October 19, 2009
Hows it going family?
Sad to hear a bunch of you are sick! Tyler dont worry your braces will come off eventually haha. Addy has swine flu? Crazy. Whats Cassidys volleyball team record? Sounds like shes doing great which is good to hear. Im sending out a package today. Its got some clothes in it that I dont need anymore and some stuff for Kallie and letters for everyone.
BTW Happy Birthday Kallie (for tomorrow) and guess what? My companions birthday is tomorrow too!!! He's gonna be twice your age tho :) Sounds like Hagen did a great job on his talk in church. Must take after his dad. Did he speak with Mike? Oh yea so my bike, I didnt even get it until Friday of this week when we went back up to McAllen for New Comp Training. Its great. I love it.
New Comp Training was way fun cus I got to see all my buddies from the MTC and we told all our stories and stuff. The weather has been pretty nice lately, around 80 so we decided to ride our bikes Saturday. It was fun and I wanna do it more often. Its a really good bike, definently worth the money. It was also nice to finally get some letters this week! No surprise the first letter I got was from Tawny. Then I got a letter from Dad and that package the next day. The package was soo good! I only have 2 cinnamon roles left haha. I gave some to my comp and our roomates tho so don't worry. The cookies were really good too. When do I need to send Lauren and Sydneys Flat Stanley thing back?
This week flew by soooo fast. So there is this thing, kinda like a goal but its more of a way of life in the mission, called 20-20-2. Which means if you have 20 contacts a day, 20 lessons a week then you'll have 2 baptisms a month. Basicly its revalation and it works like everytime. So obviously that’s what we're striving for. We ended up with 153 contacts this week. I’m pretty stoked cus thats a ton. We have over 30 twice. And we have 14 new investigators ( which means we taught them a lesson and made a return appointment) and we have like 25 lessons( which includes at least 1 prayer, usually 2). So basicly we worked our butt of and it was fun. But at the same time I feel like it was unsuccessful cus we didnt have any investigators at church. We called, arranged rides, made sure people would be there, but people used there agency to not show up. All I can do is work harder and pray more I guess.
Our kid that got baptized last week scared us this week. Basicly he’s not all there, is what we decided. We couldn’t find him until Saturday, and we had to get confirmed Sunday. All the little kids that live by him said they heard he was smoking and that he didn’t want to talk to us. But we ended up finding him and talking to him, he barely wanted to go to church but he did. It all worked out but he’s just weird, I don’t get it. We'll see if we can find him this week, it doesn’t help that his grandma hates us.
Oh yea so last Moday, after we went and bought food, we had lunch with the new brach presidente, and it was some bomb BBQ, so I ate a ton. Then we had double dinner appointments that night! Back to back at 7 and 8! So we go to this members house at 7 and she made some chicken for us, it was alright but I was still full. Everytime I finished my plate she would be like "sirvense mas elder!" which means serve yourself more elder! She made me eat like 4 plates! I almost threw up haha. So then we have our other appointment, which was with Derrick and Angela, who I'll tell you about later. Derricks hopefully getting baptized on the 1st of Nov. Anyway Angela(who is a member) made us Navaho Tacos, and they were actually kinda good but I was so stuffed that it took me forever to eat. I almost threw up but it was funny.
I’ve got some good pictures on my camera to send home probably in a week or two. You can send me some pictures of the family or whatever too if you want. I’ve got a picture of this Elder who I went on splits with on Wed. He’s under 5 feet tall. I think he’s like part midget or dwarf or something, he’s really cool tho. Anyway it was really funny cus it was big ol lengthy me and little tiny Elder Cutler. So we've got some pictures that’ll make you laugh.
Our grass in our yard was seriously like 2 feet long! We were told one of the members was supposed to cut it, but he never did so we had the branch president come over with his tractor to do it but we had to help him some. It was crazy how long it was. It looks so much better now haha.
We taught this guy from Honduras today. I couldn’t understand I thing he was saying but I guess he was really prepared and we set a baptismal date with him for Nov. 15. I'm excited cus I think hes really serious about it.
So our Branch basicly got changed to English cus the Branch President prefers English over Spanish. He kinda switched back and forth the sometimes. Typical Tex Mex haha. Even stupid me spoke some Tex Mex yesterday! I was saying the prayer in priesthood ( cus we do everything) and for some reason I was praying in English, which I havn't done outloud in a long time, and in the middle I said "te damos gracias por" which means we thank thee for, I really dont know why I switched to Spanish for a phrase but Elder Hernandez, Elder Brandleys comp, was laughing at me haha. It was pretty funny but that is so typical of what people do here. I’m actually struggling with it a lot tho. It’s hard to learn cus I can never practice cus people always wanna talk to us in English. Most can speak both but they see that we're white so even if we talk to them in Spanish they answer in English. Oh well tho, when I need it the Lord will bless me with it.
Oh yea so Derrick and Angela. Angela has been a member for like 10 years, but is kinda crazy. She used to have lots of drinking and drug problems but she’s cleaned up lately. Her and Derrick have been together for 8 years but aren’t married. Derrick is really changing his life and is planning on getting baptized soon. We are really helping them try to keep the word of wisdom. I really love them and really hope Derrick can get baptized. They have to get married tho and his interview is on Thursday so they gotta do it fast. Im nervous but I have faith its gonna happen.
Alright well I guess that’s all that’s happened this week. It’s going by really fast. Tell everyone I love them and to write me. Especially Tyler, I havn’t heard from him in forever!
Love you guys a lot and thanks for all the support
-Elder Given
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