You can keep Elder Senn in your prayers; his dad had a heart
attack (he is 85) and is in the hospital. His mom is in the hospital for
something else; I can't remember why. (She is 51...huge age gap between them!).
I went with Elder Senn to get his
patriarchal blessing finally. The Spirit was very strong, and I understood
everything said, then as soon as it was over, I forgot everything. It was
really weird. I remember thinking about the things said to him during the
blessing, but as soon as the patriarch said, “Amen,” it was like my memory was
wiped, and I had no idea what he said. I guess that’s the Lord's was of telling
me that's really none of my business to know what was in his blessing.
SO we traveled up to Montpelier for the first time. Se went
to the English class, and then played soccer for a little bit with all the
students (15 Hispanics), and then spent the night at the missionaries’ house up
there, because it’s an hour drive. Then we had a guy named Roger Hunsaker drive
us around to see a bunch of potentials all the next day. He is not the ward
mission leader, but he has been working with these people for years (he speaks
very broken Spanish), and said he has been praying for Spanish missionaries to
come up for a while. All the people knew him really well and have taken the
lessons before. We will try to work up there once a week now, but it’s tough;
work on a ranch doesn’t have a schedule. We will get a ride up once a week with
the daily dose couple, spend the night, work there on foot as much as we can,
and then Brother Hunsaker will drive us home at the end of the day. I hope work
goes well up there. It is a challenge to drive up there and especially
without set appointments, but it just needs to be done. I talked to president
about the need for more Spanish missionaries, and it surprised him. He said he
would work on that, so hopefully there should be more up here soon.
While we were driving around visiting people, Brother Hunsaker
told the coolest story to a lady. He has four kids including one is serving a
mission in South America. He had a dream that he had a fifth son, and he came
to visit him. His wife had had a miscarriage, and they thought not much of it,
but he met the baby that they would've had. His fifth son told him that he
loved him, and that he was currently serving in South America in the spirit
world along side his brother, and he was watching out for him. So he found out
that night he had five kids not just four! That was pretty cool to hear him
tell that; he is an awesome guy. I have not met a lot of people like him, and
he really cares about these people.
We were going back home last night and parked at the house
and realized it was only 8:50. I was tired and didn’t feel like going back out
for ten minutes, but I knew that I needed to. So I drove out to the first house
I saw with the lights on, and it was a 21-year-old guy. He moved
here a year ago and isn’t at all active. He had his papers in and was ready to
leave on his mission at 19 then made bad choices and couldn’t go. He was pretty
sad when he heard about the new mission age, because he said if he hadn’t gone
away to college his life would be completely different, if he had just left straight
for his mission after high school instead. I felt pretty bad for him. Hopefully
the new mission age saves some people from that. College isn’t always a good
place to start your life out of the house. So I was glad we got out for the
last ten minutes of the day and met and talked to him for a little bit.
I have found only one problem with eating in English homes
versus Spanish homes; Hispanic people keep giving you food and offering more
and more, but the English people just expect you to ask for it, I guess. I'm
not really sure. For example, I was polite at this one house and took a little.
Then we all sat there for ten minutes talking, and I just kept waiting for them
to ask if I wanted more, and they didn’t and finally just took my plate; it was
heart-breaking. Well, I learned my lesson. I guess with white people you kind
of just have to go for it and serve yourself more rather than wait for them to
offer.
Ok so our investigators:
The Padilla family should be baptized very soon. Still
working out their son’s court/jail issues and that is stressful. They have
cancelled six lessons with us, but I know they are sincere; they are just
really unpredictable like everyone else is. The dad I can't understand most of the
time; he has a really weird accent and doesn’t like to smile, so his voice is
kind of a grumble. He talks a lot about the organic milk he produces and makes
sure we don’t drink the store bought stuff with all the medicines they give to
other cows. I have only seen his wife once since she is
always visiting their son in jail in Salt Lake City, but I really like her.
Flora came to sacrament meeting! I hate to say this, really
hate to, but that is my first investigator in sacrament in probably 11 weeks. That
has been pretty sad, but we got her to come and that just made me happier than
I can tell you. I wish there were more members to work with to help us get
people to church, but there just isn’t that much here. She knows it’s true and
wants to be baptized, but her husband is a drunk and doesn’t like it, so that
is a struggle. Maybe you can pray he can get struck down like the Jehovah's witnesses.
I am starting to love the people more. The cancelled lessons get frustrating,
but I still love them and want to help them.
The Reyes family knows what they need to do. They are kind
of just being lazy right now; they have been investigating for like 8 years,
and their son is on a mission. I am usually pretty honest with them and tell
them that they need to just not make excuses, and they understand what they
need to do. I have been working on inspired questions and pausing to let the
Spirit tell me what to say. I did that with them, and it worked so well. I
can't remember what I said, but I asked something about how they could access
the atonement right now in their life. It wasn’t that great of a question, but
the spirit was strong, and they admitted they know what they need to do. I
always bring up that this is what their son is praying for everyday in the
mission field. They will not come to church yet, but we need some members to
help us out.
Karyna is interesting. She is in seminary and is very interested,
but she won’t make eye contact with me; it drives me crazy. She is 17 and has
been here a year from Peru. She will talk just fine to Elder Senn, then if I
talk to her, she just looks down and gets really uncomfortable and doesn’t
listen to what I am saying, and that drives me crazy. With her, we just need to
have her convince her mom to let her get baptized. Please pray that her mom's
heart will soften and that the Jehovah's Witnesses that her mom is meeting with
will get sent home/struck down or something.
Alvino Sanchez and his family are awesome. They are my
favorite people. We visit them often, more often than most and just talk to
them when they aren’t both home. They really like us and are just curious about
Mormons. They liked the open house and want that feeling again, but HUGE
problem; she teaches Sunday school in the Catholic church and can’t get away to
come to our church. Next lesson we are basically going to tell her to make a
choice and decide that she needs to change her life, because she knows that
this is the true church of Christ. That will be hard; pray really hard that
that will work out.
The less actives we have been trying to work with have been
bailing out on us a lot. They will come if we put together a soccer activity,
but other than that they don’t have any time for us. But we really need to
start working with them, so we will keep trying. We have come to the
realization about why the branch is so small this week; people really don’t
like the members of the branch. We found out there are a lot of active Hispanic
members that go to English wards even though they don’t speak English, because
they don't want to be in the branch. It is pretty sad; one less active lady was
telling us about how judged she feels and not wanting to be involved in all the
gossip that goes on. She used to be a temple worker, and now she won't even go
to church. It is obviously her choice, but it is tough. We need to figure out
how to get passed that.
Some of our investigators, however, know about the branches
reputation and have no desire to go there and prefer English wards. I am not
even sure if that is allowed since that isn't our work it would be the English
work, but they don't speak English! Any ideas on that? Should we just let them
choose which ward to go to? Or encourage attendance in the Spanish branch? Our
stake president is aware of that problem, and he said they are making some
changes in the branch soon that should help us out.
SO there is no real visible success yet, but with some work
we will see it. We keep running into people the last missionaries never
followed up with. That is good, because we found them and bad, because they are
mad at the missionaries for teaching them a lesson and never calling or
visiting again. The area book is so important. I wish it had been used more in
the past. We just work with the missionaries that were here four years ago, because
they were the last ones to really update the area book.
Elder Senn has been sad about his parents being sick. Occasionally
I just let him talk to me for long periods of time, because I think it helps
him to just vent out things from his childhood that just boil up inside and
give him nightmares. Elder Senn and I have studied success a couple times
together and rated ourselves on each of the bullets, and we are exact
opposites. Basically, the conclusion we made is that he loves people a lot and
doesn’t want to work as much (not true, he does work, but that is what he
thinks), and I don’t love people and love to work, so we are learning to teach
each other. Ha-ha.
Ok, so I hope you are all well. I love you so much and want
you to know I am working hard and thinking of all of you! Take care,
Elder Bassett
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| Our new pets! Just kidding. Someone left them on our ward mission leader's front porch. |
PS For those that have asked, DearElder.com letters and other letters take about 7-9 days to get to me in Idaho.
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