Week 21 - The Week where I met Elder Gong

November 28, 2018

Week 21 - The Week where I met Elder Gong

I can't believe the luck we have here in our mission. I got to meet Elder Gong, only 2 weeks after meeting the Prophet and Elder Stevenson.

One thing I learned from Elder Gong that I felt was really important, mission or not, is that when our plans fall through, that is a really good opportunity to look for the guidance of the Spirit. I thought that was really interesting.

We also got to have a mission conference and I learned something really special from President Olsen. It's called Learned, Felt, Do. Basically what happens is that it's a study tip of sorts where we read scriptures or listen to speakers, and we write down in one column what we learned, later what we felt, but most importantly what we are going to do because of what we learned and felt. I've been using that recently and it's been really helpful actually.

Marilyn is progressing pretty well. She used to be a smoker, she smoked 2 boxes of cigarettes every day, we taught the Word of Wisdom and gave her the church program for quitting smoking, and overnight she went from 2 boxes to 3 quick little breaths and then after she breaks the cigarette. This coming week she plans on stopping 100%. She's progressing really well for her baptismal date (now on Dec. 8 because she didn't come to church...) but she's still doing really well.

Michelle, we couldn't visit this week because it was the wedding of her sister and we didn't find a time when our schedules could work out to visit her, but we're going to pass by later today.

Eduardo y Claudia have a fecha (date) now, along with their son Augustin, for the 15th of December. Eduardo has just barely started the program to stop smoking as well, but he smokes a little less than Marilyn did so we have really high hopes for a quick progression there. Now we just need them to get married and we're all set there.

So this week I had my first real battle with an Evangelical. In reality not really, I just kind of watched this guy go back and forth with Elder Rojas for about an hour and a half and I didn't really have anything to say to the Evangelical ni (nor) to Elder Rojas para decir (to say) that we should leave... so I just kind of sat there uncomfortable.

This week we had 2 people come to church, and neither were people we thought would be there. First Diego came. He has some kind of Japanese traditions as his religion similar to Buddhism but he seemed a little "out of it" when we talked to him about the church. But he actually showed up... so that was really cool. Unfortunately he disappeared before we could set another time to talk to him, but we'll find him again.

Also Anila came, and we had never met her before in our lives. She came with a less active member (who is her boyfriend), the same less active member that brought Cristian to church a couple weeks ago. So this guy gave us more references than the active members which I think is a little interesting, but she seems really capa (awesome) and eager to learn more.

We found another 7 new people to teach this week, a 6-week streak for completing the mission goals, and the Zone Leaders also told us yesterday that we have a 2-week streak for best Key Indicators of the Zone which I thought was kind of awesome! So let's keep rolling with that shall we!

That's pretty much it for this week.

Nos Vemos!

-Elder Martin

Here is a side story and pictures from my Google Hangouts conversation with Bryant:

The Bug Wars

So it started on Sunday night. We came home and there was an army of bugs outside our door. We knew we had an anthill right under our house, but this was just bad, they started to come out. So what did we do? We pulled out a lighter and bug repellent and we flamethrower-ed all of them to death.

They came back on Tuesday morning.

This time there were like 3 times as many at least, they filled outside the door, the floor just inside the door and completely under the space in our desks.

They´re all ants, but half of them have wings for some reason which is a massive pain in the butt. And, they bite like crazy. They were really ticking me off.

So what did we do? We flamethrower-ed all of them to death again, I kind of burnt my thumb but it was worth it.

Then the Married Missionaries came by on Friday to inspect the house, there wasn´t any bug problems for awhile so I didn't say anything, And then they came back on Saturday morning...

Yeah, so they came back, and what we did was we flamethrower-ed them again, right, but differently.

I sprayed them like crazy so they couldn't fly, swept them all into a huge pile, and I bonfired them.

And after, I found some Permethrin that was hiding behind some other cleaning bottles, I sprayed the openings, and since then we wake up to massive piles of dead bugs. They just keep dying without effort now.