Monday, September 14, 2009

Sleeping on the ....bus?

Well, It’s hard to believe that I’ve already been in the mission field for a whole month! I’ve been on a mission for three months! Time has really started to fly and I can already tell that I’m REALLY going to take Elder Holland’s advice to heart and enjoy every moment. I love this area, though at times of course it can be a Little frustrating. We have met some awesome new investigators this week, and continue to hope and pray for them to feel the spirit and come to Christ.

Anyways, now for the funny part. Some pretty funny stuff happened this week. As I have explained earlier to you all, we have an extension that is about an hour bus ride out of Melo towards the Brazil frontera. It’s only like 15 minutes from Brazil, so the people talk in a kind of Portuñol mix sometimes (Oh by the way, we met this guy on the street one day from Italy, and he spoke in like a mix of Italian and Spanish. It was pretty funny). ANYWAYS, we were on the bus, and of course as usual we were pretty tired. I was reading “Jesus the Christ” and my comp was trying to study, and well as usual, we fell asleep. This usually happens no matter how hard we try, but we usually wake up before Noblia. However, this time we missed our stop and Continued on to Aceguà. The good thing is that the bus attendant helped us out a ton and a bus was headed back the other direction and after a quick change we were headed back to Noblia. So yeah, that was pretty funny!

Also, I ate some pretty new and interesting things this week. We went to member/investigators house and ate something that was close to a Cow’s intestine and Hígado con arroz. I felt like Doug from that old cartoon Tyler and I used to watch! It was actually pretty tasty and I still consider myself fortunate that they usually eat pretty well here as opposed to the chicken feet Nate had to stomach. Especially since we eat every night at Abuela’s. She cooks the BEST food. Alfajores, Arroz con leche, pollo, etc… We’re going to make Gnochis today. I’m SO EXCITED!

My first change is already almost over (next Wednesday not this one). I have learned so much, and continue to learn a whole lot more. Keep the faith, and don’t forget to do your part to spread the good news.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Spring has Sprung

Well, it's getting pretty hot now. Winter is over, and spring is here, and it is very very humid! Seriously, like around 90 percent humidity. So, it's only like 80 degrees, but it's hotter than blazes!
Anyways, where to begin. I guess I'll start with that a lot of the mission reality has set in a little bit lately. A lot of our new investigators from last week flaked and they are kind of scared to talk to us again, so we are kind of back to where we started. However, throughout the course of the week we found a lot of cool new people who were actually very nice and open minded. We're going to try harder this next week to try to get our investigators to come to church and keep their commitments. That's the hardest thing to do. I guess we just have to show them why. Anyways, I've been learning a lot, and we even set a baptismal date for two people, a mom and a daughter named Ilaria and Mariana! They are awesome and they go to church when they can. She has another son who is mentally handicapped and has to get someone to watch him. Luckily, her daughter and her husband are members, and they have come with us a couple of times to teach them. We had an awesome spiritual experience committing them to baptism, but they think they need a little more time. We visited them again one day just to remind them to go to church, and I could just feel this peaceful spirit in their little dark cement home. They are awesome, and we continue to pray for them.
Let’s see, what else happened this week? Oh yeah! We went to Noblia last Saturday and we had to bring a box to the children’s activity, but we left it on the bus that goes to Aceguà! We had to wait for like two hours for it to come back to get it out (because we asked people for the times the bus came back and we got like three different answers…) Anyways, we got it back and no one found out, though we kind of still felt stupid… Oh well!

We visited a woman in Noblia whose name is Marisa. She has been a member for a while, but she had been a little inactive. When I came, she had started to go back to church a little more frequently. Over time, as we came back, she seemed a lot happier, and our discussions more focused on spiritual things. This last visit, she had been going to church every week, praying, and even, reading her scriptures. I was going to share a thought when she said, “I have a question, what does the spirit feel like?” My comp shared the scripture in Corinthians where it talks about the gifts of the spirit. She commented that she had read, and just felt happier. We told her that this was a gift of the spirit. It was neat. We talked for about 20 more minutes about it. The simple little commandments truly are the support for the larger things the Lord asks us to do. Those little “primary/seminary” answers like read, pray, go to church. It’s so easy. I only regret not finding this out earlier! Oh well, better late than never right? I am so happy. This has already been such a learning experience for me.