27 July 2015 - Los Guaricanos (Santo Domingo)

Hullo! Alright well this week...happened.  Ugh.  It was rough.  Almost of our appointments fell through, so the majority of our lessons just kind of happened. "oh, so and so isnt here.  Lets visit this person instead!"  Alot of that...almost all.  Anyway, now you get to hear a little about our investigators!  I have very little time though, so I´ll be brief.  First, theres the good one.  Steven, or Estiven, is our main progressing investigator.  He is awesome.  He´s 15 and he and his brother and sisters actually really enjoy our lessons.  He reads everything, he has great questions and he´s just an awesome young man.  Pretty much the only reason he doesnt have a Baptismal date yet is because his parents.  His dad is chill with him getting baptized, but we´re pretty sure he and the mom only want us over there so that we´ll take there daughters to America.  Thats a very common and very annoying problem for us.

Next we have Jimmy and Jami.  Very complicated.  In short, Jimmy is a drunk bumb, theyre not married but have 3 kids and are living together...maybe.  Not real clear on that cus she might have thrown him out.

Finally for our main investigators we have Fausto and Demerris.  Fausto is a cool guy and could actually be progressing if his Girlfriend wasn´t crazy.  Demerris is a member, but they are still living together.  Every time we teach them about Chastity and stuff, Demerris just takes over and says thats its ok theyre living together as long as nothing happens. <face palm).  Any way, we took them to the temple last week and had a really great lesson despite Demerris´ best efforts.  Fausto agreed to be baptized, but we don´t have a date and we´re not really sure if he actually wants to or is just following is bullying, super controlling and (again) crazy girlfriend.  So yeah.  Theres my week.  I´ll write more if i have time, but i have tons of pictures!

Some of these are still at the MTC.

So these are from last Pday, we went to this old fort and the church, if you remember.  These are the DR founding fathers.

I have way more but not enough time! ah! Love you all.  We talked to an old couple who decided to make us stand in front of there cross to make sure we werent devils, then we talked to an old man that was convinced the world would end that day and we as missionaries are here to find the missing half of the earth and talk to dead people.  Pretty funny!

(Response to Dad's e-mail):

Sounds like a "Swell" time indeed! ;) haha But really daddy, that sounds great.  It is definately a challenge here, but Our mission here is to literally "Save the Dominican Family", and thats what I aim to do.  Even if they don´t want me to.  Too bad.  Its hard to love everyone, but I try my darndest, even when they pee at us.  Yes, that happens.  Its perfectly normal to just go at it in the street.  But yeah,  havin fun. gettin stories. :P Love ya dad!

20 July 2015 - Los Guaricanos (Santo Domingo)

Well I´ve been out almost a week and I am just exhausted. Happy, but exhuasted. So much stuff has happened this past week and a half and I don´t have near enough time to tell it all. Thus, I will summarize. I left the MTC and went to the East Mission office on tuesday. There I met president and alot of the missionaries. President Corbit is super awesome. He´s pretty intense, but also loves to joke around. He´s also super strict for which I´m grateful. My trainer´s name is Elder Bateman, so all the people here call him Elder Batman. Yeah. My trainer is Batman. hahaha Anyway, the first week was pretty messed up. I´ve already been on splits with other missionaries twice and one was on my second day. Then, on Jueves, (thursday) we had zone meeting, friday my comp had to go with one of the ZLs to do...something. He´s a district leader by the way. I got paired up with Elder Brady, the other Zone leader, and he´s totally awesome. We cleaned the baptismal faunt and fillled it because he was having a baptism that night. Then we went out and taugh some lessons. I actually end up teaching quite a bit for a greeny. Anyway, the next day was sunday, my first in the new ward, and today is Pday. No normal days yet. Crazy. We have a few investigators, several of which we are probably dropping. I won´t say names yet cus honestly I don´t remember who is who. Ok, semi up to speed. Story time. Thursday (i think) we were walking up the street and passed a sister sitting in her doorway. We said hi, then noticing that she looked pretty down, asked her if everything was ok. She said yes...then burst into tears. We asked her what was wrong and she told us to come inside. Apparently her son broke some sort of pipe in the street while playing and she doesnt have the money to fix it. She´s scared that she´ll lose everything. We shared a brief message about how much God loves her and how Christ had already suffered through all of her troubles. We ended by singing Come COme ye saints and the spirit was very strong. She called us today and asked us to swing by, so we´re going to go see what happened. Story number 2. Pday. Today was very manso, or chill. We cleaned the whole house (gross, when i first got here there were like 5 dead cockroaches in the bathtub.), then went to the touristy part of the island and just looked around for a bit. We walked through an old fort and saw the statues of the DR founding fathers. Then we walked though the first Catholic Church of the new world which was totally awesome. It kind of reminded me of Italy...a little. haha. Then we came back and played volley ball with some of the elders in our zone. I took tons of pictures....but i forgot my camera at the house. facepalm. Oh well.

And now, general information and random tidbits!

Our house is apparently pretty big, but also pretty lame compared to other houses. It has 3 bedrooms, all of which connect to a bathroom. There are 2 companionships in the house, but we only use one bathroom for...bathroom...stuff. We all get to use our rooms shower though.

I also tried my first street foods! First there was a chimi which is kind of like a dominican Hamburger, then an Impenada, which is chicken and cheese in the middle of fried dough. Both super good.

A spider had babies in one of our pans so that was fun, and i wake up everymorning with fresh mosquito bites. Sigh. I promise I´ll have tons of pics next week! Also, Dad. You should repent for sending me that picture of those chips. I didnt get lunch today. but seriously, you should send me some. Also, don´t forget to forward my emails!

Also also, have you ever tried typing on a Spanish key board? Its awful. And google says almost every word in this email is wrong. hahaha Love you all!!

Ok, i got a little more time.  Culture explanation.  The culture here is...well totally fake.  Everything is just fake fake fake.  Its all made to model america.  The clothes, the technology the signs everything.  Also, law of chastity? non existent.  Thats our main challenge.  Ive been hissed at 3 times now which means that somebody wants me...in the bad way.  When we were out tracting on my second day, this like 15 year old girl across the street started yelling at me some very not good things.  Its pretty messed, especially cus its only cus we´re white..  Also, here there arent taxis, but instead we have public cars.  This is kind of like a taxi except the car is super old and junky and they stuff as many people as possible inside.  Sometimes the car is so grody that you can see the road passing below because of all the holes in the floor.  Anyway, no I´m out of time.  Goodbye for another week dear friends and family.. I love you all.

9 July 2015 - Santo Domingo MTC

Woops! hahaha Sorry dad. That sounds quite lonely... Anyway, what a great week. Splits with the missionaries was super fun. The people here are crazy, but generally really nice. I went to like the ghetto area and we taught a few lessons. I didn't really do much except for pray, but i could understand what was happening most of the time. There are giants mounds of trash everywhere and the streets are filthy. Clothes are optional, especially when its super hot out, like it was on Friday. The streets between buildings are all twisting, tiny little alleyways. However, the people we taught were very nice and open to what we were saying. Time just flew by. I didn't get to go to my actual mission though; we were in the West. Apparently it isn't quite as congested with people there. Oh, and you know how in Ian's mission everyone had terrible housing but like a monster TV? Well here everyone has like tiny, cinder block houses held together with re-bar, but ALOT of them dress very nicely and have iPhones. Some one will be sitting in a broken plastic chair, drinking water from a can, but will be dressed in like skinny jeans and a nice shirt with some fake Ray-bans glasses. Its quite odd. But the rest of the week was still great. We watched an AMAZING talk by elder Bednar at on old Christmas MTC devotional. It was just....just awesome. I took like 2 pages of notes. We also fixed our problem with Ramon by bringing up Numbers...25...I think? And D&C 1:30? Haha by the voice of my servants it is the same..that one. haha And he accepted that and promised to keep reading and praying BUT now he says he wont pray because he has to finish the BoM first. UGH. But We'll be leaving soon so I wont be teaching him much more. We officially go out into the field on Tuesday. Its coming!! :D SO pumped. Um...lets see. What else happened. The drivers here continue to amaze me, I almost got hit by a motorcycle. There are literally no traffic laws here. When we were on splits, for the longer parts of the trip we traveled in the back of a truck. Its kind of like a taxi, but a pick up with like this rack thing in the back so you can stand up. It felt kind of like riding a horse standing up. Good times. Temple today was super great as always, but I was sad cus It was our last time. President Cornish came and spoke to us as well, so that was pretty cool. We're going out on splits again tomorrow, so wish me luck! :D

We found this massive leaf on the temple grounds. No idea where it came from.

And this is our district. haha

2 July 2015 - Dominican Republic MTC

Weeks are cruisin by. haha That sounds awesome Dad! The email list is on my Facebook page! It should be like the last post I did. A lot of people commented on it with their emails. You should just be able to see it through your Facebook if you go on my wall. Anyway, this week was pretty swell. Learning lots of Spanish and about its 15 different cases! -_- We just got 50 new missionaries in yesterday and now its packed here. They're going to have to start rearranging our schedules. Tomorrow I go on splits with the missionaries to teach real people! I'll probably just sit there and pretend to know whats happening. :P Also, lessons with our "investigator" Victor went really well! On Tuesday he agreed to be baptized! My comp and I were super pumped even though it was just play acting. In the mean time our lessons with Ramon went steadily down hill. He is stuck on Nephi killing Laban, refusing to accept it was the will of God because God commanded that we must not kill. We tried to answer his question and at some point during the lesson he said he wanted to kill us so...yeah, kind of didn't do a swell job on that one. Any advice for answering his question that won't lead to our deaths? We took some time and decorated our classroom with a whole bunch of cool quotes and scriptures in Spanish. Then one of our teachers said we should make it more personal so i made The Eye of Sauron, cut it out, made the tower around it, surrounded it in the writing from The Ring and wrote "Veo a Usted" over it. Its pretty awesome, not gonna lie. I've gotten quite a few complements. Aside from that, esta semana was the same. Its all swell and good here! No pics this week cus...well...nothing really happened...yeah. haha Love you all!

AND two quick things I just thought of. Was it Fathers day this past Sunday? If so, Happy Fathers day, whenever that was. :P Item number 2. I heard about the Supreme Court decision. That's super dumb. The entire mission was super bummed about it. Also, fun fact. Apparently the general Jamaican population hates Gay people. Our Jamaican elder was like raging about it. Love you all...still...haha