Email:

daniel.blanchard@myldsmail.net


Packages/Mail:

All packages are to be sent through the U.S. Postal Service. They do seem to arrive intact within 2-4 weeks.
Elder Daniel Blanchard

Mision El Salvador Santa Ana

Apartado Postal #142

Santa Ana, El Salvador, C.A.

Monday, December 19, 2016

Week 20 (Campestre, Atiquizaya)



Merry almost Christmas. This week was eh. It was good in some parts and eh in others. First off the good. This week we put two dates for baptism for some people we have been teaching. She is the sister of the ex-bishop here and she had been evangelical all her life but just recently started not liking it. Her brother invited her to come to our church but she said no because she thought we worshiped Joseph smith and only used the Book of Mormon, but then he got her to come to the devotional of Christmas, where they only talked about Jesus, and after the devotional he asked her how many times they mentioned the name Joseph Smith. 

But she really enjoyed it and got super excited about our church and actually came to church the next day. Which all the talks were about Jesus Christ and used only the bible. After sacrament meeting we had class, and for investigators we have a gospel principles class that the bishops wife usually teaches but she came to me before sacrament and asked me if I could teach it because she was leaving after it ended.

Well I was supposed to teach on the Gathering of Israel, but I decided to teach about the life of Jesus Christ. She really enjoyed that too. Well we had the lesson with her and she said she absolutely loves our church and thinks she and her daughter and her granddaughter are going to be staying for a while. (The daughter of her was already baptized about 8 years ago, but her granddaughter no) The only doubt she has is she is having troubles with being rebaptised but she and her granddaughter are preparing for the 14th of January.

With A.....we found an obstacle. He isn’t married with his wife. He always referred to her as his wife so we just assumed until we had the talk about the law of chastity. He knows too he is in fornication, like he was showing us scriptures in the bible that talks about how bad fornication is. The only problem is he doesn’t want to marry [A woman like that].

Also with the boy who we found last week who already knew that these things were true. His parents kicked him out so he is moving to Guatemala to live with his aunt. So that kind of sucked.


I attempted making brownies. But it was a gas stove. And i made bricks instead.
 
We also had a weird experience this week contacting. We knocked on a door and a super old lady came outside. We asked her if we could give her a pass-along card and she said yes but seemed super grumpy. Well we asked her name and she replied some super long name and then said the last name like 3 times in a row really emphasizing it and after said, the only Italian here among these people and I am catholic all the way since I was born. 

And at this point I think she’s just being weird cause she doesn’t like Mormons but then things got super weird. She started talking super bad about the youth that lived around her and then was like, I don’t sell marijuana! and then proceeded to point out every neighbor who had marijuana. 

Then she started talking about how someone planted the orange tree in her back yard. Then she started to see something about how the pants we were wearing were her pants. Then a neighbor of hers passed and the old lady says, [You hear that, we are talking about the Witchery you take part in!] super loud, and I almost started laughing super hard. 

Then she continued to talk about her two husbands and about how all the religions suck. The again about all the youth smoking marijuana but the next day going to church, but then she stopped in the middle of her sentence and started whispering and pointing saying, Look, there he goes, he is leaving right now, Look at him, We looked and there was nothing. So we get super scared because it seems like she legit saw someone. So my comp was like thank you hermana we need to go, but she kept talking to us, and then another neighbor passed and she started talking super loud about him also, then she started talking about how all her children are pilots. Then back again to how our pants were hers. Then about how she had a lot of guns in her house haha, it was super weird.

I learned to make catrachas. Which are food they eat in Honduras. Its a fried tortilla with beans and cheese. I call it Mexican pizza.

Tomorrow we have a huge Zone party and on Wednesday we have a huge Multi zone party. So that should be fun. Also tomorrow some members are gonna give us dinner for my birthday. We are going to cook empanadas. She served her mission in Argentina so we are going to attempt to make them. we were going to do it on Sunday but they forgot to buy the stuff.

It rained for the first time in a long time so we weren't prepared. 


This week in service was pretty cool though. We went to another area with our district leader and the other elders in our district and we did some service for them. The older Elders are basically building a house for them but they needed our help this day because they needed to remove a huge tree. We spent six hours giving service to them and after all of our hands were destroyed. 


But we had to first remove all of the branches from the tree with a machete because the axes the had kept breaking. These weren’t small branches, they were pretty big. We had to climb the tree too to get to the high branches. Then after we removed all the branches we had to dig around the tree so we could get super close to the roots. Then we and to cut the base of the tree. By this time a working axe arrived but it was still super hard, because it was super awkward cutting that low on a tree, and the tree was still super green. While two people were chopping the tree the other four were digging a hole for the neighbors but the soil was basically as hard as concrete so that was hard and took a lot of time too. 


After about 2 hours we finished the hole and the tree was about ready to fall. So we attached a rope to the top and all of us pulled and it came down. After we took the tree down we needed to cut it up into a lot of small pieces. It was hard but that day was super fun.


Hope you guys have a good Christmas

Love Elder Blanchard

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