The Weeks are Flying! About an average as a week as you can get.

(Emailed to Friends)
Here we go.  Let’s see what went down this week!

Monday - Few normal lessons that night.  Nothing too exciting.

Tuesday - intercambios with Elder Stephens.  It was fantastic.  We had 10 lessons that day.  Felt really solid.  I enjoyed it a lot.  He seemed impressed that I did as well as I did in only 6 months.  So that's pretty awesome.  I really enjoyed it.  It was fun for something different.

Wednesday - Contacting in the morning.  We had the English class, but it was TERRIBLE.  Only 2 people showed up and I had to teach it alone.  Super boring, and lame.  We also had a cool lesson with Rochelli (one of our fechas) about the doctrine of Christ.  We had a red soda and put Clorox in it and it turned clear.  Her eyes were huge.  I know that's something she'll never forget, so that was really good.

Thursday.  District Meeting.  I got a letter from the bishopric and the Halls, so shoutout to them!  It was awesome.  Getting letters is the best.  Then we had normal lessons after that and found a less active member in the streets.  Really good stuff.

Friday - I had intercambios with Elder Decker and in his area.  It was nice to not have to worry about where I'm going or what I'm going to do for a day.  It was a rough day though.  Lots of citas fell through and we walked a ton.  Lots of the people we taught were super distracted too.  Everyone seemed to have trouble focusing.  Some were distracted by my blue eyes which really weirded me out.

Saturday - I continued intercambios with Elder Decker in the morning.  Somehow we found this guy who Elder Decker talked to a few weeks ago and he showed us where he lived.  It was really cool.  His name is Manolo. A little bit of a miracle that we found him.  English class later which was really boring.  The English class isn't doing much good, we aren't finding anyone through it.  We need to change it up somehow.

Sunday - 8 investigators in church!! Ahh!  So nuts.  Francis and Nicolas Dilone (and their 4 year old daughter), Carolina and Rochelli, Nicole, Mon, and 2 people members brought.  That's been the most I've ever had in sacrament.  Really really awesome.  Made my day.  The Lord really blessed us.  Then we visited a member family with the bishop.  We taught them the "everything member a missionary" plan the bishop has.  They're going to start inviting their friends and family to come to church, family nights, etc and later invite them to talk to us.  Really effective way to find people.   We also visited Paula and Victor with them.  They're struggling.  They have lots of trials going on right now.  It hurts to see everything they have to go through.  Then we added up our numbers for the week!  We had 42 lessons, which is a high for me for a week.  Another really awesome thing.

Monday - P-day!  Cleaned, ate, and that's about it.  It's going to end at 3 today, since we're going to lose preaching time on Wednesday to go to the temple.  Kind of stinks, but the temple is definitely worth it!

I think that's about all for this week.  It's been good!  Not too exciting, but good.  Lots of people are progressing now.  A really successful week!

Love you all tons!
Elder Easton Potokar.

(Emailed to Family)
Sounds like you had an awesome week!  Sometimes the most uneventful ones are the best ones.

I love the temple. I've already set a goal to try and go every week when I get back from my mission. That was something I really really loved about the MTC was getting to do that weekly.

That's amazing with the blind lady too.  President Cornish, of the seventy and president of the Caribbean, has a special son who's probably around 30.  He's a temple worker as well!  He was on the other side of the veil when I did a session.  It was really awesome.  I really enjoyed it that day, just made it extra special.

Few things from the week.

This morning I walked by the bathroom and Elder Romero was brushing his teeth, with his shirt on, tie on, hair done, all ready to go.  Except he wasn't wearing pants.  I thought that was pretty funny haha.

When I did intercambios with Elder Decker, lots of girls stared at me and my blue eyes.  Really creepy.

My Spanish has gone downhill a bit this week.  A few people have told me they had more trouble understanding me this week.  I think it's because I talked a lot of English in my intercambios.  I need to work on it harder this week.  I studied a bit more this week, but still not a ton.

Paula and Victor are struggling.  He lost his job, and she's been in the hospital, and they are basically less active.  We gave her a Priesthood blessing yesterday.  It's really rough for them though.

I think Rochelli and Carolina are still good for the 24th.  We'll see how it goes though.  We still have a lot to teach them and their interview will be this week.  Wish us luck.

The bishop has opened up a ton more too.  I think this is the first time in a long time he hasn't had completely disobedient missionaries here.  That we're actually here to work.

There's lots of people who showed up to the English class, but were just way too advanced for it and bailed.  I've thought about having like a missionary discussion or lesson, but in English with them.  These people know a ton of English, but just don't have anyone to talk too in English.  This would be playing to our strengths too, since we really don't know how to teach English.  Don't have time to implement it here though, maybe in my next area.

Romero has lightened up quite a bit.  He really enjoyed splits with Elder Pawn.  He even extended them an extra morning, which kind of hurt, but no worries.  Elder Pawn really helped him out.  He opens up a lot more to Elder Pawn and has calmed down since then.  He kind of got into the depression work hard thing that I did at the start of my mission.  He's doing a lot better now though.

Transfers are in two weeks.  The 27th of January.  I'm really ready for them honestly.  I think Elder Decker is too. House is doing great.  Still doing all that together.  We're all pretty laidback so there's never much contention.  I talk to Elder Decker a lot and really enjoy that.  It's cool to be able to talk to someone about whatever.  Haven't had that until now.

Elder Pawn and Romero had a great lesson with Nicolas's family as well.  The Mom, Francis, pretty much said she has a testimony and cried a bit.  Nicolas said he needs more time to be more sure.  But they said it was an awesome lesson. I think they'll be a lot of baptisms here in the next couple of months for sure.

I'm not looking forward to leaving everyone.  I plan on dropping by my journal at a bunch of houses the next few weeks to have people write in it.  Like Lisa, maybe Paula and Victor, the Dilone family, and such.  I think it'll be cool to have them write in it. I did bring a book just for that so I'm set.  Elder Moncada and Ventura wrote in it too.

(Do you get to spend the whole day at the temple on Wednesday?) Until 2ish.  We'll eat in the cafeteria downstairs and president Corbitt will probably give us a quick message in the temple.  It's usually like the month after the mission tour and I think we'll have interviews in about another month.  I think there will be like 4 zones there with us though.  Same zones that were together for the mission tour.

(How come Paula has been in the hospital? Can the ward help them at all?) Her blood pressure has been super high I guess.  I think the ward will.  I don't really know!  That's up to the bishop more than us.  The water plant he works at flooded while he was there and he got blamed for it.  Not sure if the blame was accurately placed, but it was probably just an accident.  It was a rough job, so hopefully he can find a new one.  Reminds me of the Irvine’s situation a while ago.

(Is that Romero crashed on the bed in the pics?) That would be Pawn.  He didn’t even bother changing haha.  Sorry for the lack of pics this week, not much happened.

(The dishwasher is broken and we haven’t bought a new one yet.) That makes all 6 of us who do dishes by hand!  Crazy stuff.   Haha that means the whole family has to do dishes by hand now!  If you guys want, you could keep doing that until I get back!  Haha, but that would stink and I don't really expect you too.

I got to watch the new youth theme song.  The embark one.  It’s awesome.  I really liked it.  I really liked the start with all the new announcements from the apostles. So check out motherhood.mormon.org, I was browsing around on lds.org and found that.  It's super awesome.  I really think it's cool and is probably something the church is going to do for mother’s day.

Thank you for the advice.  It's ALWAYS appreciated.

Oh and my hair is way short.  I wish it was a bit longer, but in a few weeks it will be.  So no worries haha.

I believe that's about all!

Love you tons and miss you tons!  Enjoy your week!
Elder Easton Potokar.