Week 57 Happy Cinqo de Mayo

What’s up! this week was been another one of those weeks haha so I’m sure you've all heard about my latest health problem haha but just to humor you all ill tell you the full story! so last Monday morning I woke up and had some strange left testicular pain and I thought it was just that I slept on it weird or something so I decided to just wait it out and see if it changes but Monday night it still was pretty painful so I thought maybe something’s wrong, but I didn't have the heart to call my mission nurse who is a little old lady and tell her my testicles were in pain haha so I  decided to call a member of the English ward here who is a nurse practitioner in the Air force and told him the symptoms and he told me to come over so I came over and got a "check up" and he told me that I either had a hernia or a torsion, which would be worse so I needed to go to the ER and get it checked out! so I went and got violated my like 4 different people, had an ultrasound on my nuts, got my pants locked in a bathroom that no one had a key to so we had to wait for like 20 minutes for a janitor to like shimmy the door open while I was wearing a shirt and tie, dress socks and some white table cloth thing to cover the boys, and at the end of it all they told me I was fine and that I didn't have a torsion or a hernia and that it was probably a strain, and that if the pain persisted I could get a follow up check up with a urologist but after a few days the pain stopped so I’m fine now! 

Other than that this was a pretty average week! the temperature is rising and everything is getting super green again but that's made it a little harder to get a hold of people, when the weather is nicer and the sun is out longer that just means more work for Hispanic people here, so we've had a lot of appointments fall through this week and we've spent a lot of time biking from here to there just trying to catch someone who is home, and yes almost every time we get a hold of someone we are offered a beer because we look pretty thirsty sweating in our shirts and ties haha but I guess it always turns into a good teaching opportunity! 

We were able to have a lesson with Michael this week finally and it didn't go as planned but it was really kind of a break through with him mom. We brought Frank who has been over there a couple times before but we had a good experience with his mom, she's very loud and very passionate and very straight forward and she basically told us that I offended her last week because I "tricked" her into reading the book of Mormon with us which wasn't really my intent haha but I could of gotten really mad and told her she was crazy but I just decided to do the only thing I could do in a situation like that and tell her she was right and that I was very sorry haha she accepted my apology but warned me to never do it again but with some help from frank by the time we left the lesson I felt like our relationship with Michael's mom had improved dramatically which was a really good step. Michael has been kinda avoiding commitment lately so I don't know what’s going on there but we are trying to help him still. 

Missions are hard sometimes but hands down the most rewarding experience I have ever been a part of. ¡Vale la pena! 

Love you guys, hope you all have a great week! See you Sunday!

Para siempre Dios esté con vos!

PS Hey! I haven’t been to a urologist yet because I wasn’t super sure about the insurance stuff and I didn’t want to deal with the hassle so I just waited it out and the pain has gone away and I’m fine now! maybe ill go see a urologist but I don’t think I will! the urologist they recommended for me was named Ramon Caballero so I might try and go to see if we can teach him haha but I’m fine now! also we are going to the members house at 6 o’clock here so at like 4:00 your time ill call! Does that work?

Last week for Pday a member took us to play a cheap round of 18 on some farm land that was converted into a golf course but 18 holes for 18 bucks wasnt a bad deal! 

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