August 13, 2012

hey mom! 

well, here`s the thing with the covers. next monday will be my last day here, and so that will be the last time i see anyone in the branch here. i guess what will have to happen is if you can send some to me, and i can just give them to the office to send to the missionaries here to give to the members that wanted them. but yeah just let me know what you find, thanks!  and yeah usain bolt may be cocky, but he is the fastest man in the world haha. i heard about the men`s 400, and that the usa was actually winning? but usain came back and won it, so he is just insanely fast. i`m glad the basketball turned out well too. i`m bummed i never got to see a game, even if they just killed everyone. the nba will be starting somewhat soon too, so i`m gonna be missing a lot of basketball haha, but oh well, it`s all good.

but this week ended up being a little interesting. well so the zone`s been having a few problems between all the missionaries, just between them fighting and having emergency changes and all this stuff. it finally got really bad when the zl caught 4 other elders out at midnight planning on going to the sister`s house to have a sleepover thing. yeah things aren`t very good here haha. i always thought before the mission that missionaries were perfect and never did anything bad, but boy was i wrong. so last monday we just went to the church to play basketball and whatnot, but no one showed up. there were like 6 of us, so we just basically played cards all day. it was really boring, just a waste of a pday. but that night something really cool happened...

so we got home and did planning and got ready for bed and stuff, and someone called like a little before 10. it was a member, and only her and her sister are members, i don`t know if i mentioned them, but she invited us to go teach her family. so we had taught them like 2 times before, but she called us monday night and told us a really cool story. so her little brother, who is 12, was reading this picture book version of the BOM, and just had this really strong desire to pray (coincidentally enough he was reading the story of Enos) and so he got down and prayed about everything that we`ve taught and asked all the questions, and she said he just started to cry and cry. so he ended his prayer and got up, but just couldn`t stop crying. so he got down again and prayed and thanked Heavenly Father for giving him his answer. and so that experience was the saturday before the other sunday, like the 4th? and he said he just knew he had to go to church, so he got up all by himself to go to church the next day, and had a really good time and just knew it was all true. so she called us the day after, so last monday, and told us that and asked if we could come by the next day. of course we said yes, so we went by, and talked to him and stuff, and he told us the experience he had and how good he felt and how he really wanted to go to church and everything. midway through the lesson the sister was like "so my brother has some news to share," and he just said "i want to get baptized." it was way cool! so we set the fecha and everything, taught him some more that week, and he came to church yesterday and liked it again. but the sister told us that the mom doesn`t really want him to get baptized just cause he`s so young and doesn`t know everything, so that`s kind of a problem. we`re going by tonight to see if we can`t talk with her, so i`m hoping that it all goes well!

another cool thing happened yesterday too. i think i told you about the lady that we had the lesson with about the plan of salvation and how she really liked it. so we passed by this last friday to talk with her some more but she said she was really busy and couldn`t talk with us. so i was kinda bummed but we just invited her to church and said it would be awesome if she could go. she said she`d do everything possible to go, and we left. so now it`s sunday, and i like to just hang out by the doors until the first hymn, just to see if there are any late stragglers. and yesterday that turned out to be the right thing. she showed up about 5 minutes late, and i was way excited. so we said hi, and then went and sat down. the meeting turned out really well. they talked a little bit about the temple, having hope in the world even through hard times, it was just a good meeting. so afterward i was just chatting with her, and she said she really liked the meeting cause she felt she could relate to a lot of things and she really enjoyed it. and then she just started crying. i know she really felt the Spirit there. so we asked if she`d like to come to the next class, and she said of course. so we went, and we have a class for the investigators, and today it was on the temple and family history. it was perfect! we read some cool scriptures and talked a little bit, and it was just good. we could tell that she really loves her family and that they mean a lot to her, and then she shared after that her husband had died awhile back, and had had a dream about him and he was all dressed in white. she started crying again, and she gave a really good prayer to end, thanking Heavenly Father for this feeling that she has that she`s never felt before, and for all the things she`s learned and everything, it was just awesome! plus she met a ton of old friends that she hadn`t seen for a long time in the ward so that was cool too. we`re going by this week and so hopefully we can bring the same spirit then too!

we also learned an interesting thing this week. so saturday we went to paint this building, but before the zl asked me and my comp if we wanted to know if we had changes or not. i was worried cause i thought that meant we were staying, but surprise! we`re actually both going! and they`re gonna put 2 new sisters here instead! that really was such a surprise! i had no idea why. i was talking to the zl after and he said president said it`s just cause he doesn`t want to leave my comp here...but it`s kinda sad. the area is a little cold, but we do have a couple of cool people now and i have a ton of friends here. it`ll definitely be hard to leave. but oh well, i`m excited to get to know some other places. we still don`t know where we`re going, and we won`t know til next wednesday, but he said we need to clean the house and leave good notes and stuff so the sisters have a smooth transition.

that about wraps it up though. it was a pretty good week. me and my comp still aren`t doing great, mostly just with the language and stuff, but i`m ready to get a new comp. anyway i`m glad everything is going well, i`m always happy to hear it :) i hope this week is awesome as well, and we`ll talk next week!

much love,

elder paskett