August 5, 2013
This week was a little bit better on the investigator part. Since I have gotten here I haven’t talked much about investigators and less actives. Mom expressed that she would like to hear about missionary work. So I guess I’ll give in and I will do what she wants.
We are teaching 2 families and 1 couple right now, but they all have their set of problems. The first family are eternal investigators. The other family is a family that the mom is really interested and the daughter is a member, but the father is the problem. He doesn’t want anything to do with the church and has been really against her daughter going. Actually he doesn’t even know she’s baptized. But the other day we helped him unload some stuff from his truck and he opened up a little bit with me and we started to talk. I had a good talk with him outside in the street for a good 20 minutes while my comp was playing soccer in the street. These are moments that are super useful in doing missionary work. Many people focus a lot on the lessons, but I have felt different. We need to do something to have everyone progress even if it’s not a lesson and is just a little talk in the street. He wouldn’t have accepted a lesson in its self, so a good 30 minute visit in the street was worth it in my mind. It doesn’t really help the numbers though but the mom and her other daughter and their cousin all went to church this week and it was great, but they took off quick because they had to get home in time because the dad was going to get home from work. (I guess they didn’t want him to know.) A lot depends on him and what happens. He’s they key if we can get him the whole family will come following along.
There is another family we are working with where the father refuses to get married because the woman that he is living with rejected his offer to get married about 20 years ago, and now she wants to get married and he’s still bitter about the rejection. Talk about living with a grudge-- what a joke. Anyway we have taught him but he consistently fails to progress. We will drop them in a few weeks if we find new people to teach. It’s hard to drop when there’s nothing on the horizon.
Then there is Pamela and Mauricio. They are a great reference from a member and they were progressing amazingly, but then they had some disagreements with a member and then they stopped progressing. That’s how it goes sometimes. It is kind of junky, but what can you say that’s just how the cookie crumbles. Everything else is great-- we are working hard but we are having trouble finding new investigators. The ward is not used to the whole "give references plan" because they didn’t do that here before. The old northwest mission had some special way to contact that wasn’t contacting. That’s how they found people to baptize. When I heard about it, it sounded like a shady way to get around the Elder Johnson rules.
Anyway that part was for mom.
Being a zone leader is kind of like running a daycare. I am having a lot of problems with one Elder. He is having a lot of success, but he is really clumsy. He left his keys in the house so he had to take a taxi at 9:30m to another person’s house but in the middle of it he and his comp had a strong discussion so we had to fix things. One wanted to wait and the other one wanted to go because his best friends are there in the other house. I think it was a sort of double motive time thing and the other guy poor kid hardly knows Spanish and they just start talking circles around him and he’s just super lost.
I was talking to Sister Hicken--if you remember the president’s cousin were called to be the secretaries of the mission about a year and 4 months ago They have 2 months and they are going to finish with me--so that will be cool, but they have seen president go and another president come and the offices turned from English to Spanish in about 1 week and they changed a lot of stuff so she is kind of lost. I was talking to her the other day. I think she’s kind of trunky…haha kind of like my comp…haha.
My comp loves writing the fam so I have been kind of strict with the 1 hour limit. But he’s a good guy all in all. We get along great. But anyway that’s about all that happened this week.
It is pretty cool what is going on with Landon in Colombia. That’s cool and a doctor-- poor dude he has a lot of schooling ahead of him. He’s in the 2017 class—I will be done with college by then. jajajaja and Justin, how many years of schooling is he going on now like 12 --I think? Wow my brothers are setting the bar pretty high. Oh well...
I’m doing well. Elder Ika and I had diarrhea like all week from being sick it’s because of the food here. It isn’t all that healthy and a lot of times it’s not cooked really well. It just depends if we eat with poorer people or richer people not to be biased or anything it just seems like the richer class knows a little bit more about food and how to cook it..but that’s how it goes.
Anyway thanks for the letters I print them out in the morning and carried them around all day reading them. It is difficult some times to find time to read a simple letter, but don’t shorten them I enjoy them but last week I read them on the internet and I didn’t have much time to write. Thanks for everything.
Elder Hendricks
P.S. Who all goes to institute these days probably nobody I know right?
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