Yo,
Okay, this is going to be a short letter, I don't have much time to write. So this week was kind of lame lol. We hardly taught anybody because all of the lessons fell through =(. Either nobody was home or we couldn't even set up an appointment with our investigators. Lame....so I don't have a lot to tell because almost nothing happened lol.
So Jefferson is always good. He went church all by himself this week. He went to the park in Yaruqui and wasn't sure where to go. He said that he prayed to Heavenly Father to be able to know where to go. Obviously he got to the church. He was even 20ish minutes early. He's still excited about the church and for his baptism. Although he did ask us if as members we could be with prostitutes.....Law of Chastity!! Other than him nobody else came to church this week =(....
One of the only sucesses we had this week is we found a new "family". Family is with quotations because the young couple isn't married.....We found them when we were knocking doors (we had time because one of our appointments fell through...) and Elder Salazar and I are pretty sure that we interrupted...uhm.....their thing. We talked to the man (about 24 years old) and he seemed just like a good person, nothing special. We made an appoinment with him for the next day and left. We went over to teach him and his girlfriend and he was actually really good. They were both responsive and accepted baptismal dates. Woot. New investigators.
Something really funny that happened this week. We were over at Fam. Bravo's house where we always go for FHE on sunday nights and Veni (the one that can't hoola and likes my sister) told us that he likes this girl in the Branch here. She's 18 and he's 25....oh Veni lol. So he's kind of a funny guy and we were trying to teach him how to talk to girls lol. He's had girlfriends before, but he's kind of clueless lol. So we did roleplays where either my companion or another girl that was there would pretend to be the girl he likes. Here's a little bit of the dialog.
Veni: Hi Erika, how are you?
"Erika":Oh hi Veni.
Veni:.......Hi.......
an other
Veni: Hi Erika, you're beautiful
"Erika":.......
and the last one
Veni: Hi, Erika. I don't know you very well. I want to go over to your house and get to know you better
All of us:No Veni! Don't say that
So that's Veni for you.....what a weirdo lol.
Sorry I can't send pictures or anything. My camera died before I could do anything =(. Next week. For Christmas we'll do Skype. I'll give you the details next week. Changes are this next monday! It's like getting another mission call. You never know who your next companion will be or where you'll go. I have a pretty good chance at leaving this sector. We'll see this sunday afternoon.....I also added my updated scripture list =). Enjoy. Mom, that pear jam you sent is from heaven, thank you! I already ate most of it =). And for Hunter, buy a big backpack with at least a rain fly, water proof if possible.
Monday, December 10, 2012
Monday, December 3, 2012
Investigators Finally go to Church!
Hello Mortals,
Another shortish letter again....So like I said last week, the hardest thing for our investigators is church attendance. We were doing everything that we could go get them to go to church;praying, picking them up sunday morning, calling them the night before to remind them....everything, and it didn't work. So this past week the only thing that we lacked was perfect obedience. Our mission president here said that if we were obedient we would see success, and if we were perfectly obedient we would see miracles. So we thought that that might be a good idea, that it would take a miracle to get them to go to church lol. So we did that this week. We were obedient to everything. And this sunday we had planned to bring some investigators to church. Elder Salazar and I went on splits with some members in our ward to bring them to church. I went to pick up Jefferson and his family and Elder Salazar went to pick up a family that we met earlier in the week. I went to their house and the dad told me that none of them were there. He told me that the rest of the family was busy, but Jefferson was waiting in the park in Yaruquì. Ugh....lol. I paid a taxi to go all the way to his house, only to go right back to Yaruquì.....oh well. So we went to Yaruquì and found him in the park sitting on a bench. So we walked up to him and brought him to church. Woot. Elder Salazar didn't have so much luck. The family he went to pick up wasn't home, so he came back empty handed. So we had one investigator in church when we had a very possible 12ish people come. So much for our week of perfect obedience....or so we thought >=D. After Sacrament Meeting the family (Fam Loor) walked into the church, all on their own! Nice. Now we have 5 investigators in church. Oh yeah. =) All it took was a little patience and faith and our diligence paid off.
So Fam Loor. We had a visit with a less active member on Friday morning that fell though; so we decided to go contacting. They were our second contacts and we got in and taught them a lesson. They had lots of questions about the catholic church (they're "catholic") and they understood when we basically told them that worshipping Mary, and the infant baptism is wrong. Pretty good. So yeah, they showed up at church this sunday =). We have high hopes for this family.
We also have Mercedez. We found her last week. She's middle age, has suffered a brain injury and now she doesn't have very good control of her movements and is stuck in a wheelchair. She has written her own biography and reads the Bible and knows what she's talking about. The first time we taught her she was kind of stubborn and was sure that she had already been baptized once, the right way, and didn't need another baptism. We taught her again and she seemed more willing to accept what we were telling her. She has promise, but we need to keep working with her.
Update on Ulpiano Saltos. Nobody knows anything about him; where he is, what he's doing....nothing. So his date fell through....
Our other investigators with baptismal dates. Jenny Nicolade; she told us that she knows that this is the only true church and that the Book of Mormon is true. She also quit her job so that she could get sunday's off. Good person. The only problem is that she was unable to attend church this sunday, so her baptismal date will have to be pushed back at least a week. Rosalio; very nice, but we're not sure if she's keeping commitments. She's also really hard to get ahold of, so we weren't able to teach her this week at all =(. Her date fell too. Jefferson is awesome. Because of his injury he seems like he's only half there inside, but he understands everything and he says he knows that this church is true.
Oh, don't know if you remember Vanessa Alguno (the nightmare demon lady), well she's going to be baptized this saturday. Even though she's not in my area it's still cool to see her be baptized =). Excited for her baptism.
What fun things did we do this week?......I don't know lol. We found a new family (Loor), so that was the most fun/exciting thing that happened all week. Yes I got my packages. I was only expecting to get 2 packages today, but instead I got 4! It was awesome. Like Christmas, only better. I got my mouthpiece too =). And it's cool to hear that Anna and Katrina are going to serve missions. If either of you are reading this, go back about 2 weeks ago and read what I told my brother to do if you haven't already read it. And look through my scripture list just to be familiar with it. I will be sending an update next week for anyone interested =). Yes they celebrate Christmas here, and since they're all catholics here they party with alcohol and loud crappy music. So on Christmas Day we basically stay inside most of the day to avoid danger lol. No it doesn't rain here every day, your phone is lying to you, don't listen to it. It stays around 70 degrees, but it gets anywhere from 55 to 80 degrees here. It rains every few days, and when it does it isn't for the whole day. It did rain last week and the streets turned into rivers with water a couple inches deep. Needless to say we got wet....the only thing I've had a chance to cook from the recipies you sent me is the caramel popcorn. Although corn syrup doesn't exist in latin america, so I improvised with vegatable oil. It turned out pretty good, but not quite like your's mom....By the way, is there any sort of substitute for corn syrup besides vegatable oil? To listen to music I use my companions speakers. What I would recommend for Hunter, or anyone going on a mission, is something small, corded, powerful, and has a USB port. That's what I would do. No I haven't had a chance to use my magic sticks yet....maybe one day. And thanks for praying for me Parker......but I don't think that was really neccessary lol. So I got my packages today and me and my companion were amazed at what you put in those mom. You thought of everything for decorations.....everything....
Another shortish letter again....So like I said last week, the hardest thing for our investigators is church attendance. We were doing everything that we could go get them to go to church;praying, picking them up sunday morning, calling them the night before to remind them....everything, and it didn't work. So this past week the only thing that we lacked was perfect obedience. Our mission president here said that if we were obedient we would see success, and if we were perfectly obedient we would see miracles. So we thought that that might be a good idea, that it would take a miracle to get them to go to church lol. So we did that this week. We were obedient to everything. And this sunday we had planned to bring some investigators to church. Elder Salazar and I went on splits with some members in our ward to bring them to church. I went to pick up Jefferson and his family and Elder Salazar went to pick up a family that we met earlier in the week. I went to their house and the dad told me that none of them were there. He told me that the rest of the family was busy, but Jefferson was waiting in the park in Yaruquì. Ugh....lol. I paid a taxi to go all the way to his house, only to go right back to Yaruquì.....oh well. So we went to Yaruquì and found him in the park sitting on a bench. So we walked up to him and brought him to church. Woot. Elder Salazar didn't have so much luck. The family he went to pick up wasn't home, so he came back empty handed. So we had one investigator in church when we had a very possible 12ish people come. So much for our week of perfect obedience....or so we thought >=D. After Sacrament Meeting the family (Fam Loor) walked into the church, all on their own! Nice. Now we have 5 investigators in church. Oh yeah. =) All it took was a little patience and faith and our diligence paid off.
So Fam Loor. We had a visit with a less active member on Friday morning that fell though; so we decided to go contacting. They were our second contacts and we got in and taught them a lesson. They had lots of questions about the catholic church (they're "catholic") and they understood when we basically told them that worshipping Mary, and the infant baptism is wrong. Pretty good. So yeah, they showed up at church this sunday =). We have high hopes for this family.
We also have Mercedez. We found her last week. She's middle age, has suffered a brain injury and now she doesn't have very good control of her movements and is stuck in a wheelchair. She has written her own biography and reads the Bible and knows what she's talking about. The first time we taught her she was kind of stubborn and was sure that she had already been baptized once, the right way, and didn't need another baptism. We taught her again and she seemed more willing to accept what we were telling her. She has promise, but we need to keep working with her.
Update on Ulpiano Saltos. Nobody knows anything about him; where he is, what he's doing....nothing. So his date fell through....
Our other investigators with baptismal dates. Jenny Nicolade; she told us that she knows that this is the only true church and that the Book of Mormon is true. She also quit her job so that she could get sunday's off. Good person. The only problem is that she was unable to attend church this sunday, so her baptismal date will have to be pushed back at least a week. Rosalio; very nice, but we're not sure if she's keeping commitments. She's also really hard to get ahold of, so we weren't able to teach her this week at all =(. Her date fell too. Jefferson is awesome. Because of his injury he seems like he's only half there inside, but he understands everything and he says he knows that this church is true.
Oh, don't know if you remember Vanessa Alguno (the nightmare demon lady), well she's going to be baptized this saturday. Even though she's not in my area it's still cool to see her be baptized =). Excited for her baptism.
What fun things did we do this week?......I don't know lol. We found a new family (Loor), so that was the most fun/exciting thing that happened all week. Yes I got my packages. I was only expecting to get 2 packages today, but instead I got 4! It was awesome. Like Christmas, only better. I got my mouthpiece too =). And it's cool to hear that Anna and Katrina are going to serve missions. If either of you are reading this, go back about 2 weeks ago and read what I told my brother to do if you haven't already read it. And look through my scripture list just to be familiar with it. I will be sending an update next week for anyone interested =). Yes they celebrate Christmas here, and since they're all catholics here they party with alcohol and loud crappy music. So on Christmas Day we basically stay inside most of the day to avoid danger lol. No it doesn't rain here every day, your phone is lying to you, don't listen to it. It stays around 70 degrees, but it gets anywhere from 55 to 80 degrees here. It rains every few days, and when it does it isn't for the whole day. It did rain last week and the streets turned into rivers with water a couple inches deep. Needless to say we got wet....the only thing I've had a chance to cook from the recipies you sent me is the caramel popcorn. Although corn syrup doesn't exist in latin america, so I improvised with vegatable oil. It turned out pretty good, but not quite like your's mom....By the way, is there any sort of substitute for corn syrup besides vegatable oil? To listen to music I use my companions speakers. What I would recommend for Hunter, or anyone going on a mission, is something small, corded, powerful, and has a USB port. That's what I would do. No I haven't had a chance to use my magic sticks yet....maybe one day. And thanks for praying for me Parker......but I don't think that was really neccessary lol. So I got my packages today and me and my companion were amazed at what you put in those mom. You thought of everything for decorations.....everything....
Monday, November 26, 2012
Short Letter
First off happy birthday Carter! The 30th right....Sorry I can't send anything for your birthday or for Christmas for anyone else. It's really expensive to send stuff from here. You'll all just have to wait for 2 years =). Nope I didn't do anything for Thanksgiving or even remember lol. To bad to hear about Aunt Shauna's mom, but yeah, she's in a better place now. For Hunter I would get something that doesn't require iTunes. Something that's good, cheap, and around 8 gb. Yes I like the iPod speaker that I got. Unfortunately it doesn't work with the new MP3 player I got. Nope, no more fleas =). I nuked my bed with bug spray. All better now.
So this week's email might be a little shorter and more random. First off, we met some other missionaries while we were contacting. We contacted the house of some Catholic missionaries. Of course they were 100% positive that the apostasy didn't happen and that they were the true church and all that jazz. So they didn't end up going anywhere lol. You just let those kind of hard people live in apostasy lol.
We also got a few new people with baptismal dates. Jenny Nicolade, she works in a bakery and she's taken lessons from the missionaries before, but not for awhile. We taught her the Gospel of Jesus Christ and she accepted a baptismal date for Dec 15. Very good investigator.
Next we have Jefferson. We taught him once before and he accepted a baptismal invitation, but we didn't put a date on him until the second visit to make sure that he really understood. He said that he prayed to know if the church was true and he recieved an answer that it was. Sweet lol. So he has a baptismal date for the 15th as well.
So the hardest thing for the investigators here is going to the flipping church. Lol. They always say, "yeah sure I'll go". And then they never do. Darn investigators....If they would just go to church we would be having more baptisms than we are. Hopefully the 4 people that have dates now will actually go to church this week so we can get a baptism...Oh and by the way. Ulpiano Saltos still hasn't returned from the coast yet....Hopefully he'll be back in time to have his baptism this saturday.
Not to much to say this week. So that's about it. Oh, I've included some pictures of Yaruquì as well. Enjoy =).
Elder Black
Monday, November 19, 2012
A Kiss from a Girl!
Hello,
An eventful but pretty unproductive week. So we basically had 2 P-Days this week. Monday we had the day long conference with Elder Waddell and tuesday was our real P-Day. Also we have a District Meeting in Quito every day and it takes us about 2 hours to get from here (Yaruquì) to Quito. So we get back home at around 3:30 on thursdays. We also had exchanges on thursday after the District Meeting until friday in the afternoon. Basically we didn't have much time to teach this week =(.
First off, at our mamitas house this thursday she made steak that tasted exactly like moms Puerto Rican steak, dry and tasteless lol. Just kidding mom. Your food is the best =) It was nice to eat something familiar. Somethings that I ate that were unfamiliar were: liver, and chicken liver soup. Neither of which were very good....but I'm alive, but only barely. And this is the best thing that I ate this week. I ate chocolate with hazelnuts (I used to be allergic to them) in it, and nothing happened =). That was a cool moment for me.
So Jorge Robalino (the weirdo) is getting baptized this week for sure. I guess he's reading the Book of Mormon a lot now and he recieved an answer that Joseph Smith was a prophet and everything. He even stopped reading his book of "revelation" Angelorum. So he'll be baptized this week. Hopefully with Ulpiano Saltos. I say hopefully because something happened with Ulpiano. He was living in the coast (in the Guayaquil North Mission) and he was living here with his family for moral support because he took the death of his brother really hard and was drinking more than usual and thought about suicide. And I can see why, his brother had a horrible death. Pretty horrible way to die. I can see why he took it so hard. So he's living with his family for support and he's in a rehabilitation center for alcholics. We taught him the Word of Wisdom and he understood it all and we think he can do it. So what happened is that he went back to the coast to his house. NOOOOOO!!!!! I guess there was something that he had to do there. He'll be coming back, but we don't know if it will be in time for his baptism. We fasted today for him. Hopefully he'll be fine.
But we do have another person with a baptismal date for December 15. 2 months ago we were contacting and we found a lady that didn't have time to listen to us at the time but told us that we could come again later. So we went back a few times and she was always busy so we never taught her. That is, until this week >=D. Before we taught her we knew she was catholic and she seemed like a lamp. A lamp is a person who talks about how they love their religion and they pray all the time, but they don't really do any of that stuff. They just say it to make themselves look good. So with some of the things that she said and how she acted, we thought she was a lamp lol. But we taught her the Restoration and invited her to baptism and she accepted. We also invited her to church. She said that she'll be at church for sure that that she wanted to bring her whole family with her. Guess she's not a lamp after all. She's just a really nice person =).
So a couple of funny things that happened this week. The first thing. We were making tacos at a members house and one of her daughters walked in the front door. So here in Ecuador when people walk into a room it is normal for them to give a casual kiss on the cheek as a greeting. She walked into the room and I was facing away from the door. She walked up to the side of me and kissed me on the cheek. She caught me completely by surprise. I was petrified, I didn't know what to do lol. As missionaries we're not even supposed to have anymore contact with girls/women than a handshake. That was nothing out of the ordinary for her or for the natives there, but for an innocent missionary it was more than I could take, I ran out of the house. Just kidding lol. I didn't do anything. But it was a little strange for me lol. I'll have to be on my guard from now on.......The other funny thing was a dream that I had. I had parachute pants. They were like a pink jumpsuit that was made of flanel and the leg parts were about 4 ft across each. So I would jump of houses and stuff, wait for the wind to catch my parachute pants, and gently land on the ground. I even went so far as to skydive with my pink jumpsuit. Oh, and in my dream took place before my mission. So I got to go skydiving before my mission afterall mom and dad =).
This Saturday we did a service project by on the property of the church/house here in Yaruquì. There is a grass field that we leveled so that we could play volleyball on it. During the service we found all sorts of animals: lizards, frogs, big spiders, giant (for me) millipedes, and scorpions. Quite the variety of wildlife on that little field. And I caught my first lizard here in Latin America =). Now I just need a snake.....
Oh, and another reason that we weren't productive this week was because of this stupid walk that they have. Of couse most of the people here are catholic and they worship the Virgen Mary. They actually worship her here more than Christ and God. Anyways, they believe that the Virgen Mary does miracles and answers prayers and all sorts of apostasy. So they think that if they walk from Quito (2 hours by bus), or for the least faithful lamp people/the people who just do it for a social activity, they walk from somewhere closer like here (20 minutes by bus) to Quinche, where the famous Virgen of Quinche is, they will be forgiven of their sins and she will work miracles in their life. Apostasy lol. So they close all the roads from Quito to Quinche for their Apostasy/lamp walk all day and all night. The most people past Yaruquì at 3:00 in the morning.....how sad lol. So we couldn't go outside Yaruquì for 2 1/2 days because of those fools.
So that's basically what happened this week. Now I have a few random things to say. First off, how future missionaries (Hunter in particular) can prepare for a mission. I would highly recommend reading the Book of Mormon for 30 min every day and a little bit of the Bible if you have time. You might say, "30 minutes every day! That's a ton!". Well, no it's not lol. In the field you have 1 hour to read/have a personal study every morning. Then you have companionship study for 2 hours after that. So 3 hours of studying every day. So yeah, 30 minutes is nothing lol. Also, I would recommend reading the entire Preach My Gospel at least once. Don't just read it just to read it. Read it with purpose and try to understand and comprehend everything that is in it. And read all the lessons (1-5) 3 times each. Pay attention to the order and simplicity of the principles in each lesson. When you teach investigators you divide up the lesson by principle, so you need to know what order all of the principles and what all of them are. When you read the lessons, again, pay attention to the depth/simplicity that they are written in. You don't need to teach any more complex than what is in Preach My Gospel. When talking about the Creation you don't need to talk about how dinosaurs fit in or when talking about the Restoration you don't need to describe to them how the Urim and Thumimn look. Not important stuff. Again, don't go deeper than what Preach My Gospel teaches. So in my opinion, reading the Book of Mormon and reading Preach My Gospel are 2 very helpful things that will give you a headstart in the mission.
One other thing. I never remembered to tell you mom and dad, but when Carter was being baptized, when we were about to enter the font, I asked him a question. I kept forgetting to tell you about it, but I think it's pretty cool. So before we entered the font I asked him,"Are you happy? Yeah. Why? Because when I am baptized I feel clean and I can repent. And it's the first thing that I need to do to be in the Celestial Kingdom." More or less that's what he said. I was pretty impressed that an 8 year old came up with that answer. I wanted to tell you that before I forgot to tell you again.
2 things that I want to ask for. We're doing a food activity with the ward and we're making food from other countries. I would like to make chicken crescents or chilly chicken bake. If you could send me the recipies for those that would be awesome. And the second thing is more music. The London Philharmonic Orchestra album. Another thing to add to Dropbox =). And just so you know I still haven't missed 1 day of writing in my journal. Diligence!
Elder Black
An eventful but pretty unproductive week. So we basically had 2 P-Days this week. Monday we had the day long conference with Elder Waddell and tuesday was our real P-Day. Also we have a District Meeting in Quito every day and it takes us about 2 hours to get from here (Yaruquì) to Quito. So we get back home at around 3:30 on thursdays. We also had exchanges on thursday after the District Meeting until friday in the afternoon. Basically we didn't have much time to teach this week =(.
First off, at our mamitas house this thursday she made steak that tasted exactly like moms Puerto Rican steak, dry and tasteless lol. Just kidding mom. Your food is the best =) It was nice to eat something familiar. Somethings that I ate that were unfamiliar were: liver, and chicken liver soup. Neither of which were very good....but I'm alive, but only barely. And this is the best thing that I ate this week. I ate chocolate with hazelnuts (I used to be allergic to them) in it, and nothing happened =). That was a cool moment for me.
So Jorge Robalino (the weirdo) is getting baptized this week for sure. I guess he's reading the Book of Mormon a lot now and he recieved an answer that Joseph Smith was a prophet and everything. He even stopped reading his book of "revelation" Angelorum. So he'll be baptized this week. Hopefully with Ulpiano Saltos. I say hopefully because something happened with Ulpiano. He was living in the coast (in the Guayaquil North Mission) and he was living here with his family for moral support because he took the death of his brother really hard and was drinking more than usual and thought about suicide. And I can see why, his brother had a horrible death. Pretty horrible way to die. I can see why he took it so hard. So he's living with his family for support and he's in a rehabilitation center for alcholics. We taught him the Word of Wisdom and he understood it all and we think he can do it. So what happened is that he went back to the coast to his house. NOOOOOO!!!!! I guess there was something that he had to do there. He'll be coming back, but we don't know if it will be in time for his baptism. We fasted today for him. Hopefully he'll be fine.
But we do have another person with a baptismal date for December 15. 2 months ago we were contacting and we found a lady that didn't have time to listen to us at the time but told us that we could come again later. So we went back a few times and she was always busy so we never taught her. That is, until this week >=D. Before we taught her we knew she was catholic and she seemed like a lamp. A lamp is a person who talks about how they love their religion and they pray all the time, but they don't really do any of that stuff. They just say it to make themselves look good. So with some of the things that she said and how she acted, we thought she was a lamp lol. But we taught her the Restoration and invited her to baptism and she accepted. We also invited her to church. She said that she'll be at church for sure that that she wanted to bring her whole family with her. Guess she's not a lamp after all. She's just a really nice person =).
So a couple of funny things that happened this week. The first thing. We were making tacos at a members house and one of her daughters walked in the front door. So here in Ecuador when people walk into a room it is normal for them to give a casual kiss on the cheek as a greeting. She walked into the room and I was facing away from the door. She walked up to the side of me and kissed me on the cheek. She caught me completely by surprise. I was petrified, I didn't know what to do lol. As missionaries we're not even supposed to have anymore contact with girls/women than a handshake. That was nothing out of the ordinary for her or for the natives there, but for an innocent missionary it was more than I could take, I ran out of the house. Just kidding lol. I didn't do anything. But it was a little strange for me lol. I'll have to be on my guard from now on.......The other funny thing was a dream that I had. I had parachute pants. They were like a pink jumpsuit that was made of flanel and the leg parts were about 4 ft across each. So I would jump of houses and stuff, wait for the wind to catch my parachute pants, and gently land on the ground. I even went so far as to skydive with my pink jumpsuit. Oh, and in my dream took place before my mission. So I got to go skydiving before my mission afterall mom and dad =).
This Saturday we did a service project by on the property of the church/house here in Yaruquì. There is a grass field that we leveled so that we could play volleyball on it. During the service we found all sorts of animals: lizards, frogs, big spiders, giant (for me) millipedes, and scorpions. Quite the variety of wildlife on that little field. And I caught my first lizard here in Latin America =). Now I just need a snake.....
Oh, and another reason that we weren't productive this week was because of this stupid walk that they have. Of couse most of the people here are catholic and they worship the Virgen Mary. They actually worship her here more than Christ and God. Anyways, they believe that the Virgen Mary does miracles and answers prayers and all sorts of apostasy. So they think that if they walk from Quito (2 hours by bus), or for the least faithful lamp people/the people who just do it for a social activity, they walk from somewhere closer like here (20 minutes by bus) to Quinche, where the famous Virgen of Quinche is, they will be forgiven of their sins and she will work miracles in their life. Apostasy lol. So they close all the roads from Quito to Quinche for their Apostasy/lamp walk all day and all night. The most people past Yaruquì at 3:00 in the morning.....how sad lol. So we couldn't go outside Yaruquì for 2 1/2 days because of those fools.
So that's basically what happened this week. Now I have a few random things to say. First off, how future missionaries (Hunter in particular) can prepare for a mission. I would highly recommend reading the Book of Mormon for 30 min every day and a little bit of the Bible if you have time. You might say, "30 minutes every day! That's a ton!". Well, no it's not lol. In the field you have 1 hour to read/have a personal study every morning. Then you have companionship study for 2 hours after that. So 3 hours of studying every day. So yeah, 30 minutes is nothing lol. Also, I would recommend reading the entire Preach My Gospel at least once. Don't just read it just to read it. Read it with purpose and try to understand and comprehend everything that is in it. And read all the lessons (1-5) 3 times each. Pay attention to the order and simplicity of the principles in each lesson. When you teach investigators you divide up the lesson by principle, so you need to know what order all of the principles and what all of them are. When you read the lessons, again, pay attention to the depth/simplicity that they are written in. You don't need to teach any more complex than what is in Preach My Gospel. When talking about the Creation you don't need to talk about how dinosaurs fit in or when talking about the Restoration you don't need to describe to them how the Urim and Thumimn look. Not important stuff. Again, don't go deeper than what Preach My Gospel teaches. So in my opinion, reading the Book of Mormon and reading Preach My Gospel are 2 very helpful things that will give you a headstart in the mission.
One other thing. I never remembered to tell you mom and dad, but when Carter was being baptized, when we were about to enter the font, I asked him a question. I kept forgetting to tell you about it, but I think it's pretty cool. So before we entered the font I asked him,"Are you happy? Yeah. Why? Because when I am baptized I feel clean and I can repent. And it's the first thing that I need to do to be in the Celestial Kingdom." More or less that's what he said. I was pretty impressed that an 8 year old came up with that answer. I wanted to tell you that before I forgot to tell you again.
2 things that I want to ask for. We're doing a food activity with the ward and we're making food from other countries. I would like to make chicken crescents or chilly chicken bake. If you could send me the recipies for those that would be awesome. And the second thing is more music. The London Philharmonic Orchestra album. Another thing to add to Dropbox =). And just so you know I still haven't missed 1 day of writing in my journal. Diligence!
Elder Black
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