hey mom!
well happy late birthday! it sounds like it was quite the relaxing birthday huh? i`m glad my little walking stick was put to good use! i actually just got done reading all of the capitan moroni chapters and he is just the man! i feel like he should have gotten a better shout-out than just one verse saying he died haha, but i`ve never really appreciated the war chapters until now, they`re just a little more interesting now. even though still i`m not quite sure what to learn, but all the scriptures are just different on the mission i guess. but yeah there was a juggling dvd in the package, the old one that i had before, so i don`t know what happened there haha, but i`ve been practicing a bit here and there and have learned a couple things so that`s fun. i`ll have to see if i can`t teach my new comp how to juggle and then we`ll do some cool passes and whatnot :)
as far as custodial stuff goes, i don`t know if i can really offer much advice. to be honest it`s not the funnest job, if anything it`s just frustrating cause even if you clean a room super well one day, the next day it can still be a wreck. so she`ll definitely need music, even though i`m sure she already had that taken care of :) if you remember we had found all those free books from that one website and i found that to be fairly effective at taking my mind of the work. cause if you just focus on how many more rooms you have it`ll take all day, but i would just listen to books and i never really thought about how much more i have to do and it seemed to pass ok. just stick with it, it`s super tedious, but they pay well and it`s super easy, so there really are worse jobs.
i`m happy to hear you`ve been getting some water. it`s actually been pretty dry around here lately, but i don`t know why. when people told me that it was rainy season for 8 months of the year i thought they meant it just rained straight for 8 months, but it`s been at least a week since we`ve had a really good storm. every once in awhile it`ll drizzle, but it hasn`t been nearly as bad as i thought it would be. it`s still nice and hot though, that`s for sure haha, but it`s fine. yesterday we told someone we would pick them up for church, and they live kinda far, but we had no money for a taxi (taxi`s are the basic mode of transportation here, we never take any cause they`re a little expensive, but we will if we`re in a hurry) so we had to walk. but my comp is a little slow getting ready, so we basically had to run. i wanted to take a taxi back to the church, but i left my little manual thing with all my stuff in it at a member`s house so i had nothing. so i asked my comp if he had any money and he said only a dollar, and it would be a buck 50 to get back so i was super worried, i didn`t know what to do. but i figured someway the Lord would provide if he knew our intent and what we were trying to do, so we just went anyway. about halfway through a member pulled up and asked if we needed a ride, and that never happens so that was cool, and so we got in and drove the rest of the way. he said he could drive us back but only if she was ready now, cause he had to go somewhere else, but we got there and she wasn`t ready so he had to go. i ended up having to ask the member for a dollar and he gave me one, so it wasn`t quite the help i was looking for, but at least we had enough to get to church. so we got there and she had a good time and everything, so we`ll have to talk with her more this week.
but, i`m sure you`re wondering what happened with changes :) so yes my comp did end up leaving, and my new comp showed up at about 12 30 thursday morning. and my new comp is.....elder pullman! he`s another utahn, and has like 14 months in the mission. he was in the zone of colòn with me when i started so we already knew each other a little bit so that was cool. but it hasn`t been quite what i expected. i thought we`d be good friends, and after having a year he would be fairly solid in spanish and teaching and stuff, but boy was i wrong. i`m sorry, but he speaks spanish like he just got out of the mtc. like i am in shock. i feel really bad, but he just can`t speak. he still has a super gringo accent, and hardly anyone understands him. he actually says more english words in lessons than spanish. he`ll always throw in filler words like "ya know" and "well" and "like," and it`s super frustrating. i don`t know what to do. he won`t even talk when we teach either. i`ll talk for awhile, and then just stop and look at him and wait for him to take over, but he never says anything. so then i have to keep talking, and i`ll try stopping again, but he just avoids my eyes and won`t ever say anything. it`s super hard. i don`t know how to help. he`s got a super good testimony, probably the best i`ve seen in my comps, but he can`t express it. i know it`s not our words that convert people, but that doesn`t mean we can just speak english and they`ll still feel the Spirit, we have to learn their language, but for some reason he just hasn`t or can`t. now maybe he just has a hard time learning or is just afraid or whatever, i don`t know, but i don`t know how to help. i`m not fluent by any means, but i have to admit i speak better. so we`ll have to have some chats this week, and maybe he`ll hate me for trying to correct him, but i can`t teach everything and say everything for 6 weeks, i need some help. so anyway this wasn`t quite the change i was looking for, it`s a very interesting challenge or test i`ve been given, so we`ll see how it goes.
the area hasn`t been going very well lately either. we`re having all kinds of what i thought were positive people tell us they don`t want to talk to us anymore. like one guy, he went to church and loved it and really wanted to learn about the book of mormon, but after like a week of not finding him, we finally did one night and he was like mad at us. he was saying how he doesn`t need another book and his beliefs aren`t ours and all this stuff and just didn`t want anymore. and then this other girl that was even more positive, she just loved to learn and also liked the church and would soak it all in, we went back on saturday and she said she had been searching on the internet and talking to her friends and she just didn`t like anything she saw and heard. her friends were telling her she`s opening the door to the devil, and so she doesn`t want to go to church or do anything anymore. it`s super hard. i was just bummed on saturday night, cause she was so positive. it`s hard to get rejected like that. maybe this`ll be another "trev and elder bednar" story with presidente amado this week, cause there`s just not a lot of positive right now. but oh well, i guess we`ll see how this week goes.
but that`s about it. not too many exciting things happened this week. hopefully this week goes better and we can find some more people. i hope everything is still going well at home, i appreciate the news and support and everything! have a great week! oh ps, happy 8 months today! :)
much love,
elder paskett
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