Familia y amigos!!
I think I might start breaking up my emails by day and use my planner to go through what I did that day. I'm gonna try it and see how I like it...
Monday: Monday evening we were able to visit Maria and we had a member (Margarita) come with us. We had a great lesson and she "soft" committed to baptism! We've got an appointment with her on Thurs. and we're hoping that by then she'll have done what she needs to receive an answer so we can set a date with her.
Tuesday: I went on my first exchange! I went up to another area (Novato if you want to look it up on the map) with an Elder Skidmore. Since his area is English I got to have a little break from being lost whenever people spoke for a little bit! I did have a pretty sweet moment though! We went to visit a former investigator in a trailer park, but it turns out that just a little bit ago he had sold his trailer to an Hispanic guy named Fernando. So we get up there and knock the door and he comes out; we ask him if Tomas (the former investigator) was there and he explained that he'd moved and sold the trailer, in pretty good, but not great English. So we tried to start telling him why we were there and everything and he just gave us the what-in-the-world-are-these-gringos-saying-don't-they-know-I-don't-understand-English look. So I just went at it in Spanish. He even turned out to be super solid too. He let us in to his home to leave a blessing (a fairly new tracting technique we've started using) and wanted to have the missionaries come back! And I did it completely solo! It was pretty sweet to be able to do that with out someone there to help me out (besides the Spirit of course). We had dinner at a member's house and visited some less-actives afterwards before turning in for the night. (Also, I almost forgot, while I was gone, Elder Rawson and Elder Anderson committed our investigator, Alex, to be baptized May 12!! that's the first baptismal date that was set in my area! I'm a little bummed I couldn't be there for it, but I'm super excited for Alex and hope we can help him stay on track for then!)
Wednesday: We woke up and had our exercise and studies before the exchange ended and we all went back to our areas. After getting back We went tracting and went to dinner and tracted more. We found a lot of people that were pretty receptive, but none of them have become "investigators" yet.
Thursday: Today after studies we went to go tracting, but E. Rawson decided to pop a curb and consequently pop his rear tire, so we had to walk back to the bike shop... then, just a little while later, after getting back to Canal and visiting with a less-active family we came back to our bikes only to find that his tire was flat again! So we ended up spending a lot of time walking to the bike shop and getting tires fixed that day. But we did get some tracting done and found a couple cool people.
Friday: We tracted a little in the morning to break up studies, but didn't find any Hispanics (we tracted near our apartment) and not really anybody that was interested. We did go tracting after dinner in Canal and found somebody pretty sweet though.
Saturday: We helped Mercedes, a recent convert of about 3-4 weeks (right before I got here), move because her husband left her. I don't want to go into too much detail, but her husband was apparently a scam artist and fled to Portugal with a bunch of people's money; a pretty bad situation, but Mercedes seems to still be strong in her testimony.
Sunday: Church was good, although we had no investigators come (the eternal problem for missionaries). We tracted in Canal again and found some pretty solid families that we're excited to go visit again and hopefully pick up as investigators.
This week sounds a little boring, but it really wasn't. It just had a lot of little cool things. I hope y'all are all doing well and good luck!
-Elder Whitaker
I think I might start breaking up my emails by day and use my planner to go through what I did that day. I'm gonna try it and see how I like it...
Monday: Monday evening we were able to visit Maria and we had a member (Margarita) come with us. We had a great lesson and she "soft" committed to baptism! We've got an appointment with her on Thurs. and we're hoping that by then she'll have done what she needs to receive an answer so we can set a date with her.
Tuesday: I went on my first exchange! I went up to another area (Novato if you want to look it up on the map) with an Elder Skidmore. Since his area is English I got to have a little break from being lost whenever people spoke for a little bit! I did have a pretty sweet moment though! We went to visit a former investigator in a trailer park, but it turns out that just a little bit ago he had sold his trailer to an Hispanic guy named Fernando. So we get up there and knock the door and he comes out; we ask him if Tomas (the former investigator) was there and he explained that he'd moved and sold the trailer, in pretty good, but not great English. So we tried to start telling him why we were there and everything and he just gave us the what-in-the-world-are-these-gringos-saying-don't-they-know-I-don't-understand-English look. So I just went at it in Spanish. He even turned out to be super solid too. He let us in to his home to leave a blessing (a fairly new tracting technique we've started using) and wanted to have the missionaries come back! And I did it completely solo! It was pretty sweet to be able to do that with out someone there to help me out (besides the Spirit of course). We had dinner at a member's house and visited some less-actives afterwards before turning in for the night. (Also, I almost forgot, while I was gone, Elder Rawson and Elder Anderson committed our investigator, Alex, to be baptized May 12!! that's the first baptismal date that was set in my area! I'm a little bummed I couldn't be there for it, but I'm super excited for Alex and hope we can help him stay on track for then!)
Wednesday: We woke up and had our exercise and studies before the exchange ended and we all went back to our areas. After getting back We went tracting and went to dinner and tracted more. We found a lot of people that were pretty receptive, but none of them have become "investigators" yet.
Thursday: Today after studies we went to go tracting, but E. Rawson decided to pop a curb and consequently pop his rear tire, so we had to walk back to the bike shop... then, just a little while later, after getting back to Canal and visiting with a less-active family we came back to our bikes only to find that his tire was flat again! So we ended up spending a lot of time walking to the bike shop and getting tires fixed that day. But we did get some tracting done and found a couple cool people.
Friday: We tracted a little in the morning to break up studies, but didn't find any Hispanics (we tracted near our apartment) and not really anybody that was interested. We did go tracting after dinner in Canal and found somebody pretty sweet though.
Saturday: We helped Mercedes, a recent convert of about 3-4 weeks (right before I got here), move because her husband left her. I don't want to go into too much detail, but her husband was apparently a scam artist and fled to Portugal with a bunch of people's money; a pretty bad situation, but Mercedes seems to still be strong in her testimony.
Sunday: Church was good, although we had no investigators come (the eternal problem for missionaries). We tracted in Canal again and found some pretty solid families that we're excited to go visit again and hopefully pick up as investigators.
This week sounds a little boring, but it really wasn't. It just had a lot of little cool things. I hope y'all are all doing well and good luck!
-Elder Whitaker