Hey friends and fam! so I’m still here hahaha sorry I’ve been so horrible about emailing the past few months I haven’t gotten that great at managing email time yet. So far things have been good on the mish! I’m learning Spanish and am actually able to communicate with people. I can basically understand everything that anyone says to me, and can pretty much express myself while talking or teaching. It’s super cool being able to study in another language and actually understand what I’m studying. It really helps a lot with learning new words and how to better teach.
One thing I’ve noticed here is how important the spirit is in missionary work. I never had any experience with it before, but now I can’t do anything without it! It’s crazy how many times scriptures have popped into my head or some of the things I’ve said to people in lessons, or the questions I’ve asked, because all of these things are given by the spirit when we need them, (D&C 84:85; 100:5).
Another thing is the results we are seeing right now. I haven’t had a baptism yet, but we’ve been so close so many times and at times it has been super frustrating when the people we are teaching don’t progress or don’t want to talk anymore or when things like that happen. But we have a few super awesome investigators right now that we can baptize this month! One is named Naín, and he is super excited to get baptized! We told him yesterday that he can get baptized as early as the 19th, and he just about died of excitement it was so cool! Another investigators name is Ernesto, but we just call him President Snow, because he looks exactly like president snow from Hunger Games, just older and in a walker. They’re both excited to get baptized and we’re doing all we can to help them in this step.
Also about three weeks ago I got my first American comp! His name is Elder Fowler from Reno, and he’s a super cool dude! We’re pretty similar so we have a lot of fun during the days!
Yesterday I gave my first talk in Spanish, and had about a day to prepare it. My topic was the word of wisdom. It was my first talk in this ward and I was the last speaker. I filled the last 15 minutes. They called my Friday night to give it Sunday, so I was up kind of late doing that. It went really well though and I felt the inspiration that the Bishopric had to call me and for the words that I said in the moment.
It’s a super good life being a missionary and I still have a ton of time! Five months already gone and the rest going just as fast! I love you all and can’t wait to hear from you!
So we have a softball field right by our house, and one night two teams were playing so we were watching them outside. We decided to go sit in the stands and watch. It reminded me of Dad’s softball games at Field of Dreams!
The graffiti is just random graffiti we saw
We were planning and some companionships were drawing things on the desk and erasing them, and they told us to draw each other so we did haha
In response to my question of Bryce meeting with the Mission President: I didn’t have time to mention it last week. It was just a normal see how you are doing interview though. We had a zone conference the he went to, and he and his wife asked everyone who hadn’t had an interview recently, and asked me if I had had one since I got here. I said no, so they scheduled one for me. He just asked me how I was feeling and how I was handling everything in the mission. Then he asked if I had a scripture to share with him, so I shared one that I had just studied, Ether 12:4, and talked about faith. then he asked if I had any other questions, and I asked why we weren’t having baptisms or seeing results in our area, and He shared a scripture with me, Jacob 7:24, which says sometimes we can’t really do anything, we just have to keep going, and it really helped me. I didn’t explain the scripture very well, but you should go read it!
I would like more photos of us and of home that I can keep in my scriptures or have when I’m feeling discouraged or down. You guys are a great motivator for me that’s why I like to know about home. So I can try to be more obedient and work harder to hopefully help send some blessings your way.
We are teaching English starting Thursday. We will teach anyone and everyone right now. We haven’t done this before so we don’t know how it’s going to work out really. Basically we want to see how many people will show up and how we need to adjust based on that. If there are a lot of people who don’t know any English we´ll teach basic classes. If there are more advanced people then we might add more classes for them. They want to learn English for more job opportunities or maybe to go to the US who knows?
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| Elder Fowler and Elder Johnson |
