Hmmmm.....

Letter: June 18

 

The mission and time are mind boggling. Every new day on the mission seems to compress the earlier months into tiny files in my memory bank. It's starting to get hard to remember my time with Elder Jellen. I feel that those 3 months together was super short. I don't know... It's a weird phenomenon.

   

This week has been pretty great here in Dover. I really do love this area a lot, and it has so much potential. Elder Ferrell and I are doing a lot better together, and our teaching in Unity is getting so much better. As far as our investigators go, there isn't too much going on as of now. We had to change Mikaela's baptismal date to the 1st of July so that we have more time to teach her and prepare her for her baptism. This week we got to teach her about the word of wisdom, and her and her little sister Nicole were pretty sad about the whole ice-tea thing, but they agreed to it. It was pretty funny during the lesson when we were talking about it, the little brother tried to be funny and went and grabbed a gree-tea juice box and started drinking it in front of his sisters.

   

Two of our roommates Elder Smith and Elder Tippetts have been trying to get over poison ivy this past week. They had it so bad. Luckily neither I nor Elder Ferrel have been afflicted.

    

We've been working really hard this week as we set a goal to teach 30 lessons this week. We got really close with 27, so next week hopefully we can hit it. We just need to start finding some new people that actually want to hear the gospel instead of holding onto a bunch of people that don't want to progress. I get so tired of the excuse from our investigators that say, "Yo les llamo" which says "I'll call you." I don't think I can count how many times that has been said to me on my mission, and I don't think anyone has ever even called us. So it's time to do some family hunting to find a family that is ready for the gospel.

   

I think one of the biggest things I'm trying to develop now as a missionary is really teaching from the heart. After 22 months of doing the same things day after day, it can be pretty easy to go in robotic mode. I'm trying to be more dynamic in my teaching, using examples, telling stories and the such to make our teaching more powerful.

    

We went and visited this Uruguayan member this week, and she fed me my first uruguayan dish. I'm not sure what it's called, but maybe caleb would recognize it by the description. It was basically ground-beef wrapped in crepes, with tomoto sauce on top. It was like uruguayan lasagna. After we ate she pulled up this 15 minute uruguay promotional video about how cool the country was. The best part was when the guy said "So what's so special about uruguay? Well Nothing really." and then he just goes onto explain how it's a nice tranquilo place to live. I'd like to visit there one day.

 

This week should be pretty great. We have our semi-annual temple trip on Wednesday which I'm excited about. It will almost be exactly 2 years since I went to the temple for the first time, crazy right? 

Hector called me the other day on the phone and asked me when I was going home because he wanted me to come to the temple with him after he gets his mission call. He said he'll try to put his papers in as soon as he can so he can get his call and go to the temple. That would be a pretty incredible experience if I could go do that with him. We'll see :) 

 

My mission is moving quickly, and after this week, the transfer will be 1/2 over. I can't believe it. It really is all going by as if it were a dream. Last night I had some memories of things back home, and they seemed so familiar to me, as if it had only been a few weeks ago, and I was shocked to think it's been almost 2 years. I don't understand how it works. I guess that's what happens when you are busy all the time.

 

Thanks so much for everything. Thanks for the package! The Gospel is True!  I love you all muchisimo!