It's a Zoo Out There!

Hey,

Happy birthday Grace!  One year older and still as sassy as ever I'm sure.  I wish you the best and hope that you enjoy your special day.  I love you!

Sorry for the late mail.  I forgot to mention in last week's email that in this mission we have p-days on Wednesdays when it's transfer week.  So I'm one transfer down while in the field.  For our companionship Elder Boyer is being shipped out to Columbus and Elder Samuel and I will stay here.  We're expecting to gain some area from Omaha to work as well, because President realized that we're working with 3,400 Spanish speakers whils the two companionships in Omah have 50,000 which isn't the most efficient thing in the world.

The zoo was fantastic!  It’s not overly huge but they take a lot of time, money, and effort to make you feel like you're in the environment of the animals.  They have a giant glass dome that can be seen here from CB that’s called the desert dome.  It’s dried out and heated to feel like you’re there and there are even some desert birds walking along beside you on the paths.  They also have a marsh, caves, aquarium, and jungle.  It was incredible.  The best part was the gorillas.  There’s one male gorilla that hates the missionaries.  The staff doesn’t know why (probably from our white shirts and ties) but whenever the missionaries show up it gets ticked.  We would go stand by the window and it would come over eyeing us and then pump itself up to jump and pound its chest while it kicked the glass at the same time.  It was soooooo much fun to make it do that, and the other visitors loved watching the gorilla follow us from window to window.  The zoo handlers let us do it because apparently it’s healthy for the gorilla, something along the lines of allowing it to exert its masculine dominance.  So that was the big highlight there.  Also something I wasn’t expecting to see was they have the child of a zebra and a donkey.  So that took up last pday and left us exhausted.

We've made good progress with investigators this week.  A and her children B (18), Br (17), and By (15ish) have really opened up to us.  The kids all want to get baptized and made the commitment; we just need to get them to church so they can be.  A knows our message is true as well she just wants to take her time and make sure this is the right decision before she makes the big commitment.  They are really eager to learn more and now are making solid appointments with us to teach, whereas before they wouldn’t answer the door or say they were busy and didn’t have time.  We actually had a hysterical experience with that this week.  We went to teach them a lesson and when we showed up there were two Jehovah Witnesses at her door talking to her (the JW's are crazy active here).  Well we awkwardly show up and say hi to the JW's and then wait behind them to finish.  They left A with a pamphlet and said maybe they would come by when she was a little less busy.  When they walk off we approach and I can’t help but grin and then A just cracks up about the whole scenario and lets us in immediately for a long lesson.  Apparently she only opened the door because she thought it was us, but then had to wait out the whole JW talk. 

We also found a couple, M and F, that are the product of missionaries before.  They took the discussions some 10 or 11 years ago and M gained a testimony and wanted to be baptized but F wouldn’t allow it so nothing happened.  However, 10 years later he’s loosened up, listens to us and even knows that the Book of Mormon is scripture and Joseph Smith was a prophet.  The only problem is we've had difficulty meeting with both of them together when they have time, so hopefully that'll work out.  They even want us to teach their children and their spouses so we've tried coordinating that.  Besides them there’s just a couple other families that show potential and that we're excited for.

We've been spending entire days just tracting hour after hour trying to find more of the Spanish population here in CB, and because of that we've received our fair share of mockery and rejection.  The worst experience from this week was with a born again Christian woman we ran into.  Immediately when we began talking she got super agitated and was basically screaming at us about how we don’t believe what we preach, how we don’t really believe or know Christ, and how we are so sheltered and have never experienced the real world.  There was no reasoning with her and she wouldn’t listen.  She completely misjudged us without knowing our personal lives and experiences, so we bore testimony and got out of there.  The unsettling thing was she had been cutting potatoes before we knocked and had the knife in her hand the entire time, flourishing it about in her agitation.  Elder Samuel made sure to keep a firm grip on the pepper spray in his pack that we carry around. 

We also had some teenagers follow us around the other day.  It started off with two 15ish year old girls, immodestly dressed, following us around as we knocked and watching.  Then some other teens their age showed up and one of the young men wanted to impress the girls so he began following us to the doors and acting like one of us while he teased us the entire time.  We really didn’t give him much attention though.  We decided to go to the car since they wouldn’t leave and just go elsewhere.  As we were getting in that same guy thought it would be funny to come along so he hopped in the back seat.  With that we finally told him to get out.

As for your questions mom:

I wonder if you've been healthy the entire time?  I haven't had any major sickness yet

Have your companions been sick?  nope
How's your diet/workouts going?  good, we run in the mornings.  there is a high school with a track just up the road that we go to. 

Did you like the workouts I sent?  yes thank you (although one was for grandmas saying to do pushups against a tree standing up and what not)
How long is it taking to get mail from the mission home? dont know
Are you getting enough mail?  there's no such thing as enough

Who all is writing? the family, papa and gram, and Monica

Love you all,

Elder Harker