February 25, 2013

hey mom!

i´m glad you finally got my letters! i´m pretty sure i gave them to the zone leaders before christmas, but sometimes they don´t take them to the city for a long time so it´s anyone´s guess as to when they actually left, but at least they got there, if maybe only a little late! :) i´m also glad to hear it´s still snowing. i really miss the snow and being cold haha. oh well, only about 8-10 months left! :)

well, this was a much better week. i´ll start with that couple that got baptized. honestly they´re struggling a little bit. not cause they don´t like anything of the church, but i think they´re honestly just racist and don´t like me. it´s hard, like i still want to help them, but i can´t really. we´ve gone by a few times and they always say they´re busy or sick or something. i kinda was afraid of that as we were teaching them, that they just wanted us to help them get married and then ditch us, cause whenever we talked about the church and stuff she was always just like oh ok, that´s nice, but then when we talked about marriage she would get all happy and animated and stuff, so it was kinda weird. i don´t know, i guess only time will tell, so we´ll see.

so you assumed correctly, i´m still in the same area, but thank goodness with a new companion. i´m actually training a newbie fresh from the mtc, and he only had 2 weeks there so he´s super new. his name is elder villanueva from peru, and things are so much better than they have been. he actually wants to work and has ideas and talks to me and it´s just tons better. it´s definitely not the perfect companionship and it still has it´s difficulties, but it´s better. it makes me think about when i was getting trained, so i´m trying to have patience. i know when i was getting trained i couldn´t speak very well, but i still had ideas every once in awhile and wanted to help more, and would maybe get mad when my trainer just did everything, so i´m trying to be aware of that. he kinda thinks he knows everything and knows what we should do, even tells me that taking this one street would be faster even though he´s only been in the area for 3 days, but oh well. at least we´re out in the street and we´re teaching so i´m happy. honestly i wasted a lot of time with my last comp and it was hard, but i´m also district leader so we put a super high goal as a district for baptisms so we´re gonna work hard to get it. we actually have quite a few people to teach, which honestly makes life harder cause we always have to be running from one place to another and visiting everyone and thinking about their needs and everything, so it´s harder, but i feel better. just this last week feels like i´ve worked more than i did the last 8. it was basically just an average area last change, but if all my weeks this change are like this last one, i feel like this could become one of my favorite areas. like i feel like my relation with the members just soared, people give us references, we have all kinds of people to teach, it´s just awesome. i couldn´t tell you why, but it´s so much better. i really think this is gonna be a sick change :)

this morning we went to this place called Chicá, and it was just like this mountain range around here, and it was actually really cool. you could see super far, and it was fun to just walk around and explore. plus it was actually kinda cold, and with the nice breeze it was quite pleasant :) we climbed high enough to be in the clouds and it was sweet. i would send some pictures, but i seem to have lost the cord to connect my camera to the computer...i am just super bad at hanging on the things haha, i don´t know what my deal is.

ooh i almost forgot, there was one pretty bad thing that happened this week. so the day of changes my eye was really bugging me, and i tried washing my contact and everything but it just wouldn´t go away. finally i had to just take it out and throw it away, so i spent the rest of the day with just one contact, which i dont know if that´s bad, but oh well haha. so the next day comes, and i wake up and my eye was like stuck shut with this sticky crap, and i was like freaking out cause i had no idea what it was, so i called the nurse and she told me for sure it was pink eye. so that was great haha. not sure where it came from, but i had to go buy some antibiotic eyedrops, and then i couldn´t wear my contacts all week cause it just hurt super bad. it was hard leaving the house cause they sun would just torch it, but finally sunday morning it was better and i finally put my contacts in and today it´s about 98%. the nurse told me to never wear contacts again, but i haven´t had any problems for 15 months, and i won´t use my glasses, so i´ll tough it out haha.

but yeah that´s about how my week went. definitely a lot better, and i´m super excited for this change. i think we could see a ton of success. so again thanks to all for your prayers and support, i really feel it. hope even though it sounds like a quiet week it´ll be good, and we´ll talk soon!

much love,

elder paskett

February 18, 2013

hey mom!

wow, i really don`t know where to start this time either. i just spent a good while reading all the emails and support and advice everyone sent me, and i`m sorry i don`t have time to reply to them all, but just know that i did read them and appreciated every single one. i have the best family in the world! i may have even teared up a little bit, you guys got me to cry so well done :) i do feel the support and prayers of everyone, and i feel super blessed knowing that i do get thought of, cause sometimes i have felt alone. and i am amazed at how many understand. really all the wisdom that was shared amazed me, and i hope to one day be the same. i know the Lord understands our trials, and understands every single pain. uncle mark shared my favorite scripture, which is alma 7:14-16. forever i just thought that the atonement was only for our sins and that was it. but i`ve come to realize that it was a whole lot more. that because He suffered for us, he understands every pain, affliction and temptation that we might ever have, and so even when we feel like there`s no one in the world that understands exactly what we`re going through, maybe there`s no human being, but He does, and so he can provide us personal help because he understands perfectly. i`ve been really caught up in the word "hope" lately, and i`m always hoping for better things, and i think they`ve come.

so last night we got a call from our zone leaders to let us know about changes this week. we have them tomorrow, and like i figured my comp is leaving, and i`m gonna be training. i don`t know who it is or anything else other than that, but i`m really excited. honestly i`m a little worried too cause i want to make sure i do a good job and train him right and make sure he learns the right things and has an awesome mission, but i think we`ll be good cause usually the newbies don`t know how to be "ponchera," so we`ll just work hard. when he told me that i really got pretty pumped, and i have really high hopes for this change. we honestly don`t have too many to teach right now, cause i can`t really say that we`ve been looking, so i imagine it may be a slow week or two just looking for people and knocking on doors, but i think it`ll be good.

we were super blessed with 2 baptisms on saturday too. honestly, upon reading all those emails, i know that they only happened with the prayers and support of everyone else. so on friday they got married. it was a pretty boring ceremony. we all were just sitting in this room, and the judge read some things from this book, talked a little bit about marriage, shared a few pieces of advice, asked them the typical "do you take this person to be your lawfully wedded husband" and what not, and that was it. we snapped a few pictures and we left. saturday was their baptism then, and of course everyone showed up late. we wanted to start at 2, but it was more at like 3:30 haha. we were in a little bit of a rush cause the stake conference was supposed to start at 4, so we had to go through it kinda fast. everything was fine, until the lady got in the water. i guess she has a fear of water, and when my comp did the prayer and started to lower her, she would just resist, go half way, and then like freak out and come back up. we tried like 8 times, but she just couldn`t do it. so she left and we did her husband, and he did it fine, but she still couldn`t, so her and my comp finally just kneeled in the water so it was up to her chin anyway, and he still had to kinda push her down haha, but she finally did it. they both seemed happy afterward so that was good. it was good to see some fruits after all the labor that has happened.

sunday was pretty cool too. elder amado actually came again and talked to the stake, and i really enjoy when he speaks. he`s very straight forward and i like that. it was a good conference. my comp just spent the day saying bye to people, so it was a quiet day. and now i`m here with my zone just emailing. so it was a tough change, but it`s done. honestly i still feel like i failed somewhere, but i guess i just gotta move on. i have high hopes for this week. again thank you so much to everyone for all the emails and prayers and support. they really are felt, and i know i couldn`t do this without them. and again sorry i can`t reply to everyone, but i appreciate them all. thanks again, i hope everyone has an awesome week, and we`ll talk to you soon!

much love,

elder paskett

February 11, 2013

hey mom!

man not sure where to start. i´ve had a lot of things on my mind lately. with my hammock, i was thinking about calling the elders that are on my island and seeing if they could maybe get me another one, i mean i could find one here but just the fact that it comes from san blas makes it cooler :) yeah i felt bad about losing my shoes so i think that´s why i never told you haha. but i bought some other ones not too long after and they´ve held up fine ever since. i did think of one request for the package. call me paranoid but i think my teeth might be moving. it´s not big, but i was gonna see if i still had my retainer. i don´t know if i put it in that box or not, and if it´s not there then no big deal, but if you could maybe look for it that would be great :)

well let´s start with that family. so on wednesday or thursday we got a call saying that there had been a date written bad, so we had to go get that resolved, and we did and turned all the papers in and everthing, and on friday the "bride" went over and got the date of the marriage, and it´s for this coming friday. so they´ll miss valentines day by one day but oh well haha. everything is going pretty well with them. we´ll teach the last few things this week and hopefully have the interview on friday and the baptism on saturday. the only problem is that we have stake conference this weekend, so it´s gonna be a little tough planning around that, but hopefully all goes well. something kind of not so good happened yesterday with them though. so we were waiting in the doors before church and whatnot, and the member came that always goes to pick them up, but they weren´t with her. after talking with her a little bit, i found out that apparently the husband is pretty racist and really doesn´t like gringos, and he didn´t want to come to church because during the week we went by to teach them, and at the end of the lesson i wanted him to do the prayer, and he didn´t really want to but i kinda pushed a little bit cause he had never prayed and i knew it would be good for him, so he finally did it, but i guess that just drove him up the wall. and like one day we were on divisions and i was with another gringo and we passed by and he also really didn´t like that, so that was a nice soccer punch to the gutt haha. now i don´t really know how to act around him, and it just super depressed me during church. with all the other problems that i had during the week that i´ll explain, i was just wondering what good i was doing and why i was even there. that i was doing nothing and there was no point and i was just failing and alone. they finally did end up coming to church because the grandson told him that he really wanted him to go and he´s gonna come by every sunday to get him, so that was good. but it was super hard. i just felt like nothing was going right and thoughts like "why would i ever want to extend if i have weeks like this" came in and it was just tough. how i am supposed to love someone that hates me? she went on to explain that oftentimes the men have problems with gringos, and she didn´t really say why, but that they just do. all the women are fine with them, for whatever reason, but the men no. and especially since i have a comp that likes to talk a lot, and i´m not one to push my way into a conversation so they take that as i´m boring or too good for them or whatever. so yeah it was kind of a pretty negative experience on sunday.

that same day that we got the phone call to fix that wrong date, on the way back, i guess my comp got really mad again, and when i got to the house i find that he wasn´t behind me, and i didn´t know where he was. i decided to wait for a bit, and he came in like 5 minutes later with food, so he had gone to the little store to get food without telling me or anything. i asked him why he did that, and he played dumb for a while and pretended like he didn´t know what i was talking about, but then i got pretty mad. i´m sorry but this time i didn´t even try to be nice cause that was just too much. i´ll spare you the details, but the mission manual says that we´re supposed to call president if something like that happens, i figured that was a petty thing to call him about, but i needed help so i just called our district leader. he didn´t really say much to me, but asked to talk to my comp and they talked for 5 minutes and yeah. i don´t know what went down, but i was just super frustrated. i feel like whatever test i was given with this comp i failed, and i just wasted 8 weeks. i agree a lot with what dad said. i was thinking about "feeling the Spirit," and it made me think that maybe he does feel the Spirit, because like before the mission i felt it, and i went swimming and flirted with girls and slept in and stuff, but i had never received revelation for another person or tried to make them feel it and bring it to their house, and it seems to me that that´s the difference. these things are true, and he can feel that, but if we´re not obedient we can´t receive revelation for other people and can´t bring it to their house, so they´ll never know it´s true. i could be wrong, i mean before it wasn´t a "sin" to sleep in like it is now, but that´s kinda how i see it.

one good thing did happen this week though. so i had the strongest craving for french toast, cause i hadn´t had it since the mtc, and so we went over to our cook´s house and made french toast with her. it was a success i would say. they had never had it before and they said they liked it, so that was kinda fun :) but that´s about it. honestly this was just a week of despair, it was super hard. i´ve been trying to figure out when i should go home still, but i decided i can´t decide right now. honestly if i keep having changes like this i don´t think i could extend, so i´ll have to see how the next change goes. i´ve got a feeling i´ll be going up to DL and training, so we´ll see. so sorry that´s not the best letter, this is the last week and we should have some baptisms so hopefully it´s a good one. i´m glad to hear everyone is happy at home. i´m glad you´re getting lots of snow too haha. i hope you have another great week, and we´ll talk in 8 days!

much love,

elder paskett

February 4, 2013

hey mom!

yeah that doesn´t really help me decide when i want to come home...haha. it´s just a tough decision. i still haven´t come closer to choosing cause i hear different opinions from everyone. i guess i´ll keep thinking about it. i´m not sure by what date i need to decide, so we´ll see how it goes. as far as applying goes, i really don´t know what to do. i would think that right now it doesn´t really matter too much, but i´ll look a little more into it in the summer. i´m sure it´ll take a few hours to get it all done, so yeah i´ll just have to pick a pday and work on it. ok and with the packages, i haven´t heard any other news. if you really want to you can send another one, cause it seems less likely ever day that it´s gonna come, but i´m surviving with what i have now. so i´ll leave it up to you :)

interesting about what dad said about my comp, cause i more or less did that this week. so one day just about every one of our citas fell, and just no one wanted to talk to us, and my comp was still being kinda dumb and would walk 30 steps behind me on the other side of the street, so things were just out of control and i couldn´t take it. so i just went to the house, and he came it, kinda avoided me for awhile, went to the bathroom, did whatever, and i just sat and waited for him. he finally sat down, and i said look dude we gotta talk. he asked about what, and i said you know perfectly well what. i tried to be nice about it, like not really place any blame and i shared a scripture and said things gotta change, but he just got mad and kinda ripped me apart. he listed off all these things i was doing wrong and how it was all my fault that things were bad and said some really stupid things actually, so i got mad then. i told him i wasn´t trying to attack anything, but after that i kinda let him have it. i told him he had to change and had to follow the rules and a bunch of other things, but he said he just doesn´t care. i said there´s no way we´re gonna help anyone if things are so bad between us, and we´re never gonna bring the Spirit to people´s houses if we don´t follow the rules, and he just tells me that he always feels the Spirit when he teaches, so i must have a problem since i don´t feel it. short of giving all the little details, he just said some really dumb things. we sat there in silence for a few minutes, and i asked him what needs to change then. he just asked ok what do i need to change. so i told him things he did well, but that he needed to follow a few more rules. then i asked him what i needed to change, and i accepted it, then we kinda made up a little bit, hugged it out, and we went on with the day. that was like wednesday, and until then i was just wondering why i was there, cause we weren´t doing anything. i felt bad cause we have a lot of people to teach, but we couldn´t help them as things were going. it seems after that day it kinda picked up, but things aren´t exactly good still.

because of all the changes in ages and time in the mtc and stuff, this change got changed from a 6 weeker to 9, so we don´t have changes until the 20th, so about 2 weeks. honestly this has kind of turned into one of the hardest changes in my mission. i´ve never had a comp like this, and it´s tough. this week was probably the first time i thought about going home since my first change because i just didn´t feel like i was doing anything good or right, and i couldn´t take it. so i´m just trying to endure and do what i´m supposed to, cause my comp more or less told me he won´t change. we´ll see how this week goes, but yeah it´s still a little tough.

i wanted to tell you a little bit about this one family we´re trying to help. so they come from way back when elder clarke was here, a year ago now. they´re a super cool family, and it´s really tough that they haven´t gotten baptized still. when elder clarke was here they went to the temple with president and ate in his house and everything, had heard all the lessons, gone to church and everything, but then elder clarke´s companion left and for whatever reason they just never got baptized. i guess the next elder that came with elder clarke told people he was afraid of their son and never felt the Spirit in their house and would always walk by without saying hi so they just got really turned off. and since then the elders haven´t passed by consistently and they´re mad that an elder of the church would do something like that. the weird thing is that when i was in david, for a valid reason that i don´t have the time to explain :) me and the comp that was with elder clarke that then left and so they didn´t get baptized, we went by their house and talked with them a little bit, and they ended up giving us some new church shoes for nothing. i told them that day that i would have to do something awesome for them if i ever got to come to this area, and now that i´m here i´ve gotta be true to my word. so we´re trying to work with them, and i´ve got high hopes for them :)

i do have some sad news too. so like saturday morning my comp went outside and asked me if i had taken down my hammock, cause i had put it up outside to just chill in, and i told him no, and when i went outside my hammock was gone! someone had taken it during the night! i was so mad haha, that was my blas hammock! i slept in that guy for 2 months! haha and now it´s gone...i guess i´ll need to go buy another one now, but it just won´t mean the same haha. now that means i´ve had my hammock stolen, my ipod, and a lost pair of shoes on top of that (i don´t know if i ever told you that, but i lost those running shoes we got, and i lost them like my 2nd change:) and man i´ve lost a lot of money!

but i think that more or less sums up my week. we do have some really cool people to teach right now. we´re getting this couple married so they can get baptized and everything is going great with that so that´s good. this should be a better week. i´m happy things are good at home. we´ll talk next week!

much love,

elder paskett