Transfers. Los Minas. 7 Month Mark. New Comp. Wowza!

(Emailed to Friends)
What a week it's been.  What a week, what a week.  It's been awesome, but hard.

Monday - said my goodbyes to everyone.  Got to see just about everyone I was looking for.  It was a lot harder than I expected.  Really awesome though.  I enjoyed that.  Makes me realized how much I actually do love the area.

Tuesday - Transfers.  Finished packing everything up, and left with Elder Decker at around 10 in the morning.  Our areas are like neighbors.  We're in the same zone too, Ozama, but different districts.  It was about a 30 minute car ride.  Then I got everything unpacked, and we visited some investigators and members.  This is the first time my comp has been senior comp, and I could tell he was nervous making sure he filled the time.

Wednesday - Long long long day.  We really don't have investigators.  With the exception of 3 or 4 people who are progressing, they don't really have anyone.  We contacted for 6 hours, and never really found anyone.  The area is really old from what I've heard and everyone has already talked to missionaries at one time or another.  It doesn't help we're both not very bold either.  We're going to work on it though.

Thursday - District and Zone meeting.  It was good to see Elder Decker again.  Our district is me and Elder Martinez, Elder Lanza (DL) from Honduras and his comp Elder Mokofisi from US, Elder Kirk from Utah and Elder Guigni from the DR.  They're all really loud and we're not.  We don't quite fit in with the district, but we'll get there.  We had a better day after that.  Things were a lot better.  We passed by a contacts house three times and she had her grandkids lie and tell us she wasn't there all three times haha.

Friday - Long day.  We bought food in the morning, and came back early because Elder Martinez wasn't feeling too good.  We didn't leave again.  He slept all day and had a fever.  I cleaned, studied, slept, studied, snacked, and just chilled all day.  Really really boring.  I tried to stay busy so I didn't go stir crazy.

Saturday - He wasn't feeling good in the morning either so we can home early.  Had a decent night, although lots of lessons fell.  I met some of the more solid investigators so that was good.

Sunday - We had a conference for the Caribbean in the stake center.  Elder Wilford A Anderson of the Seventy spoke (in Spanish), Sister Ocarson spoke (in English), Jeffrey R Holland spoke (started in Spanish, then said his Spanish was horrible and it was in English.  Bore his testimony in Spanish though which was awesome) and Boyd K Packer  (started in Spanish, but 90 percent in English).  Super good.  It was broadcast from Utah to all the Caribbean.  After that we walked a ton.  We worked hard, but not very smart.  Lots of lessons fell again.  That's the growing pains of trying to find investigators.

Today - Cleaned.  About it.

Other thoughts from the week -

The area is really cool.  Super calm and awesome.  More like Utah.  It reminds me of Granite Flats if any of you have seen that.  The ward is strong too and really supports the missionaries.  They have like 20 YW and 3 YM.  Weird and kind of sketchy. Sometimes I feel like I need more noise here.  Like it's way too quiet and something needs to happen.  Guess I've gotten used to the noise.  I suppose this is what it'd be like to be a missionary in the states.

Elder Martinez.  From Panama.  Good missionary.  Super quiet.  The house is kind of boring because of that, but he's starting to open up.  Very analytical and smart. His family found the church when he was 5.  Good guy, and he'll work hard with me. The whole ward, area and missionaries feel sleepy.  Like it's not quite awake.  I want to change that.

The house is nice too.  A little dirty, but not too bad.  Little by little I'm going to get it spotless.  Pretty much everything works too.  Elder Cook, who lived here before, is loaded and bought tons of stuff for the house.  There's a brand new monopoly, a huge speaker system, and tons of candy.  Pretty awesome.

One of my MTC teachers lives in our ward and we talked to him the other day.  Hermano Rodriquez, tall skinny guy.  Really awesome to see him again.

3 talks that I read this week that you guys should look up

A living testimony - Henry B Eyring
Bring Souls unto Me - L. Tom Perry
The lesson is Inside the Learner - Russell T. Osguthorpe

I believe that's about all for the week! Lots of work to be done here, so wish me luck!  Have a great week!
Love, Elder Easton Potokar.

(Emailed to Family)
Wow.  Lots happened this week!  I´m glad that the stake dance turned out so well!  Those were always terrible when I went haha.  I bet the dress up standard helped a lot.  Helped make it feel more real. It looked awesome, so I’m glad that one turned out well.

We didn't have too many roaches, but I'd occasionally see a few.  The mission just has that done every couple of months.  It was the second time that they had done it since I had been there.

It was super super hard saying goodbye.  I never expected that in a million years.  It was a good feeling though.  Weird, but good.

Hermana Baez

Starling & Angel Gomez

Chaiane Castro & Odry Galvez

Hermana Paula

The Nicolas Dilone Family

I have way too much crap!  I forget a few things too, but called and Elder Pawn said he's sending it to me through the mission mail.  I should get them this Thursday.


We only speak Spanish.  No English.  Makes me really happy.  My Spanish is going to improve A TON.  I can feel it coming.  Same exercising as before.  I don't think he exercises as much as before.  No soccer.  I've talked to him about it so we'll see if we'll do it as a district sometime.

Nothing like Vila Mella at all.  This area is very calm and safe.  I was talking to Elder Martinez about it and they could really put sisters in here.  It's not too big, and really nice.  The people are tougher, but the area is nice.  Forgot to mention there's also two parks in our area.  They're pretty cool.  Like US parks, but in the middle of a neighborhood.  And smaller.  There's tons of basketball hoops in the streets with kids playing.  Not tons of people in the park.  I'd love to go to a park on one pday.  We'll see how it goes.

It's even been cool the last couple of days.  Lots of rain and I even had goose bumps.  The coldest it's been since I've been here.  Felt great.  Not sure if it was really cold, or if I'm just used to it.  That street completely flooded.  Look at the times in the pictures too.  In two hours it was back to normal.  It's been chilly here because of that.  Well chilly-ish.  It's definitely not as hot here as in Villa Mella.

   
I definitely haven't gotten cold at night , but I've slept without the fan a few times.  It's usually not too bad at night.  One of our investigator lives on a hill close to the river.  We go up on a hill and I can see over the river and a bridge and everything.  Super cool.  It's on my bucket list to get a picture of it.

We had the Caribbean conference that I talked about in my general email.  It was really awesome.  So I still don't know all the ward yet and haven't been in the church.  Sheesh.  Wasn’t very good timing for that one. The conference was at the stake center, so I've really only walked by the ward building and almost went in one day.  It looks pretty nice.  We'll see on this Sunday I guess.

I don’t' know how close we are to other missionaries.  No idea.  I've met a good amount of the members.  There's some really awesome ones and I plan on doing the every member a missionary plan that El Eden used with them.  I think we can really use the members to help us find people to teach here.

We're struggling, but getting through it.  I have this image of what I want the area to be, and it's not to that point yet, and it frustrates me sometimes.  I've got to be patient with it. I think that’s about it.  If you have any ideas on how to find investigators let me know.   We're obviously new haha.

I've cleaned quite a bit today.  Not that it was dirty, but just definitely could've been better.  I'm going to do a deeper clean next Monday.  The fridge doesn't work so hot.  We need to call the office to fix it.  The freezer works, but not the fridge.  It's definitely a problem.

We've never refrigerated eggs here.  They sell them off the street and even in the stores they often aren't refrigerated.  I have no idea why.  The milk isn't refrigerated until it's opened either.  Super weird.

Elder Martinez knows how to cook a lot more than me, and I think he's a little wary of my cooking haha.  I’ve done German pancakes, pancakes, tried to do rice, and destroyed some grilled cheese (in a bad way haha).  It's been even cooking wise though. I plan on trying to learn a bunch from him.

An investigator here gave that to me.
I mentioned I know how to do it,
 and he gave it to me.  Pretty awesome.

Also that's awesome you guys got my Christmas letter!  I think there should be 2 or 3 more of them though haha... That's a bummer that haven't been making it there.  Really bothers me.  I think the stuff is individually wrapped inside of the envelopes.  Hopefully with names still on them.  Everyone has a two or three gifts. They are only like 2 months late! I have no idea who would've put all of those on (extra stamps).  Three nephites maybe? Mom sent me the picture of it.  Way cool.  Somebody's got my back.  It looks like it needed a ton more stamps than I put on it.  Oops! Haha.


Fun fact - I think Trevor has the same side bag I used to have from looking at his pictures.

Love and miss you millions!
Elder Easton Potokar.