Two Weeks in One Post!

Ok... Here are two weeks worth of emails.  I guess I was a little slothful last week and didn't get it up.  Some of the information will seem a little redundant, because it's from two separate weeks. :)

Elder Norma, Elder Taborga, and Joshua

So, changes happened! And guess what? I have a latino... Who doesn´t know a lick of English. He´s pretty cool though. He wants to help me learn more, and he plays soccer pretty well. I don´t have any pics with him yet, but I do finally have a pic to share! And my camera didn´t get stolen! 2 bonuses in 1 day! His name is Elder Prada, and he´s from Columbia. From what I can tell, he´s the oldest in his family and he´s been out on the Mission Field for about 6 or so months.

Other news, I´m going to be made secretary in my ward! Yeah, now it´s my job to get the over 90% inaccuracy of our records down a couple of percent. We have about 940 people on our ward list but we only have about 45 on average attending per week. And that average will go down once it starts raining in a couple of weeks. Fun stuff right!?

Other than that, I got a new nick name! The new zone leader calls me Messi, because I´m the only one in the zone with a Messi jersey. I seriously want to buy a blank chile jersey and get my name stamped on it. That would be legit!

Joshua with the 7' 3" Elder Skaeblin

Hi ya´ll!

Yeah, still going strong! Hopefully...

Anyways, I have a new companion! His name is Elder Prada, and he´s pretty legit. He´s from Columbia, and he wants to help me learn spanish. In about a week, I can understand a lot better now, and I think I´ve made a new friend. He´s really awesome. It´s like hanging out with Mark and Cameran again... Oh the good old days.

Anyways! We´ve got some prime investigators this week! And all three have accepted the invitation to be baptised!!! AH! Super excited! All of them have some problems that they need to take care of, but with the spirit and determination, I know that they can be baptism worthy.

From Nichols I learned how to work, from Prada I´m learning how to teach. It´s a pretty good trade off, don´t you think?

Mother's Day Call!

So, this week's been good! I got to skype with my parents, and I'm learning spanish, as always! I'm hoping I'll have enough spanish under my belt before next monday so when I do get a latino I will be able to survive! I also found out that I only eat 10 bucks worth of food every week... Losing weight sucks 

I seem to have forgotten to mention what it is that I'm actually doing here... Well, right now we are working a lot with the ward list. Why? Because we have over a thousand names on our ward list, none of them have cell numbers, about 50 or so don't have addresses, and over 90% of the people on the list have moved out.

And because we have no idea where anyone lives except for the missionaries, they're putting us to work updating the member records and reactivations. I'm still in a baptising mission, but here, if you can get someone reactivated, it's practically the same as a baptism.

We're also starting a new program that involves member divisions. This is something that the church is trying to beta, so my mission is 1 out of 4 that's trying it out! Except we were already doing this system so it doesn't really change anything, just the set of numbers we turn in every week. The idea is that we go on divisions with members to help them realize the importance of missionary work and member retention. Hopefully this will help the amount of converted baptisms (note the word converted) and active members.

Other than that, not much else is going on. I'm freaking out a bit because I lose my fantastic trainer in a week and I have to hold up the sector until my next comp gets aquainted enough to help me out. Ojala, everything goes well.

Hopefully...

I can tell you guys are praying for me, and please keep it up! I need as much spiritual reinforcement as I can get!

Email from May 5, 2014

I now have several new nick names. No one here can pronounce my name, so the white guys call me "Fabes" and the members in my ward have started to call me "Firby". There's only a few now that call me "Elder Fa-bear".

Not too many stories to tell, mostly just walking around. A lot of it. We can't have bikes or they will get stolen, we can't have cars or they will get vandilized, destroyed, and then stolen (in that order), and there is no public transportation in my sector except for the bus that stops next to our church, which is at the very, very, very northern edge of our sector.

Also throwing things is SUPER offensive here. If you toss a latino the keys or something, it's considered as "I freaking hate you, take the keys dangit"

Not eating all of your food is super offensive too

yeah, basically everything I did back in the states is considered offensive here.

Spanish! Yeah, that's not improving much. I'm still missing a lot of important words. I've managed to get more study material, except my brain seems to be shutting off and not allowing for any other additional information input. It sucks, really, really, bad. I have to be reminded constantly for words that I've supposively learned. Urg... This is hard

Anyways, I love the love and support! PLEASE PRAY FOR THE GIFT OF TONGUES FOR ME! Please...