Monday, February 8, 2016

Danlí, Elder Guillén, The House

Hola Mi Querida Familia, (Photos to be posted later today or tomorrow.)

I hope all goes well for you this week and that there won't be anymore knife-cutting involved in our daily activities. (hmmm, Kristen) ;D I'm really excited to be serving in Danlí again. I'm serving as ZL still and I'm with Elder Guillén. He's really awesome. He's from Guatemala and came in my group to the mission. The house is messy, dirty, hard to clean, disorganized, and so we are looking for a new house because it's also really small. I wasn't super happy about that. I would feel embarrassed to have any missionaries from my zone in my house for divisions. It's pretty bad. So I cleaned as much as I could while we find a new house. :D Wish us luck!

A little more about Elder Guillén: he loves music and singing, he likes writing poems and songs, he works hard, and is a very kind and loving person. I appreciate his high level of patience and dedication.

We are working hard and have had a lot of connection with the bishopric and the stake presidency this past week. My first day in the area we had a meeting with the stake presidency to coordinate the mission efforts. We are trying to visit all the members' houses in our area this week but the problem is that we share our ward with other missionaries and literally all the leadership positions are filled by people in the other side of the ward (in the area of the other missionaries). But we were successful in talking with a bunch of leaders in church. We are going to plan divisions with the other elders in the ward to be able to get to know all the members better. After that is all done, we are going to start with the less actives and looking for the members on the ward list that no body knows of.  We've got a lot of work but we're marching on.

I was asked to give my testimony in sacrament meeting yesterday like a "get-to-know-you" kind of thing. I gave a simple testimony and sat down. After the meeting, I was conversing with a few people and they all thought I was a new missionary. When I asked them why, they said, "Because you still have the energy and enthusiasm for missionary work." Another member told me the same thing but added, "Normally an older missionary has a worn-out look on his face and you can tell by his clothes, but you still have energy and a smile and nice-looking clothes." I was truly happy to receive those comments. I'm glad to know that I'm not seen as trunky missionary!

The area that I'm in is really small. There's only one hill in it and we hardly go up it because most of the houses go around the hill and not up it. It's a pretty easy area walking-wise. I feel like I'm opening an area because we didn't have a single investigator when I got here (Elder Guillén was here for a few changes before me but they baptized all the investigators they were teaching). The missionaries before Elder Guillén and I didn't leave a clean and organized Area Book either. I wasn't too happy about the condition of things when I got here but it's getting significantly better: the house, the area book, new investigators, member relations, etc.

We are only teaching one investigator currently, Rachel. She's nine years old and wants to get baptized. She has a baptismal date planned for the 20th of Feb. She's really excited, and we're helping her mom, as well. This week, we're going to get the mom's signature to make the baptism official. Rachel is really smart and loves participating in lessons. She has made some really sharp observations in the lessons. The mom, "J", is a little slower and has Word of Wisdom/Law of Chastity issues. Pray for them so that they will be able to make the right decisions in their lives.

Love you all!
Elder Tuft

Mom,
The missionary broadcast isn't an annual thing. They only do it like every 10ish years.  I took notes on it but it was hard to focus with all the problems with Elder Reinoso being "sick". I wanted to watch it again later but we've not been given that chance yet. So I'll look forward to that.

Keep up the missionary work in the ward! :D You're awesome for just making a personal visit to "E" and her family. :D

Hermano Perez is a good friend of mine so you can add him to my Facebook.

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