Friday, May 30, 2014

El trigésimo quinto treinta y sexta semana!

Week 35
 
Dear Everybody,

Just another super great week in the Ponderosa! It was full of drama: love, laughter, joy, sadness, regret, failure and more than all, success. Basically it was a telenovela.

A notable fact about this week was we had a very large amount of people preach to us. One day we were taught more lessons than we taught the people. It was a bit frustrating but, we just try to share the simple truths of the gospel that we can and bare testimony of the love of God for us. After that, there isn`t a whole lot more that we can do. The only time that it really affected us was one of the brothers of someone we baptized this week is very much against what we believe, even thought he very obviously doesn`t even know what we believe because he has never spoken with missionaries. He influenced the mom of Raquel, who we baptized, and she became super unpositive. We are really worried that she might influence her granddaughter, Loli, to not listen to us or go to church.

This week was super cool too because we had three people tell us they want to be baptized, with out us asking them. The only problem is that two of them have problems with a really important commandment, the law of chastity. But we should be able to resolve the problems soon, at least with one.

This weekend we had two baptisms. Raquel and Carla both got baptized. Carla got baptized on Saturday and it was super cool. You could feel the Spirit super strong and some of the investigators, relatives of Carla, that we brought were crying. At that point, Catia, who hasn`t wanted to get baptized for two months finally decided that she wanted to get baptized. It was awesome. Also, we had Elder Ford sing and play the guitar while everyone was changing, it was super good and everyone loved it. Raquel got baptized after church Sunday and it was just as awesome.

Three last things that are pretty cool: I realized that I have eaten a bunch of sopa de pata, which is cow foot soup. I also realized that I kinda like it.

We also had 160 people in church this week, 33 more than when we got here. The last was a really intense experience we had in the morning bringing people to church. We went to get a less active from his house in the morning and we found him drunk. We stood there just trying to communicate how much we love him and how we want to help him stop drinking alcohol. It was super intense and at the end my companion, Elder Gavilanes, got him to go get his alcohol and dump it out on the ground in front of us.

Well, the Lord loves me, you and all of our neighbors. That is why he gave us the Gospel, to be happy and live good lives.  For that exact reason, He wants us to share it!

Peace out,

Elder Vierkant 
                                                                                           

Week 36

Hola Everybody,

This week was pretty interesting. Monday we went to a super cool water fall. It was in the middle of nowhere and we had a cool little hike through the wilderness to get there. It was super beautiful and relaxing. We just hung out there for a while taking pictures and eating snacks

This Tuesday I went on interchanges with Elder Steenhoek, my zone leadder who is from Arizona. It was super fun. We had a pretty crazy experience too. We were walking down the street and we saw a pick up truck backing up down a hill. After a second we realized there was no one in the car except a little kid in the bed of the truck. We saw that it was heading straight for another parked car, so we ran over and grabbed some railings that were welded to the truck and I don`t know how, but we avoided hitting the parked car and we were able to stop the car. It was super intense and neither of us know exactly how it happened, but I know God used us in that moment to help some one.

Cool other little fact that I want to throw in. Alex Boye is in the "Principles of the Gospel" book singing in a congregation.

We really became better missionaries this week. We were teaching lessons a lot more clearer in less time. We really felt the difference in how the spirit can testify if you teach clearer. The investigators don´t feel as overwhelmed and they understand the message a lot better. It also builds a lot of unity in the companionship. It was really cool to see our progress.

This Sunday was just as crazy as ever. We finally got the wife of Transito to come to church after trying for all this change over six weeks. We were super elated, but right after, Rachel didn`t show up to get confirmed and we weren´t able to visit her all day because she wasn´t home. Then we went the Transito's house and his daughter and granddaughter said they want to get baptized on the 14th of the next month. Cindy is super prepared and we haven´t really even taught her. She just knows. Katia has been ready for 3 months, but until didn`t want to get baptized, so it was super cool.

Then right after we left Transito's house we went to meet someone who is going to get married and hopefully baptized. When we got there he was getting drunk with his friends. It made us super sad and it took us a bit to kick up our animo, or get animated. THEN, after that we found a less active that was having problems with alcohol, but with Gods help and our visits and his strength, he has been clean for 4 days straight. We were super happy.

From a week that you could liken unto a roller coaster...

Peace out,

Elder Vierkant










Tuesday, May 13, 2014

El trigésimo tercer y trigésimo cuarto semanas!

Week 33

¿Què tal?

In summary, this week was great. First of all, we were able to finally meet the dad of a little girl that we are teaching with an inactive mom. He is a little bit hard to find but we were lucky because he was going to take his daughter to the hospital but the doctor canceled. We asked permission to baptize his daughter, when she is prepared and he said "yes." Now the only obstacle is to get the mom to church. Quick little story about this family, the dad tricked the mom into marrying him by bringing a lawyer that they were friends with and two witnesses who were friends to make the marriage legal. She thought she was taking out some other random legal document.

Anyways, we had interchanges this Saturday and I went with another Elder in my district to his area. He is newish in his area and we just walked around completely lost all day talking to the most nuts people. I didn`t stop laughing all day because it was just so ridiculous. I drank some coconut water straight from the coconut, we had a huge tropical storm. We also met some people that are from Italy and have Italian accents in Spanish. They also just speak Italian to each other which is awesome.

Saturday, Elder Larsen, one of the assistant's to the president and Elder Steenhoek, one of  zone leaders came to our area to help us with one of the investigators. I went with Elder Larsen to teach The Rivera family. It was an incredible experience. Elder Larsen really brought the spirit to the lesson and taught in a way that was super easy to understand with awesome questions. It just blew me away. The family could really feel it too and Carla said she would get baptized the 17th, which is super awesome because she had been saying no to baptism in general.

This Sunday we had Veronica, Carla and Daniela in church. Raquel wasn`t able to make it to church because she was at a funeral thing all night. After church we taught Daniela, who wants to get baptized, we just need her moms signature. We then had a mission correlation meeting that ended up taking two hours and we taught the Rivera family with Hermano Cook (His grandpa is from Wyoming.) All  in all, it was a really good week.

Just do it,

Elder Vierkant

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Week 34 

Querido Todos,

This week was super awesome. The first thing I want to say Is " Happy Mothers day" To all the mothers. It was super awesome talking to the family through video and I hope they enjoyed talking with me. Sorry that I forgot English.

Yester day we had a baptism! It was super awesome. Veronica is just the coolest lady every and she has been super faithful from the moment I met her. I hope she can always remember her baptism because it is the marking point on her journey to return to live with her Heavenly Father in happiness.

I would also like to congratulate Transito, he got the Aaronic priest hood this Sunday and should be baptizing his daughter this next Saturday, if all goes as planned. Transito is all the missionaries favorite guy. She is such a stud. He always wants to learn, is always reading and wants to share and answer questions and a super happy guy.

We celebrated Mothers day with the Rivera Family yesterday, We basically had to because all our investigators who are all family were there. We met the cutest little kids in the world, less my family. We had carne asada and cake and it was just super awesome.

Paz hacia fuera!

Elder Vierkant