Week 53: I'm Here To Teach and That's What I'm Going to Do!

Making Dudol from Sugar Cane and Crushed Rice

  Alright so this week was… fast!! As it is probably very well known I am very good at misplacing things. I hadn’t seen the expensive music speaker that I use for two days so I asked around (I asked my companion and our landlady) and none of them had seen it. I mentioned that the usb playing my music had all my pictures from my mission and then kept looking. After about 10 minutes I found it where I had been looking for the last two days (somehow it magically reappeared once I complained) and so I went to tell my companion and Sister Carms- the landlady and she had gone to the police to find it!!! I had to call her and tell her I was so sorry that she had gone through so much fuss- within the short time span she had gone to 4 different houses asking all the people who had been around the house lately if they had entered our apartment and taken anything! (Our apartment‘s front door broke so we have not been locking the doors because if we do we won’t be able to get back in) so it was a highly plausible thought that it had been stolen. To make up for the stress we went to the Vigan zoo today. I got to battle a raptor, sister Bustarde was flirted at by a peacock, and sister Carms went on a trip in the yellow submarine.  All in all it was an average day in Vigan. Also… idk why but all the foreigners I see are either missionaries or 60+. I have only seen 2 who did not have grey hair and i'm not so sure if that was natural or not… I don’t get it.

Anyways, work this week was nuts. Isn’t it always nuts? It's just a matter of trying to keep up with everyone. We got a referral from one of our members (how incredible is that?) and actually the person they referred to us has been going to church for several months and has only just lately expressed a desire to be baptized!! We both thought he was a member!! Wow man, and our lesson with him was a bit hekkledy-peggledy. It was Sunday night and we had gone to their house twice but they were not home so after working for several hours and texting them we went home. Then 5 minutes later they showed up at our door asking to be taught! Yeah, that’s crazy. But we walked with them to sister Carm’s house and taught them there. It's just fun to say here in Sto. Domingo the investigators find you!! Haha. We think that Zeus, the referral that came to our door, will be ready for baptism this month which is amazing!

Also I think have found out the foolproof steps to become less active in your faith!

1)      Stop reading your scriptures

2)      Don’t pray, and if you do just say the same thing over again… He should hear you better if you just repeat yourself right?

3)      Why bother going to church? All the people there are not perfect! Not even the missionaries! (GASP)

This list reminds me of the ‘101 ways to be completely miserable’ by John Bytheway that I read in jr high and my teachers pulled me aside and asked me if I was depressed. That was fun… anyways this is honestly the one quick ticket to lose faith and even question if you ever had a testimony in the first place!!  Honestly, I think if everyone- no matter what faith- would just read, pray (like the heart wrenching or at least reflective prayers) and regularly attend church the world would INSTANTLY become a better place. But… that little devil on your shoulder gets the best of you. Kick him off! You don’t need him weighing you down!! Geez.

Missionaries seem so scared to drop investigators. Idk why, because when we dropped one of our investigators this week (like a sit down you-haven't-been-reading-so-or-going-to-church-so-we-are-not-teaching-you-anymore lesson) and honestly she so understood. She promised to start reading and so we told her we would come back in four weeks, if she had not read and prayed to know what we had taught was true then we would not come back. It’s harsh but at least she knows just how important our time is. I’ve only got 6 more months and Im not going to spend it sitting chatting, I’m here to teach and that is what I’m going to do.

From the dino but kicking, and ice cream addicted missionary,

Sister Eldredge

(IDK= I don’t know) so if you don’t know what idk is idk either hahaha

Sister Carms gave us sticky rice.  It's cooked in a bamboo stick and then you whack it really hard to open it!