Monday, December 3, 2012

This week's delicious letter

I don't know why I began with delicious but that to me seems like an apt description of the day, the week, and life in general. Yummy!

So nothing went as planned this week because of the great blessing of the newest member of the wolf pack. Weighing in at maybe 120 pounds standing at 6'1" from Layton, Utah comes the fierce, bold, and fastball throwing Elder Talmage! He's super cool. I/We are glad to have him here with us in Central. He is waiting for his visa to go to Mexico City but it hasn’t come yet and the word on the street is that he will be with us through the end of the year. Sick!

Before I forget, thanks to everyone for all the awesome letters and packages these last 2 weeks. I haven’t even had time to read them but hopefully I get to today because Elder Bennett is sick and we'll see if we get out to work tonight. Ya’lls are the best, I wish I could keep up, but I'm glad I can’t.

To Erin and Hailey. Idk if you to have internet out in the boonies but I have proof that you haven’t forgotten about me! :) Thank you so much for the postcard. It made me extra happy that it came from the both of you and from so far. It's a dope card too. 

Most of Monday after emails was spent trying to figure out how E.T' (lol) is going to have space and a bed and all that. Then we had to go get him from the office and all that. So Monday was shot and we didn’t have any lessons that night so we just tried visiting a bunch of people.

Tuesday was exchanges with the Zone Leaders. E'T. and I went with Elder Shreve from Wyoming. We spent the day talking to referrals and setting up appointments. We talked to a lot of people: more than 60 different people and left commitments with 48, which was a record at least in my book. I love talking to people so much. It's so much fun to hear other peoples stories and problems and all those things and try to help them. After that morning we went to a few lessons that we had scheduled. At one of them, Salvador told us that he was on chapter one still. I was about to ask why he hadn't been reading when we found out that it was chapter one of Helaman, like he read up to there, Isaiah and war chapters and all. Dope. So that was super unexpected but quite welcome as well, he says that he knows 70% of it is true but the other 30% isn't true because it is already found in the Bible. We tried talking to him about this but it didn’t go over quite as well as we wanted. We definitely need to try again to explain it because I think 70% is about 31% to few. After that we did an hour of impromptu service (to one of 6 investigators we have that want to be baptized but cannot because their respective husbands will not marry them) we helped clean up her back yard. It was such a beautiful night. Vegas is so beautiful if you can look past the sex, drugs, and sadness.

Shoot. Short of time. Moving on to Wednesday. Wednesday we stopped in to visit Juana and she made us lunch which was super nice of her. She also made us her smoothies and shakes for us to try. She's a saleswoman by trade and I must say that she was quite effective! If I wasn't a broke missionary I would have bought some. We did some other stuff throughout the day but then later in the evening we went to the Bishop's house to talk about some of the baptismal records and stuff. He fed us sooooo much pie and spent like an hour explaining Settlers of Catan to us and all the expansions. It maybe wasn't the most effective use of our time but I think he liked it. He's a great guy, our bishop is.

Thursday I got my bike back and I guess the problems with my seat are beyond the bike coordinators repair so I need to go to a shop sometime soon to get the post fixed up. After dinner Thursday we were coming home with E's Chacon and Johnson and I tried to be silly and bike between them but they both wobbled into me at the same time and we all ate it. Both of them fell sideways off their bikes and I was thrown forward and did a flip and a half. I had no idea what happened until I fell on my head. Luckily I was wearing my helmet. Kids. Always follow the rules, not matter how annoying. They are there to protect you. (cough, lawofcoughchastity, cough wordcoughofwisdom cough) I felt like an idiot, luckily no one was hurt and I was only a little dazed. I'm never gonna do that again. I tried to be silly and put people in danger. I am actually super embarrassed to even say that I did that :(. Oh freak, then that night we had 2 dope lessons, both with 2 new investigating families. The first was super excited to be baptized and the second family not as much but she, the wife, gave us an entire cheesecake. It was sooooo awesome. She asked us to come back and then had us try some cake she made and we said we loved it so she gave us an entire one! I took it home in my backpack. Some things only happen on missions. In my journal I wrote "I love being loved." We are all so lucky to be loved by so many people. “We” includes everyone in the world.

Friday we had a lesson with Antonia and it almost turned into her giving a talk on faith. That woman has more faith than I have ever personally seen. Part of it is probably necessary for her survival but either way it’s powerful. She was so many stories about prayer and faith and reading the scriptures and how they help her every day. Every time we go over there she is either reading the Bible or The Book of Mormon. And she always asks us about the temple. It warms my heart. Also on Friday we saved a dog’s life. Or at least I like to think that we did. Our neighbors’ disappeared and left their pit-bull puppy outside all week on their 5 by 5 patio. It wouldn’t have been as horrible except when they left the patio was a huge mess and the dog literally couldn’t turn around. It whined and whined and whined. We tried to block the whining out of our heads for the first few days but by Friday it got to be too heartrending. We went to look at it and it didn’t have any food or water or any blanket or bedding and it had been eating paper and chair legs. Not just chewing, eating. Its stools were like 90% paper and wood.  That almost made me cry. So we gave it some food and some water and .... I may or may not have cleaned the neighbors patio to give the dog a little more space ..... Probably a bad idea but I did it. The dog certainly appreciated it.

Moving on to things that don’t involve trespassing... Saturday we had a lesson with a part member family. The husband is a member and his wife is not. It was ... weird. He is pretty less active but he has a special spirit about him. Her, on the other hand, she does not. It's not that she’s a bad person or anything, she just doesn’t have the same.... brightness, or glow, or I dunno. I can’t describe it. But you could feel and see a huge spiritual difference between these two people. It was bien interesante. 

Sunday was church and all the things that go with that. It was a good day and I liked it a lot. We went to visit Marcos right after dinner and he was super happy to see us and we talked about a lot of stuff with him. He is such a special person when he hasn't been drinking. I am also understanding him way better than when I first got out here. It was cool to see him sober and with a new hope to stop drinking. He went to church with his wife today which is way better than nothing and he also said that he was going to try to start reading The Book of Mormon whenever he wants to drink. I don’t know too much but I know that if he stays true to his word he will be happier because of it. Repentance, fingers crossed. Not in the condemning way, but a turning from the things that make him sad to the things that will make him happier. Not to mention save him a lot of money. He drinks a lot of Patron. The bottles look cool though I guess.

Aight everyone. Because of all the craziness that's all the time I have this week!
I love you all so much. 
One of these letters I'll be able to properly express what it is like to be doing the Lord’s work.
In the meantime
ciao!
Sam 

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