Week #97 - Practice and Patience (Santiago)

Hola familia y amigos!

Well this week has been normal, just trying to keep working despite whatever goes on with my branch pres. This week I had a training meeting in SPS with all the leaders and the trainers, on how to teach better and so forth. It went really well and we have already put some of the stuff in practice and it has had really good results. It’s awesome to put those things into practice! We have been trying to find out with all of our investigators is why is it that they want to listen to us. We have not really gotten back any great answers, but some have showed their desires to go to church and to do what is right, others not so much. With one kid, he is Lorena´s son, we weren’t entirely sure why he didn’t want to get baptized, but we found out after asking questions that made him think and then listening that he isn’t sure whether to get baptized here or where his girlfriend is at in the Catholic Church. At least now we know what we want to do with him haha! Other lessons have gone very nicely, esp. with Ondina. The Spirit was really strong during the lesson about the law of tithing, something we thought could have been an issue due to her current situation, but she understood it and has actually already been paying, which surprised us! If all goes well she should get baptized this weekend. We are doing our best to find more people and to get them to church, which is always the problem, but we just keep working and trying. We have found a lot of new families so hopefully they start to progress as well. Apart from that, not really much to report this week. Everything is great and I am not wanting to come home any time soon, but such is life! I am taking advantage of everything I can. Hope everyone has a great week!

Elder Neher

Week #96 - Chopping up the Church! (Santiago)

Hola familia y amigos!

Well this was an eventful week with the entire Stake Presidency and Stake Auxiliaries here in Santiago. This week we had branch conference and on Tuesday there was a meeting with our branch president about what needed to be done. We also received some news on the temple dedication, which will take place either the last week of Nov or the beginning of Dec. He also mentioned the need to go and visit people and invite as many as we could to the branch conference, which was kind of short notice, but we did it anyways. We ended up visiting a lot of inactive members. Our cook, Ruth, also helped us and we invited everyone to come to the meeting, hoping that they would show up despite problems they might have had in the past. Our BP also wanted us to help him clean the church and chop the weeds on the back porch and just make everything look presentable. So we went on Friday to go chop a bunch of weeds at the church at 2pm, which was when everyone was supposed to be there, but no one else showed up for another 2 hours! We did what we could, then the BP showed up and he was upset because we were the only ones there (and our cook), but later some people showed up and we finished it at around 5pm. We were covered in dirt and junk from cutting weeds, moving dead trees etc. We left late that day but at least our BP seemed to be really happy with us and our help.

Saturday was Elder Baldwin´s birthday and it was crazy! So that morning at 4:30am our cook, some members and students from our English class came and woke us up with fireworks outside our house and singing 'las mañaitas'. My comp came out of the house looking really angry… although he wasn’t. It was really funny haha!!

Later that day there was some problems when somebody called Pres. Veirs saying that we were going to do something when we had already said we wouldn’t. Basically there was band competition thing and they asked us if we wanted to be the judges. At first we said yes, then we said no, but somebody called Pres. Veirs to basically 'tell on us' but he just laughed about the situation. There have been so much more stuff that has happened here with previous missionaries, I don’t know why the members decide to call Pres. now about something so dumb. I just think some of the people here are out to get me, but whatever. Seriously, some other Elders have gone to Villanueva (which isn’t in our zone) dressed in normal clothes to go shopping, have driven cars, (all this with the family of the BP btw) or go to the local club, wake up in other houses, dance with anyone and everyone, and they never got caught nor in trouble. It’s really dumb and I think it is the branch mission leader who is behind it. He happens to live in the same little square with the BP and he is his right hand man. Anything that happens with anyone in the branch, he goes straight to him to tell him, so I think it was him. It’s crazy in this little town!

Afterwards it was chicken tamales for lunch, then we went and visited some people. Later there was an activity for the youth at church that they wanted us to be involved in, and afterwards was dinner, which was crazy. It started fine with some chop suey, then they bring out the cake, sing happy birthday to my comp and then his face gets smashed into the cake. They have a birthday tradition here where people smash eggs on your head and cover you with flour like a human cake. A couple of us smashed an egg on his head, but because I made the comment earlier in the night that I wasn’t going to be here for my b-day, they grabbed me and smashed an egg on my head and covered me with flour too, it was crazy! I was super sticky, but it was fun.

Happy Birthday Elder Baldwin!

Human Cake

On Sunday we had the branch conference and only 3 people that we visited showed up. I could tell the stake wasn’t very pleased with what they saw, because it just didn’t seem like anyone new was there, inactives or anything and the primary was crazy! On the good side, there were some great messages that I enjoyed. This next week we should have a baptism but we aren’t entirely sure yet, because the lady lives far and she gets home late, but hopefully everything goes well this week. When I get home I would like to go golfing. I think I am getting better on my form haha! We went golfing again today and I had some really good hits, others not so much, but last time we went this guy helped me with my technique, because he knew I could somewhat play. He said he might go to AZ to play this summer so maybe we'll see him!

I hope everyone else enjoys their week!

Elder Neher

Week #95 - Baptism Bamboozle (Santiago)

Hola familia y amigos!

So this week went by pretty well, we were going around trying to get our baptisms ready for this weekend, and teach at the same time, and it was a pretty crazy week, but a lot of the normal. The nice thing was that I didn’t see the branch president all week, he wasn’t at church because he had a meeting on Sunday. This week we tried visiting more inactives and just getting the people that we have ready for baptism, we went this week with Lorena and Kener, mother and son, and made sure everything was alright for this weekend. We watched the testaments with them and they really liked it then we went over the questions for the baptismal interview and everything was great.  On Friday I went to La Lima, while the elder there went to Planeta and a ZL came with my comp. The divisions were good, I was with Elder Benitez from Guatemala, who apparently he has a hard time accepting anyone who has leadership over him, but overall everything with the divisions went well. I had a little scare Saturday morning because our phone died and so I plugged it in to call Elder Webb (zl) about when divisions were going to finish, and he told me that my comp had been trying to call me because the baptism dropped! Lorena didn’t want to get baptized. My heart sunk, but I knew it would work out, so I called my cook, Ruth, and asked her about what happened and she explained that Lorena felt that the interview was too interrogative, and that she didn’t like all the questions about her family (which was for the baptismal record) but Ruth told me that she was going to call her and see how she was doing.

Next we went to do some interviews for the hermanas, when we got back, I asked Ruth how Lorena was doing and she said great, that the baptism was still on, phew! So we waited until the bus came and went to the baptisms, 3 for us, because there was also an 8 year old baptism, and 2 for the hermanas (we had the service with them). The service went well even though it started late while we were waiting for the hnas, but everything turned out great. Later we got on the bus right as it started to rain, so another close one, haha! Overall it was a good week!

Oh btw, well the secretaries asked me about my plans to go home and I am going to try to get a flight into Williams Field airport so it would be so much easier that way. Well that was our week in a nutshell, we are working hard and hopefully this week will be great as well. Congrats to Tomi & Crystal for getting married! Wish I could have been there, but whatevs! Hope everyone has a great week!

Elder Neher

Week #94 - Pre-Presidential Visit (Santiago)

Hola familia y amigos!

Well this week was full of water and the changes were this week, which didn’t really affect our district that much. Just one sister came into our district, Hna Vicente from Nicaragua and she is leaving with me in August. The district seems really good, and the zone seems awesome as well. This week was pretty good, I felt like it went pretty long and I tried to keep as little contact with my branch president as possible because I just don’t want problems.

This week we worked pretty hard to try and find new people to teach and make sure everything is good for this month. Our ZL's are very supportive, which is great. One is Elder Webb who leaves this change. He is from Show Low, so if you want to send me a last package, his dad goes to the valley every week and he can bring it for me at the change meeting (they are coming to pick Elder Webb up). The other ZL is Elder Ordoñez from Tegus, and we have a really good feeling that this month will be great with success.

Lorena is ready to go with her baptism and we challenged her neighbor Ondina and she wants to as well. We have some families that are progressing, like Ondina's son, Carlos, and his girlfriend Fanny, but they will be tougher because they have to get married first. We also have Mari and Felix, however this week they had a lot of problems and it’s going to be tough to fix them. Our cook told us about it because they saw a lot of what happened. Apparently Felix's brother, Dennis (who is a less active member) owes them money for something, and they want him to pay them back. Felix works at a brick making place right next door to his mom and one day last week he was a bit drunk and Dennis came and they got into an argument and Dennis started beating Felix up. They called Mari who was at our cook’s house, and when she arrived they started getting her too. Then the parents of the brothers came and joined in on beating up their own son, Felix. One of our neighbors came running down in his underwear to help Felix and was able to get everyone off. If he hadn’t shown up Felix could be dead. Felix came out of it with a smashed up face and Mari has bruises and cuts. We saw her yesterday and she was a wreck! It was really sad to see that but we fasted for them this week and we plan on visiting them later this week.

This week we met a candidate for the presidency of Honduras. He is part of the national party and apparently is good friends with Ruth. We got to shake his hand and talk to him, it was pretty funny! Well this week I had something nice happen to me during my personal study. I was still a bit frustrated about being left in this area but I was reading my way through the Book of Mormon and I was in Alma chapter 8, where Alma goes to Ammonihah and gets rejected by the people, but then is told to go back and ultimately has success. I felt like the Lord was trying to tell me that I just need to go a little farther and everything will be alright, so I hope I can pull through and have success here. Thanks for everything and I hope everyone has a great week!

Elder Neher