Transfers

Hey,

We've got the news for these next transfers.  My new companion will be Elder Moore.  He was also trained by Elder Samuel and was Elder Mickel's trainer.  I'm staying here and so is the rest of the district.

So J’s baptismal service has been moved to after church this Sunday.  The member who has been translating for him was out of town and he wanted him to be there.  We did a mock interview with him the other night and he passed with flying colors.  Speaking to him feels like we're speaking with a member except for the fact that he hasn’t been baptized.  The member he knows will perform the service and Elder Moore and I will be the witnesses since we will be the only other Spanish speaking priesthood holders.  Juan does have some back problems so there will need to be others in the font lending support. 

We had a really awkward experience this past week.  We were trying to build our investigator pool, so we stopped by the house of one of our potentials.  We knew that the house doubled as a business, however when he answered the door and let us in we walked right in to a lingerie store.  He sat us down and left the room for a bit while we were left surrounded by underwear feeling completely uncomfortable.  When he didn't come back immediately, we decided to wait outside and we've taught him outside ever since.

Fast and testimony meeting was scary.  Our ward's been having problems getting along and so some members used the time for testimonys to chew out the rest of the ward.  One woman even went up to the stand with a notebook brimming with inserts and thoughts that she then read off for a good twenty minutes attacking the ward.  Thankfully the children in the ward always love going up so they brought the spirit back.  I can't wait for  upcoming changes in leadership positions, hopefully emotions will die down then.

We've been struggling to teach a recent convert.  He has rarely attended church since his baptism so we've been trying to meet with him to see what the matter is.  From speaking with him it sounds like he’s never been taught.  He loves to talk and talk and talk and all of his believes as a mix of Catholicism and Jehovah Witness, he can’t define any gospel terms for us.  It’s really frustrating because it feels like the missionaries who taught him just rushed him as quickly as possible to the baptismal font without making sure he understood anything or what he was committing to.  So we've started from square one, and we've been teaching him one lesson point at a time, slowly trying to help him understand his own churches beliefs.

I've grown to really respect Bishop S and his family.  He served in Argentina and is a Spanish professor at Creighton.  He's had to do a ton of work getting this ward going and keeping it together.  It's not easy considering about 95% of the members are converts without mission experience.  The rest of his family patiently supports him and has put forth the effort to learn Spanish to become a part of their ward.  We had lunch with them the other day (homemade meatball subs) and he gave us a brief Spanish lesson while we ate.  They are a huge blessing to have, a sense of security in a kinda crazy ward.

Not much else to say.  Love y’all, keep the letter coming por favor,

E' Harker