Week 15

Hi Everyone!

Well it happened!  I finally found a woman who can grow more facial hair than I can. That was a blow to my self esteem.

                Anyways… this week was very good. My companion is from Mexico and this week he cooked a bunch of Mexican food! It is a well known fact that if you cook me yummy food I will literally do ANYTHING, so I’ve been on kitchen duty all week and because the food was so yummy I didn´t even mind! Also we don’t have cupboards so after you wash the plates all I have to do is put them in the basket thingy haha.

Also it’s so hot here that I didn´t have ski fever at all until last week when Hayden told me Solitude is opening, and I unpacked my olympic ski tie and daydreamed about skiing all last week.  I´m not saying it’s a problem, but I have been having some serious adrenaline withdrawls! haha.

 Last week on P day we went and explored the jungle, and it was SO COOL! I forgot my camera, but no worries, we are going back to take pictures today after I play baseball with an investigator! But let’s just say I can now cross off ¨swing from a vine in the jungle like Tarzan¨ off my bucket list. I love it here.

 President Corbit has a rule that he only allows us to listen to music appropriate for sacrament meeting, so I don’t think you need to bother sending me any music.

 As for my investigators, this week was so good! Elder Zetina has been making me lead all of the lessons and extend all the commitment invitations and it is really helping my Spanish! Rarely do I have to ask for his help when explaining a concept! Also we have been really pushing to get investigators to come to church, because people here are lazy. Usually we would just have Alejandro y Jubelis and their family, and maybe one other investigator, but we really worked hard on explaining why church attendance is important and last week we had 8 investigators attend, and this week we had 13!! We have 4 baptisms coming up on the 6th of December. The kids of Alejandro y Jubelis, and one other that I don´t think I have told you about. He is 14, and the son of a less active lady. We re-taught the lady the restoration one day, and left a little booklet for her to study, but honestly I didn´t feel like she had much desire to return to church. The next lesson we show up and her son read the booklet, prayed about it, and he wanted to learn more and be baptized. He is very ready for baptism on the 6th, and he and his mom are attending church now!  We have a few others that have a goal for the 12th and 20th of December as well, so we will have to see how it goes! Well that’s about everything that’s going on with me!

Until next week!

Elder Harsh

Week 14

Hi Everyone!

Well it finally happened. It was last Monday night, I was still with the zone leader who speaks English and we were just chillin in our room talking when A SPIDER THE SIZE OF A MID-SIZED SEDAN RUNS INTO THE ROOM. This sucker was bigger than my hand!! My comp saw it first and he said ¨Wow that’s a big cockroach¨ I was pumped to see a massive cockroach and I peek over the side of my bed and it was a SPIDER! So I calmly squished it and went on with my night. PSHYCH!!!  I freaking lost my mind and it crawled under my comp´s bed! My comp moved the bed and it climbed up into the corner against the ceiling. I was a little distracted at the time, but my comp grabbed my camera and filmed us taking care of it, so I’ll send that home to you soon. It was not a good day.

 Anyways I got my new companion and his name is Elder Zetina. He is a really nice guy from Mexico and yeah, you guessed it, He doesn´t speak English. In this week I think he has said 2 words in English haha He speaks really really fast too. It’s really difficult to understand him, but it’s also helping me understand the Dominicans so it’s all good! This week I started actually understanding a lot of what was being said. I am teaching a lot better and I even led a few lessons this week!

 I haven´t used my mitt yet because if the kids have a ball, it’s just the stringy insides and its usually mildewy and gross, so I just borrow their mitt for a few minutes in between lessons. But today I am going to use my mitt when we play baseball with a less active and his buddies, so I´m pumped for that! We go to this internet place to email that has 3 computers that work (on a good day) and usually the power lasts long enough for me to write everyone! 

We are in the same apartment and I don’t really know where to get the ingredients to cook any treats, but Elder Zetina knows how to cook Mexican food and he really wants to cook it this week. HECK YEAH! If all goes well this will be the first week in 3 months I haven´t had rice! Elder Zetina really likes to cook, so while he cooks lunch I read out loud from the Book of Mormon in Spanish and he corrects my errors. It works out really well.  I’ve read the Book of Mormon twice since I’ve been out here, and each time I feel like it’s brand new. I am studying Jesus the Christ right now to help me understand the life and ministry of Christ because the people here are mostly Catholic so I figure it will help me. But that’s about everything for this week!

Love you!

Elder Harsh

Week 13

Hi everyone!

This week has been different but very good! The first part of the week I was in a trio in a city called Yamasa. It´s about an hour away from my old area, and the houses are nicer. We had power a lot more often but we only had running water on the back porch. On the bright side I am now a champion at bucket showers! So we served in that area and most of it was more city- like but part of it was out in the boonies. We had to hop across rocks to cross a river to get to one of our investigators houses. It was awesome. Also coming back from that house at night I saw fireflies! So that was dope.

The plan was to serve with them and work in Punta with our progressing investigators once a week, but that got changed and now I am with one of the Zone Leaders in Punta until tomorrow, when I get my new companion and work permanently in Punta. The Zone Leader is from Utah, and it has been the best three days of my life with him, because I finally have someone I can have conversation with! It also helps because my Spanish is getting to a point where I have very specific grammar questions or need to know how to say a phrase where a direct translation doesn´t work, so it’s nice being able to ask him.  I really hope that my new companion speaks English, because none of my other companions have and it’s difficult!

 We have 4 people with a baptism date for December 6th! The kids of Alejandro and Jubelis are going to be baptized while they wait for their parent´s to get married, and then after they are married the parents will be baptized too! The 4th one is the son of a less active lady. We taught her twice and on the second lesson we gave a very powerful lesson about keeping the Sabbath day holy and I committed her to come to church and she did! After sacrament meeting she came up to me and told me she wanted me to baptize her son.  So we went to teach him and he is very interested and wants to be baptized!

Today since I had an English comp I figured he could help me find a place to get a good haircut. We searched all over town to find someone that sort of knows how to cut white people hair, and the entire time he was bragging to his buddies that he gets to cut ¨perfect hair¨. That’s what they call white person hair haha. It wasn´t that bad of a haircut but I hated every second of it!  haha, as for me, I´m doing good. It has really helped having an English comp these past few days.  He has helped my teaching a ton. I really hope that my next companion speaks English. But I’m doing good and I´ll try and take some pictures to send home to you.

Elder Harsh

Week 12

Elder Harsh was transferred this week and didn't write a letter.