Week 50 (Los Naranjos)

So this week was really good. We had a baptism which is the first baptism this area has had in about a year. It was super cool. The pila bautismal is really weird though in the church. Its basically an inflatable pool with a white covering. It was really cool though. 

We are seeing so many blessings in this area. It’s not the greatest with my comp. He literally doesn’t talk unless we are teaching a lesson, and then he talks too much haha. It's tiring though cause I have to do all the work, but like I said I’m already used to that from all my past companions. 

The thing those is it is nice in this area because I can see the fruits of my labor and it makes it worth it. I am really happy in this area, the members are really awesome and the investigators are awesome, and I really love my district and zone.   

Next Monday we have a baptism planned cause he originally was going to be baptized the 29th but he changed it because 24 is his favorite number. Right now we are teaching a bunch of people who live in a tiny colony really far way in the mountains. We get there in like 30 minutes walking super fast. But it’s worth it. 

We have 4 people with dates for baptism over there and we just keep finding more and more people. The lord is blessing us greatly.  Other than that everything is going good.

I'm playing fruit ninja in this photo. The ground I'm standing on was literally covered in weeds that went up to my knees. But we cleared it with machetes. It was a service that we did with the rama. 15 people came. It was for our investigator

Hope everything is going good at home.

Love Elder Blanchard

Week 49 (Los Naranjos)

This week is great. We are seeing so many blessings. We just keep finding more and more people who are preparing to be baptized. We have our first baptism this week. And we are working like crazy. 

This rama hasn’t baptized for so long and neither has the other area in my district. And we now have 7 dates in total in the district between the two supposedly hardest areas in the mission. It just goes to show that coming in with a good attitude and a lot of faith can really change areas. 

I have seen the lord’s hand so much in these past couple weeks. Also this week we worked again in the coffee field, or basically mountain. And took more pictures haha. I love everything over here.  

Um nothing really else is happened everything is going good. Nothing much more to say.

Oh also of the mission president is really cool. He’s a lot less serious than the other. He’s really loving and really goofy. haha Its now the opposite with you guys dying of heat and me enjoying the cold and rain.

Oh yeah, one of the daughters is getting baptized next week. also I bought the suit coat I was wearing for 8 dollars, and  an investigator made it so it kind of fit me I will get  it shortened as well, but it matched perfectly kind of with pants I already had.

Hope you guys have a good week.

Love Elder Blanchard

Week 48 (Los Naranjos)

Hey sorry for not writing last week. What happened was all the last week I felt a little sick, drained of energy with a headache but thought nothing of it and kept working.  Then Monday morning I woke up feeling a little bit more sick in my stomach, and then on the bus I almost threw up.  

But then we played soccer and felt fine, then we started writing. I opened all the emails and read all of them and then began to respond to them, but that’s when I started getting a really big headache and stomach ache. Like I couldn’t concentrate and was making a lot of typing errors (more than usual) but I couldn’t correct them cause it hurt my head so much the read the screen. 

After responding to two emails I decided to take a break.(I just barely read the two emails I sent and they didn’t even make sense) well I went and laid down outside of the family search center where we right, and got even worse, I started getting a fever, and then went to the bathroom and puked.  I was dying, I waited a little bit longer and got even worse, I felt super cold so I went outside and laid in the grass, and then we had to go because the bus was going to leave and there’s only a bus every two hours to our area, so I went inside, puked again, and went home, and slept the rest of the day and ended up not leaving to work in the evening.  The next day I still felt pretty sick but we went out and worked anyway. I feel a lot better now though.

Alright. Well what happened last week was basically a lot of being wet and getting lost haha. But we have been working hard and right now we have 3 people preparing for baptism and we are going to have a fourth this week.  It’s really cool because this area hasn’t baptized for about a year.  My comp's a little bit of a struggle. He arrived in the mission on Saturday. He served 6 months in Honduras but got sick and was home for a year. He is very shy, and does not talk at all except in teaching. At this point I don’t care, I’m fine doing all the work.

Yeah new mission president. It was sad saying goodbye to the old one, although I had a funny last experience with him. With what happened is 2 weeks ago we had our last multi-zona conference and he just reminded of us of stuff we need to do and gave us some reminders. One of the things he mentioned was if we get home in the night and our phone doesn’t work or we lose it we need to leave the house and find a member to call someone to let them know you got home safely or president will come to our house to check on us. 

Well this Tuesday I was on interchanges in my area with the ZL and we got home and I tried calling my district but my phone wasn’t working. I thought it was because it didn’t have much charge, so I put it in to charge and started washing my clothes. At 10:20 I tried calling again, and it wasn’t working. So we start freaking out cause it is raining really hard, and so we have to leave at like 10:30 to find a member, which there aren’t very many cause we live basically in the mountains. 

Well we leave the house in flip flops and shorts with umbrellas to go to the first house and they don’t hear us screaming cause the rain is so hard, so we go to the next closest and nothing. Finally at like 11:20 we find a member who is awake and we call president like 5 times but he doesn’t answer, so we call the other ZL to call president and tell him what happened, well we start walking back to the house well as we almost get there we hear a car screeching and going super fast and we look behind us down a hill and see president haha.  We then explained what happened and he just laughed. He left the mission the next day,

Also this week we served in a coffee field on the side of a mountain doing the hardest thing I’ve ever done. We basically hauled coffee plants on our back like half a mile up the mountain like 5 times, carrying like 80 pounds of coffee plants and dirt on our backs, we forgot to actually take pictures of us carrying the coffee but we are going to do it again this week.

Love Elder Blanchard

Week 47 (Los Naranjos)

NO LETTER

Week 46 (Los Naranjos)

Hey how’s it going. So this week was crazy. First off I had changes, and for the first time I am leaving the city of Ahuachapán. Now I am going to the Rama in Los Naranjos. 

It is really cool in this area. It is actually really cold. I wear a sweater every day. The rama has about 30 in assistence and everyone told me you don’t baptize in this area but we arrived here and convinced everyone in the rama we are going to change the rama into a barrio.  

Then on Friday we met this kid who is 15, we had two lessons with him, and he accepted to be baptized the 22 of July, and he doesn’t need to get married haha. Also we find another family of 3 that are going to come to church this week. We are going to baptize like crazy here. I love this area already. 

I loved my comp he was from Mexico, but today president called us in the morning and we had emergency changes so basically I am opening area right now cause he gone ya. I don’t know who my comp is, I heard he’s a new person so I think I might be training again, but I don’t know. I was really sad to only have 5 days with him because we literally had everything in common. 

Also Its really wet and cold were I am at and is the mountains of El Salvador. and there are two volcanoes by us. I’m out of time to write already but Have a good week.

Love Elder Blanchard

Week 45 (Nopal)

Hey this week was pretty good, I still don’t know if there are changes yet, no one in the zone knows yet.  We are so close to baptizing a bunch of people. They just won’t accept dates, get married, or come to church. 

We have this family is this guy was a drunkie and we found his house by pure inspiration a couple weeks ago, now he’s come two time to church, we haven’t seen him bolo for a while, and  right now we are teaching his two kids, and they want to prepare to be baptized, and the dad wants it too, but the dad wants them to wait 7 months... but we will be working with them this week if I don’t have changes. 

Um nothing really too exciting happened this week. Oh We had an apostle come talk to all the missions in El Salvador, and so we went to San Salvador all of Tuesday. It was really cool. I had a cool experience with him. It was Dale Rendlund, 

We will see if I have changes. I am a little bored of this area though because it’s really small,  and I already know everyone in the area haha. Of also this week on Monday I did an interview for baptism and she wanted me to baptize her so I technically had a baptism this week. 

Everything is good though. Happy Birthday Dad and happy father’s day. I wish I could be home to help with some yard work for your birthday.

Love Elder Blanchard