missonary work

Cait, I will probably wimp out and send you the pictures - i am just not good at figuring out sending things to an email address.

So, my first week (well actually second) of missionary work. On Sunday morning i had a meeting with Bishop King, who is kind of the Zone leader over our stake and the Stonewood stake. He is wonderful, made me feel good because even though my spanish is the worst of all the missionaries, at least he is as confused as me as to how this is supposed to work. We're going forward with faith that the Lord will reveal it all in time. Right now none of the stake or ward leaders really know what our role is, and in some ways we don't either. We are not traditional ward missionaries in the sense that those missionaries find people and coordinate with the full-time missionaries, who then do the teaching. But we're not full time missionaries either - we can only put in a few hours each week. So we see ourselves are "resident" missionaries - we find, teach, and baptize in addition to and coordinating with the full-time missionaries, but unlike them we don't get transfered out - we are here to help the families along over the long-haul.

Anyway, the sacrament program was off the cuff. they apparently didn't have any speakers so they called Bishop King up to bear his testimony, then me, then Bruce Nilsson. (they wanted me to take 5-7 minutes - i took maybe 2). Then i sat in the investigator class and, thankfully, the teacher didn't call on me to answer any questions, because i could barely understand maybe 25% of what was being said - how embarrassing. i did read a scripture at the very end, though.

In Priesthood we had to get up and introduce ourselves again, so i said i was from the 8th ward, that i am from Utah but my wife is part of the Balderas family. That really impressed everyone, as they then on for another minute about the wonderful translation work of Eduardo. And one member told me afterwards that he was companion to Raul Balderas in Mexico a few years back - a cousin I'm assuming (Raul is from El Paso).

So on Sunday after church Bridger graciously agreed to go with me to see a household of non-member hispanics in our ward, that live next to the Viewigs (how do you spell that?). I had talked to the father very briefly before but hoped we could get in. Coming to the door, another man was leaving so we talked with him a while, and made an appointment to come by the next day (yesterday) to hopefully give him a lession. So yesterday Bridger again came with me - turns out that man, Enrique, wasn't home (even though I'd called him just an hour before to confirm the appointment). But another woman let us in, and we gathered all the folks in the house we could find and asked if we could give the first charla. They were very kind and patient while we gave it, and though i know much of it was over their heads, i know the spirit was there because i was able to say things in the right way - my spanish wasn't better, mind you, but the correct way of expressing them came out. We gave our testimonies and left a Book of Mormon and encouraged them to read (not sure how many of them can actually read, though). Hopefully next Sunday we can go back and give the second charla or, maybe, repeat parts of the first one again so we're sure they understand it. (oh, and mom says that Enrique called today apologizing for missing the appointment, so maybe we can set that up again).

The funny thing is that there are three married couples living in this house, plus three solteros (Enrique is separated from his wife and she lives somewhere else in Orem - and he is illegal too - i think most of the rest of them are legal. All from Mexico).

That is what is happening with me - please pray for me.

Dad