Monday, June 19, 2017

Week 40: Straightening and Strengthening


Buenos Tardes Familia!

Well another week here in Colombia has gone by with a flash and now P-Day is just about over. This week has been really good! We have met a lot of new people and finally a couple things are starting to happen, but we are still putting our shoulder to the wheel and kinda trying to get things going here in Jordan. Stress level has gone down a bit because I got everything caught up as far as organization goes with the Area Book and all of that is really a blessing to have done. For any of you that have been on missions, you know that the area book can either be your best friend or your worst curse because if you don’t keep it well, it is your worst curse. Your zone leaders will ask for it, and your area book is where you keep registered everything, the people you talk to, what you have taught, your investigators, everything has to be registered. If you don’t keep on the ball, well, 2 or 3 days and you are behind. You have to kinda think back and think: “What did I teach them? How did the lesson go?” It really takes some effort to pull it all out. We have been pretty good about it the last couple of weeks and have it all caught up. Really, honestly, it’s a thing that not a lot of missionaries get good at, and I am determined to do it. It can be a great help. That being said, normally, like the other night, we got home about 9:20, I was updating the area book until 10:10, so 20 minutes to kind of get ready to go to bed. It wasn’t terrible, but it keeps you busy. Training and trying to teach, teaching patience, that kind of thing, there are a lot of things that we just do that you don’t think you have to explain but you really do. They don’t know very much.

If you can hear, I HATE this. I hate when they blast the music so loud that you cant hear anything (Note from Jessica: In the background of this week’s recording, there is some very festive and loud Latin music playing, So Elder Lewis has his own soundtrack going on.J )

So, this week we did not have a baptism, because with familia Guerrero moving it’s going to be very hard to keep Miguel Angel active in the new ward. So we decided to cancel and make sure that the missionaries over there get on the ball. We are helping them move and then making sure that when they get there that they have missionaries helping them move in. That will help them a lot. We ran into the problem where we could get their records for matrimony, but actually the problem is that Daniel does not want to get married. It’s really unfortunate. That’s basically what it is. He just doesn’t want to commit himself.

Sorry I will pull out my planner to see what we have done this week. It’s just been a flash. So we had Inter-Cambios this week. I got to be with Elder Johnston, and it was really awesome because he is a really big kid, he played Rugby. We are kind of like the same person. He played rugby for 2 years, his brother plays in Australia semi-professionally. But he is really into musicals and plays. He’s this big jacked kid but he’s really into that. He likes Les Mis, Newsies (his favorite), He’s in my district now, he is one of the new guys. He actually reminds me a lot of Riley Parkinson. It was really cool having an inter-cambio with him. The other thing is that he can dunk a basketball, so when we went to contact a huge group of kids that were playing basketball and I said: “hey, if this guy can dunk it, you have to listen to our message.” And they said “ya right.” And then he did it. That’s right. So we shared a little bit with them and talked about an English class, so we will see if that materializes. Looking to get a better teaching pool here.

Other than that, we recontacted a family called Tamele-Viejo, and they are way way far up on the mountain and they are a pretty good family, I am hoping to get some good ground with them and teach them a little bit. Found a couple of new people this week. Lets see… familia Lopez-Medina have kind of stopped with their progress, but we had a good lesson about the Book of Mormon so I am hoping that they are gonna get going again. We also have an investigator named Edison that has a bit of a problem; we have been teaching him this week and he said he would get baptized this week if he could solve one problem. And that problem was that he had 2 women. That’s right, he has two women, and they know about each other. That’s a big problem as you can imagine. He has 2 kids with one, and then the other one he doesn’t have kids with and he isn’t married to either of them but we are looking to help him solve that problem. We told him that basically “you just need to leave one. You just need to.” But you can imagine as a man who is trying to straighten his life out, and he really is trying to straighten his life out, that’s hard. That’s real hard. So he came to us so that he can get baptized. He is really looking to change his life. He has already quit drugs, his family, parts of his family, his dad and his dad’s wife are both members, and so they are helping to straighten it out. He was into drugs for a really long time. He came to church this week and hit it off with some members so I am hoping that that is going to materialize, so if you would pray for Edison.

We are continuing to visit Victor, one of the guys that we baptized a couple of months ago that’s still strong but having kind of a hard time, just with new member things, but he’s doing well. We have been contacting a heck of a lot more this week, we found a couple of good people that hopefully we can teach, I am looking to do some more contacting this week.

So, I think that’s about my week. This week I have really learned a lot about how wonderful our Father in Heaven really is with all of us, especially when we are obedient. He desires so much to bless all of us. I know it. I know that this is his Gospel. I know that Joseph Smith is a prophet. As I testify to other people, it becomes more clear in my mind. Well, I love you guys so much, and I look forward to reading all your emails. Chao Chao!


-Elder Lewis

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