Monday, September 26, 2016

9 investigators, building a house and strawberry shortcake! What?!

¡Hola todos!

Hows everyone doing? I couldnt be better here! This week was a good one! Elder Allen is doing awesome here in his training. He really radiates a lot of contagious excitement for the work which makes my time with him pretty enjoyable. I dont know how he does it, but he is already a great missionary, just lacks the Spanish right now which will come. This week we had a big focus on finding new investigators. With our combined determination, efforts, and faith we were able to find 9 new investigators by the end of the week! And a few of them that really have good potencial. It just shows how important diligence and faith is on the mission. And with it, the Lord blesses us! This past week we found a single women who lives only with her five year old daugther that has hearing problems. We found her only because we decide to knock on her door to ask if she knew one of her neighbors we were looking for. So like we normaly do, after asking we began to contact her. She says she would love to listen but in that moment had to go, but told us to pass by the next day. So, the next day we were able to go by and teach her. During the whole thing she showed so much interest and was very sincere. She expressed how in that moment she was going through a lot of hard times with her daughter and other family issues and when we passed by the day before it was a big sign of hope and a light to her. A similar experience happened the next day right before our lunch appointment. It was about 20 minutes before we had to be there so like good little missionaries would do, we took advantage of the time and starting contacting by our lunch appointment. the first door we knocked on, let us in! Her name is Alicia Galvan and since we didnt have much time we started sharing with her about the BOM. We were sharing about how it would bless her life and then she all of the sudden burst into tears and explained all the problems she was going through and how her husband had passed away about a year ago and how she had to raise her 8 kids alone. We were able to help her feel peace and the Spirit and she was very grateful for our visit. The Lord puts prepared people in our path!
So this week went well and we were able to finish it off on Saturday helping build a house a little which was cool! Anyways love you all and have a great week!

-- 
Elder Trent

mission bucket list number 9, Help build a house. Check

We helped an inactive member build his house by making the cement floor. it was fun and then we ended it by eating pizza with his family. and then a surprising treat, strawberry short cake! what? i didnt even know it existed here. it was soo good.


Monday, September 19, 2016

¡Hola Todos!

This week was quite the experience, for several reasons! One, transfers came and I am now training a new Elder, Elder Allen, straight from the MTC. He is from Bountiful, Utah. This first week went by pretty smoothly with him. He came out with a lof of excitement and motivation to do mission work so things have been going pretty well with him in the first week. He knows very little Spanish right now, so thats mainly what were focusing with him right now, helping him to learn Spanish and obviously everything we do as missionary too. Im pretty excited to continue working with and helping him improve. Im just trying to help him participate during the day as much as he can so he can learn quickly. We were able to see a few great small miracles doing this, having him inviting people to be baptized and helping share the message of the restauration. There was also another change with the other Elders that were in our apartment as well. Elder Lundell is also training a new Elder from Spain! He is super cool and a stud already at missionary work. 
Second, this week also we had planned the baptism for Belen, sadly things didnt go as planned. On friday, she was baptized, all good, everything went well, until Saturday. We found out Sunday morning when we called her to come to church that everything went bad on Saturday. Apparently she didnt feel as good as she thought she would or didnt have a great experience like she expected. And then her parents started to fill her head(they always supported her in getting baptized but didnt agree with the church) and so long story short, she doesnt want to continue with the church and didnt get confirmed on Sunday. it was pretty sad, but didnt affect on enough to get depresed or anything. We will continue to work with her to see if there is any hope and continue working diligently in our area. Things like this can happen so Im obviously a little sad from it, but just more determined to work hard.
But all is well here and Elder Allen and I are excited to continue working hard!
To end on a more happy note, because Elder Allen is learning to speak, he has said some funny things while talking to people, haha. We did a contact the other day and i asked him if he´d like to start it of. he was all for it and excited, but instead of say, "Hi, we´re missionaries" He said, "Hi, We´re millionaires". Now everyone is gonna think were rich haha, no im pretty sure the people got what he meant. But thats part of the experience of learning a language, you have to make mistakes.

Love you all!
Elder Trent
mi nuevo compañero(now that you know spanish I can do that haha;) )

I am training him straight from the MTC. He name is Elder Allen from Bountiful, utah.

We did some service Saturday morning! The dark elder is also a new elder in the mission and is from Spain! Hes got an interesting accent but I understand him anyways. Hes super cool! So Elder Lundell and I are both training new people in the same pench, which is pretty cool!


Monday, September 12, 2016

14 months down!

¡Hola Todos!

So this week finished the transfer and heading into the next which will mean 14 months on the mission! This transfer was one of the best transfers Ive had on the mission. I was thinking a lot these past few days why that might be. Ya, we´ve had a lot of success, I got along well with my Elder Lopez, and I enjoy Mercedes, but as I thought about it more I realized it was because of something much better. As I now have over a year on the mission, I have been able to have a lot of experiences for the good or for bad. So I made an effort this transfer especially to always be animated no matter what happened. To always be content and satisfied at the end of the day with the work that we did no matter the results. It made a huge different in the work, making sure I was always happy and helping my companion be happy always as well. Not just being happy all the time, because there have been very few times in my mission where Ive been sad, but more being excited and with a lot of faith to go out and do the work good everyday. So I think we have been able to see good results with that mentality always. Another thing that I have been doing and continue working on, is forgetting about myself and serving others more, my companion, my district, the people in general. I was able to strengthen my testimony in that true happiness comes from serving the Lord and others. So I am doing really great right now and feel very grateful for what the mision is helping me to become and what I am able to do to help others while Im on my mission. 
So for this next transfer I received the news that i will be training a newbie again here in Mercedes! I wasnt expecting it at all, but Im pretty excited! The first time I did it I barely had 6 months on the mission, but now I know I can do a lot better job, learning from the first time doing it and from my experience on the mission. 
Right now, we´re preparing to have the baptism of Belén this next Friday! Wahoo! She is awesome and all ready to go! This past week in general was pretty normal, we just went to General Rodriguez last Friday to have divisions with the Zone Leaders which went great. Their area over there is huuge! So we did a lot of pedaling all day long. And because its so big they have to bike super fast all day long to get around. In Mercedes, we just stroll around nice and calmly in no hurry haha, but General Rodriguez was another story. But I made sure to keep up with him. Its amazing how fast these run down bikes they give us can go! The next day I was pretty sore but all good haha. Anyways, we continue finding a good amount of new investigators every week in our area, but no one that is looking to progress very well. So we´re on the search more than anything now. 
I´ll let you all know about my new comp next week and how the first week went! Til next week!

-- 
Elder Trent

Tuesday, September 6, 2016