Monday, October 25, 2010
October 25, 2010
Hey family,
That's awesome that Mikayla's team won the championship, but crazy because she looks way different in all the pictures. (The Riverton 7th/8th Volleyball team took first place in the season ending tournament against the 9th grade Hillcrest team.) At least BYU didn't lose to Wyoming at home. That would of been a disaster, but it sounded like a fun game with the rain and all.
My new companion is Elder Sypherd from Chico, California; a town north of Sacramento. He's awesome, but Spanish is a struggle. He struggles even answering where he's from and bearing his testimony, but we'll improve little by little.
His second day we took out 3 baptismal dates with a family that we're teaching. They're 3 sisters, Nancy, Maura, and Elena. We've been teaching them the last couple of weeks, and Elena has been progressing a ton. She's 23 and she smokes quite a bit, but we set goals with her to stop smoking 1 cigarette a day, but in a week and a half, she already dropped from like 20 a day to 5. And she's really willing to make the changes necessary in her life and she had a really good experience with the Book of Mormon and prayer. And she knows that God answered her and that the things we teach are true. They have a date set for the 20th of November, so we hope they can continue keeping the commitments and preparing for the day of their baptism.
We have lots of people that are really progressing well, and we pray to be able to find those that are prepared to receive the gospel this week, and that we can help them all to make it the the waters of baptism and to make covenants with our Heavenly Father.
I hope everything goes well this week with you guys, and I'll talk with ya'll next week.
Love, David
That's awesome that Mikayla's team won the championship, but crazy because she looks way different in all the pictures. (The Riverton 7th/8th Volleyball team took first place in the season ending tournament against the 9th grade Hillcrest team.) At least BYU didn't lose to Wyoming at home. That would of been a disaster, but it sounded like a fun game with the rain and all.
My new companion is Elder Sypherd from Chico, California; a town north of Sacramento. He's awesome, but Spanish is a struggle. He struggles even answering where he's from and bearing his testimony, but we'll improve little by little.
His second day we took out 3 baptismal dates with a family that we're teaching. They're 3 sisters, Nancy, Maura, and Elena. We've been teaching them the last couple of weeks, and Elena has been progressing a ton. She's 23 and she smokes quite a bit, but we set goals with her to stop smoking 1 cigarette a day, but in a week and a half, she already dropped from like 20 a day to 5. And she's really willing to make the changes necessary in her life and she had a really good experience with the Book of Mormon and prayer. And she knows that God answered her and that the things we teach are true. They have a date set for the 20th of November, so we hope they can continue keeping the commitments and preparing for the day of their baptism.
We have lots of people that are really progressing well, and we pray to be able to find those that are prepared to receive the gospel this week, and that we can help them all to make it the the waters of baptism and to make covenants with our Heavenly Father.
I hope everything goes well this week with you guys, and I'll talk with ya'll next week.
Love, David
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
October 20, 2010
Hey family.
That´s awesome y´all got to go down to Sand Hollow this week. It sounds
super fun. Sounds like Kendrick´s going to be super different when I
get back. He couldn´t even eat when I left and now he´s freaking out
about pizza. Sounds like everyone´s growing up. That´s awesome about
Max Hall. I also was one of those that didn´t believe he would make
any impact in the NFL, but I´m glad he´s proving me wrong.
I am staying in 9 de abril, but I´m going to be training again, and
I´m a new district leader also. The new missionaries get here
tomorrow, so today I´m with another missionary that´s training named
Elder Perez. We´ll go to the mission home tomorrow in the afternoon
to meet our new companions. I got a lot more responsibility put on me
this transfer, but we´re going to try our most to improve and find new
people to teach and help to the waters of baptism these upcoming
weeks. I´m a little nervous because I´m going to have to teach the
district meetings every week to the other 7 missionaries that are in
my district, but I need to get over my grand fear of getting up in
front of people some time. We´ll pray that I can make that grand
weakness into a little bit of a strength with the Lord´s help and that
we can improve in the work.
Sounds like Christi´s having problems with strange men already down
at BYU. It makes me kind of angry that people even try to date my
sister, so I guess it´s good that I was already gone when she started
dating because it is weird to me still. Everyone´s going to be
different when I get back. Hopefully volleyball keeps going well and
that Mikayla makes the basketball team (which she will because she is
extremely tall and muy talented).
Well, I'll talk to you guys next week and I hope everything goes well
up there with everything.
Goodbye family
Love David.
That´s awesome y´all got to go down to Sand Hollow this week. It sounds
super fun. Sounds like Kendrick´s going to be super different when I
get back. He couldn´t even eat when I left and now he´s freaking out
about pizza. Sounds like everyone´s growing up. That´s awesome about
Max Hall. I also was one of those that didn´t believe he would make
any impact in the NFL, but I´m glad he´s proving me wrong.
I am staying in 9 de abril, but I´m going to be training again, and
I´m a new district leader also. The new missionaries get here
tomorrow, so today I´m with another missionary that´s training named
Elder Perez. We´ll go to the mission home tomorrow in the afternoon
to meet our new companions. I got a lot more responsibility put on me
this transfer, but we´re going to try our most to improve and find new
people to teach and help to the waters of baptism these upcoming
weeks. I´m a little nervous because I´m going to have to teach the
district meetings every week to the other 7 missionaries that are in
my district, but I need to get over my grand fear of getting up in
front of people some time. We´ll pray that I can make that grand
weakness into a little bit of a strength with the Lord´s help and that
we can improve in the work.
Sounds like Christi´s having problems with strange men already down
at BYU. It makes me kind of angry that people even try to date my
sister, so I guess it´s good that I was already gone when she started
dating because it is weird to me still. Everyone´s going to be
different when I get back. Hopefully volleyball keeps going well and
that Mikayla makes the basketball team (which she will because she is
extremely tall and muy talented).
Well, I'll talk to you guys next week and I hope everything goes well
up there with everything.
Goodbye family
Love David.
Monday, October 11, 2010
October 11, 2010
Hooooooooooola familia;
Sounds like everything's going well up there. It´s good to finally hear good news about BYU. I miss that feeling of being in Lavell Edwards Stadium Saturday nights in the lights, in the autumn breeze. But I´ll get my chance this next year. Sounds like Mikayla´s growing up; but I´ll be there to see her prolific high school sports career so it´ll all be good.
Today with the zone we watched "The Princess and the Frog" in Spanish. Once every 2 months now we can watch an approved Disney movie from the mission home with our zones. It was pretty good. Weird to see a movie. It´s been more than a year without seeing anything besides the restoration and "Finding Faith in Christ."
We had really good lessons this week with Norah and her family (the familia Boliviana). They said that they felt like they weren´t producing fruits, that they felt our love for them and all of our efforts to help them and that felt bad that they hadn´t been so dedicated to reading and praying, and they commited to reading from the start of the Book of Mormon 2 pages everyday and to pray and ask if it is true after reading every time. And they have been completed all week, and we talked a lot about how in Nephi 3:7 that God never gives us commandments that we can´t complete, and how he´ll provide a way for them to complete all of commandments if they seek God first and act on all intentions to complete. They commited to seek all opportunites to keep the Sabbath Day with prayer and with faith; and they want to follow the Savior and his example. They are an awesome family. I love them, and hope and pray that they can overcome their obstacles and make it to church and to baptism.
This week we had another good experience with service. Saturday we were walking in the morning to some contacts that we had planned to return to, but we passed in the street and we saw down the street that there were 3 women moving a big pile of dirt and cement boulders with shovels and we went and helped them. 2 of them are members, daughters of Bartolo and Felicita, and we just put down our backpacks and started working. It was the house of the neighbor of the members, and as we worked we started talking to her. Her name is Carolina, and she is from Peru, and when she was a little girl she was going to be baptized but her parents forbid it. And now she has lots of problems; her husband's trying to recover from alchoholism, and she has depression but we talked with her a lot and she invited us to come back in the evening for dinner to meet her husband when he got back from work. They are both really awesome, lots of problems in their lives but they´re trying to overcome them. How much easier it will be if they can do it with the atonement of Jesus Christ and applying the gospel to their lives; the only way we can ever really overcome the pain and mistakes we make in this life. Just like when we found he family from Bolivia, we saw the pure importance of service and charity. We didn´t help because we knew that we would be able to teach and find a new family, we helped because we knew they needed it, and we were in the right place at the right time. God works in mysterious ways, but if we´re in tune we can be where he wants us to be.
This week I´ll be writing on Wednesday instead of Monday because the transfers where changed to half a week earlier this transfer, to Wednesday. So when I write Wednesday I´ll know if I´m still going to be here in 9 de Abril with Elder Fernandez or not. I hope that everything goes well this week. Til next week.
Love, David
Sounds like everything's going well up there. It´s good to finally hear good news about BYU. I miss that feeling of being in Lavell Edwards Stadium Saturday nights in the lights, in the autumn breeze. But I´ll get my chance this next year. Sounds like Mikayla´s growing up; but I´ll be there to see her prolific high school sports career so it´ll all be good.
Today with the zone we watched "The Princess and the Frog" in Spanish. Once every 2 months now we can watch an approved Disney movie from the mission home with our zones. It was pretty good. Weird to see a movie. It´s been more than a year without seeing anything besides the restoration and "Finding Faith in Christ."
We had really good lessons this week with Norah and her family (the familia Boliviana). They said that they felt like they weren´t producing fruits, that they felt our love for them and all of our efforts to help them and that felt bad that they hadn´t been so dedicated to reading and praying, and they commited to reading from the start of the Book of Mormon 2 pages everyday and to pray and ask if it is true after reading every time. And they have been completed all week, and we talked a lot about how in Nephi 3:7 that God never gives us commandments that we can´t complete, and how he´ll provide a way for them to complete all of commandments if they seek God first and act on all intentions to complete. They commited to seek all opportunites to keep the Sabbath Day with prayer and with faith; and they want to follow the Savior and his example. They are an awesome family. I love them, and hope and pray that they can overcome their obstacles and make it to church and to baptism.
This week we had another good experience with service. Saturday we were walking in the morning to some contacts that we had planned to return to, but we passed in the street and we saw down the street that there were 3 women moving a big pile of dirt and cement boulders with shovels and we went and helped them. 2 of them are members, daughters of Bartolo and Felicita, and we just put down our backpacks and started working. It was the house of the neighbor of the members, and as we worked we started talking to her. Her name is Carolina, and she is from Peru, and when she was a little girl she was going to be baptized but her parents forbid it. And now she has lots of problems; her husband's trying to recover from alchoholism, and she has depression but we talked with her a lot and she invited us to come back in the evening for dinner to meet her husband when he got back from work. They are both really awesome, lots of problems in their lives but they´re trying to overcome them. How much easier it will be if they can do it with the atonement of Jesus Christ and applying the gospel to their lives; the only way we can ever really overcome the pain and mistakes we make in this life. Just like when we found he family from Bolivia, we saw the pure importance of service and charity. We didn´t help because we knew that we would be able to teach and find a new family, we helped because we knew they needed it, and we were in the right place at the right time. God works in mysterious ways, but if we´re in tune we can be where he wants us to be.
This week I´ll be writing on Wednesday instead of Monday because the transfers where changed to half a week earlier this transfer, to Wednesday. So when I write Wednesday I´ll know if I´m still going to be here in 9 de Abril with Elder Fernandez or not. I hope that everything goes well this week. Til next week.
Love, David
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
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