Tornadoes & Teaching

Hola,

Firstly, thank you Harveys for the jerky, it was delicious!  Secondly, to answer dad's questions: How is your companionship coming along? It has taken some time to get the companionship chemistry figured out. The biggest problem we've had is trying to properly teach with three people, but our lessons feel fluid, simple, and powerful now that we've had more practice. The mission is a place that cultivates patience. How is your Spanish progressing?  It’s slowly coming – it’s nowhere near how good it could have been if I were immersed in the language, but it’s still progressing. I'm able to better understand conversations with native speakers and my own capabilities are improving. How is your teaching pool?  Have you been able to add to it? Small and there are only roughly 3000 Spanish speakers here and there are definite locations that we can go to find them (in comparison to South Omaha which is a mini Mexico City).

I'm sure you heard about the storms here in the Midwest and to answer your concerns I did not see a tornado but there was tons of rain and wind. There were tornado and flash flood threats for the area all afternoon and night. The day was muggy and grey and then a wall of rain blanketed the area. The rain was at the point that the windshield wipers at full speed didn’t make a lick of difference, we still couldn’t see anything. Rivers were soon flowing down the streets, and there were times when our car was a boat with waves higher than the roof on either side and splashing down on top of us in front. There were some signs of tornados. At one point the wind got really cold, and in the distance I could see a low green cloud layer moving in the opposite direction than the clouds above it, but nothing formed. Needless to say, this made for interesting door approaches and people couldn’t believe that we were still outside.

Last P-day we had the opportunity to hear from a church historian. He came to CB and spoke at the Kanesville Tabernacle.  He knew a ton and laid the foundations of the political, social, and economic climates of the early pioneers and some unknown stories of the early saints.

The next day I got to go with English elders from Conestoga (an area in Omaha) on exchange. That was tons of fun. I listened to a talk titled 17 Points of the True Church which I had never heard before. I won’t describe it here, but I highly encourage everyone to listen to it.

We turned over L and her two sons this week which stunk but on the flip side we've had some families that show a lot of interest and potential that we're working with. One morning we went to the Kanesville Tabernacle because they were expecting some Spanish visitors who never showed. So to pass the time we watched Legacy in Spanish as our language study for the morning. Other missionaries were jealous to hear about that.

We've been accepted as participants in the Cinco De Mayo parade in Omaha. We're planning to have several handcarts from the visitor center with banners advertising mormon.org and other things. We'll have some members in period dress, others in the ‘helping hands’ shirts, and us in regular attire handing out pass along cards and others throw candy. It should be fun and will hopefully get us some new investigators. We had to go to Omaha to pay for entry, and when we were there we went to an AMAZING panaderia. They had tons of selection of varying pan dulce, you could watch them as they made it in the kitchens, and the prices were good. I was in heaven!

So we tracted into someone interesting the other night. Imagine if you crossed Dolores Umbridge and Rita Skeeter from Harry Potter together and you get her. She was a born again and completely patronized us. She went on and on about how we needed to study Christ’s words, how you can’t believe feelings (which doesn’t make sense if she’s a born again Christian cause how did she know she was 'born again'), and how we were blind sheep. She thought we were completely uneducated about the scriptures and even tried to use some from Matthew against us, but when Elder Samuel was able to recite back to her the very scriptures she was using it kinda deflated her argument. She was so certain that we were dumb, lost sheep who had never taken the time to study the gospel for ourselves. Why do you think I'm serving a mission then? I certainly wouldn’t be sacrificing two years in the prime of my life if I didn’t know for myself the truth of this church. There’s my rant for today.

As far as other news goes, I was able to see a convert’s baptism yesterday by missionaries in Omaha North, which was a good reminder of our purpose here. We've got big plans for today. We're going to the Omaha Zoo which apparently is considered the second best in the nation behind San Diego. Details will come next week.

Love you all,

E' Harker