June 25, 2011

Hey family,


Its great to hear that you are doing well and that Megan survived the wisdom teeth experience. (I hope you filmed some of the experience. :) ) I will give an AMEN! to getting it done before college. During college was pretty terrible. Sounds like the end of school was good for everyone. And now that school has ended it means one thing.... I am getting way to close to the one year mark in my mission. Just so you know, I have decided to permanently be a missionary. Im never coming home. ha ha. These days are pretty awesome, but still lots of work and kind of frustrating sometimes, however, the good outweighs the bad. :) This week we have had a lot of surprises and a lot of days that were kind of long, but all were filled with good experiences.
Tuesday we had interviews with President Tyler. It was pretty awesome. It was actually kind of interesting. All of my other interviews with him in my mission so far were like 3 minutes. This one was 10. And I see him more now than I did before. It was cool though. He made sure that we are studying and practicing teaching and getting out in the field sometimes. And he made sure I wasn´t being incredibly overwhelmed. Basically, he cares about all of the missionaries a lot. I have a lot of respect for him. Sad story is that he will finish his mission and go home 3-6 weeks before I do. Kind of sad, but I´ll get over it.
Wednesday we wound up going to the airport with President Tyler and a couple of missionaries that needed to go home for medical reasons. It was kind of sad, but at the same time, we had the opportunity to ride back afterwards with President. It was good to talk to him. Although we just talked about soccer and the difference between Maradona and Pelé, (President Tyler really likes sports), it was still a pretty sweet experience.
Thursday we had a pretty interesting experience. We had to go to Tail Loy which is an office supply store to buy some ink pads so that the different Elders in the mission can do fingerprints for different legal documents. On the way back, Elder Noriega was teaching the taxi driver and as we got out of the taxi he forgot about the ink pads. So we had to go back to Tai Loy and buy some more. It would up being an awesome experience because we had the opportunity to teach like 8 more people and to give out a few copies of the Book of Mormon. Needless to say none of these eight people actually live in our sector, but it was still an awesome opportunity to teach.
Friday was an interesting day because we had to go and clean the warehouse where we hold the things like beds, mattresses and dressers for the missionaries. Basically after the big change where we had to shut some sectors to open up the two new zones, we left the place in a disaster. We cleaned and organized it and it was all working well, and then we got a call this morning at 9:00 that a water faucet had been left kind of running and had flooded part of the warehouse, so we got to go back this morning and clean it up. It basically killed our study time, because it split it in half, but in the end it was interesting at least. We had to be creative about where we were going to put the different things to dry them. We also took advantage of the fans that we have in storage. They are helping dry out the other things.
Today we also had an awesome opportunity to teach Diego. Diego is between 20 and 25 years old and he was pretty awesome. We taught him about the restoration and he is open to learn more, he is one of the awesome investigators that, after we had contacted him a week and a half earlier, had actually read the pamphlet that we left him, so when I said that the great apostacy ended with a young prophet, he said "Smith, right" The thought that ran through my head was, "Either this guy is awesome and read the pamphlet or he has heard from missionaries or heard about the church before and is going to try and argue with us about Joseph Smith." It wound up being the first one. It was a great experience. He accepted that when he receives an answer he would get baptized. He also isn´t catholic even though his parents are very catholic. That´s not normal here. 90 percent of the people we talk to are catholic so it was a different experience. He just believes in reading the bible and following Christ as best as he can (99.9 percent of the people here believe in Christ, its pretty awesome). We told him he could come closer to Christ and its something that he really wants. We are excited to keep teaching him.
Lately I have been reading in the book of Mormon about the wars in the end of Alma, and it has been a great learning experience for me. I learned about the faith and diligence that I need in my mission from the 2000 sons of helaman and the faith and confidence in the Lord that I need from Helaman himself. Helaman found himself in a tough spot, but trusted in the Lord and was guided in what he needed to do. We are trying to do that here in our sector, and when walk around the street, we knock every door that looks like a good door. Basically as we are walking, Ill look at a door and the thought will pop into my head, (you should knock on that door), and I we do it, we don´t worry if its the spirit or not. We are trying to do our part and we know that the spirit will lead us to the doors we need to knock on. Its happened at least twice lately, and its bound to happen some more.
I love you all and hope that everything continues to go well. I know that Christ lives and loves us, and that He restored His gospel through the prophet Joseph Smith.
Good luck in your fun summer activities.

Tyler


Photos
Elders flying through the air:
1. Elder Bate
2. Elder Noriega
3. Me
4. Me with book of mormon


Other picture with a story behind it. Sister Tyler wants all the missionaries to have a white board to write about their investigators, Elder Noriega and I brought the Assistants into the apartment and drew them a picture with nicknames we have given them. Elder Pineda has gained a lot of weight in his mission, so we called him watón. Its slang for big stomach, and Elder Bate goes home in 3 weeks so we called him trunky (missionary slang for a missionary who is thinking about home too much.) We als drew pictures to fit.
I think we are pretty good artists.
1. with everyone
2. the drawing
3. me and elder Noriega


other
E. Noriega and me at the ocean.