Week 56

What’s up people! so this week was pretty interesting haha we finally got the tooth thing figured out after a huge mountain of problems but we ended up driving to Louisville and seeing an LDS dentist and even though the insurance still didn't work he just went ahead and pulled the tooth anyway so after I figured out that the insurance card I had expired in like 2013 so that's why nobody would accept it but i think the office called you guys and hopefully they got the insurance all figured out! Also I think if I can get the correct insurance info we could probably get reimbursed for the 183 dollars we had to pay at the first place! So thanks for all the help, I’m glad this is finally over haha I wasn't even sad they had to pull the tooth I just wanted it done! And my companion got a video of it so that was cool haha 

Other than that this week went pretty good! Missionary work is definitely a roller coaster, there's good weeks and bad weeks and everything in between but this week felt like a small dip in the roller coaster, nothing super bad happened but it’s just been harder to see certain people. Its kind of a weird occurrence that I've noticed in missionary work, when you try your hardest and you feel like you are becoming the best missionary you can be and you're trying to do everything you can, it always gets harder haha like things just stop going your way and i think that for sure has to do with the adversary, the harder we try the harder he fights back. There really is opposition in all things.

One struggle in particular we've had this week is being able to teach Michael, when we go over to his house its usually pretty hard to teach him or have an environment where the spirit can be felt, like there's usually like a bunch of adults there drinking or smoking or just in the kitchen talking or watching some soccer game so we haven't been able to have a very good lesson with him in a while. Today we are teaching a family home evening to a family in the branch that live in the same trailer park so hopefully we'll be able to bring him along and teach him there. 

We sound a new family to teach this week named the Torres family and I’m pretty excited to start teaching them more this week! They are a pretty young couple from Mexico and they have a little one year old baby named Felix. That's one good thing about not being able to see some of the people were working with as often is we have more time to try and find new people which is always exciting! There is a lot of people here in Georgetown but not a lot that are willing to change so we are trying to find the balance between working with the people that have the potential to change and knowing when we are wasting our time.

One thing we are starting to focus on more is strengthening the families in our area and trying to visit them and follow the example of Ammon in the Book of Mormon and serve them and hopefully we'll be able to bring more souls unto Christ through the members.

I love you guys a lot and I hope you have a great week! don't forget to read your scriptures!

Para siempre Dios esté con vos! 

More Dentist pictures

found this little guy in the toilet bowl on friday haha but im kind of suspicious, i think my companion might of found it somewhere in the apartment and just put it in there as a joke because i searched for days and never found it and it was suspiciously clean

Week 55

So I've talked to mom about this a little already but I have a few problems haha so Friday night after a long day of biking in the rain I got back to the apartment and decided to eat some left over Easter candy and as I was doing so I felt something that was a lot harder than the candy in my mouth, and I decided to learn from the experience I had with my retainer and not swallow haha turns out it was the crown of my tooth! so I just put the crown back in my mouth and bit down so its back into place but I decided I should probably get it checked out! so after a lot of phone calls my ward mission leaders wife set up an appointment for me in Frankfort at 1115 on Monday so we found a member who could drive us to Frankfort and we got there this morning to find out that my dental insurance only works in Utah apparently, so after several more phone calls we got a hold of mom and got the money transferred over and we just paid the 186 dollars for the visit and I assumed they would just fix it and I'd be on my way but that wasn't the case, they told me the tooth that I had a root canal on a few years ago was infected pretty bad and that's what caused the crown to come off and they told me the infection was pretty bad and that I had only 2 options, 1. get the root canal redone which would come to a total of 3300 dollars or 2. get the tooth pulled which would cost me about 300 dollars SO I don't really have money for either of those things and I don't really have the time or resources to go to Frankfort but they told me that the infection is bad enough that if I don't do anything I'll wake up one morning with a baseball sized sore on my check and I'll be in a lot of pain haha so needless to say I'm a little stressed and out of ideas so any suggestions? Should I just have my companion yank the tooth with some pliers or what haha I really have no idea what to do! the member that gave us a ride just happened to be a doctor and so he prescribed me a antibacterial drug that he said will fight the infection just temporarily until I can figure out what to do so maybe that will help!

Other than that this week was pretty good haha it has been pretty normal! I dropped off Elder Torrico and picked up my new Peruvian Elder Inga and its been a pretty good week! it feels like years since I've had a new companion so the change is definitely welcomed haha. But I feel like I've made a lot of spiritual growth this week, I decided to focus on Humility and made that the focus of my studies this week and I've realized how prideful I am haha but I've learned so much and really had a lot of humbling experiences and have been trying hard to make being more humble a priority and it has helped so much. The scriptures are full of examples and stories of how important humility is and I am really trying to be a more humble Missionary, and person in general.

I've also had a few really cool experiences with receiving spiritual guidance and knowing what to do in certain situations.  One particular instance involved Michael, we were kinda struggling to know how we could best help him and what he needed so during the week I was praying and studying with him specifically in mind and felt impressed to read a certain chapter of the book of Mormon with him and it went really well. We had kind of a funny experience with the lesson though, we showed up and started the lesson and after a while his aunt came over and saw us and sat down and started listening and later his sister Vivi came in and started reading with us, then eventually two friends knocked on the door and saw we were reading so they came in and sat down and listened, then his mom saw us all sitting in a circle in her living room reading so she came and joined us and sat down so I handed her my book of Mormon and pulled out another one from my bag and as we were reading she was asking us really good questions and making comments and participating in the lesson a lot, and right before we finished reading the chapter she turned the book over and looked at the cover and said to us "wait wait wait, this isn't the Bible!? I don't want to read this if it isn't the bible!" and she closed it and handed it back to me haha so we were so close! she was feeling the spirit and really enjoying it until she actually knew what she was reading haha

But we had another pretty cool experience where the spirit guided us to know what to do, last night we got home from church and we had planned to go try a few people in a certain area but I was really stressed out about my tooth situation and I remember just not being able to feel the spirit at all because I was so preoccupied with what I was thinking about so I decided to just go in my room and say a quick prayer and ask for some help and as I did I felt this really strong impression that we needed to go try and visit this left active lady who lived on the other side of town, so we biked over and knocked her door and no body answered and I felt pretty stupid haha I felt like I was totally inspired to go try that lady but I didn't know why! so I told my companion how I felt and he suggested we saw another prayer, and I felt like why do we need another prayer? I already prayed and felt like we should come here? (There’s my pride again haha) but we said another prayer and both felt like we should go try a particular family and we were able to visit them and get to know them a little more and it was really good and as we were leaving I felt pretty content and felt like we had followed the spirit pretty well but I felt like incomplete almost like I wasn't done yet, so I decided to just say a quick prayer in my head and ask where do we go now? and I just had a thought to go try a guy who was kinda on the way home anyway who used to meet with the missionaries but was almost never home because he works so much, so we said what the heck and we went and tried the guy and when we got there his car wasn't out front and all the lights of his trailer were off so I actually said out loud to my companion "oh he's probably not even here so we don't need to lock the bikes up" haha so we just left the biked on the front porch and knocked his door and waited for a minute and eventually after 2 or 3 knocks he opens the door and invites us in and tells us he was really happy to see us and that he had some questions and didn't really understand the tree of life story in 1st Nephi, so we sat down with him and read the story with him and it went really well! he told us "hey I’m not working tomorrow so can you come over again and read another chapter with me?" haha it was really cool, stuff like that does not happen very often so we are going to go see him again tonight and I'm super excited!

Hope everybody has a great week! love you! READ YOUR SCRIPTURES!

Para siempre Dios esté con vos!

from left to right this is Pili (michaels mom) elder Torrico, Michael, Maybeth (pili's sister) Nico (a member and Michaels cousin) and me

this about sums up how I feel about the dentist situation haha

Week 54- Puros Peruanos

FAMILY!! so this week was really good! my companion goes home and youre really not going to believe who my next companion will be haha so there are 14 Spanish elders and 2 of them are natives and I just spent about 4 and a half months with one of them and now that he is going home the other native who is also from  peru is coming to Georgetown with me haha back to back Peruvians! he moved to Utah when he was like 12 though so he speaks a lot more English and he is a little more normal haha but im pretty excited! he actually already served 6 months of his mission in Georgetown so he knows all the people here so we should get some good work done together! 

Tuesday was a really interesting experience, we got a new ward mission leader and he is nothing like our old one haha so the ward mission leader is in charge of coordinating all the efforts of the ward with the missionaries, and our last one was a marriage councilor so he was super nice very soft spoken and a great guy just kinda asked us what we needed and gave us a piece of advice and that was everything right? so our new ward mission leader tells us come over to my house at 8 oclock on Tuesday night and so Tuesday roles around and we get a little lost and cant find his house and role up at 8:17 and get out of the car and before we could say anything he starts cussing us out and calling me a jerk and talling us we need to grow up and take our calling seriously and he told us to never come late again to his meetings, he said I don't care if you were baptizing the pope you don't show up late haha I was blown away! after he chewed us out we went in and he had a huge schedule with everything he needed us to do and all the people we could try and see and who we were working with and members he thought needed to be visited it was awesome! I honestly left his house scared out of my mind and so excited! I think this is exactly what this ward needs so im really excited to see how things change in the next few weeks! it would be really easy to be offended and mad that he swore at us and wasn't understanding that we were late but I kinda liked it haha like at least he takes his calling seriously and knows how important missionary work is! 

We had a lot of cool experiences this week and we've seen a lot of success but for the interest of time I just wanna talk about one specific experience we had on Saturday.

So we went and visited a family that we have seen before in the past who mostly just think were cool people and like to give us tacos and stuff haha but aren't super interested in doing anything other than chatting with us but we were walking by and we saw them and went and talked for a minute and they invited us inside and we sat on their couch and the mom went into the back room to do something and the dad was fiddling around in the kitchen and this little super chubby 6 year old girl comes up and sits on the couch in front of us and starts talking to us and telling us that her mom calls her bad names and hits her and she told us that she always prays to god that he will help her but she just didn't know what to do and she was like so intent on talking to us and telling us her problems and we just talked to her and told her that god loves her and that if she kept praying things would be okay and it honestly broke my heart to see this sweet little girl so sad but it made me feel really good that God led us to that place at that time and made the situation perfect so this little girl could talk to us and tell her how she felt and soon after we talked to her she told us okay ill keep praying, and she got up and ran off to play and soon after we left, it was just a really cool experience for me that doesn't happen super often as a missionary but it really showed me that God loves all his children no matter who they are or how old they are.

I love you guys a lot and hope you have a great week!

Para siempre Dios esté con vos!

Elder Follett

Me and my 2 Peruvians haha the one on the right is my companion Elder Torrico who goes home tomorrow and the one on the left is Elder Inga who will be my companion tomorrow!

This is the Rocabado family!  The wife is white (but fluent in Spanish) and her husband is Bolivian but he recently just got back from Bolivia after trying to get papers for a few years and now their family started attending the Spanish Branch so even more Spanish families in Georgetown which is great!

For P-day last week we went and played a little baseball and the fields were right nect to a golf course and somebody brought a couple buckets of balls and we got to wale on a few of them so that was fun!

Week 53

WHATS UP EVERYBODY! so this week went really good! 

Unfortunately, its not looking like Michael will be getting baptized this weekend, he says he still is unsure this is the one true church. He feels good when he reads the Book of Mormon but he says he doesn't think that is his answer because he read the Quran and felt good too haha so we are going to be working with him a lot to help him get his answer! it is looking a little iffy as well if his mother would even let him be baptized, but we are trying to help him recognize his answer before we worry about obtaining permission from his parents. His parents are more than okay with us teaching him and him coming to church but they take baptism very seriously and don't want Michael to take it as a game, but I feel like they just want the best for him so if he has a solid "Yes I want to be baptized" his parents wont say no.

We are teaching a big group of people right now, I'm excited to be here in Georgetown! its come a long way since I got here 6 months ago, I don't think its due to me but we have been seeing the lords hand in a lot of people lives here. We are teaching a lady named Yadira who is definitely changing a lot! when we first met her she would get really caught up on things like what's the difference between a verse or a chapter or she really was afraid of praying in front of us but now she is really starting to understand a lot. She still has not been to church and she still is not married so she'll take a while but she is moving in the right direction! We recently also started teaching a lady named Lizbeth! We knocked on her door and without us saying anything at all she invited us in and had us sit down and got us something to drink haha we were really confused! usually we have to at least explain who we are at least but turns out this lady is the Niece of Frank (The elders quorum president in the Spanish branch/owner of franks donuts/missionaries best friend) so we have taught her twice now and were excited about her! she is like accountable to herself, like we invited her to read after the 1st lesson and when we came back before we could even ask she told us "don't be mad, I haven't read yet!" haha so it was bad she didn't read the book of Mormon but good she at least remembered we told her to do it! We also met franks younger sister this week, Carmen, and she was really nice! she said she's pretty set in her Christian church but she LOVES to watch BYU TV haha so she watched conference and she'll always watch BYU sports or like conferences or talks or whatever so we'll for sure try and stop by and visit her again.

Friday was absolutely crazy! there was a HUGE flash flood storm! it poured rain harder and longer than anything I've ever seen! and because its so hilly here at the bottom of all the hills there would be a huge lake of water built up, there's a small river that runs through the center of town and it raised more than 10 feet so the parking lots in the middle of town were all underwater haha it was crazy! and that was the night we had planned and set up everything and invited everyone to have a bonfire for the branches very first mutual, but it turned out alright! we ended up just doing it inside and scratching the bonfire and playing games and having pizza and stuff so it turned out really good and we had a lot of youth show up which was really good for Michael.

Saturday and Sunday were all conference haha it was super great! there were a lot of talks that I really needed to hear and stuff I had been specifically praying about so that was really cool! Easter was really lame haha the ward members took good care of us and I had a nice package full of candy, but its still just not the same without you guys! 

I love you guys, hope you all have a great week!

Para siempre Dios esté con vos!

Elder Follett