September 29, 2014

So first off, weird happenings this week. Just about everything that could have gone wrong with our investigators this week did. 

In chuch on Sunday, there was an old man who told us he was a member, and that he had just not come for a really long time. Then, during sacrament meeting, he randomly got up, went over to the fire extinguisher and raised his arms and started mumbling to it. Yeah, he was crazy. There are a lot of people like that here. (Absence of mental health care.) Just something unique to pass on from a third world area.

What’s a normal day like? I leave the house at 12, because I’m in my first 12 weeks and still learning and training in the mornings. We work until 2, normally doing contacting, which is just walking around on the street talking to random people in different areas, to see if they want to listen to us. At 2 we head over to a member’s house to eat. At 2:45 to 3 we leave, and resume work. Sometimes contacting, sometimes teaching in the afternoon. Normally a little more of contacting. We return to the house around 9, and plan out tomorrow (who we’re going to teach, where we’re going to contact, things like this.) Then at 9:30 we end planning, study a little more, or do whatever needs doing, and then sleep at 10:30.

We have a gecko that lives in the ceiling above my desk and occasionally poops on it. We have a ton of ants. There’s no way to prevent the ants here. And the gecko? He eats the bad bugs, so we like him. Sometimes we find massive cockroaches the size of my thumb and freak out. No way to prevent that here either. When I get back to the states though, I am NEVER living in a dirty house again. Here I can’t change it, the house is poorly built and all that, and there’s loads of ways for things to find their way in. We’d have to spend hours every day to keep it actually clean...

The strangest rejection I’ve ever gotten? One time a guy told me to go away cause I’m American and Americans have killed lots of people, therefore it is possible that I have killed lots of people, so he didn’t want to listen... that’s the weirdest. I haven’t gotten all that many rejections.

We had 32 people at church this week, but fewer youth, but there’s one or two who are really developing, or that I hope will develop into really strong members for Christ. I have been thinking a lot about sharing 2 Nephi 25: 26 with the parents here.

Getting clean water here is actually easy because the people here don’t drink the water either.

I got the weirdest feeling when I saw the pictures Mom sent of me as a baby and Jay, like he’s here helping the work sometimes. I actually think about him a lot out here. 

Thanks for everything, love, gotta go right now, next week!