Spanglish conversation

On Monday, August 24, 2015 2:36 PM, Dustin Thelander <dustin.thelander@myldsmail.net> wrote:

This week was pretty cool. We had a lot of success mixed in with some disappointment. I absolutely love having a hour each day to study the scriptures. It makes for a really good start to the day, and I have learned so much. I wish we all had the time to study scripture like that every day. Though, we can all make time to read a little bit, and that can make a really big difference. I have actually reached a benchmark in my reading this week. I have finished The Book of Mormon!!! It was so great to finish and really take in the words of the prophets of old. I will begin to read from the New Testament starting this week. I'm really excited about this because this is an area where I need to really enhance my studies.

So, on Tuesday we had one of those bum days. Had a great day planned out, but before noon we had the rest of the afternoon free because of cancellations. After piecing the day together, we finally came to splits. Splits is where a member of the ward comes out with the missionaries so we can be in multiple places at once. This day we only had one lesson though, and the family wasn't home :(. So we scrambled with Brother Felix and decided to visit the Leon family. They are a part member family, with an investigator from the YSA ward living with them. We went, and thank heaven that Brother Felix speaks Spanish. The investigator, Jorge, can understand most English, but he cannot speak it at all. So the three of us elders sat there while Brother Felix went to work, and he did a great job. He is a return missionary, and earlier that day he was hoping he could use his Spanish soon. Funny how things work out. But, Jorge is interesting because it seemed that he was just trying to please his aunt and the missionaries so we didn't really know his commitment level. That was until we met with him later in the week. He said that he has read from The Book of Mormon, prayed about it, and received an answer that it is true. What?! We totally didn't see that coming, but it was totally amazing that it did. Miracles really do happen. We are going to get a baptismal date set up with him this week.

I am sorry if I ever repeat stories or experiences- time is literally flying so fast I can't keep track of the weeks. It's week 5 already!!!! I feel like I just got here. Anyway, we met with Brother Fraijo this week, and he is a returning less active member. He has been to church the last two weeks, and this week was his third in a row. He went from not being around, to being a totally faithful member who loves the church. On top of it all, we really helped out with his biggest concern. He felt he wanted to be more involved. So this week he got a calling, he is a ward care representative or something like that. In essence he in charge of coordinating the building cleaning. His face lit up when he received his call. He is such an amazing example to his daughters, who in their circumstance could really struggle. The girls both came to church as well and loved it. Brother Fraijo is literally my favorite person to visit because every time we leave his home I just can't help but to feel happy.

So I said the week was good mixed with bad, well most of the good came from Thursday. We began the day with a good lesson with our investigator Ben. We are a little sad for him, because he is non-committal to baptism and hasn't been to church in a long time due to work. He, for some reason, feels the need to discuss the church with his friend who is on a mission and gets back in September. We have hope for him, but he needs a little kick in the pants. We also met Daniel Cole for the first time. He is an outspoken Pokemon master (he has caught them all!!!) and huge self proclaimed nerd. Him and Elder Brown really hit it off and talked video games for an hour while I sat in silence. He cannot attend church due to work, bummer because he said he would go if time allowed. There is a job fair this week, so we hope that Ben and Daniel go and find new and better jobs. Then, after that lesson we went on YSA splits, and we went off three different ways and had two names apiece. We got in a five of them and had great lessons wherever the door was opened. In total, the day resulted in 7 lessons taught. Elder Jennings who has had major success on his mission of 16 months tied his record with this number. It was a really cool day.

So the Boyer family, who are recent converts that we love, just got the news that their property has sold. They have an acre, which in southern California is worth quiet a bit. They are really poor now, and they won't be when they close the deal. They will be moving to Twin Falls, Idaho. They leave in 30 days, and we will miss them a lot (won't miss the smelly house though- haha). In other news, we actually had success with a headquarters media Bible referral. Any of you return missionaries know that these usually result in slammed doors of really nothing. This time though a sweet little lady answered the door, and accepted the Bible. She then asked for another one for her brother. We didn't have an extra Bible, but we did have a Book of Mormon. She accepted it and accepted a return visit next week. That is a #miracle. It is a theme for our district to text out a #miracle text when a miracle occurs. There have been quite a few so far and the experience with the referral Joice definitely qualifies. Sunday we had a great time at the two ward meetings, and that 8 hours of church was great (we go to a family ward and the YSA ward).

I really look forward to this week and the miracles that will surely come. I love this work, and I love all of you.

Love,

Elder Thelander