July 29, 2012

July 29, 2012

Hey family, I’m doing well. Its been a very frustrating week, but it came with a lot of learning experiences, and I feel like I’ve grown a little bit because of it. My companion is doing well. He has been feeling sick recently and he thinks its because his tonsils are infected. He also is feeling a little discouraged because of this area, but I’m trying to do all I can to help. He’s a great missionary and teaches me something new everyday about how to teach. He is teaching me tongue twisters in Spanish which are super hard but they do help with pronunciation. The area is just tough because the branch has a lot of inactive members.  We spend a lot of time visiting them. We have a few investigators that we are working with. Each of them have their own problems. Paublo is one of them; middle aged man raising 4 girls. All of the girls are a little bratty. I can see now why it’s important to have a house hold with a mother and a father. With him, whenever we teach him something, he always brings up something to contradict us that is just ridicules. He thinks too much…that is his problem. We taught him about prayer and that we can’t receive any spiritual knowledge unless we pray about it. If you read the book of Mormon and don’t pray about it, you won’t receive an answer. That’s his problem. We’re going to visit him tomorrow, hopefully he prayed to receive an answer.

I’m very excited to hear about dad and his new job. That’s amazing. I remember I was struggling through my prayers last night. I didn’t know what else pray about so I asked what I need to be praying for. The answer came: my family. I prayed that you guys are doing well. I’m glad new opportunities are arising for you dad and you guys.

I think Lauren should just try out anyway, she might look back and end up regretting it if she doesn’t. I don’t know. Maybe you can pray about it together and read the scriptures for an answer.

We went contacting all of Saturday, we were fasting that day that we could find someone prepared to receive the gospel. We contacted about 25 houses that we’ve never been to before on the outskirts of town. We didn’t get into a single house. That took up the whole day biking from house to house. We were dead by the end of it. We are just trying so hard to see the fruits of our labor.

Church on Sunday we had the first counselor of the stake come and talk to us. He said a lot of things that I really liked. He talked about his mission that he and his companion spent a lot of time contacting and not really finding anybody, but they saw a slow flowing of people returning to the church that were less actives. So he told us if we just do the best we can God will bless us. Sometimes in a different way than we wanted. He then also talked about how we as converts can stay converted. Sometimes in the church there are people who go to church but aren’t active in the gospel. He talked about living the gospel is being a convert. He talked about Lehi’s dream and that the people who held to the bar and grasped to the word of God where the ones who endured. He also read Alma 32: about diligently working with your seed. It was a great talk for what I needed to hear…and how to help people stay converted.

Answers 1, and 2. I haven’t gotten letters the past 4 weeks because There was actually a strike with the mailing system here in Uruguay and it messed up the whole mailing process, so who knows when things will get back together.

3. The house is ok. It has some ups and downs. I forgot to take a picture of the house. I’ll send picture of it next week.

4. The bike riding is better now. I can keep up with my companion now, but I still come home dead. I do like riding

5. My companion is great. He’s just a little discouraged and a little sick. That’s the mission

6. I will upload one

Questions: How are the Olympics? You’ll have to keep me posted.

Maybe you can have Lauren say something to Kyle Davies through Facebook for me. Just to say “good luck and congrats on the call.” I’ll be praying for him.

Ok. love you guys. Elder Webster