Solid week. Not much new though!

(Emailed to Friends)
Solid week.  I don't remember it being too out of the ordinary, but it's been good.

Monday - FHE.  We managed to get two families of investigators at it.  We also contacted a guy with the deepest voice I've ever heard, and his sister (30ish years old) is probably about the loudest, boldest, talker I've ever met in my life.  I was honestly having problems not getting mad at her!  sheesh.

Tuesday - Good morning.  We've got some new investigators who seem interested and teaching them is going well.  The evening went OK too.  A few member present lessons.  Not too much out of the ordinary, but it was solid.

Wednesday - I had my first baptismal interview in the morning.  I studied a lot for it and felt ready going into it.  She was a 12 year old girl.  I got her to open up and things went well.  Not too hard.  It was cool how strong the Spirit was there.  She was baptized this Saturday.  I have 3 or 4 more interviews this upcoming week.  In the evening things went OK.  Didn't have too many firm citas, so lots of walking and talking to new people.

Thursday - My first District Meeting as DL.  It went well.  At least I think it did haha.  I had them start with a prayer, their most spiritual experience in the mission to really invite the Spirit, then we talked about how to get the 15-20 investigators progressing.  Lots and lots of good ideas.  I thought at first it was going to be some secret key that we needed to do, or just working really hard, but I realized we need to be sharper missionaries.  More effective.  We set four goals for this week to do it.  Shorter lessons (30-40 minutes like PMG says).  Talk to 10 new people daily.  More direct commitment questions.  And shorter member visits to show the members we're diligently working for this.  It's been hard to implement them, but we'll see how it works on in this next week.  Then we had 4 lessons in the evening.  Good lessons.  We stopped by the crazy ladies house again.  She was nuts for a while, but then calmed down and listened to us.  She's a lawyer and knows a lot of the bible.  Really really surprised me.  The Lord taught me a lesson with that one.

Friday - Another solid morning.  The evening was just OK.  We weren't too punctual for any of our lessons and that hurt.  Basically as we set those goals, we got worse at those things.  More contacts and new people as well.  We also started talking to people in the streets and contacting between appointments to get the 10 people daily.  Found a really good one from that.

Saturday - We got lots of food this day.  Really long lesson with Ranquel and Katherine in the morning.  We went over The Family: A Proclamation to the World.  It went really well.  They said they know all of that stuff, just don't apply much of it.  We invited them to apply it and improve the marriage.  We'll see if they do their part.  Then we had tacos for lunch with Angel and his wife.  It was really good.  He's like a for-sure baptism, just needs to get married, which he has a date to get married in May.  His wife is a member too, just super inactive.  We taught them about the family too, and about examples.  Then we contacted, had habiachulas con dulce (a sweet bean drink which is weird, but good.  They eat it here for Easter) at a less actives house, and a few more lessons.  Talked to the crazy lady and deep voice man again.  They fed us Mangu and juice.  He had us sit down and just watch some NBA.  Didn't know how to handle that haha.  They also insist on calling me by my first name.  Super nuts.  Not too interested in the gospel unfortunately, just in having some friends.

Sunday - 6 (3 were our investigators) at church.  Angel's wife came to church which I count as the biggest success.  Then we had solid lessons.  The Spirit was there really good in all of them.  Lots of people with potential, we'll just see how things go.

Today - Cleaned, haircut, and went to Megocentro.  Had Taco Bell there.  It was good.  Just kind of hung out today.  It's been alright.  Wish we had a little more freedom to play on P-days, but that's alright.

I believe that's about it for this week!  This next week I'll have more interviews, an intercambio, and should be a good week.  We need to work more on working with the members.  I think that's about it though!  Love y'all tons!
Elder Potokar.

(Emailed to Family)
Wowza.  You guys had a crazy busy week!  Sounds like you had a great week!  Soccer, prom, and 3d printers!  I've got to say I was SUPER impressed by that 3D printer.  That's huge.  If they can make that available to whomever and wherever, that's going to change the world.  Really though.  That's awesome.  I bet its a few years until it's available to the general public on an affordable price.  But that's way way awesome. I'm kind of happy Garrett's getting into that type of thing.  That's super awesome.  Haha we'll have something in common!  Making a 3d printer is on my bucket list to do after my mission too.

Mom sent me Ash's prom pictures.  It looked like a really fun time.  Good group.  I recognized the Peterson girl in her group.  Good boys too which makes a world of difference.  Lydia and her bike are way cute too.  Way awesome.  Wish I could be there to see it.

The interview went well.  It wasn't as hard as I thought it'd be.  I put the prep into it beforehand and it helped a lot.  It was like 45 minutes long.  I hit a small snag with her, but it was more she didn't understand something.  It was awesome though.  I really enjoyed it.  I've got 2 or 3 more coming up this week, so I'm going to have lots of experience doing them!

District meeting went really well.  The ideas took up more time than I expected.  We didn't have time to go over their areas.  Hopefully the goals we implemented were actually done.  We have lots of people who just need to come to church to be progressing.  Super frustrating.  We really need to find families and use the members more to be able to do this.  Elder Romero sat in on our district meeting and he seemed super impressed.  He wants a copy of the list of stuff we're going to apply.  So that's really cool too.

We had 40 lessons for the week too.  Only 5 with member though so we need to work on that a lot.

I've been a LOT more happy with Elder Solis.  He's very very upbeat and cracks a lot of jokes.  I've been very serious for a long time so I've enjoyed that. We speak a ton of English.  It's a lot easier to crack jokes in English.  I probably speak more Spanish between us two than he does.  I'm going to set a goal with him to at least speak Spanish in the street.

Investigators are coming along.  Slowly, but surely.  Not too many progressing really.  It's super hard to get people to come to church consistently.  They'll usually come once or twice and never again or just never come in the first place.  Super frustrating honestly.

(Who are you having intercambios with this week?) I think it'll be with Elder Kirk.  I'll be with him in his area to do some more interviews.

We teach a mission prep like class for the youth.  It's usually OK.  Nothing too special.  I don't know the members all that well, so that's why we haven’t been leaving with too many of them.  That's something we're really missing to get the 15-20 investigators progressing too.  Elder Solis had to give a last minute talk in sacrament this week too.  Too nuts.  I got off the hook, probably cuz of my Spanish haha.

I also had a 12 year old girl tell me I'm pretty like 4 times.  Haha it kinda cracked me up.  It was more because my eyes are blue.  Dominicans are crazy for colored eyes. It was funny.  I just kind of ignored it and kept talking to her and her friends.  Invited them to church, but they flaked.  Didn't surprise me at all haha.

Yesterday we also visited the first counselor's family.  They have 4 kids, all under 9 years old.  One of their little girls is 5, and was in a pink dress.  She was doing the same twirly thing Lydia would do (and probably does.)  She was a lot more open than Lydia is with strangers though.  I played around with her a bunch.  She was way cute.

I know the Spanish now but just lack the accent.  Majorly lack the accent.  The crazy lady we found this week made fun of my accent.  That hurt a bit.

(Glad to hear you talking to new people. Sometimes that is all it takes is to say hi to someone on the street. That used to be out of your comfort zone. Does it bother you now?) Maybe it's because of the tag, but it doesn't bother me at all now.  It's something normal here too, so people will talk to ya like it's no big deal which is awesome. This is a trait I'm going to try to get to stick.  To be able to talk to whoever fearlessly.  Something I want to keep with me forever.

(Does the DR celebrate St Patrick’s Day?) I haven't heard anything about St. Patrick’s Day here.  I honestly forgot that that holiday existed haha.

I weighed myself this week and I weighted 175.  Up 10 pounds since last time.  Not sure if that was right, but oh well.  We'll say those 10 are muscle from working out ;) haha I don't think all of it is though!

I miss soccer a lot.  Megocentro has an indoor cage thing where they play that I saw for the first time today, and oh how I wanted to play!  It looked awesome.  Sometime I'll play there.  It's been way way way too long since I’ve played a really good game of soccer.

Tampico comes in pouches for 5 pesos.  They sell water like that too, but I find that really sketchy.

The food picture is the one I ate with Angel.  It was super super good. Best meal I've had in a long time.

That's a normal taxi here haha.  Elder Solis has some better pictures of it.  Basically all the taxis here really shouldn't be on the road.

The one of the four of us is me and elder Solis, and on the left Edward, the returned missionary from Mexico.  The first one with the taller guy is Robert, our investigator.  And the other one is with Hermana Mercedez less active son.

There’s some Dominicans screaming here right now.  The DR is nuts haha.

I think that's about all for the week.  Not too much to say! Let me know if you have more questions.
Love you tons!  Love you tons!
Elder Easton Potokar.

Potokar, Robert, & Solis

Solis, Potokar, & Sebastian