Hi All,
My week was a blitz.... a literal blitz. I swear to you I just blinked and it disappeared. It's nuts. Aight, so, I met Elder Xavier once in Rivera but it was nothing more than hello how and who are you. He has been out for 7 months this last sunday and we get along great. Elder Xavier did not speak spanish before the mission but rather learned
some in the Brazilian MTC and then perfected it in Rivera where the
members and people could at least understand portugese. I'm replacing
Elder Sorenson who is from Elder V's Mtc group. However, Elder Xavier does speaks a great deal of broken english. Really all that he needs help with is some of his grammer and his pronunciation and vocabulary. It's impressive really. He says his father had to learn english for work and then his sister went to Riverton High in Utah her Jr. year to learn english and then came home for a year and is now at BYU so she and his dad spoke english all the time which is where he picked up a lot of it. Pretty cool. He was already in Cardona and its a lot like Tranqueras. It's defintely a farming/bus into work at a factory town so there's not a whole lot that goes on. Biggest hunk of news, we ride bikes. I was SO saddle sore the first two days it was absurd. Now I get a little sore by the end of the day but it's nothing too bad. As for the church here....I'll explain that later. I can hardly believe that I've been out for so long. Here in two weeks I
hit 11 months and after that....welll 1 year. oof that's insane. It
blows my mind.
.
Okay so events of the week as I promised! Saying goodbyes was hard. The Da Salvo family was the hardest. He's the stake patriarch and she's just great and we all got along just swell. We talked a lot about the importance of this life and what ever deep and profound topic that we wanted too because there aren't too many people down here who do it that well. They kind of just glance of the surface like a weakly aimed shot where as we acted more like a teflon-coated super sonic armor piercing bullet from a high caliber rifle. We got to the point. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know them. When I was leaving they said to tell you that they got to know the Simpsons through me and that the apple really doesn't fall too far from the tree in this life so they say that they love you all and that you did a good job on me.
I caught a 05:30 bus from here to Colonia Suissa and got there at about 9. I met elder Xavier, and Elder Flake who is my Zone Leader and also saw elder Duke whom I know from the MTC. He's the group just below me. Then elder Xavier hopped on a bus at 11:30 and headed out to Rosario which is the first stop, and we then got off and transferred busses to go to Cardona/Florencio Sanchez.
Naturally, on both buses, right in front of us, were couples who couldn't seem to figure out how to stay off of each other, stop slobbering on each other or quit eating face. However you want to describe it, they couldn't handle it. Repulsive.
We don't have to travel super far for district meeting, but tomorrow
we're going into Colonia because the Assistants are going to be teaching a
class to the Zone. Speaking of them... They called me on Wednesday, to
tell me that they and President are going to be watching closely and are
expecting great things. Then the branch president called and said
pretty much the same thing and that they were so excited to work with
me. Great....thanks guys. No pressure.... Phillipians 4:13. Also,
President wants me to call too. Then I found out why.
I got to the Colonia Bus Station and Elder Flake said, "Welcome. You ready for all this?" Ready for what....? Well turns out the Zone Leaders in Oeste didn't know that I was going to be 1st councilor in the Branch Presidency, nor did they know that I was going to be full time translator of the branch president who is also from Ceder City Utah.....Yea...............Not to mention the fact that the average attendance of the branch lately has been about 14, 4 of which are missionaries.
Elder and Sister Crawford are the housing authorities/office couple for the mission and are currently living in Deo. They come out every Sunday to preside and Elder Crawford does not speak a work of Spanish. Sister Crawford does but she's not really able to be Branch President seeing as she doesn't and cannot hold the Priesthood. Anyway, this last sunday, 27 people came to church. Elder Xavier and I worked HARD. We're currently using the ward directory to locate all members, incomplete families and less active members. We've also been getting references and knocking doors to find them. The going is...interesting. Obviously it helped this last week.
Just so you know, I'm no longer nervous about being senior comp. I think the nerves went away the night before I got on the bus. After that I was just stoked, even when they threw an enormous pail of cold water on me when they told me all that when I got into the Zone but no pasa nada right?
Also, English...is getting hard sometimes so sorry if I throw in some Spanish. Yesterday, during sacrament meeting (first sacrament meeting I've ever directed in my life, by the way) the Lord told me that it will all be okay and not to sweat the little things. So that's what I've been doing and it's worked out pretty well so far. We've had more than a couple of miracle finds so hopefully we'll be seeing some baptisms this change. We taught Sunday school and have to every Sunday. I also have to speak for half of sacrament meeting and the other half goes to a conference talk. We listen to translated conference talks for half of sacrament meeting because there aren't enough members to give talks, nor enough who are confident enough to speak for more than 5 minutes without just reading it all. Oh well. No pasa nada. Side note, I'm currently teaching and English Class on Saturdays...
that's a different feeling, explaining English grammar in Spanish
I'm the most tired I've ever been in my life and I'm stressed all the time, but it's not an overwhelming stress. More of just me realizing that things need to be done and thinking about how to do it. I've never prayed so much in my life, and the Lord is working miracles in my heart and the hearts of others. Realistically speaking, I'm here to rock the boat. Things have gotten comfortable and that's not acceptable. So I'm gonna shake things up. Hard. There's nothing wrong with comfortable but when it means that roughly 90% of your members are inactive and comfortable with it, things need to change. As my dear friends of August Burns Red would say, "Leveler, make level the way for the righteous." Today is the day of repentance. I'm in the trenches, and the shells are up to my knees. The grit and the smoke from the powder cakes everything around me. I've got my orders from HQ and they got them from On High. I've got my
walkie talkie, keeping it precisely tuned to the station. And off we go
again, into the black to oust the foes and find the fallen comrades. My
rifle is more and more worn each day. I don't know how many rounds I've
fired. I lost count months ago. The stripes on my shoulders are heavy,
but I wouldn't have it any other way. We will rise victorious because
the end is so very near. We're gonna take the hill or we're gonna die trying, and when we get there, we're gonna hoist the Christian Banner high. Oorah
Vamos Arriba
Elder Simpson
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