not sure what.  Then there was another investigator that was supposed to come.  We had one of the members call her and invite her to come to the FHE and she said she would, then we stopped by her house on our way to make sure that she was coming so that the member could pick her up.  She told us yes, and that she was supposed to go over to the members house to ride over with them in a few minutes (the member lives across the street).  So we wen't to the FHE and found out that that member that she said that she was riding with was already there, so we called her, and she told us that she had left and couldn't come...just 20 minutes after telling us that she was coming!!  So we got there late, because we were running about 15 min behind, and then we had to rummage around to try to find somebody that could come, so we ended up being 30 min late.  So when we got there, the members were mad at us because we were late and didn't have any investigators there, and she had cooked a ton of food.  We ate dinner with them and taught a lesson, and tried to make the best out of it that we could, but it was still a pretty disapointing night.

 

 How are things going?  

 

• Great

 

 Do you need anything?

 

• nope...pix from sharee's wedding!!! (electronic copies are great, but us missionaries like to have hard copies of pix).

 

 Did you ever get your bike adjusted? 

 

• I brought it in and they looked at it and told me that repacking the bearings wouldn't really do anything.  He said it wasnt the bearings that are wearing down (as in the balls)  but what the balls roll on,  so he told me that if he were me that he would just ride it out for now (because it isn't too bad,  I just wanted to fix it now before it caused a bigger problem) and later on I'll need to get new hubs.

 

This week we had a training on tuesday, and then I went on exchanges to wilminton after the training until weds. evening.  IT was interesting, we taught a family from china.  It was weird though because I heard them speaking chinese, and since I've been speaking spanish, my brain tried to pick up what they were saying, but since I don't know chinese I didn't pick up any of it.  I don't know if that makes any sence, it's kind of something you have to experience.

 

As far as food goes, we did really good this week.  We ate with members 7 times this week, which made my stomach happy, and we got try and get referrals from them.

 

On Thursday evening we went to teach a family, but the parents weren't there...well, they were asleep and didn't want to wake up.  But their son was there, and he agreed to let us teach him.  We had to teach him outside, because we can't be alone with him inside the house.  But we taught him the plan of salvation, because he had some questions about that.  The leson wen't really well, and it suprised me how well he remembered everything that we taught him.

Video of Missionaries singing "God Be With You Till We Meet Again" at conclusion of Spanish Conference in Knightdale, NC - see Jeff on the back left.

how are you doing?

I just sent you a few pix from the Spanish missionary activity that we had this weekend.  on Thursday night we drove with the zone leaders to the mission home in Raleigh and stayed the night there.  Sis. Cotterral had cooked some soup for us, so we ate that (our second dinner that night),  and then we went to bed.  The next morning we got up and went to the temple in apex.  We did a session in the temple, and we did it in Spanish.  I was surprised at how easy it was to understand.  It is really basic and simple Spanish.  Then we ate lunch had some training/discussion/testimony meeting and then headed back to our areas.  However with traffic, by the time we got back to our area, it was already 7 o clock and just had enough time to go to a dinner appointment.

We had a pretty good week this past week.  I really enjoyed the Spanish activity, but it did take away a lot of proselyting time, but that's alright.  I learned a lot of things that should help us out.

Tuesday was pretty crazy this week.  Tuesdays are usually days that you spend tracting for hours on end, because everybody's at work.  But we were really busy, we taught four really good lessons, between traveling and teaching the lessons, that's all we did that day.  We found this guy a while back, and in the contact with him, we invited him to read the book of Mormon, to pray about it and then to be baptized if he came to know that it's true.  When we taught him, he told us of an amazing story of this dream that he had telling him that it is true.  We set a baptismal date with him for the 13 of august.  But now were not to sure, because we talked to a few members that know him and we're not sure if he is quite capable of making the decision to be baptized. But we'll see how it goes.

There was a family that we were teaching.  I think I told you about them,  but we decided to drop them.  They weren't will to give up the church that they are at right now.  they told us that they had made a promise that they wouldn't leave the church that they are at right now.  and their son plays the guitar in the church band (I've always thought that the church bands are kind of interesting, because they are breaking the sabbath day at church by listening to rock music in the church!)

Tonight we have an exiting night planned.  Two of the families in the branch are going to have a family home evening, and invite a few of our investigators.  So we're going to eat dinner, have a lesson, and let the investigators get to know a few members.

Sister Cotterell fixed soup for the missionaries

Conference of Spanish speaking missionaries

Picture of Companion

Picture is of Elder Dixon before he (Dixon) was transferred.

How are you doing? So it wasn't too long ago since I last wrote you, but there's a few things I could tell you about.

We finally got back up with [investigator] (the boy thats 12 yrs old and his parents didn't want to give him permission) but it looks like they might end up giving him permission. So were going to work on teaching him again. But he's going to honduras for three weeks, so we'll have to wait for that.

I think I told you about the family we found last tuesday, the Rivera family. We taught them again this week, and it went pretty good. the mom had read in the book of mormon and prayed about it, but she told us that she hadn't recieved an answer telling her if it is true or not yet. We're kind of wondering if they're going to be willing to give up the church that they are at. When we invited them to come to church they told us that when they began going to the churhc that they are at now that they were anointed and promised that they would stay at that church and not go to any other church. But Elder Lake asked them that if they found out if our church was the only true church if they would join it. that sentence doesn't make sence, we'll try it in spanish. El les pregunto si ellos llegaran a saber que nuestra iglesia es la unica iglesa si se juntarian con nuestra iglesia. and they said that they would. so we'll see how it goes.

So I told you that me and elder Lake have been speaking just spanish together, and we are still doing it. We've gone two weeks now. I feel like I've gotten a lot better at spanish these last few weeks. I could speek just fine about the gospel, or teach lessons, but I talked a little bit slower whenever I tried to carry on a normal daily conversation (I could do it but I had to think), but now it's starting to come a lot more smothley.

This last week we also got up with a potential that we contacted about a week and a half ago. it was origionally the daughter that we first contacted, but the parents were there and listened when we taught them. it was a really good lesson. the parents didn't quite understand everything, but the daughter seemed to absorb everything, and give some really good answers.

In our mission since near the beginning of our mission, pres. Coterral has always encouraged us to try to extend a baptismal invitation in the first lesson. it always requires an extra effort to get that invitation out, but recently he's been hinting on us extending invitations to be baptized in the contact. Me and elder Lake decided to give that a try and we ended up inviting 16 people to be baptized this week (where we normally only invite about 5-7) but we saw a lot of good things come of it. it was amazing seeing the number of people that actually said yes, and that have already started to fulfill commitments.