Week 32 (Nopal)

So this week was weird.  Two of our dates dropped. Then we put two more dates. In the last baptism a guy’s brother came and he likes it a lot. He invited us to a "small lunch" and how it was super close to us. It was still in our area but we asked permission and it was ok. Well we went, it ends up being 30 minutes away. We went with the brother to it cause he is our ward mission leader, and we had no money so we couldn’t leave either. We were there for 3 hours. We had a five minute lesson with him and gave the reference to the elders in his area. It was super weird. 

Also the dates who dropped was super sad. One is one who wants to get baptized but his wife is crazy and evil and refuses to do so. They are super poor and building a house. He makes his own adobe to build the house by taking earth out of the well that was in the pictures a couple of weeks ago. Then he had to clear a bunch of rock hard dirt. We have been helping him every morning because he doesn’t have any help. My hands and body are dead. The bishop of another ward offered him a job too but his wife wouldn’t let
him take it because she wanted him to work on the house. This guy didn’t even have money to buy breakfast. Super sad situation. 

The other just didn’t come to church because he was only here two days and he was supposed to have jury duty on Tuesday but he was gone, so the guy gave the paper to us cause we are his neighbors. And we gave it to him after the lesson on Saturday night which was a really good lesson, getting him to be excited for his baptism, but Sunday morning he left super stressed out in the morning to go and figure out what to do about the paper. That sucked. 

We received a referral from other elders about a lady who went to church and wants to get baptized and lives in our area, so we will contact her this week. hopefully that goes well. Also on Monday we made a fire and s’mores with the guy who is really poor. like everyone in his family ate like 50 each. 

Then we had interchanges with the ZLs this week, there’s a new thing where when ZLs do interchanges the two comps both go to their area because it needs to be the model area. me and one of the ZLs found 11 new investigators haha. 

We went to an part of their area that is super far and started knocking on doors. We find a women and she wanted nothing to do with us but we asked for referral and she gave us her front door neighbor. It was more a clan then a family. There were 8 people when we went in. And while we were teaching, more and more people kept joining us. It was really funny. Then while we were praying  and so there’s a bunch of religions who pray really weird and they were evangelicos so they say stuff like "thank you Jesus" and "oh hallelujah Jesus" and "yes please Jesus" while the other people are praying, which is really hard to pray while they date that, but to end the lesson one of them were praying so while they were praying my comp started doing it too. I was trying so hard not to laugh, because he was doing it super weird, but to the other people its normal. I was having to cough to not laugh.  But yeah that was funny.

 
Here it rained last night for the first time in a while. I hate the heat. 

Have a good week,

Love Elder Blanchard

Week 31 (Nopal)

Hey so this week was alright. This week the Zone was sucking it up. There was only five dates in all of the zone. And we had two of them. We had interviews planned for Tuesday and so President had us have a zone conference and he macheted the zone. 

Our district then said we would put seven dates this week for the 25th. And it looked like we were going to do it and then Sunday came and none of the people came to church. So that was disappointing. And since I’m the district leader, it’s my responsibility. Which is one of the bad things about being it. So hopefully this week is a lot better.

Me and my comp almost put two more dates this week, but in the last second an emergency came up and she and her son couldn’t come to church. And without coming to church it’s not a real date. So this week we will hopefully put a lot of dates for baptism.

Interviews were really good too.  Also something cool that happened is that our investigator that was supposed to come to church saw a miracle with the Book of Mormon. She has a husband who works a ton. She only sees him like every 3 months for like 2 days, if that. And now he just got a job for 10 years in Costa Rica.  So he was there yesterday looking for his passport. And he saw her Book of Mormon and sat down to read a little bit of it. This guy hates religion. He is like the .1% of people in El Salvador that hate religion. And then he asked her what was something he could read real fast, and she she told him the chapter we left her a while back in Ether 12, and she said she was watching him read it and he started to weep. He wanted to take it with him, but then he forgot it. But it was really cool to here that. 

Also last week we went to eat in a place called Ataco which is like the Park City of El Salvador. We went to a restaurant called Raclette. We got the raclette.It was so good. But so expensive. But it’s really cool up there and pretty. 

Then we went to a place called Apaneca which is even further up in the mountains. It seemed a lot like Switzerland because of the overcast and mist and there were a bunch of rich people. Every p-day we play soccer. I love p-days now because we just hang out with the zone leaders.

Hope everything is good at home.

Love Elder Blanchard

Week 30 (Nopal)

Hey this week was another good one. The Hermano S..... came to church again this week. When we asked him if he was going to come he said, nothing can stop me from coming, nothing is going to knock me off this path, and then he showed up an hour early to church all ready, and we didn’t even have to pass by for him. 

He liked it a lot and participates a lot. The only problem is we have another situation with a crazy wife. They aren’t married and she refuses to get married. 

Saturday morning we did some more service and were talking with her and she was joking with us and super nice, and then last night we went by to talk with S....., and she came and started bawling saying how she doesn’t want us to come over anymore and a bunch of other stuff. Then S..... came out and we just sat out in the dirt talking in the dark, because he doesn’t have lights. 

They are super poor and their house is a couple of logs coming out of the ground with black garbage bags nailed to the poles. He believes she is possessed by a demon. I just think she is bipolar or something. So this will be a challenge because he can’t get baptized if he continues to live with her without getting married.   

We have a couple more people who are progressing. We have a baptism next week so hopefully everything works out, because it’s the guy who works in San Salvador during the week so is only home during the weekends. So pray for R..... if you can so he can be baptized on the 18th.

Everything is still going good, we met a couple really interesting people this week. We had a lot of rejections that were really funny. There’s one guy in the area that you knock on his door, he opens it sees us and just says a bad word and closes the door. Also I have been helping the stake president in his school cause he teaches English so I have been doing the oral tests, and that is really fun.

Everything is going good though, a couple other things happened but I just ran out of time to write.

Hope everything is going good.

Love elder Blanchard