Week 23

Hi Everyone

This past week was great! We got to go to the temple on Wednesday and I saw a few of my buddies from the CCM there! It was great talking with them and hearing all their stories! The temple was great too!

And Saturday we had Georgina´s baptism interview. After the interview all the district leader had to say was ¨wow, she is ready for baptism¨ I wish he would have known her two months ago so he could see the difference! But she has tons of faith and if all goes well her baptism will be this Saturday.

Right now I am studying the New Testament.  It is a whole lot easier to understand the significance of everything after reading Jesus the Christ, so if you haven´t read that, I would definitely suggest that! I love to eat the Spitz dill pickle sunflower seeds during personal study, and it keeps me awake!

But transfers are this next week and there is a very good chance I am getting transferred I kinda hope I get an English companion this next transfer, but I´m getting comfortable with Spanish so it’s really not a big deal anymore.  It’s going to be hard to say goodbye to some of the friends I have made here, but I´m kinda looking forward to see other parts of the DR. But there is a slight chance I will stay here so I guess we will have to see. I´ll be sure to let you know next week!

Love Elder Harsh

View of the Dominican Republic Temple

Week 22

Hi Everyone!

Well this was a week of ups and downs! We had two people scheduled for baptism on the 24th, Georgina that I told you about last week, and Juana. Juana had been progressing very well but we stopped by last Saturday night to remind her about church and we found her at a colmado drinking. The next day she didn´t show up to church, but we stopped by and talked with her and she is still interested, but she just isn´t quite ready yet. So that was kind of sad. But with Georgina, early in the week we discovered she had a problem with coffee. She said she would stop but two days later she said that she got awful headaches and she couldn´t stop. We then taught her about the law of the fast, and had a really powerful lesson about how she can fast for help overcoming her addiction. She is now 4 days clean of coffee and is preparing for her interview this Saturday!

Also in other news last night E. Zetina wanted pancakes but we didn´t have the right ingredients and since it was Sunday we couldn´t go to the colmado to get anything. Sooo we made them anyways and they were awful. We didn´t have syrup so we tried them with honey and it was nasty. So I figured I had nothing to lose and I got out the chalula sauce and IT WAS DELICIOUS. Me and my companion high fived and ate the rest of the nasty pancakes with chalula sauce!! So that’s about all that happened this week.

Love,

Elder Harsh

Streets of Punta

Week 21

Hey Everyone!

Well its 2015 aka the one and only complete year of my life I won’t see my mommy!

 New year’s was really boring. We were on lock down and none of our neighbors had cards or dominos to let us borrow so we had to improvise a little! They weren´t playing music very loud so we couldn´t even make fun of the music to pass the time! We were so bored we ended up putting in earplugs and just going to bed, but we set an alarm for 11:50 because this was both of our first new years and we were curious how Dominican’s celebrate!  When the clock struck midnight the Dominicans that were in the street drinking got up, hugged everyone, and left.  It was really dissapointing but we did get to see a drunk guy try to ride away on his motorcycle so it was all worth it!

Also I got to use my Chulula sauce this week and holy cow, its good!!!  Dominican food doesn´t suck, it just lacks chulula!! Rice and beans are alright, but with chulula it’s great! Dominican spaghetti is great, but with chulula it is even better! And that’s about the only food Dominicans eat. My latest million dollar idea is after my mission I am going to market Chulula here and make millions! But like most of my million dollar ideas I ran into a little snag, because Dominicans don´t like spicy food. At all!!  So dang.

 In other news, two weeks ago Juan Miguel (the guy we baptized) gave his first talk in church and nailed it! Yesterday the three kids all got up and bore their testimonies and it was awesome!!

Also, we have an investigator named Georgina. I have taught her my entire mission with little signs of progression, but we finally got her to attend the Christmas party, and at the party we asked a member of the Bishopric to bring her to church. He did, but the next week we forgot to ask him and so we were kinda bummed until she showed up by herself! She has attended every Sunday since then and as of Saturday has a baptism date for the 24th of this month! It was really awesome to FINALLY see her progress! So things here are going well and I hope all is well back home too!

Love,

Elder Harsh

Elder Harsh and Elder Zetina's baptisms