Spanaway - October 31, 2011

It's been a good week in Spanaway! Numbers wise, not so much, but we still had fun. Like I said we've either baptized or dropped our whole teaching pool so that's been a struggle. Mari moved out of our area, though she's still in the ward. She moved up by the church, but in the area of Tacoma Spanish. It'll be sad not being able to teach her as much anymore, but at least I'll see her in the ward for the next 5 weeks. So we helped her pack up a lot of things as she was frantically looking for a house to rent. I love seeing how much happier she is now, how much she's more at peace. She reads the Liahona (there's no Ensign in Spanish, but the Liahona is just as good) as well as the Bible and the Book of Mormon.

 

Gregorio and Concepción are solid; in the third hour of church today everyone was together and they talked about convert retention and they were excited to get their own Progress of New Members sheet so they can keep track of their progress in the church. We're hoping to have a temple baptism trip for all the new converts in the ward in the beginning of December.

 

Even though we only got 10 lessons last week, we found some miracles. We gave a man named Alirio (from El Salvador) a church tour; we've known him for several weeks now but we hadn´t been able to get in contact with him. But even though he's a strong member of another Christian church, he committed to read a chapter in the Book of Mormon and pray and he said that he knew our church didn't teach anything bad. So we'll see how willing he is to truly read and pray.

 

Last night we went tracting after our dinner appointment and we got invited in and watched Finding Faith in Christ with this really nice lady from Panama and her children. It turns out she went to 'Mormon church' in Panama with her stepdad when she was really little, and she already has a couple friends in our ward here. She's Catholic but she happily took a Book of Mormon and we have a tour set up with her for this coming Friday. She is learning English and she works with disabled children and the whole family does tons of community service and they do a lot of stuff to help out orphans and foster children in the area. Just talking with them gave me the impression that they are true followers of Christ, and I just felt really good about the whole thing and I'm excited for the church tour on Friday!

 

Hmmm, ¿qué más? Idk, it's been a good week and I love working here in Spanaway. It's hard to believe that by the end of this transfer I'll have served half my mission to this point here. 

 

I love you all and hope you have a very happy Halloween!

 

 

Greg

Spanaway - October 25, 2011

Well, regarding transfers, both Elder Robertson and I stay! There were a lot of really interesting developments this transfer though, including that my trainer (and zone leader for the past few transfers), Elder Liechty, was called to serve in an English ward as one of the APs! Now there's a scary thought, switching from Spanish to English! But he's someone I know that will do well there.

 

President and Sister Weaver also announced that for next P-day (Halloween), we're not proselyting at all in the evening and instead we're going to have a Halloween 'activity,' not a party (Direct quote from President Weaver: "An activity is still an activity, which has a very broad meaning.") with our respective zones, which will include watching a movie that will be approved by him and his wife. Apparently last year there were non-missionaries that dressed up as missionaries and did some rather unsavory things and President Bowen got called, so President wants to be able to say 'Nope, those aren't our missionaries; ours are all accounted for.'

 

So regarding the miracles and awesomeness of last transfer, this past week, Mari didn't smoke at all. We were sending her daily messages and scriptures through texting and we knew that God was preparing her for baptism. So on Thursday we had a lesson with her, at the beginning of which she expressed how stressed she was and why she didn't want to get baptized. We ended up sharing D&C 122 and JSH with her about opposition, and the Spirit just did some work on her. We extended the commitment and she committed to be baptized on Saturday!!!!!

 

It was awesome, though we learned when she was confirmed in Sacrament that we had misunderstood and we were actually missing part of her name, which made Sunday one of the most stressful days of my life. We ended up rebaptizing and confirming her after Tacoma's baptism that finished at 4:55, and before the Samoan's baptism that began at 5! But we got it done, and I'm just so grateful for the help we had in reaching our baptism goal of 4 for this transfer. When we prayed at the beginning of the transfer, 4 seemed like a really big number, but it just felt right. It was a joy to see how happy Mari was when it was all said and done.

 

The hard part is now that we've either dropped or baptized our entire teaching pool. So we literally have 0 solid nonmembers that we're teaching. Just pray that we find them or that they find us.

 

I love you all and hope you have a fantastic week!

 

Love,

Greg

<3 <3 <3

Spanaway - October 17, 2011

We had an incredible week! Gregorio and Concepción were both baptized on Tuesday, confirmed yesterday, and Gregorio is going to receive the priesthood next Sunday. It was an awesome baptism; Tacoma also had a family of four that was baptized the same day. It was pretty much an awesome day for the Spanish zone. The record we have in the mission is 12 baptized in a single month in the zone, and we're already at nine!

 

We also had a great lesson with Mari and she set a goal to have quit smoking by the end of the month so she doesn't smoke in her new house. She needs to quit for at least a week to be baptized, and then she'll receive the Holy Ghost which will carry her the rest of the way as long as she's doing her part. So she committed to prepare herself to be baptized on the 29th. I'm hoping that I'll still be here, since I found her and have worked with her for so long, but we'll see.

 

We also had a missionary come home in the ward, and everyone threw a huge party at the church. He served in Pittsburgh, PA, and apparently knows one of my friends in Berkeley, Simon Tiu, who served as his zone leader. I don't remember exactly how to spell his last name, but it starts with a Q and he's from Tacoma so maybe Simon will remember him.

 

We finally had our interviews with President and Sister Weaver this week too. All I can say is that they're awesome and that I know they are inspired in order to be able to do their job; I just felt the Spirit during the whole thing, and it was fantastic. It sounds like there are going to be some big upcoming changes in the upcoming transfer meeting, to rules, expectations, etc., and they have a big focus right now about placing Books of Mormon. But again, we'll see!

 

A couple days ago we had a really weird day. It started off by going to see one of our potentials, and just on the doorstep she told us her whole life story, how she was raped, and so her family sent her here, etc. These people have way sad stories, and the sad part is that this isn't the first story I've heard like that. Then we had to go to our apartment to pick up a children's Book of Mormon for her because the normal one is hard to understand in Spanish, then she invited us to eat papusas with her and her brother later in the day (and you don't say no to food from a nonmember). So we already had our own lunch appointment, to which we went, then we went over to the Elders quorum president's house for 'cake' which really meant another dinner and we didn't want to offend anyone so we ate, then we ate papusas, and we finished off with Mari feeding us pan dulce with chocolate milk. I am not looking forward to Thanksgiving next transfer....

 

The work goes on, and it's wonderful. I love you guys and hope you have a wonderful week!

 

¡Les quiero y espero que tengan una espléndida semana!

 

Con cariño,

Greg

Spanaway - October 10, 2011

Well, I suppose I'll start off by telling you about our miracle: Gregorio and Concepción, our two eternal investigators that were coming to church but that had no desire to get baptized, are getting baptized on Tuesday!  We went over to teach them on Tuesday, and felt inspired to change the lesson plan.  We shared Mosiah 18:8-10 with them, asking them all of the questions contained in these verses. And then they said they felt they were ready to be baptized! They had their interviews yesterday and they're solid! It was such an incredible moment because these are people that were found the week before I came to this area so I've been working with them for almost four months now. Tacoma is also baptizing a family of four at the same time and with Juanito from last week, our ward will already have seven baptisms for the month. Bishop promised us a special barbecue when we break 10 =)

 

So Mari is still having trouble. We've set goals with her to help her and just really tried to follow the Spirit. She needs to gain faith in herself and believe that she really can do it, and we left her with the homework of reading Elder Oak's talk about desires from a few conferences ago, as well as Pres. Uchtdorf's Saturday morning closing talk. She needs to move out by the end of the month and she's looking for houses in her spare time (not that she has very much of that) and we're really hoping that she doesn't move out of our area. But what comes will come and we'll work hard either way.

 

We really haven't been able to work with too many other people; one person separated from her husband and moved to live with her parents in Seattle, a couple others moved and won't answer their telephone, etc. But we're still working hard and looking and have faith that they will come.

 

So we had a pretty legit P-day today. President Weaver invited the six of us in our little Spanish district over for breakfast and companionship study, which was way fun. It's Elder Wilde's birthday (Elder Liechty's companion) and we hung out with them and did a way epic go-kart race. Liechty and I were fighting it out at the end, and we hit each other pretty hard a few times, but I finally ended up winning.

 

So here's a funny thing that happened this week: Mari has a Parakeet that is infatuated with me and throws a fit every time I'm there. Last week she bit both me and my companion pretty badly as we were holding her on our hands. Mari had gone to a back room to get something at the time and didn't see till afterward so this week she asked us how everything actually went down. I said 'Jazzie me pisó la mano...' So piso means floor and the verb pisar means to step on, so I was trying to say that Jazzie (the bird) stepped onto my hand. But apparently pisarle means something very different than what's in my dictionary... Well, you learn something new everyday!   lol

 

I love you all very much.

 

Paz y amor

Greg

Spanaway - October 3, 2011

Hi there!

 

I did really enjoy conference; I didn't get too much out of the first session because I was watching in Spanish and was too busy worrying about Juanito not showing up so I wasn't really able to concentrate. But then after that first session he finally came and we baptized him there at the stake center after the second session. That was just a way stressful day; we were late in the morning because we missed our exit, went over the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, and had to pay the toll to get back on the Tacoma side. It was a relief when it was over.

 

As far as talks that stood out to me, I really liked President Uchtdorf's on Saturday about how even though we're so small compared to all of God's creations, we are important and we mean everything to God. Also, in the very last session, I loved the talk about choice and swimming in the shallow water. In the end, there are only two choices: following Christ, and following the devil. I bet it would be interesting to review all the activities we do every week and consider which of those choices we're making as we do that activity. Also, I'm planning on reading the talk about the Book of Mormon and how it clarifies Bible teachings with our investigators. 

 

Mari has continued to make a lot of progress. She couldn't find her Book of Mormon for a few days so she instead read about halfway through the Principles of the Gospel book. We were way surprised when she pulled out her notes and asked us questions to clarify stuff about Michael the Archangel... haha. But she's solid and wants to get baptized as soon as she quit smoking. We're not sure what more we can do for her; we've fasted with her, given her a blessing, given her cinnamon sticks to use instead of cigarettes, looked in the church addiction literature based off of A.A for ideas, etc. I think she'll do it though; she's made so much progress just from studying the Book of Mormon and once she comes to church on a more regular basis she'll find that strength she needs.

 

Sadly, most of our other investigators have either fallen off the face of the planet or they continue attending church but have no desire to be baptized. But we'll continue looking for those prepared :)

 

Les amo muchisimo y espero que esten bien. Sigan firmes!

 

Greg