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| So there is an elder with a whip and he let me try...like the indiana jones kind..so I whipped myself in the face by accident and everyone for the next three days that I saw asked what happened to my face..it looked worse in person. |
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This one is right before we ate some habaneros filled with cream cheese..a member nearby made them for us..very hot!
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SO this week we had a pretty good district meeting. It was
all about working with members and building trust so Elder Coronado and I gave
an example of how not to act in a
ward council that was pretty fun. It was similar to the way that Elder Endemano
and Marquardt did it a few years back. Before hand, the four Spanish
missionaries made lunch for our district. A couple weeks ago, the sisters had
bought us pizza, and they told us we needed to do it the next week. SO we made
enough for all our district, but when we went out to eat it, several members of
another district came out and started eating! NO one invited them, and they
didn't ask so it looks like no more district lunches now. It was too bad;
nobody really got enough so we went home and ate something really quickly. Then
we had a zone blitz of the sisters’ area covering the singles ward.
Luckily, that also happens to be our area so we went out
tracting, and I found a woman named Angelica. She is awesome! She started
crying when I was testifying to her that God had sent us. Since then, we have
had two lessons with her. She is very interested and has known members of the
church in the past and trusts and loves them. She is having a lot of family
problems right now which makes us meeting with her kind of weird, because her
husband checks her phone and computer everyday to see if she has talked to any
boys. So she asked us to come and teach her during the day as long as we bring
a woman with us (and a man so we can go in the house). We aren't really sure what
to do, because she really wants us to come by and has felt the Spirit, but her
husband wouldn't be ok with it. It's really sad; she talked about how when he
gets home she just tells the kids to not make any noise and stay in their room
the whole night so he doesn't get mad at them. Not really sure what the
solution here is, but for now, we will just get her some friends from the
relief society to come visit her and read the scriptures with her. SO the zone
blitz didn't help the sisters a lot we were blitzing for, but it helped us out!
The next day I went on an exchange with a visa waiter named
Elder Wyckoff in my area. We had planned on doing splits with the bishopric, so
I wouldn't actually be with him at night. So the few days before, I set up Wednesday
with double appointments and was going to send him off to teach with a member.
He wasn't very excited when I told him that since he doesn’t speak Spanish at
all yet. He has been out two months and was trained by Elder Saldaña, and so he
doesn't feel like he has learned anything and didn't know how to do any of the
lessons. I told him he would be fine and that's the best way to learn. He went
with a member and for the first lesson he just sat there while the member
bashed for an hour. Then the other two appointments fell through. Some how he
got through the night, but I don't know if it was the best night of his
mission, ha-ha. Either way I have done that with everyone I have trained; I
think it's a good way to learn. When Elder Ward and I did it with Elder Pyne,
he came back with a baptismal date!
So jumping to Saturday night, we went to help with the
Martin Harris pageant. The Martin Harris pageant is something that happens
every year in Clarkston (near the Idaho border) and it is a lot like the Easter
pageant in Mesa just not as many seats. They have been doing it for like twenty
years, and they said last night they had their millionth viewer. I will have to
take the family back to see it one day; it was pretty cool to see the whole
story from Martin Harris' perspective, and how he (mainly his wife’s fault from
what the pageant made it seem) lost the pages but then was still a witness. We
couldn’t figure out why everyone brought blankets. We had our short sleeve
shirts on, but we quickly figured out why. We will go back again to help this
week. It runs everyday for a couple weeks and different missionaries go
everyday. We leave at like four and then spend the night at a member’s house up
there (so we don't have to drive back late) and come back the next morning. It
takes a whole night away form proselyting which is too bad. We mainly just
passed out programs and shook members hands and told them where we were from
and how long we had been out (the question every member asks as soon as they
see us, ha-ha!). So the best part of that was we stayed at a guy's guest house,
and he had swiss rolls, nutty bars, chips and salsa, and pancakes left out for
us. It was like staying in a hotel. We are staying in his house again when we
go this Thursday.
We had a service project last week that made me feel like I
was on extreme makeover home edition. We went to go fix up a family's house to
sell. The thing that made me feel like we were on that show is because the mom
kept crying that so many of us had come out. I filled in lots and lots of holes
in the wall, and it reminded me of me ‘practicing my hammering’ in the Antelope
house, and Dad teaching me how to fill them in and paint over them. I also
realized I don't have enough skills; Tyson needs to teach me. They asked me if
I knew how to do dry wall. I didn't and felt ashamed like I wasn't manly enough
or something, ha-ha.
Ana is doing ok. She bailed out and didn't come to church
because, she had to do laundry. She obviously just got nervous and decided not
to come. We have tried to ask her if we can get someone to pick her up, but she
always says no, but we probably will do it anyways next week. Lenny and Neri
showed up 30 minutes late and then they left right after the first meeting to
take their sick son to the hospital. At least they came at all though! Neri
didn't like it, because she doesn't like to leave the house or look at
anyone. We are trying to get them set up with a therapist since Lenny has a lot
of mental problems and Neri has the worst depression in the world. Every lesson
is the same with them; she comes out depressed then we talk to her for 30
minutes, and she is fine and willing to keep commitments to get better. Then we
go back the next time and start all over.
Hernan randomly decided to go to Wyoming for a week and half,
so he didn't come to church. That was so disappointing, because he is the best
investigator we have, but he works so, so much, and they don't warn him they
just pick him and drive him away for a while to work in another state. Miguel
didn't feel like coming to church this week, just an 8 year old kid I guess,
just all the more reason we need to get his very uninterested mom involved.
Hopefully we can build enough trust to let her teach us a lesson by still
stopping by to teach Miguel in the mornings. There is still no progress with
the Salazars. They won't come to our ward still, and someone told them not to
talk to us so we can't set up a lesson with them.
Big news! This Friday I will be getting on facebook and keep
getting on everyday to proselyte with friends/family from home. There’s a lot
of grey area…basically anyone that's less active or not a member I can talk to.
I will update my status and you can see it. You can even write on my wall if
you want; I just can't reply to it. We aren't clear on everything yet. I will
find out on Friday. Dad probably knows more than me. I hope it will be a
successful tool. It is a little weird. I kind of wonder what I will do since I really don't know a lot of
nonmembers. I am so mad I
missed the mission leadership conference where they talked about and introduced
it. The first mlc that I miss after released had to be this one!
Love you all, take care!
Elder Bassett
