Week 54

Hi Everyone!

Well this week went by pretty quick! Elder Carillo is doing good, but he is in what I like to call the CCM Hangover. It’s something that every missionary goes through sometime in their first transfer where they realize that missionary work is hard. This week the schedule, the heat, the rejection, and everything else seemed to come down on him! The poor guy was literally falling asleep while reading during our study and it was really funny. After lunch I was trying to help him memorize words one day and he kept falling asleep, so I would throw the nearest object at him and he would wake up and keep going. This went on for about 15 minutes until I ran out of things to throw and I decided to let him sleep. But he is still very motivated and he is working hard, so thats good. Luckily for me he isn't homesick, because i'm not so good at giving comfort. I would tell him "tu tienes que crecer tu pelotitos. Vayate afuera hasta tu puedes ser un hombre." or something like that. So it’s good that that isn't a problem for now.

But this week we had something incredible happen! There is a family that lives next door to Juan David. The three kids are 12, 10, and 9 and Sister Patricia always takes them to church and they love it. Tons of missionaries have taught the mom and the kids, but the mom kinda has her other church and the dad never talks to anyone that comes to talk about religion. So we were kinda stumped on what to do with them, so we would just go and teach them a little lesson to practice my Papiamento and them talk with the mom in Spanish. But one day the mom was sick, so she sent the dad to go tell us to come back another day. He came out and he was just drunk enough to want to talk to us, but sober enough to remember what we said. Perfect! So turns out he likes to read and has read a lot of stuff online about our church. He said he didn't have a problem with his kids going, but he had some questions because of some false things he had read online. We talked with him for over an hour and shared all about the restoration and answered his questions and we left on a really good note, and he agreed to let us come back to talk to him! Later that week he was at work, but we were talking with the mom and she said that not only was actually interested in hearing more from us, she was starting to think that maybe there might be something about "us mormons". Funny how the truth does that to you! But it was a very big step for this family and it was incredible because missionaries have been trying with them forever. I guess now is just their time so we are going to have to work with them a lot! It’s incredible how much the gospel would bless their lives. It would solve almost every problem they have. I love this Gospel!

 In other news, I asked Juan David where to get my hair cut, and he told me this place to go to today. I asked him very clearly "Do they know how to cut white people hair?" and he said yes. Welp they don't and now my hair is pretty messed up. So to sum it up this week was great spiritually but now there's a funny looking white guy wandering the streets of Aruba with a blue book in his bag. And I wouldn’t want it any other way!

Love Elder Harsh