Week 74

WHATS UP PEOPLE! this week was another one haha not too bad! just to sum it up we still havent gotten the car back so we're still biking every where but no more fire works or trucks hitting us but we did get pooped on by a bird hahaha but other than that not much to complain about! 

We've had some pretty Good lessons with Wanda and José this week, José couldn't make it to church yesterday but wanda came and had a really good time. and we had a really good come to jesus talk with José this week and he is really motivated to read the Book of Mormon and get an answer, so were really excited for him. His progression is a little slow right now but he's making great steps in the right direction. Wanda is pretty much the same, slow but steady progression. Other than that right now we're kind of hurting for investigators! we actually saw Emanuel this week for the first time in like a month and he has gotten worse, still says he wants to change his life but not sure theres much he's willing to change. 

So here in the ward there is a lady named isabel who has been coming to church for over a year and a half but still hasnt been baotized because of some complications with her kids father, but yesterday we went and visited him in the hospital and he seems to be opening up to the gospel so hopefuly we will be able to take advantage of this situation! 

 This week we have interviews with the mission president which will be really good! Other than that nothing new, just working our hearts out here in Louisville! Love you guys, hope you have a great week! 

Para siempre Dios esté con vos! 

Week 73

 Translating Relief Society for all the Spanish Speaking women!

Whats going on people! this week has been one crazy week haha so last monday we dropped our car off at the body shop and so its been nothing but biking all week haha i also picked up my new missionary on tuesday! he's name is Elder Weeks and he is from a itty bitty place called Clarston Utah (pop. 530 something) and he just graduated high school! I'm super excited to work with him, he's a stud worker and knows his stuff so i got really lucky! training him should be a breeze. 

So right after transfer meeting on tuesday we had an appointment with the Carillo family, so we biked down there and the lesson went really well, Wanda is really starting to get a strong testimony. On the way back we were biking and a car drove by and threw a fire cracker at us haha nothing happened it was just really loud and i thought it was super funny because it happened in like the first 2 hours of Elder Weeks mission haha 

Later this week we were biking to an appointment on the sidewalk and a guy in a truck turned right in front of me into a parking lot and i couldnt stop fast enough so i slammed into the side of the truck and put a huge dent in his truck haha it didnt hurt at all but i like bounced off and landed on my feet and the guy jumped out of his car and asked if i was okay and i like thought it was my fault so i like apologized and told the guy i was sorry and the guy just made sure i was alright and then left super quick so i thought i got lucky that he didnt get mad at me but after i realized i didnt do anything wrong and i should of pretended like i was injured or something haha but oh well it was too late!

Other than that we had a really good and busy week, we've managed to put in a lot of really good work even being on bikes all week! We are teaching one of the members brothers named José and both him and Wanda came to church and we had a really good showing of members this week too, so they both really enjoyed it which was sweet. 

Other than that every things going swell, living la vida loca haha love you guys, hope you have a great week! 

Para siempre Dios esté con vos!

Week 72

FAMILY! Whats up people! So this week we got some pretty exciting news! On Saturday we got a call from President Brough and he told us Elder Birky would be getting transferred and that I would be training a new missionary! I'm super excited!  President also told me Ive been called to be the District Leader here in the New Albany District, so the pressure is on haha I'll be working over time with an Elder fresh out of the MTC and a District to take care of so I'm really excited for the opportunity and think it will help me grow a lot. 

Other than that this week went great, pretty normal! right now we are teaching a few part member families and have seen a few progress! one thing I've learned a lot lately in my mission is that investigators get so much farther when the ward is involved! 

We are teaching a 25 year old named José who is the brother of a member here and he came to church this week and seemed to like it! it was his first time in any church ever so it was a pretty new experience for him! the sister in sacrament gave a 35 minute talk on the pioneers and it was reaaalllyy dry and not very applicable but the good thing about our investigators not speaking English is we do the translation for the sacrament meeting so we can pretty much twist whatever the speakers say and make it applicable and more interesting for the Spanish speakers haha so that's always fun! 

We are teaching the Carillo family still too, they are teh ones who moved here recently from Venezuela and its going good! they have some concerns and its hard to find them all home at the same time but hopefully things will start picking up with them soon. We are helping with a little bit of English too and the only thing the mom remembers how to say is "girl you crazy" in a super think Venezuelan accent haha its pretty funny!  

We also had a fun little family night activity last night for the Spanish group and watched meet the Mormons and had popcorn with lime and hot sauce haha that's one thing about Hispanics they put lime salt and hot sauce on nearly everything! but we had a few investigators come and it went super well! 

Love you guys, hope you have a great week!

Para siempre Dios esté con vos!

Week 71

WHATS UP GUYS! This week was a pretty good one! definitely a big learning experience haha Something that I love about missionary work is that every mistake is an opportunity to grow. Not that this whole week was a big mistake but it wasn't the best week we've had and I've learned and grown a lot.  Our focus to work with less active members has been good and we've seen success but i think we've neglected finding for our own efforts and our number of lessons kind of took a hit but I think I learned a great lesson about finding balance in our work.

Monday we had a really weird experience with some ward members, we had been asked by an older guy in our ward to help him move a desk or something and we didn't really know what he meant but we told him we could come help him but later got a call from the Elders quorum president asking us to help another family move and then later go help this brother with his desk and when we got to the house to help the family move some of the members heard we we going to help the guy move his desk later and pretty much just told us no, we cant do that and we weren't allowed to go... it was just really weird and I'm not really sure what happened but we were pretty much just put in a really awkward situation with the members.

Tuesday we had a really good experience we had been biking all day and it was about 8 o'clock and we had felt like we needed to go visit a certain investigator, so we head out on the bikes and we see the sky start to storm really bad and there was like flash flood warnings and stuff and  we ended up getting to this guys house on the bikes but we were super wet and he ended up not being there, so we thought about what to do and we decided to visit a lady who had been part of the church previously in our life and we knocked her door and she told us with tears in her eyes that she had been praying for help and five minutes later we knocked her door which was really cool! 

Wednesday we were on an exchange with our zone leaders and it was a really good day. We met a lot of cool people and a lot of people who weren't to friendly with us haha but over all it was a good day.

Thursday was not as good haha we were driving to an appointment and we were stopped in traffic and got rear-ended really hard and the guy took off and so our car is totally smashed in the back, our bike rack went like into the trunk haha but the worst part was that it was literally like right in front of a strip club haha so we had to pull over in the strip club parking lot to fill out the accident reports and one of the witnesses for the police has a stripper and the other one was the bartender haha so that was not the best and it probably means we'll be with out a car for a while but we'll see what happens! we are so far just driving around with it haha 

Other than that this week has been pretty normal! working hard and seeing lots of little miracles! love you guys, hope you have a great week!

Para siempre Dios esté con vos!

Week 70

PEOPLE! Whats up! This week was crazy busy! Its felt like we've been running nonstop but i guess that's a good thing! we haven't been able to see a lot of the people we normally visit but its been good to get out and find some new people. 

The first half of the week was actually really slow as far as lessons go, we did a lot of biking and trying to get a hold of people but didn't have too much going on, but after a few days things started picking up. We also got asked to do a ton of service for the ward members which is good. We were able to see a few less active members this week which was really good too, we have seen a lot of success with less active members who just need a visit or two to remember what their missing our and start coming back to church, its been really rewarding to be able to help them in that process.

This week we started teaching teaching a man named Abraham who moved here from Honduras and he is a pretty cool guy. He's still pretty new and we've had a few lessons with him so we'll see pretty soon if he will continue to progress. 

We have also seen some success trying to find old investigators, we've found that a lot of them are still open to hearing the gospel, but were dropped due to loss of contact or one thing or another so instead of just knocking random doors we've been focusing on less or inactive members and former investigators and its worked out pretty well.

We weren't able to see Vidal and Lan this week, both times we set a lesson the ended up canceling on us so we'll try and put a little more focus on them and try and show up randomly. Its hard because their work schedules don't match up too often so its hard to find them both home. 

We have also been teaching a family from Venezuela which has been fun, its a mom and her son and step daughter, we haven't been able to teach the Dad but we met him this week and he seems really nice, just really busy. They are really funny together and kind of remind me of my family because when they all get together they are really loud and talk really fast haha but its cool to get to know so many people from so many different cultures and see the differences and the similarities there are in their cultures and ours and the many others we meet on a daily basis.

We've also started teaching a weekly English class to try and get Spanish speakers in one place to try and teach them English which is what they want to learn and the Gospel which is what they need to learn haha we've only had a few people come but we are going to start advertising in Mexican stores or home depot parking lots or anywhere we can haha so hopefully that goes well!

Other than that its been a pretty normal week! Love you guys, thanks for all the support!Hope you have a great week! 

Para siempre Dios esté con vos!