Monday, September 24, 2012

So, hey there everybody!!! It was good to hear from all of you!! ... I still don´t sound totally like a native, but I doubt I ever will 100%.

 It´s good to hear the office is still doing good, and tell Lonzi to send pictures of the baby! I hope all goes well with that, and tell everyone at the office hi for me. I wish I could have been at the temple dedication with you guys, and it´s sad to hear that elder packer is going so fast, but he will be here till his work is done, so whenever that is, it´s right.

Mason, it sounds like you had an awesome week! I can´t wait to see your creation with hangers, and hope that you do sell it to a museum. How many 12 year olds can say they have done that?! I bet your soccer team is just killing it, and it´s awesome to hear that you have A´s in everything! Keep that up, your study habits will help you a ton in life.

 

Cody, I wish I could listen to the new MCS album with you. That sounds like it´s so good. Brogan was raving over it before I left and it made me sad that I can´t listen to it. Keep it safe, and we will hopefully jam to it when I get home in 21 months. If you´re not in the MTC already, that is. It´s good to hear your team is destroying, and know that you will continue to do well. And to have Javi tell you ¨Good shot...¨ I think you´re life is complete. Just give up with everything else. Except the Drums. Your soccer world is complete now. It´s good to hear that Jordan football is doing well.

 

Erbear, you´re starting!!! What did I tell you? I told you you would, and look atcha. Are you doing soccer and volleyball at the same time, or just the one? How is school going? How are your classes? It´s good to hear that all your brothers are being nice to you, and I think even Chance will try to make a better effort.

Thanks to Malerie for writing.  Tell everybody at the singles ward Hi for me, and let them know that I am doing well.

So this last week was super Good!!! We found......drum rolllllllllllllllllllllllll. . . 14 new investigators, and if all goes well, hopefully 11 of them will be baptized next month! There are four or five that are bien pila, which means like ready for the font, so we will see how it goes. We went back to the lady´s house that we dropped and then visited again, and she changed. I think we lost our window on that one. But all that means is now isn´t her time, and hopefully missionaries in the future will find her. I think that this week paid off though.

So last week, for pday, we did what we always do-email, lunch, and then soccer at the church. It´s conch soccer, on concrete, with the goals that support a broken pair of basketball hoops. We play like every week. I don´t know if the Latins like a gringo that can play, and outplay them, and there are two of us that can do that. Elder Beesley, whom the Dahls know, played and won two state championships with Waterford, so he played with Dolbin. He was MVP of the 2a his senior year, and is pretty good. we play on the same team every week, and just kick butt. 

 

So Tuesday we had an investigator that we were hoping would be home, and was home, but the lights go off and they like to play hide and seek when we knock. It´s okay, I have learned patience here, and am a very patient seeker. That means I will go back unannounced with Nava. We found another guy who was super chill about the gospel, and understood a lot of it, but wouldn´t commit to anything. We also had a lesson with our used to be preggo investigadora, but she isn´t pregnant anymore. They have here their ¨cuarentina¨, which literally means 40 days of not doing anything. They even wear ear plugs so bad air doesn´t get in and cause headaches, because after birth the body is open. Which is true, but not your ears!!! So she told us she can´t get baptized until her forty days are up. Whatever. We will work with her.

 

Wednesday was rough. Our correlation meeting with Elnicky and Sorenson is Wednesdays at 6:30 am, but this week the bishop wasn´t at his house and we had no warning, so we wasted like an hour of sleep and study time. So ticked. But then we had a sort of rough day. All of our lessons fell through, and we spent pretty much the whole day contacting, which makes for a long day. It was rough, and I kept thinking that I was doing something wrong, or our lessons wouldn´t be falling through and we wouldn´t be losing investigators like that. I said a really really long prayer that night, and just waited for a response for like 10 minutes, to know if it was me, or what I need to do better, but nothing came. The next day in district meetings our DL was talking about people that get dropped, and he said, ¨if you know that you are teaching everything right, that they understand, and they still say no, it´s not your fault, it´s that they weren´t prepared.¨ HOLY cow, God answers prayers.  I know I am doing everything I can to help these people, and they still say no, it´s not my fault. I am teaching the best I can, and they still don´t want to listen, it´s like they are rejecting the Savior, it says in the bible, so I don´t worry to much about it. I have other investigators and my own salvation to worry about. 

 

Thursday was really good! We had a lesson with two of our promising investigators, and we read 3rd nefi 11 with them. The spirit was so strong, and they could both feel it. They both want to be baptized, and the son, Jorlyn, who is 14 wants to come to church and everything, they came yesterday. They were only going to stay for an hour, but he told his mom they were staying for two, and that was pretty much the end of it. They stayed for two. The mom isn´t married, and her pair seems indifferent, but those two, if we can get her married, will be baptized for sure. 

 

Friday was FLIPPING AWESOME!!! I contacted a house last week, and the kid who I talked to was 16, and there didn´t look like there was anyone home with him, so I was a little doubtful that coming back would do any good. We went back, however, and I was more than pleasantly surprised. There were 9 PEOPLE sitting in the living room waiting for us. Two are members, one active, Ruth, but she goes to a different ward that is not the right one, and her daughter, Luz, who is inactive. Ruth has another daughter, Miriam, who is non member. Miriam has a daughter who is 11 and non member. Ruth has two grandsons who live at home; Alfredo who is 16 and Luis who is 13, nonmembers. And Lalo, who is an old guy that lives there, and I don´t know if he is a husband to Ruth or a brother or something, but he is 58 and non member. Then there are two 7 year olds, Nicole and Fari. Pretty much, the five that aren´t members have baptismal dates, and are PILA!!  Four of the five investigators went to church yesterday, and they feed us!! They have some money down here, so we are always taken care of at their house. So Good. 

 

Saturday there was a mega baptism between three zones- ours, cholu oeste, and monjaras, and there were like 60 baptisms. It was really cool, but we didn´t have any baptisms there, we just went to support. Saturday we left after that and visited some inactives, and taught the huge family again. 

 

Funny experience from Saturday. To give a little background, I was talking with an elder in Teguc during training, and he told me that I was in trouble, and it was because I am white, tall and blond, with blue eyes. Until Saturday, I really didn´t think about it. We went to visit a new convert from like 3 months ago that is moving houses to escape some problems with her ex husband. So we passed a house on the way to her new one, and there were like 3 teenage girls sitting outside of the first house. We greeted them with Buenas, which is short for buenas tardes, or good afternoon. Everybody here greets everybody, and everybody responds. So they responded with Buenas back. I then hear giggling and in heavily accented English hear, ¨How are you?¨ I turned and said, bien, gracias, because sometimes English makes people uncomfortable. I turned back to walk and hear more giggling. and then came, ¨See you later,¨ which I ignored. we talked with the new member for like 20 minutes, and when we went back past this house.  The door was closed. So Nava was like, let´s go contact, to which I agreed. We went and knocked, but they didn´t open the door, just talked through the grate, and the house was dark inside. Nava asked if they could open the door so we could talk to them, to which they replied...Si, pero sólo si el chielito puede entrar solo.- yes, but only if the little white boy can enter alone. Nava explained that wasn´t going to work, I was pretending like I hadn´t heard anything, and we left. Those girls are called Geepers- flirts, and that can be applied to a missionary or non missionary, male or female. pretty funny.  Apparently it only gets worse. Most gringo missionaries that I have talked to that are tall, white, blond haired and blue eyed have at least one story of a baptism where right after they baptized like a teenage girl or 20ish year old, they have either been kissed by the girl, or tried to be kissed. Hopefully nothing like that happens to us.

Yesterday it rained super hard, and when it rains like that, there is no point in going outside. It started after church, at like 2, so we stayed in yesterday. We had 7 investigators at church, which is almost more than the first four weeks combined.

That brings us back to today.  Gonna go eat with the gringo´s, play some soccer, and relax a little.

To answer your question, dad, to get water, we have a pila at our house, on one side, that is open with no techo. The water comes like four days a week for a few hours at a time.  It´s not clean, so we buy our drinking water- in bags, of course,- from the Pulperia across the street. you should have a picture from earlier of my Pila. The music is getting a little better.

Church is hard here. I wish that they could spend one weekend in the states to see how it is run.  One leader has suggested multiple times that the elders quorum pass for a few weeks to show the the ym  how it was done. I immediately said that that was totally against the rules, and he pretty much ignored me. He always asks the gringo missionaries how things are done in Utah, and we tell him the same way things are done here. It´s practically the same, just with Spanish. He asked me how we keep the sabbath day holy in Utah, and I responded the same way we do in Choluteca. The commandments are the same, and you keep them wherever you are. Yesterday he was talking about how there was no unity in the elders quorum, and I realized that was because nobody home teaches. I suggested home teaching, but he said that they don´t have enough to do so. I retorted, how do you think you´re going to find more?! 

Well, love you guys. Thanks for your prayers, and everything.

I have seen this week the power of prayer, and it helped me realize that prayer really does work. You can pray about anything, and God will answer your prayer.

Love you all!!!

Zach