Week 38 (Nopal)

Well this week was interesting. Well I had to go to Tacuba again this week to do baptismal interviews for two people up there so we just did interchanges again so we didn’t waste a bunch of time going clear over there. Unfortunately I did not find my plack. 

But this week was interesting. To start out all my photos got deleted. So that sucks. What happened is we went to go take pictures of the house of a recent convert so he could take the pictures to the government. So we went to the church to print the pictures off, but I left my adapter in the house, so we left the things there with the young men’s. And they started playing with my camera and I thought nothing of it. Until I returned and it showed I had no photos. They were all deleted. I tried looking up  programs to recover deleted programs, and I found one and it worked, and found the pictures but when it asked me if I wanted to recover the photos, it said I needed to pay 40 bucks. So I said no. We are going to see if there is a cyber who will do it for like 2 bucks. I still have hope hah.

D..... is going good. The area is going pretty good too. We had a mission activity this week which we have been planning for a month. It kind of turned out. A bunch of the organizations didn’t come through with their assignments, and a bunch of people didn’t come, but we improvised a lot and it turned out good. It was about the pioneers. and was good.

Sorry this email is short I didn’t have a lot of time cause I’m trying to download photos I sent in the emails.

I hope everything is going good.

Love,

 

Elder Blanchard

Week 37 (Nopal)

This week was pretty good.

Well first off I went to go do interchanges with an area called Tacuba. This is a little pueblo which is an hour by bus out of the town of Ahuachapán where I am at. To get there it is like a canyon drive, except in a bus, that is so full you have to stand up and are packed like sardines, without space to put your backpack on the luggage rack, and the bus driver being crazy and driving way faster than he should on roads like that. It was pretty interesting. 

Then we had a pretty normal day until it came time to go visit one of their investigators later in the day. We had to take a moto taxi to get their which is basically a small buggy with 3 wheels. When we got there we started walking to the house of the investigator, and then that’s when I realized I wasn’t wearing my nametag. Which I knew I had it on earlier during the day because nobody can ever say my name unless I show them my tag up close. 

Well we ended up not finding it which is sad because now I have to order a new one, but it won’t be the same cause since I went to the Provo MTC, the letters were bigger and engraved more deeply. 

(Giving service of building another house out of adobe. It doesn't show in the picture, but my face was covered in mud. I am now an expert in albañileria. or the art of building houses.)

Well back to the lesson, we went to visit a 14 old girl who is the daughter of a recent convert. At first she wanted nothing to do with the missionaries, but over time she had been opening up, and now she has started going to church, but she still kept saying no to be baptized. So we went with the hopes that she would accept a date. 

We get there and we just start to get to know the family and they are really cool, then we try to have a lesson with the daughter but it is super hard because her older sister who is like 25 and her mom were sitting against the wall behind us making all sorts of comments at the things she would say and were laughing really loud. Which in that setting is pretty hard to maintain the spirit. But we just told her to ignore them and kept teaching, and eventually they left. But the lesson was really good because we started off talking about her reading the Book of Mormon and what she learned. She said obedience. 

And so we were asking about that trying to tie it into baptism but she was avoiding trying to say baptism, so I read Alma 7 vs 15, and we just sat there for a moment, and then we asked her what the scripture says, and she said that I need to be baptized. Then we started talking about the temple cause she had expressed her desire before to go into the temple. And we told her to enter she needs to be baptized. And the whole time the spirit was super strong, and she was crying, and I was almost crying, but in the end she accepted to be baptized the 28th of this month. 

Then we went on to have a normal day. Then the morning comes and we call my comp and his comp to tell them to come back up here so we could change back. And then an hour later they call us and tell us a bus still hasn’t passed by, and then my comp for the day realized that the day was Holy Friday. And that there would be no buses going to or from Tacuba until Monday.   

Well we started freaking out cause I didn’t want to stay in Tacuba until Monday haha, and I needed to get back to my area. Well we start searching around town asking people if it was true that there weren’t any buses and they said yeah it was true. So we started looking for a member to see if they could take us back. So basically we have no idea what to do. because we can’t hitch a ride because we can’t be in the back of trucks and that’s the only thing people have here. They pack the back of trucks with people like sardines.  

Well halfway into the day the branch president finally called us back and told us he could take us, but for 12 dollars. Luckily I did not have to spend my weekend in Tacuba.

Also we got one of our investigators to accept a date. He is a 12 year old D...... He is the son of an investigator who was going to get baptized but then couldn’t because her husband didn’t want to get  married. This kid already has been to church 6 times, but in this mission, kids need to assist church 12 times before they can get baptized. He is almost there haha.

My comps alright. He is super prideful and not very obedient, but it’s going along. District leader is super stressful, but it’s going along good too.

Hope you guys have a good week

Week 36 (Nopal)

We have one person that is so close to accepting a date to be baptized. She loves the church, her partner died 15 years ago so the law of chastity doesn’t apply. She wants to be baptized but the problem is when. She was supposed to get baptized in January, but then left to San Salvador to work for 2 months, and just barely got back. 

She told us she was going to get baptized but what happened is that the wall of her house is basically falling down on her and someone told her the bishop could give her money to buy materials, but when she went and talked to him he said no, and she said that that made her feel sad and disappointed so she wanted to wait a little to be baptized, and to not pressure her to be baptized.
 

Hopefully we can help her feel the desire so we can at least put a date with her. Other than that we are having trouble finding people once again.

Um this week we went to go play soccer in the morning and my comp set the keys in the grass because he is not very smart. So we lost the keys. My comp literally has the curse from the book of Ether where they lose everything they set down. Since he has come here he has lost his camera, his USB, our keys and his yogurt and cheese. Yes he literally lost a bucket of yogurt and a bag of shredded cheese. Don’t ask me how, it literally just disappeared. He was the most upset about losing the yogurt.

Other than that nothing exciting or interesting is happening. Just trying to work to find these new people. We have been seeing some miracles within the district which is pretty cool, with finding people who already want to be baptized and already believe in the Book of Mormon and in Joseph Smith, and even that Thomas S. Monson is a prophet. And that was their first lesson with him. 

This week we heard about a girl who wants to go to church with us. She is the daughter of the brother of our ward mission leader. The brother came to the baptism of the mom of the two(the 92 year old lady) and he really liked it and wants to be taught us he lives in another area but is pretty close. We sent the missionaries of that area to him but he wants to be taught by us. He is going to come this week and bring the daughter, who lives in our area, and hopefully we see a miracle with these two people.

Everything is going good though.

Love,

Elder Blanchard

Week 35 (Nopal)

So this week was really good because of conference. Conference is so much different in the mission. And it just amazes me how I came with a bunch of questions and every one of them was answered. We were able to watch all of them but the last session in English. It kind of sucked watching it in Spanish cause it just isn’t the same cause the people translating don’t have the same emotion and it bugs me seeing the peoples mouth move and the words and the voice not being the same. But other than that it was still good. The priesthood session was really good.

This week was slow and uneventful other than that. All the people we found we haven’t been able to find because they are really busy. We will just be straight contacting this week and visiting members and hopefully find more positive people. Our problem is that all the positive people we find are never in there house so it’s hard to have lessons with them.

But the work is still going and we are still working hard and enjoying it.. Yeah the speaker from conference de Argentina was really cool. It’s sad though because we only had one investigator here it, the other two arrived right after it.  It was funny because with that talk the computer shut down two times during that talk, and every time it shut off everyone was mad haha.  But yeah the work continues.