Lot of Tracting

How are you holding up with the weather?

 

• Good, It is really not much hotter than last year, but it is a lot drier.  We haven't had hardly any rain this year, which for here is very unusual.  They don't have any sprinklers for the crops out here, so a lot of the corn is about to shrivel up and die.  But even still it's wetter than Utah, and still plenty humid.

 

How was Spanish Day and how are things with your companion? 

 

• We haven't had the spanish day yet, that will be the 15th of July.  Things are going great with my companion.  It's been great working with him, I was talking with another elder and he said it is kind of funny, because my personality and elder Dixson's personality are so similar.  But Transfers are tomorrow and he's getting transferred.

 

[We]  would like you to take pictures of the countryside in Raleigh if you ever get the chance.

 

• I'm assuming that your referring to the countryside of North Carolina?...because there isn't countryside of Raleigh.  But I can work on that, it's sometimes difficult because I don't really have much time to take pix, but I'll try and take a few pix.

 

Have you been affected by the wildfires or the smoke?

 

• It depends on the day and which way the wind is blowing,  the fire isn't in our area, but sometimes we get the smoke blown our way.

 

This last week we did quite a bit of tracting.  I told you last week about how most of our investigators dropped us.  and on Wednesday it made the final push.  We called up Jame's mom to see when we could teach him, and she said that she wasn't so sure anymore that she was going to let him get baptized...  So we'll have to see, it might change if we give it some time, but we just have to wait it out for now.  So we've spent most of this week knocking doors and trying to find someone new to teach.

 

This week kinda reminds me of a scripture in Alma 26 when Ammon is talking about his mission to the lamanites and there's a verse that said something along the lines of when the were discouraged that the lord comforted them [See Alma:26:27].  (I'm not sure exactly how it goes, I don't have my scriptures w/ me right now.)  But it seems like nearly every day in the morning I had a good study and got excited to go out and work and then worked hard but then by the end of the day I felt kind of discouraged but the next morning I'd have my study again and then get exited to work the next day, and it all went through the same cycle.  Sometimes it's difficult but nonetheless, it's such an important and urgent work that it's so important to keep at it.

 

Our District

Our District

There's always a frog in front of our doorway at night, and I call him el guapo sapo [the handsome toad]

Family that was baptized a little bit before I got to Wallace

Mission Conference with Richard G Scott - Most of the Spanish speaking Elders

 

Investigators Moving Away

So, it was a pretty good week this week.  we kept busy and taught a bunch of lessons.  However, we started out the week with 4 solid investigators, and 3 baptismal dates, but somehow withing two days we lost three investigators and 2 baptismal dates went with it.  so we still have james that we are teaching, and he's still on track for baptism.  we moved his baptism for the 9th of july, but now I feel like we just got set back at square one. 

 

So I just found out that we are going to have a "spanish missionary day"  Meaning all of us spanish missionaries are going down to raleigh to go to the temple (I'm guessing in spanish, but I'm not sure...) and then I guess training and lunch or something like that, but I'm pretty excited for it.  It's kind of funny that whenever we go to trainings, all of the spanish missionaries group together and all of the english missionaries group together, we don't really talk to the english missionaries much.  So it will be awesome to get together with all of the spanish missionaries.

 

This week we found an awesome investigator.  We found him on monday, had an awesome first lesson with him and set a baptismal date with him.  The second lesson with him (weds.) was also a really good lesson.  He talked about how he felt the spirit during the lesson, and his desire to change his life.  However when we called on saturday to confirm our appointment with him that night, he said that he had moved out to his mom's house in goldsboro and is going to be there for a month.  So I guess we'll pass that on to the goldsboro elders.

 

We were also teaching someone named Jose.  We had set a baptismal date with him and he had even come to church last sunday.  We had lost contact with him for most of the week, but when we finally got back up with him on saturday we found out that he was moving back to honduras in 3 weeks, and would be to busy to contunue the lessons, and I don't know if he's going to let us put him in contact with the missionaries in honduras or not.

 

We were also teaching someone named Johana, and the last lesson we had with her was a really amazing lesson ( I think I wrote about it last week)  however since that lesson we havn't been able to get up with her, and were pretty certain that she is avoiding our phone calls/not anwering the door, etc.

 

But on a good note, we still are teaching James.  I mentioned a little bit about him earlier, but he's doing pretty good, and should be able to make his baptism.  We just struggling to get him to read the book of Mormon.

 

So I did get my bike fixed, but it was a little frustrating.  I took apart the break, and there was just a little spring that had broken (I took a pix of the spring).  I talked to the bike shop and they said that we couldn't order/get just the little spring, so I ended up having to buy the entire new brake, which I'm sure you saw wasn't cheap.  I thought about just going to the hardware store and trying to rig something up, but I figured that brakes are important and I'd better not try to rig it up somehow, and that it would have take too much time.

Ribeye Steak

We had a pretty good week this week.  It seems like we have a fairly good teaching pool right now, but for some reason or another we weren't able to teach many of them this week.  But I think it should pick up again this coming week.

Recently we've been teaching someone named [Investigator].  I wrote a little bit about her last week.  She was the one that was worried about the end of the world, and then had a lot of questions about judgment and the resurrection...resureccion, so we answered a lot of her questions using the book of mormon.  But then we taught her about the Restoration...well, tried to.  But she had a lot of doubts about prophets and apostles.  She liked us talking about Jesus Christ and the Atonement, but she got a little uneasy when we talked about prophets.  More than anything I don't think she really understood what a prophet is.   (and she's not the only one, there are a lot of different beleifs that I've heard of what a prophet is.  In fact a lot of people don't recognize the need for a prophet.   I've ran into so many people that think that the bible is all that they need to be "saved", but what they don't see is how many people say that, but yet how many different beliefs and religions have come from the bible.)  We talked to her on friday about what a prophet is, and we ended up spending about an hour and 45 min. talking to her.  It was a lesson that at first it seemed like it was all going down hill, but somehow at the end we were able to recover it.  We were with a member that talked a LOT, he was saying a lot of good things, but the conversation was moving so quick, that I felt like the spirit wasn't really able to be there like it should.  [She] just wasn't catching on to the concept of prophets, so finally we jumped into the Restoration and the first vision.  IT seemed like when we shared that, the spirit was able to come back strong again, and it clarified a lot of the doubts that she had.

We also are teaching someone named [Investigator man].   [He] has a baptismal date for the end of July.  But we had been struggling with praying with us during the lesson (something that our mission pres. wan'ts us to do at the end of every first lesson is to invite the head of the household to give una oracion de rodillas [Prayer kneeling] (sorry I couldn't figure out how to spell that). ).  But he just didn't wan't to do it.  So we went over with a member to teach him on tuesday and taught him about prayer.  IT was kind of interesting though, because the member is american and doesn't speak one word of spanish, but we still invited him to bear his testimony about prayer.  It actually turned out really well, we had to translate for him, but I felt like it turned out well.  Whenever we go on exchanges to visit a spanish person with an english speaking person it's a little different, I always feel like their's a barier between them, but it seemed like it wasn't like that this time, and they were actually able to communicate.  But, at the end of the lesson, Jose Prayed!!

On saturday we had a really good dinner, one of our members fed us Rib eye steak and potatoes.  I know that's kind of a random fact, but beef is expensive out here, and that's probably only the 3rd time I've eaten steak on my mission, so it was a really good dinner.

In response to your question about the weather, it's getting pretty warm.  It has been in about the 90's this whole week.  But it is also quite humid out here.  I'm a lot closer to the cost this year than when I was in raleigh, so it's even more humid than Raleigh was.

I was wondering if you could possible find on the internet or somewhere that tells how to speak in vos.    Not Vosotros, but vos.  There are a lot of Hondurans here and they speak in vos  a lot, so I'd like to figure out how to use it.  It's similar to speaking in Tu (tu, tuyo ti, etc.) but it's a little different.  and also I was wondering if you could make me a copy of the last general conference in SPANISH on disc so that I can practice listening to spanish a little more (it's a little more difficult in this area, because sometimes I don't speak with a native for more than 1/2 hr in a day.)

Good Week

We had a really good week this week.  We've started teaching some new people, and we now have several people with baptismal dates.

 

I told you last week about [sister investigator], who we set a baptismal date with on the first visit.  We havn't taught her since last tuesday, but we have an apt. with her tomorrow.

 

We've had an investigator/potential, named [Investigator], who we've taught a couple times these last few months, but we had lost contact with him for several weeks.  We finally passed by last sunday with a member that already knew him ( I think I already told you about this part last week).  But we had a really good lesson with him.  And on Thursday we visited with him again, and he accepted a baptismal date for the end of July!  (The other good thing about that was that my companion, to celebrate setting the date with him, cooked us T-bone steaks!)

 

We're still working on getting [Investigator] ready for baptism, however we didn't get to teach him this week, because he doesn't have a phone, so we were'nt able to get in contact with him until this last fri/sat.

 

There was another person that we taught this week named [another sister investigator], (I know the name doesn't look hispanic but she is, she's from honduras, and for some reason or another a lot of honduraneans have american names.  I'm not sure why.)  I may have told you about her before, but we talked to her one day.  And it was the day right before when there was a lot of stuff going out on the news about how the end of the world was supposed to end on some day in may.  I don't know if you heard a lot of that or not.  But she was reaally scared that day because she knew that she was sinning.  We talked to her about the doctrine of christ and how she could be forgiven,  and then on tuesday we taught her again.  She had a ton of questions about the Resurrection and judgment.  So we read in 2 Ne 9, we didn't really have to do any teaching during that lesson, we just read, and through the BOM she answered her own questions.  We had another lesson with her on Fri.  where we talked about the Restoration.  We didn't quite get all the way through the lesson, because she asks a ton of questions.  It might take a while to teach her, because she doesn't know hardly anything about Religion, so we just have to start at square one,  But it seems like she has some potential.

 

On Saturday night we had a pretty interesting lesson.  We talked to this guy that believed that the Atonement of Jesus Christ was just merely a torture.  He thought that since christ was the son of God that he should have been worshiped rather than tortured and then hung on the cross, and he thought it would have been better for ten other normal men to go stand in his place and suffer that for him.  So we talked to him about that and tried to help him understand the atonement of Jesus Christ a little better and why Christ was the only one that could do it.  (the more I've thought about it the more I've realized how illogical it would be for anyone other than christ to try and perform the atonement.)  At the lesson it was him and his daughter and his daughters friend (who are both only 13)  and towards the end of the lesson his daughter started to try to flirt with me.  I'm wondering if it was just a ploy to get us out of there and to keep us from coming back, but either way, it worked and we got out of there quick and I don't have any plans to go back.

"Pretty Good" Week!

We had a pretty good week last week, we were able to teach a lot of people last week, and our evenings are pretty much booked from now until the weekend.  We are still teaching [investigator] and he is still on track to get baptized next month.  We were able to get permission from his mom to baptize him.  She was a little reluctant, but nonetheless gave us permission.

This last week we got in touch with several of our old investigators that we hadn't had contact with for a while.  Several of them have different work schedules now, and we are going to be able to visit with many of them this week.  So we'll hope that the all work out.

We just got back from an awesome lesson (we taught it right before I came to email.)  She had been raised in a baptist church, but recently she had quit going to church, but she wanted to start going to church again, and we just happened to knock her door at the right time (about a week ago).  She was busy at the time, but she invited us to come back.  We taught her today.  We just taught her about the restoration, but the spirit was really strong and you could tell that she was interested.  at the end of the lesson we set a baptismal date for the end of July.  She agreed so promptly to a baptismal date, that it was almost as if I wasn't sure if she new what I had asked her at first, but at the end of the lesson when she said the prayer she expressed her gratitude for being able to be baptized!

Yesterday, our preparation day, was memorial day, as you know (which is why I couldn't email yesterday.)  but the Racquetball courts were closed,  so we tried to go play Frisbee/basketball outside, but with the heat/humidity we didn't last longer than about an hour.  So we went back to the apartment, and I decided to cook something for dinner with the time that we had.  One of the members told me how to make salsa Verde, so I tried making that.  it turned out decent, but it will need improvement, and then I made rice, beans, chicken (well...i warmed up the chicken that a member brought us in the microwave), and homemade tortillas.  It took about an hour and 20 min, but doing all of that wore me out more than the longest bike ride I've gone on during my mission.

Another Baptism

How are things with your new companion?

Elder Dixson has been a really good companion.  He's a good missionary and we get a long really well. 

 

How goes the piano playing

Good, I guess they didn't get the memo at the baptism, because I went to go up to play the piano and somebody already beat me to it and played the recording on the piano.  But either way, I've been playing the piano at the apt. quite a bit.

 This week we had the baptism of [investigator] (as I mentioned earlier).  Everything went really well.  I'm trying to download the pix to send to you, but the computer doesn't seem to recognize my camera, so we'll see if I can send it or not.

I'm trying to think of what happened this week, but I can't really think of anything, it always goes so fast that it seems like I just wrote you.  We had a lot of appointments set up this week, but it seemed like about 70% of those appointments fell through this week.  so we did a lot of contacting and we have tried to get up with some of our investigators.  Recently, as in the last couple of weeks, we found several new investigators, we're just trying to get back up with all of them and try to get them progressing.  One problem we seem to run into a lot is that a lot of our investigators don't have cell phones or any phone at all for that matter.  so it is difficult to get in contact with them because we're out in the country, and it's hard to get around to all of our investigators.  This was the same problem I ran into in Raeford when I first got there, but once I learned the area and got the hang of it I was able to keep things moving pretty good, so maybe it will be similar here.

We are teaching someone right now named [investigator].  I think I told you about him last week,  but we reset his baptismal date for the 25 of june, and I think its going to go through,  the grandma had a few conflicts with the previous date that we set.  But this week when we taught him we were at his dads house and we went there with bro. Brown (he served his mission in Chile).  The girlfriend of [investigator's] dad was there, and so she listened to the lesson while we were there.  Bro Brown did a really good job at friend shipping and helping out with the lesson, and she agreed to be there at the next apointment, which is today.  The other good thing was that she is from honduras, and so I asked her if she knew how to make Valeadas (Tacos made from flour tortillas usually with beans, some sort of meet, hondurenean cheese and crema...ask Cody I'm sure he could explain it.)  so, the next time we go over with bro. Brown, he's going to teach elder Dixson and I how to make Valeadas (or at least the tortillas).

Baptism!

How are you all doing.

This week was a fairly busy week, but at the same time I can't really remember what it was that we did.  We have been working on getting [investigator] ready for his baptism and getting the baptismal service all lined up.  He seems like he is excited and ready to go for his baptism.

So, there was something funny that I found out this week.  While we were getting ready for the baptismal service I asked [my companion] who it was that played the piano every week for church, because I always saw one member behind the piano.  But then he said that nobody plays the piano, it just plays itself.  Which surprised me, I couldn't believe that nobody played the piano for church.  I think I told you before that we have a piano at our apartment, so I have been practicing it in the morning, and I've gotten to where I have a list of about 8-10 hymns that I can play.  So I'm going to play for the baptism.  And we'll see how it goes for church, pres. Atkins knows that I play the piano, but I don't know if he wants me to play for sacrament meeting or not.

This last week we had a training, which was really good, and I learned a lot of things that I have been able to apply.

I think I told you last week that I was thinking of getting some raquetball raquets to play raquetball.  We found some raquets that didn't cost too much, and we played raquetball last week for preparation day.  It was a lot of fun, it is nice to be able to get out of the apartment on preparation day.

We began teaching a boy this week.  His grandma is a member, and he lives at his dads house most of the time, except every other weekend he stays at his grandma's house.  His grandma has always brought him to church.  however it might be difficult getting and keeping the support of the dad.  We talked to the dad yesterday, and he gave us permission to teach/baptize [his son].  But I don't think there was much support behind it.  The grandma however is there to support him as much as she can, but she can only have contact with him every other weekend.

This weekend is transfers, but [my companion] is staying and I am staying also.