Another Week Down! Probably the Quickest One Yet!

(Emailed to Friends)
I´m going to do a quick play by play for this week.  We´ll see how it goes.  Here we go.

First off on Tuesday.  We had a really cool lesson with the Rhohas family.  They have an 8, 12, and 14 year old boy.  Lots of questions which was cool.  We'll see if they were interested in the message or just us next time.  See if they read our pamphlets or not.  I felt like part of the family though.  I really enjoyed that lesson.

Wednesday.  More contacting.  Not my favorite thing in the world.  A few other lessons.  One really cool one with Paula, one of the recent converts.  She's got a hard life.  Her husband works night shifts in a water factory alone.  Super dangerous.  She used to go with him (they'd read scriptures together during it), but can't now.  Her daughter in law bailed and just left her grandson to live with Paula and took the other grandson to live with her. Horrible.  I've never heard her complain about it though.  And she was very faithful about the whole thing.  Really an example for me.

Thursday.  We were teaching a family for the first time.  When we prayed to leave, this probably 11 year old kid (Christopher) asked me to pray for his eyesight.  He's had some problems with them for a lot of his life.  We should have blessed him, but it totally slipped my mind.  I've been praying we'll get another chance to talk to him.  Then we taught Nicolas's family, the family Dilone.  We taught his whole family.  His wife in the past has usually been pretty skeptical of us.  She showed us that she's read the two pamphlets we gave her (and read all the scriptures and actually wrote all the answers to them.  That's never happened before!).  At the end of the lesson we asked them if they've been praying if our message is true.  Her and Nicolas both said yes and said they've gotten an answer!  Ahh!  So crazy awesome.  She said she didn't think it was possible, but it happened.  We're going to give them a baptismal date this week, along with their 15 year old daughter.  So awesome!  They just aren't married so we've got to work on that.

Friday.  Normal lessons for most of the day.  We taught the familia Frias that night.  The mom and Olvida, their probably 20 year old daughter.  They both said they've received answers to their prayers too!  Ahhh!  I believe that their dad and another sister already have as well.  Probably going to give them baptismal dates this week too.

Saturday.  English class flopped this week.  We had to have it earlier and it rained (Dominicans never go out in the rain because they think they'll get sick. And they do really easy for some reason) so only like 7 people showed up.  They were like all our investigators though so that's cool.  Then the other Elders had two baptisms.  One 9 year old and one 10 year old I believe.  When they went to do the baptism someone had drained the font!  We had to wait for the font to fill and used another water spigot and garbage cans to fill it up faster.  Definitely a memory I'll never forget.  After Elder Romero and I gave a quick lesson.  There was probably about 20 people there.

Sunday.  Ward Conference.  I said the opening prayer.  The mom and Olvida of the familia Frias were there.  Awesome.  Their dad is going to change his work starting in January so he can come and I think the other sister will come next week.  Nicolas's family wasn't there though.  I don't know where they were at.  We haven't been able to get a hold of them so I think they're out of town.  About it for Sunday.

Today.  Lazy lazy day.  Cleaned a bit.  Slept some.  Studied some.  Wrote some letters.  Bought it. (He meant "that’s about it".)  Fun fun.

A few other thoughts for the week.

One night we were cooking eggs and ran out of gas.  Like 10 at night.  We called Nicolas and he came, took our gas and went and bought gas for us!  We paid him of course, but still way awesome.

I can roll my R's now!!!! I don't know if I said this before or not.  Quite the miracle in my opinion.  I put it to lots of people praying for me and the language.

Finally got the conference Ensign.  Woot!  Read a lot of it already.  Excited I get to read Priesthood conference finally.

Saw a guy in a Jazz hat.  What's up?

So it's really hot here, so there's a lot of guys without shirts.  Or they'll fold their shirts in half so only their stomach is poking out.  Anyways I saw a guy without a shirt and he had shaved a cross in his chest hair haha.  Made me laugh a ton...

All three of my baptisms here were at the baptism this week.  I thought that was pretty awesome.  That they are all still active and all that.  Pretty cool.

That's about all for this week!  Enjoy your week!  And Thanksgiving!  I think Thanksgiving is this week at least...
Love you all!  Elder Easton Potokar.

(Emailed to Family)
(We am assuming you can skype on Christmas. Are you going to need a microphone and headphones?) Some of the internet centers have headphones and mics.  Just depends.  We went to a different one this week and it's a ton faster.  And cleaner.  Windows XP but a ton better.  Just saw an email dialog pop up and we've got 100 megabytes per second.  Way awesome.  I think we'll come here next week.  Oh and how's the new internet been at home?

(Is your conference an Ensign or a Liahona?) Conference is a Liahona, but the conference edition is exactly the same as an Ensign.  I've noticed with some of the other conference editions we have.

(What do you mean you “bought it” when you talked about p-day today?) I meant about it.  Like about it.  Haha just spelt it wrong.  My English is slowly deserting me and it scares me haha.

(Your food looks good! You figured out the French fry dish!) French fry dish is Yaroa.  Way good.

(Fieldings’ called and asked if we sent a water bottle/purifier with you. Did they give you one in the MTC, we had read that they would?)  They gave me one with a filter, but I hardly use it.  Maybe I'll use it if I'm in more of a fieldsy area.  Because when we're on the street there's nowhere to fill it up, like there's not drinking fountains here!  So we just buy Dasani’s.

Tell Grandma thanks!  We're set for Thanksgiving now.  And tell Harrops thanks too.  She sent me a small Christmas book (Wise Men and Women Still Seek Him) with money in it.  I have to look into changing the money.

Ask the Elder from Portland if he knows a Jeremy Hodges.  Elder Hodges was in the MTC with me and is into Math and such too.  I think he got a 32 on the ACT. Smart kid as well. I know Portland is big, but I'm sure there's not a ton of Mormons.

I took my baptism pants to a washing place today.  Like a dry cleaner place in our area I found.  I tried using some of the stain remover on part that Mom gave me, but it was just smearing it around.  I figured the professionals can do better than me.  (Easton hung them over a half wall after his first baptism and it stained them.)

For future reference I can't chew gum.  Not sure if you knew that or not.  Mints can be done though.

That’s awesome.  They (Ashley & Garrett) both are a lot more into things than I was.  Good for them.  I'm jealous.  I wish I would've done more of that stuff in junior high!  Haha I do remember that. (screenprinting) I did a mean Blitz shirt.  And I cried when it got stained when Brad fought me.  Oh the memories.

A few of my pictures from last week are of us in the dark.  Our invertor hasn't been working so we've been in the dark for a few nights.

 Time for my selfish request.  Could you send me some Jazz news?  Or at least their ranking and win loss record? ... Ahh I love it.  Sounds like Snyder is doing a great job.  Lots better than Corbin did.  Thank you for sending that to me!  Way awesome.  5 and 9 isn't terrible.  Lots better than last year.  We could potentially still make the playoffs.  And the team is still learning.  They're just going to get better as the year goes on.

OK, updated Christmas list.  This is pretty much it.  Backpack.  Shirts.  SD Card connector.  (Found one here but it was like 10 bucks.  Figured you could get me one for cheaper) pants.  3 ring binder.  Body spray. Maybe s'mores stuff?

I set up a scripture marking system for my whole mission in my study scriptures this week.  That's what I have with all the little post it notes in my picture.  Has room to expand and change easily if needed too.  I plan on adding more topics as time goes on.

The scripture study books look amazing.  I really want to give some a try.  There's some pretty deep doctrine in them.  We also have all of the teaching of the prophet’s books in our house, but they're in Spanish.  I can more or less read them, but it doesn't has the same significance as it would in English.  And it's just a little harder to read.

Do you have any ideas on how I can see my progress better?  Sometimes I feel like I'm not progressing at all.  It gets really depressing sometimes. …Thank you for the thoughts on progress.  Months wise it's very easy to see progress.  It's just been hard to see it the last couple of weeks.  Week by week.  It was easier to see when I was progressing faster, and it's just slowed down some.  I've made it over most of the learning curve is all. I just gave some advice about some stuff.  It's crazy how much more I know now! Wow.  I know a ton more scriptures and doctrine is a lot more solid.  Really cool.  Look forward to how much more I can learn in the next year and a half.

It finally clicked in me this week.  I'm a missionary.  The feel definitely comes and goes.  I realized that if I had to leave next week I would miss this country and have some regrets.  Not regrets exactly, but along those lines.  It finally clicked that I'm a missionary.  Crazy crazy stuff!

We also have the family Sosa.  The mom is a member, but goes to a Pentecostal church with her husband now.  Their Grandma happened to be there when we were talking with them and she's still very active.  We talked to their husband and he admitted than he could be in error or we could be.  They have potential.  Have four kids probably under the age of 12.  Would be another really cool family to teach.

(Is getting married a hard process down there or expensive for Nicholas?) It's on the pricey side.  And sometimes there is paperwork problems.  Like peoples papers won't say their right age.  Weird stuff.  And then it's if they actually want to be married.  We'll see how it goes.

Lessons went pretty well this week.  We had 35 this week.  Had 37 last week and 35 week before.  We had 7 with member this week though, which is over double last week.  We had 3 last week.  So better.  The only thing we're lacking is references and baptismal dates, which hopefully we'll be able to set a bunch this week.  Only thing is it's going to be for January because they need to get married or that's when they can start coming to church.  I've been praying to have one more transfer here so I can see all of these baptisms!  Like we'll probably have like 7 in January.  And maybe Magdalena's too.  That’d make like 8.  That'd be awesome!  But it'd be nice to change areas because the members treat me like I still don't know Spanish or anything.  Which was true, but times have changed.  We’ll see how it goes.  I've been praying to stay for one more transfer, but I don't know if it'll happen.  I would hope that we stay together one more transfer.  But I might be needed elsewhere by the Lord.  Or he might need to push me more elsewhere.  I don't know.

The ward is split into our areas.  Our area is on one side of the freeway and theirs (the other set of missionaries in Easton's apartment) is on the other.  We've kinda split our area into sections for contacting.  We’ll usually hit a couple of streets every morning.  It's hard to visit people in the mornings, so that's when we do a ton of contacting, and have more lessons in the night time.

We use the BOFM a ton more.  Give BOFM chapters for commitments.  I love using it this much.  We’ve probably given out like double the number of BOFMs and got like 30 more to give out this week.  Way awesome.

That's about all.  I included most of it in my public email.  Let me know if I missed anything.  Sorry it's mostly wants.  This week went by WAY fast.  On Thursday it felt like the day before was Monday.  Weird.

Anyways, love you tons!  Miss you tons.  I had a few rough moments this week.  Reading some of your old letters helped a ton. Love you more than I can explain! Thanks for everything.  All the support, stats, etc.  I couldn't ask for more.
Elder Easton Potokar.