Semana dos en el campo

Hola mi amigos,

Como estan? I hope that everyone is doing super well in their lives, it’s crazy to think that as of now I have been away from home for a full two months! Time goes by so fast when you are constantly on the move doing things. P-days are nice since they give us time to slow down a little and we also get to talk to all the awesome people back home (:

So time for a sad story that happen last P-day. We got to visit the French market in New Orleans after emailing you all. It was a fun time until we ran into a homeless (I think) man sitting outside of one of the oldest catholic cathedrals in the USA who called himself "King David.”  He called my group of missionaries over and said, "Come teach me about Jesus." So we go over and find out that he really didn't want to have us teach him anything but wanted to try to catch us in our words and try to twist what we told him, so one of the elders got a little mad at him and "King David" responded by swearing at him and calling him all sorts of vulgar things and then finished it by saying, " I have three things to teach you 1. Jesus is God 2. He is a black man 3. He does not exist..... unless you believe in him." It was such a crazy experience because it showed the complete and total difference between people who are kind and love God like most of the people we interacted with, when compared to someone who only wanted to tear other people’s beliefs apart, degrade, and humiliate them. It was such a stark contrast that it made me feel so bad for this man because there was a point in his life when he had joy and happiness, but something had driven him from this happiness and had left him with nothing but harsh words and anger. I so wish we could have helped him, but there was not anything we could do since he would not accept anything we said. I heard the mission was hard because some people wouldn't listen to you, but I never realized that no matter how rude they were, you would still wish there was something you could do for them, which makes things ten times harder.

So on a more happy note, our investigator Miguel who was dragged to Florida by his controlling dad came back to New Orleans!! It is so awesome because even though there were a lot of trials for him, he still had the desire to be baptized and so did his mom and rest of his family. We have to work with some of the other members of his family; but he is on date to be baptized on the 8th of this month! It was such an awesome experience to see him again and see that his faith had not wavered in the slightest. Another awesome thing about this week is that we ran into two new investigators while tracting, and they seem pretty awesome even though we have only taught them once. It was a really cool story because when Elder Barron and I were walking into a complex of homes in Fat City there was a little boy who ran up to us and asked, "Can you teach my mom?" We were super surprised, but followed the kid to his house in the complex and proceeded to help his mom and her sister with their project of cleaning the house, and then sat down with them in a lesson that they seemed to enjoy a lot. It was super awesome and they invited us to come over this Wednesday for a second lesson.

We met with a lot more people but those are the two biggest stories for the week but now I have a quote of the week from a conversation between me and Elder Barron

ME: (talking about my knife) "My Leatherman is so sharp that I can shave the hair right off my legs.

Elder Barron: "That is both the manliest and girliest thing I have ever heard!"

Hahaha that may only be funny for me and him since we have weird missionary humor so I apologize.

One of my favorite quotes from conference this week is, "I was promised that if I read the Book of Mormon with my kids every day I would not lose any of them... And I will not lose you." I love that quote since it is a mother to her child but also because it is a testimony of not only the strength of mothers but also the love God has for us. When we sin I can imagine God saying to us, "I have prepared a way for you to be clean again through the Atoning Sacrifice of my Only Begotten, I gave this to you because I love you and I will not lose you." Whenever we make mistakes we can always repent and return to the path that leads to him. We can find joy and happiness with our families for eternity. 

I love you all, have a great week!

Some very interesting hot sauce

Catholic Cathedral in the French Market

My comp pretending to pray while sleeping.

Mi Primero Semana En El Campo

Hey Everyone!

So I’ve been out in the mission field for just under a week now, it’s very hot and humid here in Louisiana and I think that my shirts will very soon be yellow instead of white... I guess I’ll have to figure out what to do about that so if anyone has good ideas on keeping shirts white let me know. 

So anyways I’ve got a new comp now named Elder Barron (The one in the pic where we are standing in front of a car very awkwardly since I didn’t know who he was at that point, but now everything is good). He is an awesome guy who has been on the mission for about 15 months and I’m amazed at how good he is with Spanish! It makes me super excited for when I get to that point. I’m serving in an area called Metairie which is just outside New Orleans. We have about 5 progressing investigators as of now and I haven’t been able to meet some of them yet since this week has been crazy with the new transfers and also for the investigators too. So one I have met is Miguel who is a 13-year old kid who is on the road to baptism as of now and so we just have to get him ready for that. We taught him and his family on my very first day in the field but it was nice since he prefers English over Spanish, but his mom is 100% Spanish so it was a juggling performance with talking to him in English and then trying to listen and talk with her in Spanish at the same time. But it went well and they were super nice. Right now we are not sure exactly what is going to happen with him though since his dad is very against him getting baptized and they actually fell of the map for a couple days when the father got home from his work. So we will see if he lets them keep coming to church, I really hope all goes well cuz Miguel is a great kid and really wants to become a member.

The second day in the field was better since I got to go 100% Spanish with our investigator Carla, she is an 18-year old who is probably around 4 feet tall but she is very sassy and hilarious. I could actually understand her Spanish too which was way nice.  It was awesome to bring her to church yesterday since she shared her testimony in one of our meetings and it was super awesome! We even had some members tell us "that girl needs to be baptized." Elder Barron and I both agree that we have to challenge her to baptism this week!

One last story is that we had a baptism in our district on Thursday of this last week which was really cool, but when Elder Barron and I rolled in one of the sisters in our ward ran into the hallway we were walking down and yelled, "Fuego, Fuego!" which means FIRE, FIRE. so we chase after her into the kitchen of the church where apparently someone had put full boxes of pizza into the oven to keep them warm and one had caught on fire; and so the sister had put it out. But the entire kitchen was full of smoke so she wasn’t sure if all was well. So Elder Barron and I ran around to make sure everything was ok and fanned the smoke out of the room with our suit coats. After it was all done we all started laughing because of how crazy we had all looked running around.  So we missed seeing the actual baptism but we made a good memory from it.

I Love you all and hope y’all have a great week this week.

With the Mission President and Wife

MTC comp - Elder Stoddard

New Comp - Elder Barron

People I love from the CCM