6/17/17

Fam,

Some news. Elder Waters is passing on to Big Rapids. That was a pretty big surprise. We were in our apartment doing comp study and we got a call from the mission office, meaning the President, meaning someone was getting transferred. We totally were expecting to be together until around September or August when the new Spanish elder arrives. We picked up the call and President told Elder Waters what's up. Big Rapids has a branch of something like 20 people attending. From what we've heard a family is moving out, so Elder Waters and his companion will be white washing the area, replacing some sisters, so that they will have enough priesthood holders in the branch. Elder Rencher will by my next companion. Elder Barrows will likely get his Brazilian visa soon, so when that happens he will be gone pretty quick and I'll be in a trio with Rencher and Guerrero to finish off wha ever transfer that happens in. That'll be exciting.  

Last Sunday was pretty exciting. The Aguilars said they were going to invite some friend to church, who turned out not to come. It was a really great sacrament meeting. A new member gave a really good talk on baptism that kind of hit everything the Aguilar fam most likely needed to hear. Natividad was asked to give the closing prayer. At the end of the service he walked up and gave an awesome prayer. That was way cool. I was sitting with someone else so after the meeting congratulated him, obviously I told him good job. He was pretty nervous. They are progressing but I'm worried they'll plateau if we don't decide to really pick a date and prepare to be baptized on that date. Solid goals are really important in all aspects in life. If you're not working towards something you're not progressing like you could be in what ever you're doing. They are still doing great though, that whole language barrier is a little annoying because I don't know exactly what they need but we are putting a lot of effort in praying for them. Also my Spanish has gotten a whole lot better in this last transfer, which is nice. 

Speaking of my Spanish abilities, Montserrat and Frank were in church last week. I spent the whole Gospel principles translating for him. That was way fun, really mentally draining. Listening, translating, and talking to someone for an hour straight all at the same was intense. I would say I probably successfully translated with like 60-80% accuracy. Hopefully Frank picked up something close to that.

German is on date for the 24th but out of nowhere he has tons of doubts about everything. We are trying to figure everything out today. Today will be pretty much a make or break day. We need to know yes or no because we are going to be announcing it at church tomorrow. We had four really good lessons with him this week, two with members, so I really hope he will know that he is ready. I'm not sure exactly how much support he is getting from his family. That probably is making it tough on him. I suspect today will be quite the day. We will see how it goes.

We also lost a few investigators this week. One family that I saw so much potential in has been curbing us really hard the last two weeks. We keep stopping by and they will set times for us to come back because they are busy, then when we come back they won't be home. On our fourth time we left a note on their door saying if they want us to come back please call, I hope they call. Their kids were super solid and actually read a fair amount. If the parents won't let us talk with just their kids, and won't let us meet with them as a family there isn't much we can do. We will check up on them in a few months. 

On a happier note Montserrat and Frank are doing well. We officially passed them off to the English Elders. That's not fun, but we had a great final lesson with them. We brought the other Elders with us to introduce them and make the transfer more smooth. After the lesson we talked with the other elders for a bit outside. They thanked us and talked about how awesome Montserrat and Frank are. The funny thing was was that there was this chubby guy smoking shirtless outside on his porch giving us the weirdest looks. As we said goodbye to the other Elders, the guy retreated into his house. Slightly unfortunate, it would have been fun to talk to him.

Coming home one night we saw someone moving into our apartment building. We spent our hour helping them move in and had a pretty good conversation at the same time. Turns out the guy was a sous-chef at some restaurant. He thanked us for our service and asked if he could repay us somehow. We said we were good, but he offered to cook us some steak. We couldn't say no to a free dinner. We gave him our number and he said he'd call. If I've learned anything on my mission so far is that no one ever calls back. I've put out hundreds of pass along cards in people's doors with our name and number on the back, as well as asked people if there was any kind of service we could do for them to just call us. In 5 months we've received two calls out of the blue, both from former investigators. I'm even surprised we haven't gotten prank called or anything. We'll see if he calls.