This has been a pretty good week. We were tracting, and this man asked us if we wanted to go see his calves. They are everywhere here. I knew you would like to see them.
We went to Big J's finally this week. It's the place that
they got the tots from in Napoleon Dynamite...not that great it turns
out..haha.
I will give you more info about Elder Ireland. He and I get
along really well. We talk too much about worldly things like movies he saw
before he left or music that we liked before the mission... so we set goals to
get more focused. He is pretty different from me, but we still really like each
other. He really likes Elder Senn, too. His Spanish has already improved in a
week. He had a pretty heavy guerro accent when he got out, and it
only a week it has improved. (…a guerro is a white boy. I sound like a Mexican now,
which makes me happy. People occasionally comment on how they like my accent. I
still have tons of room to grow, but I am getting good at sounding Mexican-ish.)
I spend a lot of language study now just teaching him grammar which kind of
makes me review and understand it better, so that is good.
Elder Ireland was a wrestler and musical guy during high
school. He likes boy bands and his favorite movie is high school musical. We are debating this week if listening to Christmas
music is appropriate for missionaries...meaning the Michael Buble Christmas album
of which he is a huge fan. His girlfriend introduced him to the church, and
that’s how he was baptized.
He is a greeny, so obviously he has this natural desire to
go tracting, so we have done some of that this week. It usually isn't done here
in the normal way by us because of how unproductive it is in town. There are
really no Hispanics in town at all; they are all out on the farms which means
to tract would be driving from house to house, but we have already covered all
the ones close by. So we tracted in town a little bit to get him better at
contacting people and just talking to everyone. Not too much practice with Spanish
there, so that’s too bad. We tracted our one trailer park (10 trailers) in Franklin,
but we have already done that twice. They still aren't interested, but he got
to practice a little bit more. It's a different type of work here, lots of
driving and seeing members to figure out where Hispanic people live. Some tracting stories” "I HATE Mormons!”
- door slammed… "This is a Jehovah’s Witness house.” …*ten minutes
later* “yes you can send the (English) missionaries by-Success! …lady on the phone
while answering the door "Oh no, it’s the elders"...(they say
something to her) "oh, don't worry I will"...some lady yelled at her
when she was 16 and it’s the church's fault"...no other really interesting
ones beyond that..tracting here consists of talking to lots and lots of
members.
We had Thanksgiving at the Hatch's house, and it was
awesome! We had a competition between them and all their family to see who
could gain the most weight, and I got second with like 4.7 pounds (I think?). It
was great. There is a police officer in town that asked me to slow down when I
first got into this area. I got out of the car one day, and he pulled up next
to me and said, “Slow down in
residential areas.” I guess it was a school zone, and I didn’t know it and was
going like 30. Anyways, it turns out he is one of the Hatch kids…ha-ha. They
started late and then planned on dessert later on…so we didn't get any dessert
on Thanksgiving, because I wasn't going to stay for several hours on a
proselyting day. I ate plenty though, so I didn't need it, and Jen and Sherm
sent me pecan pie, so I had that. It was good to be in their home. Elder Senn
and Ireland aren't as social as me, so they just talked to each other, but I
talked to lots of people there when they weren't talking to the rest of the
family.
And it turns out Thanksgiving was a really bad day to do Spanish
missionary work. NOBODY was home, and I mean that literally, we had no lessons
so we just tried to make visits all day, and everyone was gone to Logan at
parties, I guess, so that ended up being a slow day.
OH, I think I have
told you about the wing challenge before; it's at New York Deli. It is ghost pepper sauce
wings. The record was broken by Elder Avalos with 36 wings. They are really,
really hot. I started eating them, and immediately my face and ears starting
tingling. At about wing number four, I was getting numb. Then I started to get
dizzy, and my face just kept tingling, and I stopped at seven. I am weak, I
know, but seriously, this is the spiciest thing you can imagine. Ghost peppers
are supposed to be several times hotter than habanero's. It was a rough
experience. I don’t recommend it. I can’t begin to describe to you the amount of
pain I experienced eating and then... Ouch. I just
wanted to get my picture on the wall, so I am happy.
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| When they still had the innocent notion they were real men. |
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| BEFORE |
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| AFTER |
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Megan sent the family this picture and note from her iphone: "Well look who I ran into today! In case any of you didn't already know this, Elder Bassett is serving his mission in the area where my mother's parents live. They invited him and his companion (plus his greenie) to Thanksgiving dinner, and I got to see him. He is doing great! He looks healthy and happy. I could easily recognize him, but it was completely obvious he has been called to serve the Lord. I've never seen him so mature and purposeful in my life. Elder Bassett sends his love to everyone of you, and he's headed back out to do more important work."
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| 4 packs of bacon, a HUGE log of ground beef, and 3 logs of sausage |
I decided this week that Sunday's are just bad days. I can't
seem to ever be happy in Sacrament meeting anymore. That's a problem, because I
need to be focused and repentant during the Sacrament when really all I can
think about is how mad I am about the people that lied to us! We had zero in Sacrament
meeting. That was a rough day. Ignacia and her kids got the flu, so they
obviously didn’t get baptized or go to church this weekend. Roberto was supposed
to meet us halfway, so he could follow us, but he decided to go shopping
instead (third week in a row) and the other three families that didn’t come
just didn’t show up...pretty disappointing...but we did all we could do to get
them there. I don't think it is our fault.
We are not used to having a third companion still. We left
Elder Ireland at the church, ha-ha. He safely backed us out and opened the back
door to get in. I guess all of our backpacks were on that side, so he closed
the door to walk around and get in on the other side. I just heard the door
open and close and assumed he was in. It wasn't until ten minutes down the road
when I asked him a question, and he didn't respond that I realized we had left
him at the church, ha-ha. That was pretty funny. There were members there;
though, so he just talked to them until we got back.
The greatest thing ever happened at church. They decided they
are going to start on time. They started at the usual 25 minutes late this Sunday,
and then announced that starting next week they will be starting all meetings
exactly on time to show respect to the Lord for the meetings that we are
having. I am pretty happy they said they were going to start ward council on
time now, too, so that will be nice.
So we taught a guy named Pablo a second lesson this week. He
isn't incredibly enthusiastic; he just likes to listen to stuff about God. We
asked him again to pray about The Book of Mormon and he said no and this
is why, “The Book of Mormon has thousands of followers and believers, of course
it’s true. Why wouldn’t it be? Asking god would only be doubting the
truthfulness of a good book.” But he also believes that every single religion
is true. He can't wrap his head around the idea that that is a completely
contradictory belief. It is tough when people believe that "if you believe
it, then it is true, that's all that matters"...kind of missing the point.
So Ignacia hasn't really progressed this week towards her
baptism. There have been some problems going on, I think, with her x-husband,
and she got a job so things have been crazy for her, but we are sticking with
it. Keep her in your prayers; she really needs it right now.
Karyna has managed to avoid us for yet another week. She got
a boyfriend, so now she's too cool for the missionaries. That's too bad.
Jesus Beltran is really progressing. (He’s the one who’s
wife died.) He works a lot on Sunday's, so it's hard for him to make it to
church. But after three lessons of trying to explain the need to be baptized again,
he gets it. Then I had him pray to get an answer right then about Joseph Smith,
and he did and felt the Spirit. Then I asked him to be baptized in four weeks,
and he said he would consider it...but no church on Sunday like he promised, so
maybe not that soon. Either way he is really turning things around. He wants us
to baptize his kids which made me so happy until I found out they are ages six
and seven. It is really hard to teach him, because he doesn't really understand
basic things and you have to repeat yourself a lot. I need to get better at
teaching simply, I guess.
Roberto is really progressing. We brought Brother Mariscal
to a lesson with us. I will describe Brother Mariscal. He is the most Mexican
looking guy you have ever seen, except his size. He is probably six three and
well over 200 pounds but not overweight at all. He looks like a Mexican boxer.
He doesn't smile a lot...and when he does it is pretty scary. He is balding
enough, so that he just has that skinny little tuft of black hair from his
forehead to the back of his head, and he has a thick, thick black mustache. The
best description I can give is the Mexican Tom Selleck. He is an awesome guy. He
is the one in the ward that when I am getting frustrated at ward parties or
meetings because all the adults are talking or being disrespectful, he just
looks at me and laughs, because he is just as angry as I am. He is the new
young men’s president I mentioned. Anyways, we brought him; he is a great
teacher. He connects with people, especially Mexicans really, really well and
got Roberto to open up and talk for like thirty minutes about problems in his
"past life" and Mexico which lead right into him needing the changes
of this gospel. (Especially because Brother Mariscal had the same types of
problems in his past life.) So he really likes the lessons, and when we finish
he asks when we will come back which never happens. The problem is he stands us
up going to church and for 70 percent of the lessons he isn't there. It is very
frustrating.
The Ricaldi family got the flu this week, so we didn't have
a lesson with them, and this is his week to work, so that was disappointing.
We taught Eva Loya and her family a lesson. We asked her
daughter to be baptized, and she said no (ten year old)…but she said she would
start to think about it. They promised to be at church, but they weren’t there.
Albino and his family cancelled a couple lessons this week,
and we didn't find anyone new. It just felt like an unproductive week, but we
were working. It’s hard when things are growing, and then just shoot right back
down to where they started all of sudden.
I am excited to hear about Natalie's mission call this week.
Maybe she will get called here. Any other new mission call announcements?
I finished reading the Book of Mormon this week in 23 days.
It was good. I like reading through it fast like that to understand the
sequence of things better. What I did this time was for every chapter I wrote
down a potential question it answered in that chapter, so I have a long list of
questions that The Book of Mormon answers. My questions are all serious and
insightful-ish except Jacob 5 "Is it hard to take care of a
vineyard?"
Anyways, I think it is time to run...sorry this a short
email. We have a lesson with Ignacia in a few minutes which usually we don't do
on p-day, but this is like the only time she was available.
Ciao!
Elder Bassett
PS Happy Birthday to Aunt Amy and Grandpa Brasher. I hope
you each had a great day. And Uncle Peter. Who else am I missing?
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