Week 35

My Dear Family,

This week was hard. The more and more closer we get to the end of the transfer, the more and more Elder A says that 'he doesn't care, he's going home', ugh its frustrating.

Monday was a bit boring. we cleaned, shopped, and emailed, nothing too exciting happened. Nobody in the district likes to do activities on PDAY except for the zone leaders, but they play basketball with other zone leaders and the farsi elders. We had a lesson with this investigator named W S. He was born in Costa Rica, but raised his whole life in Panama until he moved to the states. He is a member of the... Anglican Church, that's a new one. His mom had him christened when he was a baby, but other than that he only goes to church on Christmas and nothing else. He watches a lot of religious shows on TV and he likes those pastors because they are 'lively' (oh by the way, he's part Jamaican because his parents were, but he speaks Spanish perfectly, and he's 82 years old and still kickin it). He told us that he doesn't plan on changing religions anytime soon because "he doesn't want to get involved in THAT type of stuff"... ok? We had dinner with the E family and it is always weird with them. They want us to eat in peace and quiet so they leave and we just sit in the kitchen. Its really awkward because Elder A and I are at a rough patch in the companionship and so we just eat without talking at all.

Tuesday, oh man did everything go downhill that day. It was the training for Elder A. It's called the Departing Missionary training, but we all call it 'trunky training' because every missionary after just thinks about home and school, and marriage.. etc. So that was bad. During that time I was on exchanges with Elder Z again, but this time in my area. It was really awkward because I talked to basically everyone (cause they're latinos) and he doesn't speak a lick of Spanish. At the end of everything he would say 'adios' and it was pretty funny. The lunch that we tried to make is that awful picture with the hot dog and avocados. The A family gave us that last Sunday and its called a 'mezcla' or mix. It was so good when they gave it to us that we wanted to try it! we thought we could make it the same, but we missed a lot of ingredients and it was probably one of the most nastiest things that I have tasted on my mission.

Wednesday was even more boring! (I'm making it sound worse than it really is, I just didn't write down any stories for the week, cause nothing really crazy happened) We wrote down a bunch of names to go and visit in our area, half of them weren't there, half of them were English, and the other half were actually people that wanted to talk to us. We saw a lot of cool looking churches on a street in our area though. There is a Polish Catholic church, and a Seventh Day Adventist/ Presbyterian Korean church right by it, I think I might go take pictures of them, cause they look pretty cool. We ate with the R family, and the mom thinks that I am malnourished because my companion is bigger than I am. She told me in Spanish 'Elder, I want you to get FAT on your mission'. Trust me mom, the food is amazing, we ate spaghetti, but I just couldn't eat more than 3 platefuls... I can't, no matter how much I love spaghetti.

Thursday, was kinda boring, Elder A is trunky, so its hard to motivate him to work. We had chicken alfredo with the L family (what is this Italy??:)))) ) anywho, the family is super chill, just the dad has a lot of personal problems that we are working on, but the mom is seeing a change in him, so that's good. She thought that 'being born in the covenant meant that your parents were baptized, not the temple thing. When we explained that the 'covenant' part talked about temples, she almost cried. We also met with the A family, some investigators, and while we were talking, there was a huge cockroach on the side of the apartment wall outside, it almost looked like a freaking dinosaur. The hermano went over to smack it with a stick and it flew at him, he jumped and squealed like a girl, then stomped on that sucker and boy did that cockroach SQUISH!  

Friday was fun, played some spoons with the F family and had a FHE which was fun, Saturday was ridiculous because there was a festival so we had to take a 30 minute bike ride detour to our appointment, which we were late for, so we missed it, super depressing. (sorry I'm running out of time on the computer and I will email the other part later) On Saturday we met again with Winston and asked him that if God told him that the Book of Mormon was true and that everything fell into place, that the priesthood was back on the earth, would he be baptized by the power of God? and he said "naw, I don't think I would change, because I am Anglican"... UGH!

Sunday was a bit interesting and frustrating at the same time. It rained in the morning, so that was nice, except for the bike ride to church haha, watch out for those puddles right? We arrived at church and none of our investigators were there. It was really sad. We saw a family of 3 show up that were our investigators halfway through the first class though! It was the A family! They stayed for the first two hours, but not for the last, which is sacrament meeting here. It was really frustrating. They were leaving right before sacrament and Elder A and I stopped them and asked them if they were leaving. They said yes because the daughter, who is 9 wanted to leave. We asked her why she wanted to leave and she said because she wanted to go swimming. Fo real? Ugh, she kept crying to her mom saying that she wanted to go swimming. The mom looked at us and said "if I don't take her, she's going to tell me all day and during the week 'you promised', so we have to go"... Oh man did that make us a little frustrated. Serious? You are skipping out on sacrament? Do you know what it represents? Do you know that you are now telling your daughter that swimming is more important than remembering the Savior on His holy day? So that was a little depressing. Something else that was depressing is only part of the F family showed up to church. The mom and the two oldest daughters didn't show up to church. It was really sad. Church was interesting. Gospel principles went off topic a lot and we, all 6 missionaries in that class, had to bring it back often. In priesthood the lesson was weird too. Sacrament meeting was really good though, the two speakers talked about The Restoration. I guess some of the members are getting some stuff mixed up, but the talks were super good, they laid down the law!! We decided to stop by a less active family and talk to them, the family N and they are super cool. We are eating with them in Saturday! That's what I love about serving in Spanish, the members love to feed the missionaries, except on Sunday's hahaha... :( we also stopped by the F family to see why they didn't come to church. We talked for a bit and committed them to read 1 Nephi 1-18 by next Sunday AND to go do baptisms for the dead on Saturday and if they do that, we will have a FHE party/ farewell for Elder A on Monday next week, so that seems to be good. 

Every week before I go to bed, I listen to one of the conference talks, this last week was "It Works Wonderfully" by Pres Uchtdorf. This week I am going to read Elder Ballard's talk about staying on the ship, the second talk of conference Saturday morning. Will you read it with me??

Well, hopefully this week wasn't too crazy for you, it sure was a little dull for me, but this week to come should be pretty fun.

Les quiero más que puedan pensar 

Brazos y besos,

Elder Roberts

This is what they made but left out a couple of ingredients.