Saturday, January 29, 2011

Another week in the life of a missionary

Okie Dokie.  So another week has gone by in the life of a missionary.  Things have been going pretty great here.  This week was a little bit harder than the past week.  It started off quite good, but fairly quickly got harder and harder.  The reason being that all our appointments were getting juked, and that we've had to drop a couple of our investigators.  But on the bright side, we had a couple investigators at Church on Sunday.  We've been teaching a family recently and they all seem pretty excited about everything.  Elder Lopez was teaching them the last time that he was here, and so here we are teaching them again.  It's a single mother with four daughters, 3 of which are old enough to get baptized.  So we're working really hard with them.  We've been working with a family in the ward to help fellowship them, and that’s going really good.  The mom’s name is Yudelka (I know, it's a little different.  But apparently in the Dominican Republic they like to give their kids different names).  Her daughters are Laura 18, Reinisi 11, Reina 8, and Juliana 4.  Recently we've been trying to focus a lot on how the gospel can really help her with whatever stress she has in her life (her daughters make things hard for her sometimes).  But that’s what the focus of our lessons has been with them.  Another thing we've been doing is bringing Brother Antola and his Daughter Maite with us to teach them, and then when we do the actual teaching, we split, and Maite and I teach the Kids while Elder Lopez and Bro. Antola teach the Mom.  That’s been working great, because it allows her to focus on the lesson, and to really feel the spirit and allow it to reside there during the lesson.  Tonight we're having a FHE activity at the Antolas house, and we're hoping that it can really help them too, and bring them closer to baptism.  But yeah, I and Elder Lopez would really appreciate it if you included them in your prayers; especially so that the girls will start understanding why it's important to help their mom.
Anyways, in response to your questions, the Mr.Mac Jacket sleeves are fairly short.  Like 2 inches too short.  I was talking with Elder Lopez about the rain, and he was saying that you barely wear a jacket when it rains, because it's so warm anyways.  And I could buy one here if it really came down to it.  But let me know for sure what you want me to do.  I still haven't taken any tags off of it, and I have the box they sent it in. 
In regards to your package question, I'd say it's best if you send it to the mission home.  But you can send it to my home address if you want.  The only thing I'm not sure of is what they'll do with it if I'm not there when they drop it off.
That’s kinda sweet that you got a new car and all.  As for selling my car, try and keep my sub and amp if you could, cause it'd be nice to put in the car I get after my mission; unless Grandpa wants to give me his Acura TL (wink wink nod nod...  JK).  But yeah, I have no problems with you selling that.  Hopefully you can get a good bit of money for.  Like $2000 ish, maybe $2500.
In regard to your question about challenging investigators to baptism shortly after starting to teach them, the reason it's better to give them a date sooner, is because that’s normally when the spirit is testifying to them the strongest, and it gives them something to work towards.  Of course you always need to let the spirit guide, and if it's not the right time, then you don’t do it.
We still have a pretty good amount of snow, and I've heard that we're supposed to get like another 20 inches or so in the next day.  It's snowing a fair bit right now.  It hasn’t started collecting on the ground, but when it does, there’s going to be a lot of Ecuadorians receiving jobs.  And it'll build up fast.
Transfers happen in about three weeks of so.  Hopefully I'll be able to stay with Elder Lopez, because it’d be best for this area.  He goes home at the end of next cycle though, so if I stay with him, I'll also be killing him too.  If you referred to it in mission terms, I'll be killing my Dad and my Mom (trainer and follow-up trainer).  And yes, I'm still the driving missionary, which I love.  I'm hoping to get a new car soon, because ours is dying on us.
Anyways, I've gotta get going for now.  I look forward to hearing back from you.  And let me know what you want me to do with the jacket.
 Love, Carson 

No comments:

Post a Comment