6 August 2018

So, to start it all off this week, I got bit by a dog on Saturday. This particular dog has the nickname of "The Tank," given to it by one of the previous missionaries who served here. It's actual name we found out is "Muñeco," which means "little doll" in Spanish. We think that The Tank is a much more accurate description. He's a big pit bull who is always chained up in the front yard of some trailer, and whenever we pass by him he runs to the end of his chain and barks like crazy. Well, on Saturday, they didn't have him on a chain. I don't know why, but they didn't. So we were walking by (we frequently visit this particular trailer park) and as we were turning his corner, he starts to run at us. I was used to this, but I thought he still had a chain on. He didn't'. I saw that and still wasn't too worried because he wasn't barking like normal. I thought he was being friendly. (We've tried to befriend this dog, but it wasn't happening.) Then, as he was right in front of me, he jumped at my arm. At that point, I realized, "Oh, he might not be so friendly right now." This is where I think that God intervened. I hadn't even really comprehended what was going on when he had jumped. I don't remember pulling my arm back at all, but apparently I did. And I'm pretty sure it spent a lot of time in his mouth, because I had slobber on my arm almost from elbow to pinky. I'm pretty sure that I can't move all of my lower arm past a dog's mouth before it has time to really bite down, but that's what happened. I did get bit a little, but it wasn't anything major. At the same time, I kneed it in the chest/side to get it away from me a little, and then the owner called it off and it walked away. I was bleeding a little bit, but if God hadn't intervened, I would have had a 75+ lb. pit bull hanging off my arm. So that's really my miracle of the week. I'll have a picture at the bottom, but it's not bad, almost just a scratch. With some minor swelling. But that's since gone down.

In terms of the work for this week, it was pretty good. We got to meet a family of 3 who seem way open to listening more, and they really want to learn. The dad is named Roberto, and he's a taxi driver, so he even has a pretty regular schedule, which is super uncommon out here. Like, ridiculously uncommon. I think he's only the second non-member Hispanic I've met out here whose schedule isn't just absolutely insane. We're really excited for them, and we're meeting with them again on Wednesday. And something very interesting happened in terms of less-actives: We found two that we didn't know existed. One is from the Dominican Republic and hasn't gone to church in over 15 years, and the other is a 16 year old girl from Hondorus who got baptized when she was 11 and just fell away. But she seemed super open to us, and she and her aunt live with another person we've been trying to teach. She said she wanted a Book of Mormon, so we're going to go by and read with her and everyone there in it, and hopefully they'll both start going back to church. That's it for this week, talk to y'all later!

 

 

30 July 2018

Okay, this email has nothing to do with phones, but I needed something that rhymed with zones and that was the best I had. We started off this week with a zone activity, and that was pretty fun. Kind of like the Olympics with different events, but things like who can build the tallest/best looking tower out of spaghetti noodles and marshmallows and that kind of thing. It was way fun. Our district's name was the Faarsquad. Half of our district really loves Shrek, and so my comp was Lord Faarquad leading the Faarsquad into battle. There was pool noddle jousting, now that I think about it. And dueling. (Again with the pool noodles. No pools were involved.) My "event" was where we had to have someone reading out a proclamation to the people as Samuel the Lamanite with people shooting Nerf darts at you. I had to read some weird recipe and we were judged by the amount of passion we put into it. We had 5 people in the district who could help block the darts, and every hit you took was minus one point. I was awarded 15 points out of 10, because I was the last one and they had already given ten points to someone else, but said that mine was way better. However I got hit 18 times and therefore didn't do too well there. But we got five bonus points for one of district member's exhuberant blocking. If I can find a video, I'll definitely send it.

In terms of the work, we're still trying to work with the same family, but they might  have something going on that prevents any of them from being baptized, even though the kids really want to be. We'll have to see as time goes on. I'm not sure how much I can really put in an email. Still, they are progressing as much as they can and it makes me really happy to see them move on and change their lives. I love this chance that I have to be a missionary!

Sorry, I think that's all the big stuff this week, maybe more next week. Oh, and here's a random picture of my first time trying helote. (Elote?) Anyways, that stuff's way good.  

23 July 2018

My comp keeps on putting the week count on his email, and I wanted to do the same, but I don't know what week it is, which makes it way harder. Anyways, this was a pretty great week. I don't have much time right now because of a zone activity, but I'll talk about the big events of the week.

Well, the big event of the whole week was really just one of our investigators making it to church. This is the first time that someone has gone to church in this area in transfers. It was way good. Her name is Maria (same one from before) and the ward just absorbed her. We had to go to her house in the morning and knock on her door to make sure she was up and getting ready, but it all worked out. A family from the ward picked her up, and they're so great. They made her feel really welcome really fast, and already invited her to go to dinner with the rest of her family. Her family is on board as of last night, and she and her brother have baptismal dates. Their mom wants to go to church, but isn't as sure about being baptized. We had a great lesson where we taught the Word of Wisdom and what they have to do to be baptized, and they were super open to it all. They always have great questions and actually understand. Well, I will maybe send out a second one later, but I can't focus in here because it is way loud.

16 July 2018

So, tomorrow (as everyone around me keeps reminding me of) is my year left point. My official release date is to be 17 July, 2019. Everyone around me is very excited, probably because we have four missionaries in our district all going home on that day. Well, the halfway point for the Spanish misionaries going home that day is actually not until next week, and our year on a mission isn't until the week after that. English missionaries hit their halfway point last week. This is due to MTC time counting for the Spanish missionaries but not for the English ones, mostly because the Spanish ones had to spend twice as long in it.

The week itself wasn't super eventful, but I went on exchanges with someone in my district named Elder Barnes. He's pretty cool, and he's in the same group as me time-wise. It's nice to be able to work with a whole bunch of different people and see how others work, sometimes you can get stuck in a rut and not end up doing what the person really needs. Right after that exchange, we had district meeting and I went on exchange with one of my Zone Leaders, Elder Sannar. He's another really cool guy, and I learned a lot on how to work with the members from that exchange. We didn't get to tract much on that exchange, but I still think that it helped. We also got to help prepare one of the youth in our ward get ready for the mission and teach him a little bit on how to teach the Restoration. It's kind of funny, because he only speaks Spanish and is probably going to have to learn English on his mission. He struggles with that the most. It is also interesting to reflect back  on the beginning of my mission in the MTC and realize that I struggled as much as he did teaching. Actually, I struggled a lot more because my Spanish was truly terrible. Which also makes me think about how much I've improved there. In the MTC, if we diverted from the very carefully planned and written out lesson that we had, I would be completely lost and my companion (who, funnily enough, is also my companion out here right now) would take over thhe lesson entirely and I would sit there trying to keep up, and generally failing at even that. But yesterday, we were talking to the brother-in-law of one of our investigators and he was shocked to find out that I was even American. Apparantly, he had thought that I was from Spain. This is despite the fact that I don't have a Spanish accent at all, I've been told that mine resembles just a mix of people from Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Chile. Which all have very distinct forms of Spanish, so mostly if someone doesn't assume that I'm American, they're just way confused about where I might be from. It's just crazy to think that I've been able to reach this point with Spanish so fast, I know that it's only with the Lord's help that I've been able to do this. I took five years of German in school, and I wasn't ever even close to where I am in Spanish. It would always take me a second to switch between English and German mentally, but I can switch between English and Spanish literally without thinking. I sometimes find myself thinking in Spanish even! This is just so incredible to me because I don't even have the chance to be fully immersed, but the Lord gives us what we need to help the people we talk to. I'm excited to see what might happen in the next year. 

For other random things in the week, we had interviews on Wednesday for the first time with President Holland. He assured us that they were very different this time than what they were normally going to be, and then proceeded to talk to us for the whole time about our families. It was a get to know you type thing, but it was still kind of strange. It'll take  while until I'm as comfortable with him as I was with President James. Still, I look forwards to the opportunity. And another random cool thing, we got to talk with one of our investigators for the 4th time today. That's pretty rare out here, they're very rarely there for their return appointments. We're just trying to get him ready and willing to go to church. We know he likes having us around, partly because we don't badmouth the other churches. We can tell he likes having us around because he made us carne asada and hot dogs, and tried to get us to eat a lot of it. And then invited us to go fishing with him and his brother in law (same one as before) so that he could make us catfish. We had to politely decline, we're pretty sure it's not allowed. We're not 100% sure, but it doesn't hurt not going just to be safe. 

Well, I think that's about it for the week. I know that I'll remember something huge soon, but for now that's all.

9 July 2018

So, this week has been kind of crazy. It's felt like two weeks in one, and just absolutely flown by. So not too much happened in the first few days of the week, just that those teenagers Maria and Antonio we had been teaching weren't there for their return appointments and they weren't responding to texts.  So, on Thursday, we declared a temporary drop on them and made plans to contact them next Thursday. But Wednesday was really the big day of this week. That was when we had our first meeting with the new mission president, President Holland. Wow, it was intense! He is definitely a different sort of mission president than President James was. The big quote from the meeting that people keep on quoting is, "If you are disobedient and aren't going to change, I will not hesitate to send you home." That's a big change from before. Personally, I think it's for the better. But we also got to meet his family, and that was pretty cool. No, we didn't get to meet his dad. And yes, that is how he refers to him. It's kind of funny. But it was a really great meeting and we're all super pumped to be able to work with them.

The big thing of this week happened yesterday. So, we were trying to go to a few appointments last night, but they were all falling through. We were heading to the last one where the miracle happened. We were in the same trailer park that Maria and Antonio lived in, and we were walking down this one street a pretty good distance away from their house. So imagine our surprise when they were pulling away from a house and driving towards us! So Maria stopped the car and we started talking to them. They invited us to come by to talk with them more that night, and we said we'd be able to go soon. We tried our last appointment at about 8:00, but they weren't there either. So we walked down to Maria and Antonio and got to teach them the Plan of Salvation! It was way cool. They had a lot of really great questions and were getting involved. Now there's a few things involved in what made last night so crazy. 1: We had decided to park in a nearby parking lot and walk to this trailer park, rather than park in front of the trailers that we had planned on visiting. If we hadn't done that, the timing would have been off. 2. There was a set of sisters that were driving by at the time and stopped us to ask us if this was our area. Basically, the boundaries in that part are really weird and so there's a few streets that are kind of a gray area. Again, the timing would have been off if that didn't happen. And 3. All of the appointments fell through. If they had been there, we wouldn't have been walking down the right street at the right time. So basically, everything lined up perfectly to allow us to talk with them again. We are going to invite them to be baptized after we get the chance to talk with their mom again, which should be happening tomorrow. So yeah, we're getting excited over here. I think that's about it for this week, bye!

2 July 2018

So, the city I'm in is called Knightdale, and has the nickname of "The Dale." No one is entirely sure why. I'm staying here for our weird 7 week long transfer. Though that is because of the first piece of big news.

So, the biggest news for this week is that we officially have our new mission president! He is President Matthew Holland, and yes, he is the son of Jeffrey R. Holland. We still have yet to meet him, but we're going to have a special welcome Zone Conference on Wednesday to meet him. We're all super excited, but a little sad to see President and Sister James go. I'll miss them! Things around here are probably going to be pretty different. Unlike President James, the Hollands have their family out with them. (The James' kids had all grown up and moved out already.) So that means that we likely won't be able to see them as much as President James, and that the assistants are going to have a much harder job. They're going to have to shoulder all of the responsibilities that President Holland can't because of spending time with his kids. One of our assistants, Elder Hunsaker, already looks stressed enough. He extended for a transfer to make the transition smoother for the Hollands, but he already was just stretched to the limit. Apparently they have some nights where they don't sleep at all, just keep on working and dealing with all of the problems out here. So, whenever anyone asks if I would want to be assistant, the answer is no. Definitely not. No way. I already have issues with feeling like I get enough sleep as it is. I'm just about always tired out here, and a nap sounds really good all the time. 

Anyways, we had a pretty cool week in terms of people who we got to teach. We had a return appointment with someone named Luz, but she wasn't there. Instead, we found her daughter and got to have a pretty cool talk with her. She later told us that she whenever anyone from a church comes to their door, she just says that she's atheist and not interested. However, she let us talk and invited us to come back again. So that was pretty cool. Her mom wasn't there again, but we got to talk to her and her little brother outside. We taught them the Restoration, and they said that every other church was boring, but we made it interesting. We kind of wanted to say, "It's not that we make it interesting, it's just an interesting message! We have the same church that Jesus Christ established on the earth again! Yeah it's interesting!" They said that they would go to church, but their mom didn't let them. We're trying to get in contact with their mom again  so we can teach her and explain why it is that we want to teach and help her kids. And hopefully bring her along, too. One more cool thing. We ran into a guy who was selling things door to door, and it turns out that he and Elder Hull (my comp) have a mutual friend in Texas! Crazy, right? Anyways, that's the week for me.

25 June 2018

Well this week things are starting to look up with the work! Basically everyone (including the Zone Leaders) have given up any hope of success in the area I'm in right now. When they found out my comp was staying here another transfer, they both said they were so sorry for him. This place doesn't have a good reputation. However, we had some really cool experiences! It started out with finding a family Sunday night of last week and being able to meet with them multiple times this week. The mom (Naomi) has been going through a really rough time, she recently had a son murdered in Mexico. We're trying to help her understand the Plan of Salvation and that she can be with her son again as his mother. It's really great to see how much the gospel can touch people. She seems to be doing much better and being happier, even though she's been pretty sick the whole week, which is why she couldn't come to church. We've also been working with another one of her adult sons, Miguel, and he's doing a lot better than we thought that he would. We left him with  something to read from the Book of Mormon (Alma 40) and we dropped by last night to see how he had done with reading before we came by today to teach them some more. (He had to work Sunday morning.) To our surprise, when he started talking about something entirely different than the Spirit world. We asked him where he was reading, and he said Ether 15! It wasn't quite what we had hoped (where he had just read from Alma 40 to Ether 15) but rather that somehow the assignment got mixed up. However, it ended up being exactly what he needed! He read Ether 15:3 to us and said that it was exactly what was going on with his mom! ("and his soul mourned and refused to be comforted," Ether 15:3, last lines) So that was really cool! We're way excited to talk with them tonight again! He said that he had a hard time reading in the physical book, so we downloaded the app onto his phone and showed him how to use it. He was really excited with that and said he was going to read more! Way cool! 

And in other news, our mission president is going home this week. It's pretty clear that he's been kinda trunky. He (and especially Sister James) have been very excited to spend time with their grandchildren. I had my last interview with them on Thursday, and that was really cool too. I'm going to miss them, but I'm glad I had the privelege of serving with them for about 10 months! The really cool part is that our next mission president (coming in on Thursday or Friday) is Elder Holland's son! We're super excited for that, and I get to have him for over a year! I hope that Grandpa (as Sister James referred to him, referencing how the new mission home is going to have a guest room) comes to visit sometime and just happens to want to talk with the missionaries too! It's going to be a little weird having a mission president who actually has a family out here, we think it'll make the assistant's job more stressful because President Holland will also have to spend time being a father rather than just being able to be with the missionaries full time. Still, I'm looking forwards to the experience! 

So random thing about knocking doors in trailer parks: you can find a TON of change just scattered everywhere. I know an Elder who collected more than $70 in 2 transfers. It's pretty crazy. Apparently change collecting is a common thing with missionaries out here. 

And in other random news, being with my MTC companion again has been way good for my morning workout. We just ran 4 miles this morning, and we usually do three every day. We would do more, but we have time constraints on exercise. Still, it's not even hard to run anymore, and I've actually been able to outrun him in both long distance and sprinting! It's cool to see how much the Lord blesses you in every way out here, even physically so that we can have energy to do His work! That's still kind of hard, I'm tired every day!

I think that's the news of this week, love y'all! 

Elder Battraw

The pictures are first, our district just being crazy at Zone Conference (like normal), second a random sword we found while tracting, and finally, the famous fridge of the wife of our ward mission leader. Even if you don't want to give her your magnet tag, she'll take it. If she liked you, but she's basically every Spanish missionary's mom that goes through Raleigh. It's their house where my trainer had his last meal on the mission after his crash, and you can see his tag there too. (Elder Rolph)