04/18:
Dear Everyone,
It's been a while. Apologies. Here's my explanation of why I didn't write last week:
So I woke up with amazing diarhea (sp?) but fasted that day as we had planned anyway. As the day went on, I got weaker and weaker until we went to that appointment we had to schedule in the middle of preparation day. They weren't home. So I just layed down on their porch. It was bad. We went straight home (well, picked up some gatorade first) and I took in fluids and slept for 45 minutes before hitting the road again for some more appointments. Fortunately, I felt fine then, but the next day still had a little something in my stomach telling me not to eat. I didn't have anything but crackers and gatorade until the late afternoon when we came across and wonderful Mexican barbeque and simply invited ourselves in, taking the opportunity to talk to everyone there. It was the absolutely ideal missionary opportunity, but did, of course, involve having to eat a lot of food. I got most of it down and suffered (and I mean suffered) amazing gas and bloating the rest of the night until our 8pm appointment. We had to have it in the garage because it was just us, Geovanni and Adelino, and we would have had another guy or another girl to go inside (our other joint teacher didn't show up). Anyway, so we start talking and Adelino, who told us two days before that he wanted to choose a date for his baptism, now tells us that he's not so sure that any of it is true, especially the part about three kingdoms of glory. Just then, having to be in the garage worked to our favor big time because the neighbors got home and decided to come chat as well and find out what it is we teach, after all. It turned into a powerful lesson about the Restoration of the Gospel, but as we were getting to the end, I felt something inside shift. I ran out and got to the garden just in time to violently vomit everything I had eaten and suffered the past two hours...right in front of all 6 members, missionaries and investigators. Wow. Exciting. Of course, I've felt just fine ever since.
Funny...I was just looking at my notes of what I was going to write in my email that day, and I was going to include a bit about how I appear to be wearing out my digestive system. I guess I was right.
There are some real down-sides to having two newby Spanish speakers working together. For the past while, when we called to set appointments, we'd ask when they would like us to get together: "juntarnos". One day, I guess I said it one too many times in a conversation with our 30-year-old, former bad-boy investigator, and he couldn't help but laugh. We asked someone else later in the day what he may have been laughing at, and they explained that "juntarnos" means to get together...as in shack up. Oh the embarasment! And I don't even know how long we've been saying it. Now we only use "reunirnos".
Minnesota spring: when winter and summer take turns. It's 50 degrees one day and snows 4 inches the next.
We had 35 appointments last week. That is absolutely unheard of. Of course, they weren't all there, but we took the opportunity to look for investigators in the area and found some. We're having a ton of success...to the point that we're dropping investigators who aren't keeping commitments and looking for new people who really do want it.
I'm staying in this area until my mission ends, which is exactly what I wanted. Unfortunately, I'm feeling some frustration with some ward members, but it's a great opportunity to work on my patience and charity. We'd like to start doing larger ward activities that people can invite their friends to. The ward did them some years ago and they were a huge success. Everyone brought friends and a ton of people got to learn about the gospel. Unfortunately, they were stopped because some of the members started bringing alcohol and after the missionaries left, the events would take a very different turn. We were thinking that was all out of the ward's system and we could start fresh...but then a member brought alcohol to a non-church-function barbeque at a member's last weekend and we're back where we started. Just goes to show that the Lord sends blessings only as quickly as we are able to receive them.
Adelino called yesterday beside himself with sadness. He is so alone here. We changed our plans for the whole day and had him go out with us on bike. We visited some spanish-speakers in a local nursing home and had him give the spiritual thought. He has this dream of sharing the gospel with people in hospitals and prisons, and he did a really amazing job. We then got lunch (Sister Williams and I ate almost the entire pizza) and had him watch some conference talks on the internet. I hope it helps. He's opened up to us a TON, but he's super, super, super shy when there's anyone else around and doesn't talk at all. He really needs good friends, though. Hopefully he's resolving his problems and really getting closer to baptism. He talks about it more, but he's not solid enough yet that he'd stay active if we both were to leave.
We took a member joint-teaching for the first time and she rocked. Our appointment was being slow answering the door, so she just let herself and us in. It was awesome! I love spunky women.
We had stake conference via satellite from Salt Lake City. I've never done anything quite like that. It was like a second general conference.
Sister William's sleeping medication doesn't let her really start functioning until 8:30 or 9 in the morning, so my last bit of my mission has a very different feel than the rest of it. I still get up (unless I was up in the middle of the night with her, which doesn't happen as much anymore) and putter around the house studying or working on little things. Yesterday, we took our bikes to a local park for exercise and followed a trail by the Mississippi River, which was fun. Exercise is really therapeutic for her, so we can take as long as we need for that. When we got back to teh house, that's when we heard from Adelino, so we spent the whole afternoon with him as described above, then went to an appointment with the Vega family. We got there just as the parents were leaving for an errand and told them we were just going to wait until they got back. Sister Williams had an awesome time playing soccor with the kids and teaching them Book of Mormon stories. I, on the other hand, had an all-out (but friendly) bash with the neighbor who was at our first lesson with the family. He read the Book of Mormon through Mosiah and took major offense that when God cursed the Lamanites by removing them from his presence, that he also marked them with a dark skin. He said that was all-out racist. It was a really intense conversation and used all the Spanish I had in me (I really couldn't talk in Spanish after that). in the mean time, the parents had gotten home and Sister Williams had a fun conversation with the mom about being a mom. We then went to an appointment with los chavos at a member's home, and it turns out the members went all-out and threw a barbeque...and los chavos (that always refers to Pompilio, Geovanni and Andy) never showed up! We called but to no avail. Fortunately, the member's cousin was there (the one I stood by awkwardly until she invited us over) and we had a really good conversation with her. So between a slow morning, a fun bike ride, the rest of the afternoon on bike with no appointments, playing with the Vegas and a barbeque...it was a way laid-back day. And yet we still accomplished so much. I like that combo.
Thursday morning was terrible for Sister Williams and I really wondered if she's going to go home...so we spent the whole afternoon blowing bubbles (thanks, Mom) by the lake. It was very chill.
We have to awesome new potential investigators: Oscar and Lily. Oscar didn't believe in God until Lily had worked on him for a couple years, and he thinks he's ready to learn more. Lily says she doesn't pray often, but when she does, God always sends someone. For example, she prayed the night before our appointment with Oscar, and then was at the house when we showed up to teach. She's got a ton of energy and they're both really sharp. I'm way excited to teach them.
Easter was fun. We had a ton of appointments but almost none of them were there (big surprise). Geovanni came out with us as our joint teacher (yay for new converts!) and he LOVES tracting because that's how he was found. We taught a couple lessons and helped some people with their yard work and Geovanni is really just cool.
We spent an hour side-walk chalking scriptures onto a less-actives driveway, and it was Sister William's turn to vomit. We had just eaten a slightly questionable dinner with a member, and then being almost upside-down while drawing was too much for her digestive system and she lost it, too. Oh, what fun.
An appointment recently fell through and we saw a Koptic Christian church with a bunch of people going in, so we treated ourselves to sitting in a few minutes in their service, which was AMAZING!!! Everyone there sang SO BEAUTIFULLY, which was a huge adjustment from our ward : ) Then a member gave us a tour of the church. It was so much fun!
The weather has been absolutely beautiful and it makes life a ton better. The trees and plants are budding and about to burst. I'm grateful. And we're on our way to another barbeque.
Love you all!
Erin
It's been a while. Apologies. Here's my explanation of why I didn't write last week:
So I woke up with amazing diarhea (sp?) but fasted that day as we had planned anyway. As the day went on, I got weaker and weaker until we went to that appointment we had to schedule in the middle of preparation day. They weren't home. So I just layed down on their porch. It was bad. We went straight home (well, picked up some gatorade first) and I took in fluids and slept for 45 minutes before hitting the road again for some more appointments. Fortunately, I felt fine then, but the next day still had a little something in my stomach telling me not to eat. I didn't have anything but crackers and gatorade until the late afternoon when we came across and wonderful Mexican barbeque and simply invited ourselves in, taking the opportunity to talk to everyone there. It was the absolutely ideal missionary opportunity, but did, of course, involve having to eat a lot of food. I got most of it down and suffered (and I mean suffered) amazing gas and bloating the rest of the night until our 8pm appointment. We had to have it in the garage because it was just us, Geovanni and Adelino, and we would have had another guy or another girl to go inside (our other joint teacher didn't show up). Anyway, so we start talking and Adelino, who told us two days before that he wanted to choose a date for his baptism, now tells us that he's not so sure that any of it is true, especially the part about three kingdoms of glory. Just then, having to be in the garage worked to our favor big time because the neighbors got home and decided to come chat as well and find out what it is we teach, after all. It turned into a powerful lesson about the Restoration of the Gospel, but as we were getting to the end, I felt something inside shift. I ran out and got to the garden just in time to violently vomit everything I had eaten and suffered the past two hours...right in front of all 6 members, missionaries and investigators. Wow. Exciting. Of course, I've felt just fine ever since.
Funny...I was just looking at my notes of what I was going to write in my email that day, and I was going to include a bit about how I appear to be wearing out my digestive system. I guess I was right.
There are some real down-sides to having two newby Spanish speakers working together. For the past while, when we called to set appointments, we'd ask when they would like us to get together: "juntarnos". One day, I guess I said it one too many times in a conversation with our 30-year-old, former bad-boy investigator, and he couldn't help but laugh. We asked someone else later in the day what he may have been laughing at, and they explained that "juntarnos" means to get together...as in shack up. Oh the embarasment! And I don't even know how long we've been saying it. Now we only use "reunirnos".
Minnesota spring: when winter and summer take turns. It's 50 degrees one day and snows 4 inches the next.
We had 35 appointments last week. That is absolutely unheard of. Of course, they weren't all there, but we took the opportunity to look for investigators in the area and found some. We're having a ton of success...to the point that we're dropping investigators who aren't keeping commitments and looking for new people who really do want it.
I'm staying in this area until my mission ends, which is exactly what I wanted. Unfortunately, I'm feeling some frustration with some ward members, but it's a great opportunity to work on my patience and charity. We'd like to start doing larger ward activities that people can invite their friends to. The ward did them some years ago and they were a huge success. Everyone brought friends and a ton of people got to learn about the gospel. Unfortunately, they were stopped because some of the members started bringing alcohol and after the missionaries left, the events would take a very different turn. We were thinking that was all out of the ward's system and we could start fresh...but then a member brought alcohol to a non-church-function barbeque at a member's last weekend and we're back where we started. Just goes to show that the Lord sends blessings only as quickly as we are able to receive them.
Adelino called yesterday beside himself with sadness. He is so alone here. We changed our plans for the whole day and had him go out with us on bike. We visited some spanish-speakers in a local nursing home and had him give the spiritual thought. He has this dream of sharing the gospel with people in hospitals and prisons, and he did a really amazing job. We then got lunch (Sister Williams and I ate almost the entire pizza) and had him watch some conference talks on the internet. I hope it helps. He's opened up to us a TON, but he's super, super, super shy when there's anyone else around and doesn't talk at all. He really needs good friends, though. Hopefully he's resolving his problems and really getting closer to baptism. He talks about it more, but he's not solid enough yet that he'd stay active if we both were to leave.
We took a member joint-teaching for the first time and she rocked. Our appointment was being slow answering the door, so she just let herself and us in. It was awesome! I love spunky women.
We had stake conference via satellite from Salt Lake City. I've never done anything quite like that. It was like a second general conference.
Sister William's sleeping medication doesn't let her really start functioning until 8:30 or 9 in the morning, so my last bit of my mission has a very different feel than the rest of it. I still get up (unless I was up in the middle of the night with her, which doesn't happen as much anymore) and putter around the house studying or working on little things. Yesterday, we took our bikes to a local park for exercise and followed a trail by the Mississippi River, which was fun. Exercise is really therapeutic for her, so we can take as long as we need for that. When we got back to teh house, that's when we heard from Adelino, so we spent the whole afternoon with him as described above, then went to an appointment with the Vega family. We got there just as the parents were leaving for an errand and told them we were just going to wait until they got back. Sister Williams had an awesome time playing soccor with the kids and teaching them Book of Mormon stories. I, on the other hand, had an all-out (but friendly) bash with the neighbor who was at our first lesson with the family. He read the Book of Mormon through Mosiah and took major offense that when God cursed the Lamanites by removing them from his presence, that he also marked them with a dark skin. He said that was all-out racist. It was a really intense conversation and used all the Spanish I had in me (I really couldn't talk in Spanish after that). in the mean time, the parents had gotten home and Sister Williams had a fun conversation with the mom about being a mom. We then went to an appointment with los chavos at a member's home, and it turns out the members went all-out and threw a barbeque...and los chavos (that always refers to Pompilio, Geovanni and Andy) never showed up! We called but to no avail. Fortunately, the member's cousin was there (the one I stood by awkwardly until she invited us over) and we had a really good conversation with her. So between a slow morning, a fun bike ride, the rest of the afternoon on bike with no appointments, playing with the Vegas and a barbeque...it was a way laid-back day. And yet we still accomplished so much. I like that combo.
Thursday morning was terrible for Sister Williams and I really wondered if she's going to go home...so we spent the whole afternoon blowing bubbles (thanks, Mom) by the lake. It was very chill.
We have to awesome new potential investigators: Oscar and Lily. Oscar didn't believe in God until Lily had worked on him for a couple years, and he thinks he's ready to learn more. Lily says she doesn't pray often, but when she does, God always sends someone. For example, she prayed the night before our appointment with Oscar, and then was at the house when we showed up to teach. She's got a ton of energy and they're both really sharp. I'm way excited to teach them.
Easter was fun. We had a ton of appointments but almost none of them were there (big surprise). Geovanni came out with us as our joint teacher (yay for new converts!) and he LOVES tracting because that's how he was found. We taught a couple lessons and helped some people with their yard work and Geovanni is really just cool.
We spent an hour side-walk chalking scriptures onto a less-actives driveway, and it was Sister William's turn to vomit. We had just eaten a slightly questionable dinner with a member, and then being almost upside-down while drawing was too much for her digestive system and she lost it, too. Oh, what fun.
An appointment recently fell through and we saw a Koptic Christian church with a bunch of people going in, so we treated ourselves to sitting in a few minutes in their service, which was AMAZING!!! Everyone there sang SO BEAUTIFULLY, which was a huge adjustment from our ward : ) Then a member gave us a tour of the church. It was so much fun!
The weather has been absolutely beautiful and it makes life a ton better. The trees and plants are budding and about to burst. I'm grateful. And we're on our way to another barbeque.
Love you all!
Erin