Week 37

Whats up family! This week has been a pretty good one! Tuesday morning we drove down to Louisville and picked up my new companion Elder Marco Torrico, from Lima Peru and its been pretty fun! a little different but still we've had lots of fun!

Me and my companion Elder Torrico (aka Bruno Mars)

Wednesday we went on down to the trailer park and visited with Jennifer and we had a pretty good lesson with her! She is really excited to be baptized but is still pretty scared to call and tell her parents in México but we're working on it! we were talking and we asked her why she wants to be baptized and she told us that she had a dream that Jesus told her that she needed to be baptized and to read the book of mormon so i think she's recieved a pretty powerful witness that its true, we just have to work out some of the kinks before we can do it so thats good, im pretty excited about that!

Thursday we had a lesson with Jorge and Zaira and they're doing awesome as well they are super solid and are reading from the book of mormon everyday and they are teaching their 3 todlers how to pray and they know that this is the true church, the only problem is that they haven't been to church yet haha Jorge works 7 days a week so next time we visit them we are going to take them to the chapel here and give them a little tour and hopefully that will spark their interest in coming to church on sunday!

Friday we contacted a hispanic lady and she told us she wasnt really interested so we asked her if she knew anyone that was and she pointed out a specific door and so we went and found a single mom named Blanca who has been through some hard times so she was pretty receptive to our message and we came back the next day to visit her and teach her about the book of mormon and the restoration and we asked her if this was pretty new to her and if it was hard to believe and she told us well yeah it is new but its not so hard to believe, God can do whatever he wants! She has great faith, i think she'll just need some time to digest everything!

Sunday we had church all day but at the end of the day we finally got back in contact with Ausencio! (not aurelio haha) but yeah we found him again after 2 weeks of not seeing him and he told us he's read the first three chapters of the book of mormon and said "this is pretty interesting" haha so im excited to come back and visit with him! last night we had a prayer with him and kinda just chatted about the Book of Mormon and baptism and it went really well, he is super prepared!

Over all this week went pretty good and im super excited to keep working here in Georgetown! the weather here has been a lot nicer! still cold but not nearly as bad as it could be!

Love you guys, hope you have a good week!

Para siempre Dios esté con vos!
Love Elder Follett

Week 36

HEY! What's up! this week went by super fast again! We got transfer calls!! Elder Henderson is getting out of here and going to Louisville and my new companion is from Peru and his name is Elder Torrico! I'm sad to see elder Henderson go but still super excited! Elder Torrico only has a few months left on his mission and he had never been to the U.S. before his mission so Spanish was his first language so I'm going to try and improve my Spanish as best as I can! I'm super excited! the new mission president is really changing things a lot! He's been here for a few months but he's just barely starting to change everything the way that he wants it! like 2 of the area's have been changed into a "zebra area" which means that there is a Spanish elder there with an English elder and they do both Spanish and English work! he's white washing one of the areas of Spanish elders (which means he's taking both missionaries out of the area and sending in two new ones) and our Zone Leaders said eventually Spanish elders wont share an area with English elders and only do Spanish work, they will have the areas most populated with Spanish people and do all the English work there as well, so times are changing here in the GKLM! 

This week was pretty good! Elder Henderson was a little sick at the beginning of the week but we still managed to have a decent week! we taught a couple of pretty good lessons. We weren't able to get a hold of Auerelo this week but were going to try and find him next week! I was able to talk to elder Torrico a few days ago and he told me he doesn't have a bike so its going to be pretty interesting to see what happens haha hopefully we can find one at the mission home on Tuesday maybe when were in Louisville! on Friday we had a zone conference and a guy named Elder Erich W. Kopischke of the first quorum of the Seventy came and talked to us and it was a pretty cool zone conference! it was pretty long but it went really well and I learned a lot! I think one of the biggest lessons I've learned about missionary work, and I know I talk about it a lot, but is its not about how many people you baptize or what leadership callings you have, and being obedient is not about saying how obedient you are, but its all about sacrifice.  As a missionary you sacrifice 2 years and doing a lot of stuff you like to do, and sometimes it can be pretty hard, but in the long run it is so worth it. He read us a scripture in Doctrine & Covenants 97:8 " Verily I say unto you, all among them who know their hearts are honest, and are broken, and their spirits contrite, and are willing to observe their covenants by sacrifice—yea, every sacrifice which I, the Lord, shall command—they are accepted of me." and he told us that you will know your mission was successful when you are sacrificing things you care about to be obedient and he told us just like the scripture said that the lord will except our sacrifice.

It seems pretty easy to do missionary work when you put it that way haha so im excited to see what happens with this new companion! He has actually already served in Georgetown, the very first 6 weeks of his mission so he already knows the area and the members here so that's good! 

With our 14 year old investigator named Jennifer we made some good progress this week! she told us straight up that she wants to be baptized and just not tell her parents in México haha and we can technically do that because her Aunt has legal guardianship over her but we all decided that it wouldn't be right! so we are working with her to be able to call her Parents and tell them "I know this is true and I'm going to get baptized" so we are going to keep working with her a lot! 

Also a pretty funny story this week so every Saturday night the whole Zone does a conference call and they send in a request to the missionaries praying and they will pray about it and as a joke elder Henderson texted "pray elder Follett will get a package soon...no just kidding pray for....." and then said what we really needed divine help with, so the sister was praying and she got to our part and said what we needed and I sighed in relief because she didn't pray for me to get a package and she finished the prayer and said "and please bless Elder Follett in Georgetown Spanish to get a package this week, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen." and I was super embarrassed haha the whole zone heard that and were all pretty confused and elder Henderson got a good laugh, BUT on Friday I got a knock on the door and the UPS lady had THREE huge packages all addressed to elder Follett! haha I was pretty surprised but happy! So thanks for the 2 Christmas packages, I haven't opened them yet don't worry!                                            

                                                                 My Miracle packages!

Overall this week has been pretty good and I'm really excited to keep working here and see what happens! I love you guys a lot! Have a great week!

Para siempre Dios esté con vos!

Love Elder Follett

Trying to fix Elder Henderson's Bike

Missionary work at it's finest. 6:30-7:00 every morning we're exercising! mostly "stretching" because were so exhausted from biking haha but to explain the shirt, we found a sleeveless white collared shirt and the little sleeve cuffs still with it so this is what happened!

Week 35

Whats up family! another week down! i cant believe tomorrow is already 8 months! time really is going by quick! this week was a pretty good week, a little slower with the holiday and everything but we still managed to have a decent week!

We found a potential investigator on saturday and came by and visited with him on monday night and were met with a little resistance haha.  He is from Mexico and has lived in the states for like 10 years maybe (still speaks very little english) but how we found him was we talked to two white ladies on their poarch and asked if we could pray with them and they were pretty rude and said no so like always we asked if they knew if any of their neighbors were hispanic and the pointed next door so we went and knocked the door and as we were waiting the ladies said hey he's right over there and pointed across the apartment parking lot, but before we could walk over the door opened and a pretty large young hispanic kid answered the door and we said (in english) hi how are you? and he responded "we're jehova's witnesses in this house" and then shut the door haha so we walked over to the guy the ladies pointed out and he was changing the oil in his old beat up car and talked to him and he was very nice and receptive and told us that he used to be Jehovas Witness and we gave him a book of mormon and he was super nice and without us asking he told us, yeah i'll read this book and ask you guys questions about it on monday when you come haha so he is awesome! on monday we came over and knocked the door and the big JW kid answered the door again and looked really surprised to see us again but we asked if Auerelo was there and we went and got him and we heard him say to him in spanish "tell them to go away" haha but Auerelo came to the door anyway and let us in and was super nice and we talked and had a really good lesson with him and he told us how he was a jehovas witness but was "dis-fellowshipped" so he wasnt allowed to talk in church or participate or be baptized or anything so he was really looking for a church that would accept him even though he wasn't perfect so he was really receptive to us and everything we told him he really stuck to and enjoyed, its almost like his time studying with the JW church like prepared him to meet with us and accept our message! it really reminded me of the verse in Alma 32 which says "And now when Alma heard this, he turned him about, his face immediately towards him, and he beheld with great joy; for he beheld that their afflictions had truly humbled them, and that they were in a preparation to hear the word." it was a really cool experience! so the resistance i was talking about haha while we were teaching him the people that he lives with (im assuming their family somehow) the whole time were playing JW videos really loud and being really rude and while we were praying the were like yelling really loud and just being really rude and hostile so next time we teach him we are going to try and get him to come to the church building here in Georgetown and give him a little tour of the building and teach him some more so hopefully that will work out!

Tuesday and Wednesday went pretty well, we taught a few of our investigators and it went well. Thursday was pretty crazy haha so in the morning we biked over to the church and played basketball with a few missionaries and a member from lexington which was fun! after that we went and had our first dinner at 12:30 and went straight from that to another dinner at 3 o'clock and lets just say we were pretty full after! after that we all went home and just hung out and played cards and it was over all a pretty fun day! not really the same without family but we had a good time!

Saturday night we biked down to the trailer park to visit our 14 year old investigator but she wasnt there so we went over and met with that family i told you about that likes to feed us and we knocked on the trailer door and it opened and there was probably about 30 or 40 Hispanics just all crammed into this little trailer all talking and singing and eating and drinking and we saw our investigator and he was like "HEY HERMANOS!!!" haha so aparently it was his sons 4th birthday and Hispanics are similar to Italians in the sense that they know how to party haha like it was crazy in there and Alberto, who knows we don't drink offered us a water and we took one and a cousin of his was like hey you guys don't want beer? and we told him no we dont drink! and he was like "ooohhhh right! how bout a tequila?" haha so we only stayed long enough to eat some tacos and chicken with molé and some birthday cake and then we were out of there haha Sunday was about 9 hours of church between meetings and going to the english ward in the morning and driving to Lexington for the spanish branch but it was a pretty good day!

Glad everything is going well back home and look forward to skyping with you guys in a few weeks! Love you! have a great week!

love Elder Follett

Para siempre Dios esté con vos!

the AMEN house! we volunteer here once a week and this week was pretty crazy with all the donations because of thanksgiving! this pile of clothes got about twice this size! 

Week 34

Whats up! I can't believe another week has gone by, time really flies! This week went really well and we made some pretty good progress here in Georgetown! The weather this week has been ALOT nicer haha! It's been pretty warm here the last couple of days! So Monday was obviously pretty cold and snowy and that night after P-day we decided to bike down to the trailer park even though it was cold and snowing but we got there just fine and we went to this guy's trailer named Alberto who we had never taught before but just talked to on the street and we knocked the door and his son answered the door and said he wasn't home but was across the trailer park at another trailer so we went over and tried the trailer and they let us in and were all super happy to see us and told us to come in and sit down and they made us hot chocolate and gave us some sweet bread and totally welcomed us and were like, "hey yeah come in sit down teach us about God have some hot chocolate" haha it was like a dream come true! They were all super nice and friendly and we went back and saw them twice this week and its been the same thing every time haha! They love us and like feeding us, and every time we go over there they ask us questions and listen to us its awesome.  Its a little harder teaching in a big family though because theres different levels of understanding and different beliefs amongst all of them but they really like us and they're all from Mexico City, actually the Distrito Federal, where the CCM (MTC) is so we got to talk to them about that which was pretty cool! They call anybody that is from Mexico City a "Chilango" which is kinda like calling someone from New York a New Yorker.  So that was really cool and it made it worth it to bike a few miles in the snow haha.  

Wednesday was pretty normal, we had a good lesson with the Guatemalan kid were teaching, Santos.  Thursday we had another Zone Conference and for lunch 4 of us decided to go over to a restaurant while we were in Lexington called BD's, where you like but all the stuff you want for a stir fry in a bowl and the guys like fry it for you but it was super good and we ate a lot of food and as we were leaving the lady next to us payed our check for all for of us which was awesome! We asked her where she was from and if she knew the missionaries there because we just assumed she was a member and she told us she was part of some Methodist Church, apparently she knew a little about missionaries and was just really nice! 

Later that night we had a really good lesson with 2 investigators named Jorge and Zaira and it went really well. They are super super solid and have been investigating for more than a year now and have an amazing testimony of the Book of Mormon and of the Church and they know it is true they just have a few hurdles they are trying to get over but they will eventually so just keep them in your prayers!  

The next day was a pretty interesting day haha we were doing our weekly planning and we got a knock at the door and the mail man had 2 big packages and he gave them to us and one was for me and the other was for Henderson so that was really cool, we both got packages from our families and we were pretty excited and we kept planning. Eventually about an hour later we got another knock at the door and the UPS man was there with 2 MORE packages for both of us from our girlfriends haha it was a pretty awesome day!

Over all this week was pretty good and its been really going well! So for thanksgiving, its a non-proseliting day and we have been invited over to 2 members houses for back to back thanksgiving dinners so we will definitely not go hungry haha! BUT our mission president just recently made the mission rule of absolutely NO football of any kind no matter what so I will have to miss playing in the turkey bowl this year and the next, which I'm not super happy about but oh well I'm in Lexington Kentucky I should probably work on my basketball game haha but yeah this week is already like super full of activities and things to do so its gunna be an interesting one! ALSO 

I got my little mini tree all decorated on my desk with all your guys' home made ornaments haha! Thank you so much! and thanks for all the other stuff you sent me in that package it was great! Im gunna need all that stuff pretty soon haha!

Love you guys so much and hope you have a great holiday week!

Para siempre Dios esté con vos!

Love Elder Follett

To Lily: 

Hey lily whats up!!! Im glad you liked the polar bear picture and I love your new shirt haha its awesome! Thats awesome that it snowed in Utah! all the

snow already melted here! have fun at school! LOVE YOU!

My little tree haha

 

Franks Donuts! (he's real name is Francisco haha)

Us at BD's on thursday!

Packages!

Then it happened again an hour later haha

Week 33

FAMILY! Whats up! This week went by pretty short! But it was a good week! Not too much new! It is snowing pretty hard here haha its crazy! So we were biking to get our groceries this morning and it wasnt snowing super hard and we got there and bought our groceries and were about to leave and it was coming down super hard and we were not looking forward to biking home with all our groceries when we saw a member named Francisco, or Frank as he goes by haha but he gave us a ride home it was great! I know thats a dumb little story but I was pretty happy about it! He owns a little donut shop here in Georgetown and 2 others here in Kentucky called Franks Donuts and every monday we get to go and get free donuts and milk haha its awesome! Georgetown is a great area for me haha!

So in Georgetown, there is two areas that we work alot. One is an apartment complex and the other is a HUGE trailer park that's about 4 miles away (uphill both ways) but yeah we spend alot of time in the trailer park! The other day we were down there and we tried a bunch of people and not very many people were home and we decided to stop by Jennifer, our 14 year old investigator who lives with her aunt and uncle who are members, and we knocked the door to remind her to read the Book of Mormon and her uncle, Hermano Acosta answered the door with a big pot of soup and said "Oh here Elders take this come on were going to the baptism!" haha! So unexpectedly we drove to Lexington (where the Branch meets) and we went to one of the members 8 year old daughters baptism and it was crazy! There were more people at this baptism then at church! And after words everybody went into the cultural hall and had soup and pizza and there was loud Salsa music and a Piñata haha it was crazy! It was super fun though! It was also cool to have Jennifer be able to see a baptism and see that she can do that as soon as she is ready and she really enjoyed it so that was really cool to see.

Other than that this week went pretty normal. A funny story did happen haha so one day my companion Elder Henderson wasn't feeling very well and one of the other Elders here in Georgetown wasn't feeling good either so they called us and we did a little temporary exchange and me and one of the English Elders went and worked for a few hours and biked down to the trailers (evidently the English Elders spend alot of time in the trailer park as well haha) and we biked back and we just walked into the apartment and we found the 2 Sick Elders in their pajamas with a plate of cookies playing board games and right as we came home and walked in a member came to pick us up and he looked inside and saw two missionaries in their PJs playing Lord of the Rings Risk and the member was like "what the heck??" haha it was pretty funny so we like tried to explain and he was like yeahhhh right haha it was funny.

Other that that not too many stories to tell! Still havent crashed too hard on my bike yet so thats bound to happen one of these days haha so i'll keep you posted!

Love you guys hope you have a great week!

Para siempre Dios esté con vos!

Elder Follett

On the way to Zone Conference with the Frankfort Spanish Elders

Elder Birky and Elder Eatough!

Sometimes it rains really hard and you have to bike any way and your clothes weigh like a gillion pounds!

One time a man from Idaho saw us and recognized the Elders so he pulled up in a van and picked us up in the Kroger parking lot and bought all six of us Subway!

Week 32

So first off, before I forget my address is 125 Hiawatha Trails Georgetown, KY 40324 sorry I totally forgot about that last week!

So what happened with the whole not emailing you guys on Monday or Tuesday is first the zone decided to plan a zone conference on Monday so that took literally all day from 9 to 6 including travel and then yesterday we had P day and we were going to email but the library was closed for Veterans Day! SO thats the explanation for the super late email!

This week has been a pretty good one! It seems like forever ago since I last emailed. I can hardly even remember what happened! Saturday I went on an exchange and got to drive the car all day so that was a nice little break from biking! Its been getting pretty cold here so thats cool I guess haha! This week has just been kinda off! We have alot of investigators who have alot of potential to progress but are kinda at a stand still at this moment! like they all know what they need to do and understand it but they just need to act! Like we had a lesson with our 14 year old investigator Jenifer (Yenifer if you're hispanic) and her uncle who she lives with and who is a member kinda just layed down the law and told her look you need to be doing the things you know are right like reading your scriptures and you need to get baptized and it was kinda strange but good I guess haha like she cried. I dont know if it was out of the spirit or out of feeling attacked but it was a generally good lesson and Elder Henderson decided we should sing a hymn in spanish so we sang a hymn and that was kinda awkward but whatever haha you do alot of awkward things as a missionary you kinda have thicker skin for uncomfortable-ness haha! But yeah 

Last week we met a guy named Santos and he is only 17 and he is from Guatemala, and alot of the time Guatemalans speak a different dialect as well as Spanish and a member in Shelbyville taught me a saying in a dialect called Mum so I asked Santos when we first met him if he spoke a dialect and he said "yeah I speak mum." So I said the little phrase to him and he thought it was really cool but I'm not really sure what I said haha its nothing like Spanish! But Santos is a really cool kid he's really really short like I tower over him which is weird! He doesn't go to school or anything but he works a lot  We invited him to be baptized and he had alot of questions like he basically knows that he has to be baptized like he got that and immediately understood that he will have to eventually but he has alot of questions about it! Like he asked if he gets baptized can he still have his girlfriend who is catholic haha! He's a great guy and I'm excited to keep working with him!  

Were teaching alot of people right now which is great and I've really seen the Lord help me grow and change for the better but I think we still have a long way to go haha Just something kinda funny that the mission does to you is I've become a total clean freak! Like i get major anxiety if the kitchen is messy or my clothes are out or if my beds not made it stresses me out big time which is weird because I was definitely not like that before! just weird little stuff like that changes alot haha but yeah I love you guys alot and hope you have a great week!

Para siempre Dios esté con vos!

Elder Follett