Queridos Amigos y Familiares!!
Well, Elder Alcivar arrived! And I love him already! He was born in Ecuador (where his parents are from) but moved to New York (Staten Island to be specific) when he was 10 months old. He was a football player in High School and he's just a fun, neat guy. He has super strong desires to work hard and be a great missionary, which he is, even after just two transfers in the field. When he came in he really rekindled some fire that I don't think I realized I'd lost over the last couple transfers. I'm super excited to just go out and work as hard as I can and to really get this area going strong. As we picked up the Hermana's area, we really should be having a lot of work going on in the future and I'm super excited for the work that we'll be doing in the future.
As far as what we did this week, we were able to teach Magdalena and one of the Hermana's old investigators, Adalid. Magdalena is still pretty hard headed in many ways, and she flat out refused to read the Book of Mormon every day. She said she'd read it when she felt like it, because she felt like it, not just because we ask her to. But she did say she'd read it during the week, and she did come to church this Sunday and has been coming fairly frequently. We are making headway with her, but it's very slow and lessons have to be tailored to her pretty specifically. Then teaching Adalid we didn't get to teach much, but we did give him a priesthood blessing and were able to teach a little about what the priesthood is and how through his faith the blessing would be realized. He said that he's learning not so much because he wants to change, but because he wants to know more about what his roommate, Lupe is learning. Lupe is the Hermana's old investigator that has a baptismal date for Dec. 7th. We haven't been able to meet with him yet, but will hopefully be able to tomorrow and be able to see where he's at and continue teaching him and preparing him for that date. We have had a little bit of a different week this week with all of the changes this week and unfortunately for this week a lot of things got lost in the cracks that shouldn't have, but that's ok, we've got next week well planned out and it should be a pretty successful week if I have anything to do with it! :)
I loved getting quite a few letters over the last few weeks, it's been great receiving cookies, candy, letters, cards and everything else people have sent, and I hope to be able to get thanks to all of you that sent something sometime soon in some form or fashion. Love y'all and keep going out with the missionaries!!
-Elder Whitaker
Well, Elder Alcivar arrived! And I love him already! He was born in Ecuador (where his parents are from) but moved to New York (Staten Island to be specific) when he was 10 months old. He was a football player in High School and he's just a fun, neat guy. He has super strong desires to work hard and be a great missionary, which he is, even after just two transfers in the field. When he came in he really rekindled some fire that I don't think I realized I'd lost over the last couple transfers. I'm super excited to just go out and work as hard as I can and to really get this area going strong. As we picked up the Hermana's area, we really should be having a lot of work going on in the future and I'm super excited for the work that we'll be doing in the future.
As far as what we did this week, we were able to teach Magdalena and one of the Hermana's old investigators, Adalid. Magdalena is still pretty hard headed in many ways, and she flat out refused to read the Book of Mormon every day. She said she'd read it when she felt like it, because she felt like it, not just because we ask her to. But she did say she'd read it during the week, and she did come to church this Sunday and has been coming fairly frequently. We are making headway with her, but it's very slow and lessons have to be tailored to her pretty specifically. Then teaching Adalid we didn't get to teach much, but we did give him a priesthood blessing and were able to teach a little about what the priesthood is and how through his faith the blessing would be realized. He said that he's learning not so much because he wants to change, but because he wants to know more about what his roommate, Lupe is learning. Lupe is the Hermana's old investigator that has a baptismal date for Dec. 7th. We haven't been able to meet with him yet, but will hopefully be able to tomorrow and be able to see where he's at and continue teaching him and preparing him for that date. We have had a little bit of a different week this week with all of the changes this week and unfortunately for this week a lot of things got lost in the cracks that shouldn't have, but that's ok, we've got next week well planned out and it should be a pretty successful week if I have anything to do with it! :)
I loved getting quite a few letters over the last few weeks, it's been great receiving cookies, candy, letters, cards and everything else people have sent, and I hope to be able to get thanks to all of you that sent something sometime soon in some form or fashion. Love y'all and keep going out with the missionaries!!
-Elder Whitaker
*make sure to check out some new pics Elder Whitaker sent, which you will find under "pictures" on this website