Week 7 (Campestre, Atiquizaya)

My companion is really cool. He likes music, and soccer. Although he sings a little too much and scares our neighbors in the morning because they think a cat is being tortured in our house. Just kidding it’s not that bad. But he is from Nicaragua and no he doesn’t hate Americans. He always talks in English which is kind of getting frustrating, but he always talks about American culture and how much he likes the stuff there.

The members here are all super nice. But they don’t like working so it is really hard working with them. The only people who help us are this married couple who are recently returned missionary’s names R…… and R……. We always have to ask him to help us when girls are alone in the house but we need to teach them. I always feel really bad asking him for help cause its usually super late when we ask him.

The other people who help us is a couple who is about to get married, who are both returned missionaries. One looks super Chinese so they call him chino. But he lives in Nuevo Amanacer which is a 10 minute bus ride away through the jungle. His girlfriend always helps us when we go up their cause the chino is always working. She has a bunch of references for us, but they are never home. The bishop sometimes helps us but he works a lot, or like this week we had a lesson planed with S…… the date that we have, and we asked him the day before if he could come with us, but he was sleeping when we got to his house, and then his son went to wake him up but the bishop said he was too tired haha. Luckily the girl wasn’t home so we couldn’t teach her anyway.

This week we had two people come to church which was really cool. We had S…… come, but her mom and brother didn’t so we had to drop their dates. There is also an inactive guy that we visit a lot that is really cool but his wife is Catholic. He has a kid named S…… who is the cutest little kid and is super fat but he has a blood problem so the family constantly has to go to the hospital. Well last week he got super sick with flu, and his parents were gone and his grandma asked us to give him a blessing, which we gave him and it was super cute cause when we finished it he asked if he was healed, which the next day he felt a lot better.

Well we have been working really hard with the family and the dad came to church last week which he hadn’t been for a couple years. His wife was kind of a problem though because she is hardcore catholic and believes that god Jesus and the spirit are one thing, and we asked the family to do family prayer, but she wouldn’t because she believed you shouldn’t pray in groups, and doesn’t like the way we pray, but on Friday we kind of had a lesson with her saying how dumb that was, and they promised to pray. But the next morning the whole family showed up to church which we weren’t really expecting. The husband seemed super proud that his wife was there.

This week we also went out with other companionships in the district to help them get some dates for baptism and we helped one companionship gets 3 dates, and another get one. Yesterday was extremely hot. I was dying. But we went to a member’s house because we are now trying to strengthen the members to see if they will work a
little more. And we went to this guy’s house who we thought was pretty strong in the church and he was talking about how he still doesn’t now if he is fully converted yet. He has been a member for four years, but has only been to the temple once. His wife is the relief society president and is a very good woman and wants to get sealed but the husband but he doesn’t know yet. He says he has a lot of doubts about god, which is weird because everyone here believes in god, but he also says he doesn’t care about other people unless they have monetary value to him. So he doesn’t feel like he can be truly converted.

Another problem we have is with how there are so many churches here. And you think it would be super nice having everyone believe in god and Jesus and the bible, well no it sucks, because the people who aren’t part of a church believe that all churches are true. It is honestly so frustrating but funny, and we would show them a lot of
scriptures saying how there is only one church and all this stuff, and they’ll be like yes there is one, church, all churches. It is so confusing to me haha.

Also this week for lunch on Thursday it was really funny. The day before Elder Adams the super tall white guy in the corn picture who is from Riverton told the cook that me and my companion really like fish soup. So the next day we walk in and I saw soup, and smelt fish so instinctively I told them I was fasting. Well she brought out the bowls and there is literally a whole fish in it with whole little crabs in it and shrimp. I wanted to throw up haha. The cook wasn’t too happy when we told her we actually hated fish and that Elder Adams was joking.

I’m glad everything is going good at home.

Elder Blanchard