March 9, 2009

Hello Family this email wont be very long because we have a Zone activity in Caborojo at the bottom of the island and it starts at 2…
This week my companion was sick and we had to stay in for almost three days so we didn’t get a whole lot of things done but we did have a wonderful lesson with our investigator Madeline and Zully. They have been investigating for over 6 months and Know the church is true just have a desire to gain more knowledge before baptism. So we have been working on that and when we passed by to teach her we talked a lot about baptism and prayer. She still hasn’t prayed with us. So we worked on that I wrote down the prayer on my whiteboard and included the handsome missionaries as something she is grateful for and she started cracking up and always says that when she sees me now. =) she prayed for the first time with the missionaries though. My companion is going zone leader we are pretty sure because tonight we are doing another trade off with the Zone leaders. That’s two this transfer. Ugh. I am staying and the other elder is coming up here. So yeah. I have been writing galina regularly so I will make sure to send her a BYU-I pumped up letter. =) She’s awesome. Other than that we had a lesson with Madeline and her mom who we haven’t taught yet and found out her mom has read all the way to 2nd nephi . THROUGH IT TO JACOB… crazy we haven’t even taught her. She wants to read it all and we told her to pray about it to find out if it is true. She said “I don’t need to pray you silly teenagers. I already know it is true.” =) WOW we haven’t even taught her. Then I talked directly to Madeline. And said Madeline we have three principles left to teach you then the next step is baptism. Will you be baptized on Saturday. Her eyes got really big and she said… well….i will pray about it and tell you yes or no on Tuesday. If I feel no I will have a date for you. =) SHE IS GOING TO BE BAPTIZED!!! Then another investigator said he is coming to church because he doesn’t want my companion to leave without seeing him go to church. Woohoo! And then we are teaching a 16 yearold kid from the states that was questioning us on repentance because he hit his dad. We were telling him that Christ founded only 1 church and we need to find that church. We told him he needs to find it and he told us well if you know what church it is just tell me! So we told him and he wants to come to church as well and he is going to read and everything. AWESOME!!!
Well I gotta go. I will write a letter with some other things. And my memory cards. Still didn’t get those sent out. Love you Bye~

March 2, 2009

Hello Good Week!
Well this week looks like I am writing to a bunch of busy bodies.Well this morning has been crazy! We woke up to go get my license and so we showed up the guy told me I have to call the Oregon office to get a letter of clearance to get a Puerto Rican drivers license so they gave me the number and now I am waiting till they open to call and have them fax it over here. Then we went to go finish the rest of the papers. I had to go make some copies then I had to go to a medical exam to get that part signed for 12 dollars and then pay for 12 dollars worth of stamps for some odd reason. And then now I am waiting for the office to open to give them a call and ask them to fax the sheet over. We had an exchange this week and I was down in Caborojo… Lucky ducks! Man they get fed so much. We were going all over because the elder down there Elder Parodi is from spain and just started his mission. He didn’t quite know what to do. It was fun. He told me about their siesta and crazy schedule in spain that they don’t eat dinner till 11 PM. He talks funny too. His Spanish is very different. He uses the Vosotros form which is older Spanish and no one uses it here or in much of latin America. For example we were contacting and he asked a boy “Cuantos sois en su familia?” in the ustedes form it would be cuantos son en su familia. In the Yo form Ser would be conjugated into soy. So this elder from spain has a little bit of a lisp and loses his s’s so he said sois but the boy thought he said soy… so he would be asking “how much am I in your family” instead of “how many are you, your family” The boy was way confused. =) I was pretty entertained. He also says vale all the time which is just a filler word like right or yeah or you know… it was an interesting experience. The cough is going away little by little and Sister Martineau said that I should take Sudafed to see if it makes it go away and if it doesn’t she wants me to go into a doctor. This week we didn’t have too much success but we have a lot of citas set up this next week with members and the Zone leaders are asking us to go on splits. So it will be interesting this next week. Today we are planning on going and playing volleyball on the beach but the thing is we need to find a beach with a volleyball court without girls. Man… that’s a hard one. If not we will just play in the church. Gonna be fun! Last week we went to the driving range not to golf golf because they had some dumb rules and we didn’t have any clubs. I am one of the worst golfers I have ever seen. But we got some sweet pictures you have to see. Today I plan on sending two more memory cards home. A 1 gig and a 2 gig. This lst week we did a lot of finding a lot of walking and little teaching. This island is not as easy as it would seem. Everone seems to be Catholic. Although as a member pointed out to us last night (who used to be catholic) in their bible or one of the bibles their church has used they took out the commandment of graven images and replaced it with and explanation of another commandment. So this member was confused… in his bible class he raised his hand and asked the teacher… If it says ten commandments why are there only nine? And the preacher asked him to be quiet and ask the question later. He said he went time and time again and asked everyone and all the members and no one knew so he finally went into a different church and asked and he gave him a different bible and told him to check that one. FINALLY HE FOUND IT. He said he realized why the catholic church had taken that one out and covered up their mistakes. He said he wanted nothing to do with the catholic church after that. Then he told us he was on the edge of creating his own church teaching what he read to be true not what a pastor dictated to the people. Then right in the moment of his need the missionaries showed up on his doorstep. They taught him and three weeks later he was baptized . he shared this with an investigator that hasn’t found her desire to be baptized yet. She knows it is true but just wants to make sure she is doing the right thing.It was a great time for her to see such a strong testimony. Then she asked us about a scripture in first nephi. Her mom was talking about the book of mormon and asked her why god would go against his own commandment and ask nephi to kill laban. She couldn’t let go of this one. Then Madeline our investigator said “Mom I am positive that god had a reason for him to do this. We don’t know why god gives us commandments. “ we showed her further in chapter 4 of first nephi where it says that it is better for one man to perish than a whole nation dwindle in disbelief. “she shouted… I KNEW IT! I KNEW IT!” she stood up for what she knew to be true and she didn’t even know it was true. Her testimony was strengthened greatly…now she is working on the last few commandments we have to teach and then hopefully next week she will set a baptism date. =) I am almost positive I am staying in the same place this next transfer because my companion has been there for 6 months and I think he is going zone leader. WoohoO!
Well yes one other story. There is a kid from new York named Michael that we contacted and then the other day we were walking and someone shouted and said “hey gringos… Hey gringos” so we turned around and he wanted to talk to us. He said he had got in an argument with his dad and felt really bad. And wanted to feel better. He asked us what he could do. We taught him a little about repentance. He listened and was excited to go apologize to his dad. Then we also invited him to church and he said yeah yeah I am going to church with my mom. And we showed a little disappointment and he asked, what it doesn’t matter what church does it? And we asked him what do you think? And he said no of course not. And then asked well how many churches did Christ set up when he came to the earth? And he answered well only 1. Then we asked. And how many do you think are true today? And he said uh 1. We shrugged our shoulders and he said ”I need to find this church” so I am hoping this week we get the chance to work with him and he comes to church next week. WoohoO! He’s awesome. And speaks English!
That’s my week. More happened but that’s the stuff I remember at the moment.
Love you all,
Aaron