Hello Family and Friends!!! Here´s what I did this week.
What do you use for transportation now you have been transferred? Do you use bikes at all or just on p-days? We´re still walking. There are no biking areas in our mission. We rented those bikes from a shop.
Now that you have been out almost a year what has been the hardest thing for you as a missionary?
Being patient with myself, I think. I always feel like I don´t know enough and that I´m not learning fast enough, but when I look back I really can see how far I´ve come.
Last Monday we had a pretty chill P day and Elder Buttars and I just stuck around here in San Fernando. Nothing too exciting, but it was a good break. We made some good lunch and later that night we headed out to meet with a man who is less active and has been living on the street. We had a meeting with him in the capilla and we are going to help him stop smoking and drinking, because that is really the source of all his problems right now. We don´t know that much about him for now, but he seems to be sincere in his desire to quit. Later we passed by another less active member named Conchi and she was really nice even though her daughter didn´t want us to come in, she let us in and we had a really good lesson about repentance with her. We´ve been visiting all the people on our ward list this week and we´ve almost made it through the whole thing. We´re hoping that it will help us find a few more new investigators as well.
Tuesday, we had our district meeting in the morning and talked all about how to use Family History in missionary work. It´s something I have about zero experience with in the mission, so I´m hoping I can figure out how to use it more effectively in this next little while. After that, we went to go eat with a young couple named José and Maricarmen. Their power went out right before they were going to make lunch for us, so they ended up going to a pizza place near by and bringing some home for us. ha ha It was a fun cita, though. After that we headed over to see a family we contacted on the street named Ana and Alfonso and their 3 little kids with the Guttenberger family from our ward. It was a really good visit and they had a lot of questions but Ana and Alfonso are practicing Catholics and they pretty much told us they were comfortable where they were and called us later in the week and told us that they didn´t want us to come back anymore, which is unfortunate, but it happens. Later that night we got in with a menos activa named Maricarmen and we talked about her testimony and she claimed that the church was true for her when she was 14 but not anymore. Kind of a silly comment. She´s really nice though and let´s us in, so we´ll see what we can do with her.
Wednesday was a great day. We visited with one of the recent converts in our area named Irene and talked about family history with her and helped her to set up an account. Later, we went and ate with the Barquín family and had a good time there. I´m not used to eating with so many members, but here we do it almost every day. We also met with a menos activo named Enrique for the first time today. The recession here has really effected him and his family and he really wants to come back to church and knows what he needs to do, but he has to work on Sundays.
Thursday, we had a really loooong but a really good weekly planning. Last week the AP´s taught us how to plan more effectively and it helped us out a lot. We also had an Elder with us named Elder Thia because his comp had to go to Málaga for the day. We did a lot of walking and didn´t have much luck, but at the end of the day we got in with a few menos activos named JuanJo and Pat. We talked with them a little bit about why they don´t come to church and they didn´t budge very much. They just wanted to talk about the problems they had and not talk about why it´s important to go to church. It´s really hard to work with people who don´t want to be worked with.
Friday, we had lunch with the Bishop, had out correlation meeting and then stopped by to visit the Elder´s Quorum president to talk to him about a few people we could visit. Other than that we did a lot of walking that day and had to take Elder Thia back to the train station in the afternoon.
Saturday was just about the same and we went to eat with Chano and Milagros again, and then later in the night we went to see Maricarmen (less active) and we brought her a Book of Mormon because she lost her old one. She has a testimony, she just needs to find it again. Weekends are pretty tough here, because EVERYONE and their dog goes to the beach. When we talk to someone in their door and try to set a cita to come back, they tell us "Weeeellll, I´m not really sure when you can come back..... The thing is, summer is pretty complicated because we go to the beach a lot...." ha ha Beach time is sacred here.
On Sunday, we come to church to see that José (menos activo living on the street) showed up at church and has been doing good with his goals to stop drinking, which was good to see! After church, we went to eat with Nicolas and then went to see a member named Francisco to ask for some references and got some pretty good information from him about part member families and less actives we can work with.
As you can probably tell, we´re pretty low on investigators this week, so we´re passing by a lot of members and menos activos. We´re pretty much starting from zero right now because we´ve lost contact with our good investigators that we had, but that´s alright, because who
doesn't like a good scavenger hunt?? :)
This week Elder Buttars and I have been visiting a lot of people and we´ve heard a lot of funny things from people and I´ve been joking about writing a book on the mission called " How to not leave the Church" There are so many different reasons that people stop believing in God and "lose" the faith, and I think a big one is that we let our doubts get in the way of our faith. Like President Uchtdorf said, "Doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith". If we truly remember all the times God has answered our prayers, and all the times the Savior has stretched out His merciful arm to us, we would have unshakable faith.(3 Nephi 9:13,14) That´s the truth. We need to remember how we received our testimonies and writing them down is a big part of that.
What do you use for transportation now you have been transferred? Do you use bikes at all or just on p-days? We´re still walking. There are no biking areas in our mission. We rented those bikes from a shop.
Now that you have been out almost a year what has been the hardest thing for you as a missionary?
Being patient with myself, I think. I always feel like I don´t know enough and that I´m not learning fast enough, but when I look back I really can see how far I´ve come.
Are you serving in a leadership position?
yes, I´m District Leader right now.
Greatest take a way from Zone Conference.
Seeing people 2 times in white and helping them not only get to baptism but to the temple.
Are you celebrating the 24th of July?
Yes. Our zone has the goal of setting 28 baptismal dates for the 24th
Mom, I do feel pretty good walking back to the piso after a long day. Getting in bed feels SO good, but I have no problem with getting up for a new day.
Love you all so much and hope you have a great week! Thanks for sending all the pictures, Mom, and Dad!
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