Week 11 Vallenar

May 25, 2015

Okay, where do I start? So honestly, this week was really stressful. I am in week 6 now and I have a ton more responsibilities. I have to carry the cell phone, make and receive calls. I have to always be the person that initiates conversations at the doors of houses. It’s funny because sometimes when we just want to knock on a random door but don’t know what to say, we simply do this. "Hola, Buenas! Estamos buscando por Maria Araya... Conoce a ella?" (Translated for you noobs out there) Hello, good afternoon, night, or morning.... we are looking for Maria Araya. Do you happen to know her? Almost always they say no or direct us to a different house haha. It’s so funny. After that we simply say, we are missionaries de la iglesia...etc. After that we ask if we can pass by there house a different day and chilenos hate so say know so almost always say yes even though they don’t want to haha. We definitely take advantage of this. Anyway, it’s really scary to talk to people in a language you hardly know. There are some people I understand really well and others not so much. Last night I was extremely frustrated because I was being forced to do things I thought I couldn’t. The whole walk back to the house I was thinking of how hard this was. When we return the house at night, the first thing we do is plan for the next day. I was expecting Elder Leon to tell me to plan by myself but you know what he did? He said tonight we are going to do something a little different. We are going to have a companionship inventory. This is basically where we take a step back and express things we want to improve ourselves and things the other person needs to do better. Elder Leon basically taught me one of the most inspiring lessons I’ve ever heard in my life. He related my situation to the story of Pedro (Peter) in the bible. In this story, Jesus walks on water. Peter was the only one out of the 12 Apostles that had the faith to step out of the boat. As the winds began to pick up and the waves began to rise, his faith was weakened and he began to sink. Elder Leon said right now, I’m in the boat. He said the only way I’m going to experience miracles and have an extremely successful mission is if I leave the boat. (My comfort zone) I need to put myself out there and NOT BE BASIC like you always tell me dad haha. I will forever remember this lesson. I’m so grateful for my companion Elder Leon. I would be so lost without him. Oh! Another thing, we had a lesson last night with one of our investigators named "Nicanor". He is from Columbia. We invited him to baptism and he said yes!!! There is one problem, we don’t know if he knows how to read... It’s really hard for him to gain a testimony of the book of Mormon if he doesn’t know how to read. We are going to work with him and find a way to help him enter into the waters of baptism either next month or the following. Anyway, that about sums up my week! It’s definitely been a rollercoaster. I love you all!!! Until next week!

Elder Spanbauer

Vallenar

Elder Leon (Trainer)