Week 65

What's up people! This week went really good! We are kind of in a finding mode right now so we've talked to And met a few new people which has been cool. So the whole situation with Our investigator took a lot of prayer and a little fasting and a lot of studying but basically because of his current condition he has no place to go and is really not doing to well, so with some help from our ward mission leader we had a sit down with Our investigator and told him that he couldn't do it on his own and not with just us either but that he would need more professional help, we more or less had an intervention and told him that if he can get clean for 3 days he can be admitted into a help program and from there after about a week go into a 6 months 12 step program and after that it would be more appropriate to think about baptism. And honestly if i had to put my money on anyone overcoming something like this, i would put it all on Him.  i think he can over come it but i guess we'll see this week.but yeah he is a great guy and hopefully a few months down the road will be able to be baptized. 

Other than that this week we started teaching a 16 year old Cuban girl named Roxana who just barely moved here a few weeks ago. She seemed pretty curious and open to what we were saying and really grasped it all, its been interesting to see that the majority of the time, teaching children or youth they usually pick it up a lot faster and understand a lot easier where as adults are usually a little more set in there ways and a little slower to pick things up. so that's cool, hopefully we'll be able to teach her and her family. 

We also have been teaching a less active guy named Vidal who is super awesome! he is super spiritual and loves to read and study the scriptures and watch conference talks and everything, he just doesn't come to church haha i think its pretty hard for members here to go to a church group where no body else speaks your language and you hear all the meetings through a headphone set, but i guess there's no excuses! we've been trying hard to get him to come to church the past 2 weeks but he hasn't made it yet. His wife is from Vietnam and isn't a member but doesn't really speak English super well, and neither does he but they communicate either way haha.

This Friday we also had interviews with President Brough which went really well. He's a great guy. The first thing he asked me was how the whole in my mouth was haha but anyway, the transfer is coming up, only one more week! its crazy how fast time is going by here!

Love you guys, hope you have a great week!

Para siempre Dios esté con vos! 

Week 64

Whats up people! this week was a really good week but at the same time its been really hard. This might be a super short email but just to explain whats going on, it'll be kind of hard to keep it still appropriate and confidential but still explaining the whole situation,but ill try.

So this week we saw An investigator everyday, he asked us if we could come over everyday and see him and we have and we've had some great experiences and grown super close to this man, he has progressed so much in the 2 short weeks we've known him and he has opened up to us a lot. On Monday night we invited him to be baptized on the 18th of July and he was willing and excited to be baptized! he asked us what he had to do to be baptized and we briefly laid out all the requirements for baptism and he said he would be willing to live them, so we just kept coming back and we would read about and focus a lot on the atonement because he had expressed a lot of sorrow and guilt and he has been reading the Book of Mormon and praying everyday and has told us that he sees a huge change in his life and you can just tell that hes soaking in everything like every single lesson he was in tears and so happy at what we were telling him and its been so amazing to work with someone like this and every time we see him he talks so much about how he wants to make this change for the rest of his life and how badly he wants to be baptized and how excited he was for the 18th and its just been super awesome to be able to help someone like this so willing and so in need of the Gospel! its been honestly one of the best experiences of my life to see this man so desperate for hope and to be able to help him see that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is his way out. But we ran into a very large and unexpected hurdle when we taught the word of wisdom. Its kind of out of our league as missionaries, and i want so badly to help this man but i don't know how. So we will keep working with him, he is completely 100% willing to do the things we tell him and rely completely on God but this is going to be a very long and crazy roller coaster of emotions haha so pray for us and more importantly PRAY FOR HIM!

We definitely will need some deliverance right now, he is honestly is one of the most Christlike people I have met, just has made some wrong choices and now wants to change, really difficult but with God all things are possible! He really has the biggest heart and I seriously love this man more than myself! I just hope things will work out, I don't care how long it takes! Love you guys! Hope everything is going well back home! 

Love you guys alot, Hope youve had a great week!

Teeny Tiny Toast!

Week 63

WHATS UP PEOPLE!! This week was good! it was kind of an interesting
one but it was still good haha so we had some really good people we
found and some good people we dropped and some good people we found
and then dropped shortly after!
So we had a lot of good lesson and some "bad" ones that kinda needed
to happen! not bad in the sense that like we taught badly haha but
pretty much we weeded out some people that were meeting with us for
the wrong reasons and didn't have intentions to change!
The first big drop was a Guy named Joel who moved here from Cuba a few
years ago.  He basically told us that we were ignorant because we
wouldn't watch a youtube video that explains that Joseph Smith was
incorrect with his translation of the book of Abraham and so he
couldn't be a prophet and he wasn't willing to read the book of Mormon
and pray so we told him when he was we'd come back but for now we
wouldn't come back!
The next drop was that kid named William, it was a little sad but it
mad a lot of sense and it felt right after! he told us he was just
meeting with us because he liked us and didn't think the book of
Mormon was true! so we gave him the best shot we could to except it
but he still didn't!
The NEXT drop was one that was a little more sad haha it was a lady
named Gloria who had recently moved from Cuba like 3 months ago, and
we had met with her starting this week and had 2 really good lessons
with her and she said she wanted to go to church if we could find a
ride for her, but Saturday she called us and told us that the owner of
the house she was living in doesn't want us to come by and so we tried
to meet with her in public or at a members home or something but she
watches the guys kids so she cant like leave. She said she was working
on getting her own place to live so we are going to follow up in few
months to see if she is okay to meet with us again!
BUT, despite all the drops this week we found the most Golden
Investigator i have ever taught! Actually he found us haha on Thursday
we were walking through a trailer park and he saw us and ran towards
us and flagged us down and told us he wanted to come to church! he
said his name was Emmanuel and that he had gone to our church here in
Louisville like 10 years ago because he dated a Mormon girl but they
broke up and he stopped to go and eventually the girl died, but long
story short he said he had a great experience in the church and wanted
to get his life back on track and he wanted to teach his son whats
right! He is a single dad and has a little 5 year old named Tristan
and so we came over and taught him the first lesson the next day and
he loved it, he actually had a friend there who was from Kansas named
Carlos and as we got to know him it turned out he was actually a
member haha but the next day Emmanuel came to church and brought his
son and they both loved it and made a lot of friends and said they
really wanted to keep coming and now we have a lesson with him tonight
so I'm super excited about him!

Things are looking pretty good here in Arcadia, there's a lot of cool
people here!

Love you guys, have a great week!

Para siempre Dios esté con vos

Worlds Largest Baseball bat here in downtown Louisville 

Week 62

WHATS UP PEOPLE! this week was a huge improvement from last week!
Still not super ideal but i decided to take Coach Behms advice and
"control what you can control" so i had to stop worrying about all the
stupid stuff that didn't matter anymore and just go do the best i could
and it turned out to be an okay week! its hard here because its so big
and spread out, there's Hispanic people everywhere as opposed to in
Georgetown where all the Hispanics lived in 2 places, so it was a lot
easier to find people there! there are definitely more people here but
they're all spread out!
But we had a pretty good week, on Tuesday we had a lesson with a kid
named William who is 14, 2 years ago he moved here from Honduras and
he actually speaks really good English! But he has been taught by
missionaries for a while and he is super cool! he has a good
understanding of everything and will come to church every week as long
as someone gives him a ride! so we had a great lesson with him about
the holy ghost and how he can receive his answer so I'm pretty excited
about him!
Wednesday we went all the way downtown to a street called Muhammad Ali
which is actually the street i took that video of on the icloud but we
found a lady named Joanna and taught her and her kids and it went
really well, both her and her 8 year old son Jacob were pretty intent
on listening and when we came back on Saturday they were both super
excited to tell us that they'd read the first 2 pages of the book of
Mormon so that was cool! were pretty excited about them as well.
On Thursday i went on an exchange with my district leader Elder
Engstrom across the river in a own called New Albany, Indiana, and it
was a pretty good day! we were doing a district fast so we hadn't eaten
all day and it was a super hot day so we were pretty beat at the end
of the day but overall it was still really good!
Friday we met a less active guy named Carlos who was super cool! he
was super excited to see us and let us in and talk to us, he's someone
who still has a huge testimony of the church and still loves the
church but just kinda let life get in the way but he told us to come
back the next day and when we did he had 3 of his friends there and
wanted us to teach them the gospel haha it was super cool! so we
taught these 4 guys about the restoration and it was super cool. This
area has a lot of potential and I'm excited to see what we can do here!
I got those pictures from lily's baptism and I'm super sad i missed it
but it looks like it was a really good time!
love you guys, hope you have a great week! Thanks for all the prayers!

Para siempre Dios esté con vos!

Week 61

Whats up people! so week one in Louisville wasn't everything i expected haha its been frustrating to say the least! The area is huge and there are so many people here but its pretty slow right now! not a lot of work has been done recently and when i got here the elders had already gone 100 miles over the mile limit for our car so we had to bike and ride the bus a lot this week which makes it pretty hard especially in such a huge area. The only people we saw this week were people that we found this week, i still haven't met anyone that was being taught here before so its been a struggle! its pretty frustrating because i don't know the area but I've just been telling my companion to take me to the trailer parks or places with a lot of Hispanics and we've met a lot of new people and taught a few good lessons that way! The one good thing is that there are a lot of people that haven't met missionaries before haha so in no way is this area overworked! plenty of work to do! so hopefully things will start getting better soon! so prayers wouldn't hurt right now haha but the area is pretty cool! in our area we have the Louisville Slugger museum, the Muhammad Ali museum, Churchill Downs (where they have the Kentucky Derby) so that's pretty cool! 

we also got Ipads this week as you guys probably figured out from the icloud pictures i sent yesterday!  so that's pretty cool! its not super different, we dont have internet unless we go to a place with wifi so right now not a lot has changed. they do things in like 3 different phases ans this is phase 1, get the ipads haha so after we finish doing some training's then we will move on to phase 2 which is planning and doing all the records on the ipads and then phase 3 will be facebook and online proselyting so it'll probably be another 4-6 before we even get to phase 3! so we'll see how it goes with that! 

Other than that not to much to report! the area is way way different then Shelbyville or Georgetown was haha like missionary work is so different in the city! the small town was hard at first but i had really gotten used to it and i knew how to work it and this is totally different! the people are different the culture is different its a complete change! in the missionary handbook it says to not write home anything negative about the place your serving in so I'm just going to say the gross capital income of Louisville is probably not high haha but something kind of unique and cool about Louisville is its LOADED with Cubans! when Cuban people come here they all go to Miami, because its so close, but the city with the 2nd largest population of Cubans is Louisville Kentucky so that's cool! I'm having to adjust my Spanish a little so I don't sound too Mexican haha but Cuban Spanish is crazy haha like they talk so fast and mumble their words and usually cut off the beginning and ending sound of the word and only say the middle part so its taken some adjusting! and most of the time its hard to tell a difference between African Americans and some Cubans until you hear them talk so its a guessing game sometimes when you talk to people on the street!

but i hope you guys have a great week, i think Lily's baptism is coming up right? let me know how that goes i guess haha I'm trying hard to not be too sad about missing it but what can you do! 

Love you guys! 

Para siempre Dios esté con vos!