Dear Everyone!
Well, here I am, in my second area, working hard! We have been
working with our investigators and with the members of the branch,
trying to invite everyone to come to our church meetings. That´s
probably the hardest part of helping people get baptized is that nobody
ever wants to come to church. The church is even in the middle of
Centro, so it´s not even hard for the people to come. But we´re still
inviting everyone to come. We had 27 people come this week, but we had
an investigator family that my companion was teaching before I got here.
We just have to work on the marriage papers and get all of the stuff
ready for a wedding. That´s also a challenge here in my mission. Anyone
we want to baptize has to get married first because everyone here just
lives together, even after 10 or 20 years of being together, the couples
won´t get married. So in our mission, we say that our work as
missionaries involves an extra step: We find, teach, marry, baptize, and
retain, as part our duty as missionaries. So that´s always fun. But
we´re working with this investigator to help her get baptized. We have
also found a lot of new investigators this week. I really feel like we
are trying harder to find by the spirit, and we have found new
investigators by listening to the guide of the spirit. It´s neat to see
who has been prepared to hear our message. I´ve been a little bit sick
this week, I think it was probably somthing that we ate, because my
companion felt sick in the stomach too. On Friday morning, I slept in
the morning instead of studying and then worked in the afternoon. I´ve
been working normal since then, but I still am sick, but we have too
many appts to take a day off to rest. But that´s alright, I´m feeling a
little better today, but it´s been hard working while being so tired. It
looks like I´m the official new primary teacher... I´m not sure how I
feel about that yet.. I taught a lesson yesterday with the kids about
keep the sabbath day holy... After my lesson, like during church, the
kids left (with the permission of their parents) and went to the
pulperÃa (little store like a gas station store) and bought treats, and
then came back to my class. Fail. They will learn little by little, as
their parents learn too, and teach them to obey the rules of the church.
But I colored a really nice picture of some animals on a roller coaster
with our crayons and colored pencils with the kids, and helped them
paint apples and noah´s ark and pictures that we have here in the
coloring books. So I guess that the class wasn´t a complete waste ;p
I´m going to keep finding more activities to do with the kids and
learn new ways to teach them. If anyone has good suggestions, I´m
definitely open to learning how to teach them simply. We sing songs and
show pictures and stuff like that, but I have to keep them entertained
for 2 hours straight in the same little room... Haha, it´s fun.
We also taught seminary this week. We have a teacher for the class,
but she doesn´t really prepare the lessons, and just expects that the
missionaries will come to help teach the class. We´re trying to help her
(and the entire branch) become more independant, so that they know how
the church functions, what we believe, and how to lead it by themselves.
We´re basically starting from nothing right now. It´s crazy to figure
out how everything works and to teach everyone else. But I´m learning a
ton more too.
Well, that´s all for this update.. I´ll add some pictures too, but
I might have to send some in separate emails. I can´t send many pics
per email...
Love you all!
Love,
Elder Ward
me and my first convert.
The other people was his family (his brother and his nephew and niece...?)
my zone right now.
the picture of cereal is too show that I was so excited to find cereal directly imported from the states one day, that I bought a huge box of Reese´s puffs. They are super tasty, but they were a tiny bit expensive...
