Week #7 - 03/02/15

So it is utterly freezing here. I thought I would love the cold but I grew to hate it in a day. My first area is called Hampton, and is in the northern part of the state. My area for the spanish mission is utterly massive, it takes about 3 hours to drive from one end to the other. And that is just the area I cover currently, for this transfer. We have a truck for our mission car! A 4 wheel drive Nissan Frontier, and we need it. Hampton is so crazy tiny, only 4,000 people, but a lot are spanish speaking. Most of the buildings are very old, like at least 90 years. Our apartment is near the main street, above a bunch of old shops. It is a little warn down, the paint is old and peeling, and the faucets leak, but is super warm and pretty cozy. Missionaries have been living there for 20 years, so its been well kept for a building I am told (by a 90 year old woman next door) that it is over a hundred years old. Half of the houses here seem like they used to be big, beautiful homes 60 years ago, but were turned into make-shift apartment buildings and the people all live like squatters in their own homes. Its kinda depressing. We meet a lot of people like that. They all work with the pigs or animals in nearby farms. All the middle class people live in new homes that are pretty nice. Oh, and the people are so much nicer here. Its insane. You can literally go up to almost anyone and have a conversation about Jesus, and even if they dont want you to come to their home and teach them later, they are still nice and politely decline. No one here is threatened by some random person trying to talk to them. Its awesome. And a lot of people are actually very interested when we say we can come to their homes and teach them more about Jesus Christ. I was actually really nervous about that at first, but it is easy. I feel bad for the Elders where we live.

Oh, and my companion is from Puerto Rico, and knows only a bit more english than I do spanish, so i am learning spanish insanely fast. If I didnt, Id have even less of a clue as to what is going on, and I would go insane.When I talk in spanish, a lot of the times I just think in it, only for simple things, though. Its still hard to understand. People here talk so fast, I have to concentrate so hard. It is really easy to just tone it out and chalk it up to gibberish. We have a spanish branch here. There are only about 50 to 60 active members, but we have our own building. It is just like a normal church building, but the chapel is much smaller and not nearly as many rooms, but its impressive. The people here all love the missionaries because basically all the adults are converts. They feed us every night, fantastic Mexican food. There are so many little kids. In 20 years the ward will double in size just because they all have so many kids. Mexicans.

We went to the house of the branch mission leader for coordination. He is a really cool guy, only a convert for 3 years, but is super strong. he was so happy that he and his wife were married in the temple, he has pictures of it all over his house, which isnt saying much, to be honest. He has a little girl and another kid on the way, but his entire house is basically the size of my room plus the kitchen. Its smaller than our apartment, but his wife keeps it pristine. The people here are really humble. Apparently people do a lot of baptisms in my mission. We already have one scheduled by the last Elder that was here, and we just found 2 really promising investigators yesterday. We went to check up on a former investigator, and met this one guy getting home from work. I didnt want to talk to him because he looked tired and I assumed he would be annoyed with us, but My companion just walked right up to him. He is from Honduras and is working here, but his family is still down in Honduras. We just asked if he wanted to learn about Jesus Christ more, and he was all for it. We started teaching him, and his roommate came in and we taught both of them. They are both very interested to learn more, and when we taught (well, my companion did 95 percent of the talking) you could feel the spirit so strongly, and they did too. My companion's name is Elder Marte, and he taught better than I feel I could hope for. The guy's roommate cant read, or at least not well, so its going to be a little hard to get him to read the Book of Mormon, but we are going to get a cd for him or something.

I also gave a blessing to an inactive member that was feeling really depressed about his family being in Mexico and his wife being sick. I did it in english and Elder Marte translated as best as he could. It was amazing, I felt God's love for this man so much and the Spirit so strongly as it spoke through me. I was amazed. I hope to have the same love for these people eventually. My companion really loves them and feels really frustrated for them and sad when they don't follow their commitments and come to church, but right now Im still kinda apathetic about some of them that dont seem interested. Anyway, I am having a great time, I feel the Lord guiding me and his hand in my life so much right now. I still have so far to go to be an effective missionary and servant of Christ, but God will help me get there. Love you guys.