I don’t really know how to begin this email creatively, after a year and a half of doing them; i have kind of run out of ideas haha. But, my family and friends, I can say this week has definitely been a better week full of good hard work, as well as its fair share of challenges.
Well Tuesday (my birthday) was actually super low key. I didn’t tell anyone except Elder Bejar it was my birthday so we didn’t really do anything which was alright because I wanted it that way, but we spent most of the day contacting all the references we received from all the young men that “attacked our are” last week. So as it turns out all these positive references they gave us didn’t turn out to be positive at all and involved a lot of slammed doors, people telling us that they are catholic and don’t want anything or people just being super rude and not talking to us or answering thier door when we saw them right in front of us; but so is the life of a missionary. We did have our correlation meeting with our ward mission leader Chato and his wife, and apparently Elder Bejar had told them it was my birthday, so we celebrated with these sketchy Guatemalan hamburgers and tres leches cake which was pretty bomb so that was good enough celebration for me haha.
Wednesday we went on divisions and I stayed in our area with Elder Acietuno, a new missionary from Honduras, and I took advantage of the time to go all out and work our butts off. So I think I’ve mentioned before, but our area is the side of a mountain pretty much, so we spent the whole day climbing up and down this mountain contacting more references and everything. We ended up finding a partial family who the wife Romelia is an inactive member but her husband Victor and her two kids Paola and David aren’t baptized, and they have many problems so the wife wants to come back to church and involve the family which is pretty exciting.
Thursday we had zone meeting, and we did an activity which was like construction telephone which involved the 2 districts trying to build something, but having to communicate to other members of the district in different phases how to build it like the game telephone; it was pretty cool and we were able to emphasize the importance of knowing how to communicate effectively in missionary work. We also talked to some crazy catholics, and we ended up proving to them with the bible that infant baptism was wrong and they still didn’t believe us.
Friday we had a leadership meeting with president which was really good where we mainly talked about our testimony of Christ and the importance of testifying of him in every phase of our teaching as missionaries. It was a very powerful meeting where we learned some really good stuff that I can’t explain too well in a letter. President also went out to an area called Soche in the zone that is having some major problems in the ward. (For example, it’s a ward and only 60 people show up to church.) So he went out there to do a fireside with the members and… nobody showed up. Yeeeaaahhh there are some real problems over there.
Saturday was also a super good day of hard work. Elder Bejar has had a better attitude about the work this past week, so we did some good stuff. We went and chopped wood for a family and then we continued contacting the references we received last week and found a couple families and other people that we are going to focus on helping progress. Oh and we had a super interesting lesson with this one family where the daughter is half crazy… bot even kidding, as we were sitting on the beds of this family in their shack on the side of the mountain (they don’t have chairs) this daughter was in the corner talking to herself and like half chanting stuff under her breath; really kind of creepy, but it is a pretty cool family and we are going to go back to see if we can help them.
Yesterday was a good, good day because that partial family that we found earlier in the week came to church! We are hoping to be able to baptize the two kids at the end of this month and then work with the husband for March because he has some challenges with work.
Overall it was a better week. I think I just get a little too stressed out all the time with trying to be perfect at everything. I get stressed out when we waste time and I feel like we could be working more diligently, and I get stressed out when my companion or other missionaries aren’t being obedient in everything and I feel like all that responsibility of baptizing and helping out the zone falls on my shoulders. The thing is I just don’t want to waste any more time that I still have in the mission, and I don’t want to regret not doing anything that I could have. For that I think I get stressed out when things aren’t the way that I want them, but I guess it’s something I have to learn because it’s going to be that way in real life. I will just be happy when I can choose and act for myself and have the ability to choose who I want to be around; not that my companion or the members of my zone aren’t good people, it’s just that I feel like I’m babysitting whiny kids sometimes. That’s probably not the best thing to say, and yesterday I was reading a talk by one of the general authorities in the Liahona that talked about serving with love. It’s also something that President Ruiz talked to us about; that we should be doing the work that we are doing because we truly love the people we teach and the missionaries that we serve. It’s how the way I serve others is an expression of love that I have for my Savior Jesus Christ. That’s what my focus has been lately, to truly think of the love I have for him when I am facing challenges with my companion, other missionaries or myself.
Well, since its Valentine’s Day this week or Dia de Amor here, I just want to say that I love you all. I really do. When the going gets tough all I have to do is realize the great blessing the Lord has given me to have you all in my life and ¡me da mucho animo para trabajar y ser diligente!
Love you so much, and finally I am going to send some pictures as well!
-Elder Henderson
PICTURES:
1.Elder Bejar and i at the temple
1. Me and a cow!
2. A cloudy view from my area
3. Another view of my area/mountains
1. A waterfall we visited on p-day
2. Elder Bejar and i at a different waterfall
1. The birthday cake!
2. Celebrating my birthday with Elder Bejar
3. Night view of San Marcos even though you cant see too much
No comments:
Post a Comment