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

La trigésima segunda semana!

Hola!

Well, I need to be short this week, I spent most of the time sending pictures, so hopefully you enjoy. 

This week was pretty dang awesome! We had 4 investigators in the church this week, and two people have dates for when they want to get baptized. The first is Verónica, who is awesome. We teach her the commandments and she immediately obeys them, even if she has a problema with it. For example, we taught the Word of wisdom and she immediately stopped drinking coffee. She has a ton of faith! The Other is Raquel. She understands a lot more then most people that I have ever taught and she says that she feels a lot better in church and when she is talking with us. Someone in her family died (half of the neighborhood, or colonia here is family) and we taught her the Plan of Salvation. She said she felt a ton better and that affirmed my faith that our Father in Heaven has a plan for us and He wants us to be happy, so He sent His Son to teach us how to be happy, which is His góspel. He remove the obstacles in the course of returning to our Father in Heaven.

All in all, it was a great week and I love it here more and more. It is a million and five degrees here and really humid. It is starting to rain every night, which is super awesome.

Hasta entonces,

Elder Vierkant

 

I chopped some Wood, did some service putting mosquito repellent in houses to stop dengue fever, we ate food as a zone, we went to the beach, we went to some ruins and stuff too. Went to conference. This is about a fifth of what we have been doing lately.

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

La trigésimo primera semana!

Hola, ¿Que tal mis amigos?

Another week has passed in El Salvador and I am more and more convinced that the world is crazy. No, but that this last week was awesome. After writing last week, we went to some ancient ruins. They were super sweet, I will send pictures next week when I am using a computer in the stake center because the computer I am using in a cyber cafe is a bit weird.

Wednesday were changes and both my companion and I left Opico. I got an awesome new companion, Elder Gavilanes, from Ecuador. Pretty much we are awesome together and we go and kick butt. I got moved to an area called La Ponderosa 2 in Sonzacate. That name reminds me of a old western show, I don't remember the name of it, just that there was a ranch called the Ponderosa and there was a huge guy named Hoss. I love this area! The people are super nice and we have a good time. The area has a lot of positive investigators. There is the Rivera family who has some family members that were baptized and the rest are working on it. They are super cool and we always have a good time at their house. We also are teaching Veronica. Yesterday she said she wants to be baptized and we are going to work with her, hopefully sometime in May to get baptized.

This Sunday was kind of a bummer though because everyone here goes to the beach for Easter Sunday, which really doesn't make any sense to me. What day is it? Easter! What does Easter honor? Christ! What should we do? We should go to... THE BEACH! Honestly people, go to church. Any ways, I got to go, we have a P-day activity. We are going to the beach.

Mucho amor,

Elder Vierkant

La semana trigésimo!

Hola todos!

I am writing a little bit late this week because we are going to see some ruins that are not opened Mondays. A really great thing about this zone is that we always do something really cool for Preparation day.

This past week was interesting. We weren't able to talk with Edwin at all this week and he didn't come to church or any of the activities that we have. We did a lot of cool things that he just didn't come to. We play soccer in Saturday morning at the church, we teach English, there was a baptism and a wedding for the other missionaries and we had a super sweet family home evening. We just weren't able to get him to go.

Some good news was that we had another investigator and his life companion in church this week. They have been investigators for basically 10 years and their kids are baptised, but they haven't been to church our entire time here. We went to their house after church, on interchanges with the district leader, Elder Stone. We talked about what is holding them back. Basically, from what we understand, he just doesn't understand that we have to show our faith to God through action and that he wont just do everything for us with out that action. As such, he doesn't want to get baptised and married yet. On the other hand, we finally got his companion to talk and she understands. She obviously understands the gospel and action. She is just patiently waiting for him to realize that he has to take this step towards Christ and get married and baptised and prepare himself to get sealed in the temple.

We are learning and growing as a companionship and our struggles really are making us better people. It makes me think of a shirt I have from wrestling. It says"The Grind" and has a skinny little boy falling into a grinding and coming out a huge man. That is really what is happening!

Con el amor!

Elder Vierkant


Photos: We went to a volcano with some jungle terrain. I also ate a huge pupusa loca with goodness knows what was in it but it was the best papusa that I have ever eaten. We also had a super sweet family home evening with a part member family, less actives and the ward mission leader.

La vigésimo novena semana!

Hola mis amigos!

This week flew by, like always.

The highlight of this week was general conference. I got to say it was like recharging a dead battery listening to conference. I learned so much from every single talk. But the most important thing that I feel I learned from conference wasn´t from what they said, but how I felt. The love that these men have for the gospel and for their fellow brethren was very evident to me this conference. You can also very visibly see their happiness and positivity and the only thing that you can attribute that to is the gospel. And it isn´t just something that I see and feel as someone who has lived the gospel for many years. One investigator after conference said that when he went home there was a love and happiness that he had felt and he couldn´t forget.
 
As for our progress this week, we have had success with Edwin, one man we met just standing in a dirt road. He has gone to church twice and he is really interested to learn. Alex is having difficulties committing to doing things, which is severely hindering his progress. Felicito, well he is just really hard to get in touch with because he works so late and we can only see him on the weekends, but my companion and I have a lot of faith in him.
 
Those are the main matters that stick out in my mind this week.

Hasta la semana quentra mis amigos!

Elder Vierkant

An amazing birthday cake for another Elder!

Semanas veintisiete y veintiocho!

Hola!

Last Monday we went to the beach for Pday with half the zones here in our mission in El Salvador. It was really awesome, but we spent way too much time there, so I didn´t have much time to write. We finally had two investigators in church that are positive.

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I really cannot believe that it is already Monday again. The time just flies so fast that makes me worry that my mission will be over before I know it. It really is a learning experience. I hope that I can be humble enough to learn all the lessons that life is willing to teach me.
This week we cut a lot of our investigators who aren´t very positive and weren´t progressing. At first I was a bit worried about doing it. But It has helped because it made more time for those who are willing to listen to us and are willing to do the things that are necessary to learn about the gospel. It is sad to leave these people who need the gospel in their lives, but maybe they can receive it in the future.
 
We have had 3 different people in the church this week. One is the father of a member who was listening to members before. His name is Felicito. He is really positive now that one of his sons is on a mission. The only problem is that it is hard to teach him because he is only home after 9 at night Saturdays and Sundays.
 
We also had Alex and Edwin in church. Edwin stayed the whole 3 hours, our first investigator to do so. Alex lives in a huge family that is some how magically bigger every time we show up to his house, which makes it hard because we have to help so many people focus, but it is awesome to have a family like that to teach and it is always fun to be there. In our area, we have another two pueblos that are pretty far away, but are important to the growth of the ward, so we have been taking time to go out to one that is named Tacachico and another one named San Matias. There the people haven´t heard a lot about the gospel and we have met a lot of people who are interested. But the most positive people always come from references from members. Members really are key to having success in missionary work.
 
I hope you are all doing well and are all helping the missionaries in your area.

Hasta luego!
 
Elder Vierkant