Recuperating Week

April 30, 2012

Dear Familia,

Well first off congrats Jake, Brandon, Sean and all you other folk out there who have their calls. I have met people from pretty much all those places and they're great (except the Russians are usually not too interested in talking about God, sorry Brandon, but I also don't speak Russian nor do the majority of the missionaries here, so it doesn't really work too well.).

Anyway to answer Dad's question about the ethnicities (for Spanish) in Jamaica: probably about 60% Guatemalan, 25% Salvadorian, then after that there are good numbers of Hondurans, Ecuadorians, then Mexicans. On my mission, I have met people from the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Bolivia, and Argentina, which leaves me with only Spain, Uruguay, and Paraguay on my to meet list for Spanish countries. I have also met people from Brazil and Portugal for those almost Spanish countries.

But anyway, I was sick pretty much all of last week. So we didn't get a ton done this week. I was getting really bad stomach pains all week. I went through a ton of tums and pepto bismol but neither of those really seemed to work. It's pretty much done now though.

So on Monday, we only went to one appointment which we almost cancelled because our whole apartment had diarrhea and we didn't really want to go out that bad, but we went and had a really good lesson. We also fearlessed this lady and her son on the way and the mom told us that she was baptized in Nicaragua and more or less told us to baptize her son.  So far it hasn't seemed as though he has as much interest as his mom. But that was still good.

Tuesday was deep clean (it's crazy how fast this transfer has been).  So we didn't leave the apartment til about 3 and then worked pretty slow cause I was sick. But that night we went over to Jenny's house. I can't remember if I have talked about her but she is a less active that one of our members told us about (she isn't on any of our records so we wouldn't have found her otherwise). We went over to her house a few weeks ago and she is living with her boyfriend (Antonio), and then her father (we don't really know his name yet) and her boyfriend's sister (Silda) and her (Silda's) boyfriend (Carlos). But they are all investigating the church now. Antonio especially seems to be interested so we are working with them a lot.  He and Silda grew up in a very protestant, bible home (which is a little strange for Hispanics) and he seems to be afraid of the Book of Mormon, but he has a genuine desire to know.  So we had a good lesson with them on Tuesday.

Wednesday we had a lot of appointments fall through, so we went to a building that we knocked last Sunday to do some follow up. We have a member in the building, so we buzzed them to get in and decided to just go and say hello.  They invited us in and asked if we could help give a blessing to their 5 year old son.  During the blessing he was squirming around a ton. I figured he is just a crazy five year old high energy kid (which he is) but after we finished we looked down at him and there was a wet spot on his pants so we all had a good laugh about that. But then after we left their apartment to go look up some of the other people, we fearlessed a guy in the lobby and he invited us in so we taught him and his brother.  His brother wasn't very interested but the first guy was.  It is crazy though, you can kind of feel how long someone has been in the states after you start talking to them. The people who have been here less than a year are generally so much more humble and a lot nicer than the ones who have been here for a few years. The United States just corrupts people I guess.

On Thursday most of our appointments fell through but we started teaching English class again and that was our first day, it was raining (which means Spanish people generally disappear), and we waited for about 20 minutes and nobody was showing up, but then finally one little 18 year old Guatemalan kid showed up and we taught him. Then after class we taught him the restoration and it blew his mind. So he should be a good investigator.

On Friday we went on exchanges and I was with Elder Matthews. We ended up spending a lot of the time just in the apartment because I wasn't feeling good at all.

On Saturday I was finally feeling up to the point where I felt like I could actually start working normally again, but Elder Bond got sick, so they decided to send me with him just to give me an extra day to keep getting better.  But we switched back before our last lesson of the night which was to Antonio and Rolando. We went over there and I guess their roommates got tired of us taking up their main room so they put some chairs in one of the bedrooms for us. We went in and there was a kid lying on the bed reading his bible.  It turned out to be Antonio and Rolando's cousin, a week out of hopping the border. His dad in Guatemala is a pastor and told him (his name is Marvin) that he needs to find a church. He mentioned that Antonio and Rolando have been thinking about going to the Mormon church and his dad said alright (huh, the pastor telling his son it's alright if he goes to Mormon church, go figure). And he also told us he didn't have a job yet, which is the primary reason people don't come to church.

Sunday, Marvin somehow found a job in between 9 pm Saturday and 9 am Sunday so he couldn't come. After church we taught Delilah though and we cleared up all of her doubts. Well Elder Sanford and Elder Pearce did while I went to Branch Council (I put my nametag on Saul, one of the branch missionaries and we did a member exchange so a missionary (me) could go to the branch meeting). So she is really excited now but we had to move it a week back so her dad could be there so her baptism is scheduled for next week now. Then we got juked like crazy the rest of the day.

And that was our week. 

Love you guys,

Elder Pearce