Diggin' the New Digs

If you guys have seen Incredibles 2, you should go look up the soundtrack and listen to the song “Diggin the New Digs” for me. That’s the vibe I’m feeling right now. I remember in high school I would listen to that all the time, especially at the start of a new phase of life. And everything here is pretty new and exciting. New comp, new area, new people, etc. Anyways, that song is stuck in my head and it’s pretty good. I’m diggin the new digs out here. 

Vamos a La Playa

Last week I sent an email out, but my phone is super wack and it didn’t send. It wasn’t a very good email anyways though so it’s fine. But last week I got a call that I was getting transferred to Puerto Plata! THE BEACH. When he told me, I tried not to be too excited over the phone but when he hung up I went crazy. Super sweet!

Pretty Embarrassing

Yesterday we were in a meeting with President, so I was on my best behavior haha. He asked one of us to read D&C 78:18. I thought he said D&C 68, not D&C 78. They sound pretty similar in spanish. So instead of reading the cool scripture about “[being] of good cheer”, I read the following:

“No man has a legal right to this office, to hold the keys of this priesthood, except he be a literal descendant and the firstborn of Aaron.”

After I read it, I paused and thought “fetch, that doesn’t sound right”. But Presidente Breton is a loving soul and was just like “gracias Elder Wride” and then had someone else read the right one.

It took a couple minutes for me to process what had happened, but I’m still cringing super hard at myself. 

Comp

My new comp is great. Especially during the first couple days, you always try to be on your best behavior. It had just rained and he was shaking the water off his umbrella and was like “isn’t this cool?”. I thought that was weird but was like “dang Elder that’s sweet”. But apparently he wasn’t talking about the umbrella, he was talking about some tourist thing that we had walked by that looked cool. He had just happened to be shaking the water off of his umbrella at the same time. But I was just so committed to agreeing with everything that I told him the way he shaked the water off of his umbrella was cool. It was funny. 

Puerto Plata!

This is probably the coolest place I have ever been in my life. I can’t even describe it. Like you guys don’t even know. There’s this whole world over here and I wish you could experience it like I am. 

It’s a concrete jungle. It’s SO cool! We live like a 2 minute walk from where the craziness starts. You walk down the street, into a little alley way, and the whole world changes. It looks like it’s from Dr. Suess. Just insane hills everywhere with crazy buildings. It’s a maze. And then if you walk down another alleyway it opens up another whole new world with tons more houses and buildings. Ahhh I wish I could explain it better. But it is absolutely the coolest thing ever. 

My area is right by the beach. We live like a 5 minute walk from it. So in the mornings we have been going running on the beach. It is so sweet. I literally cannot even describe how much I love the area. But what makes it really good, as always, is the people. Because all of the houses are super close together it’s really easy to find people to teach. And the ward is so awesome. There’s a lot of members so we get fed a lot. Which I need big time because I’m getting too skinny. I want you all to see me when I’m fat.

El Apartamento

Puerto Plata is super touristy and cool, but we’re still in a third world country. A lot of these things I’m used to, but it’s still funny. When I first got here we didn’t have water for the first couple of days. It was rough. Water is so essential to our survival haha. So we had to take buckets over to this emergency water supply and fill it up. We used all of that to shower and clean for a few days. As I stood there in my broken little bathroom showering with my little bucket of water I had the thought, “wait, this isn’t normal”. But it is now! I would never have done anything like that before the mission. 

The bathrooms have some problems, and water is hard to get. When we do have a water supply it comes from the tank behind the apartment. And if we ever want to use the sink or anything, we have to flip a light switch or it doesn’t work. Weird stuff like that. 

The mosquitos are interesting here. I was happy to get mine set back up. Makes me feel like a jungle man. My comp hasn’t been using the mosquito net and his ankles are bleeding from bites haha. 

We have this kid named Daury who lives in the apartment next to us. He’s a member and he’s super cool and also super annoying. He basically lives with us and speaks broken english so it’s a lot of fun. He made us jello last night that was super nasty. 

Also my shower is pretty funny. There’s just a PVC pipe sticking out of the bottom of the wall and when I turn the water on, instead of coming from the top it shoots from the bottom. Not sure how to fix that.

Motor Bikes

I haven’t been good at getting all the insane stuff that happens here in my weekly’s. My bad. Some of it just seems normal. Like I didn’t think to tell you guys last week about when we were walking and a motorcycle flew at like 60mph through the air in front of us and into a ditch. We probably would have been decapitated if we had been closer haha. It was nuts though. I saw the bike fly and crash, so me and my comp sprinted over there. I was totally ready to see a dead guy, but by some miracle he was alive. In the air he had landed in the different side of the ditch. When he came out, he was covered in mud. I though it was blood at first and was ready to whip out my oil vile and bless him haha, but yea it was just mud. He did have a dislocated shoulder though (at least). And the car that hit him just drove away which was pretty messed up. 

Motor Bike #2

This is a cool story! So a few days ago we saw another motorcycle accident. We heard a crash and turned around just in time to see the guy face-plant on the cement. So we sprinted over there to help him out. He was okay. His bike was kinda broken though. We helped him up and helped him move his bike. We didn’t really know what else to say and had to go to another lesson so I handed him our number and told him to text us if he needed anything. A couple hours later we got a text from a lady who told us that her husband was the one from the accident and she wanted to thank us for being there for him. 

My companion has been in this area longer than me and saw the lady’s whatsapp picture and said that he’s met her before. He said a few weeks ago she was driving by and pulled over and told them that she is looking for a church and asked where the church is. They told her, but haven’t seen her since. 

So we talked more to her over whatsapp and invited her to church and she said she would come because her and her husband have been looking for one. Pretty sweet! Basically we lost contact with an elect lady until her husband face-planted in the cement and now we’re gonna teach the family! I’m super hyped about it. 

Sax Guy

We met with a member this week who has a tenor saxophone. I told him that I play and he let me go at it for a few minutes. It was magical. I totally forgot that I even did that with my life before. So I let out a lot of stress I was feeling through the horn and it was pretty sweet. I also played some hymns like “praise to the man”. It was cool. 

The Book of Mormon

This week I grew a lot spiritually. I’ve been feeling empty lately and it was driving me nuts. So I decided to start the Book of Mormon over again but in english, and decided that I would mark every time it refers to Christ. I had been reading the Book of Mormon every day, but in spanish. I was also in the war chapters so I feel like I wasn’t getting spiritually filled like I could have been. 

After just a few minutes of reading, the light came back and I felt such peace in my heart. The days since that have been amazing. 

It’s Probably Going to Happen

Me and my comp were having a spiritual discussion about the last days. He told me about how he was reading in Jacob 5, the coolest chapter ever. Basically it runs through the whole world history in a really cool way. It goes over the apostasy, restoration, and so forth. Then the last part of the chapter talks about the servants going to prune the vineyard one last time. In other words, the missionary force going out to preach the gospel one last time before the Savior comes again. And then, the last verse of the chapter - 

“And then cometh the season and the end; and my vineyard will I cause to be burned with fire”

Super intense. My companion then said, “you know, everything else it talks about in this chapter has already happened. So this is probably going to happen too. 

And it’s true! I’m seeing it first hand out here. The Lord is coming soon. 

We went to the beach today so I don’t have time to write everything that I wanted to. Sorry. But I love you guys! Hopefully next week I’ll have more time because I have a lot of cool things on my mind. I also had a couple times this week where I would read a scripture about Christ and just get major chills. I feel like I am getting to know Him a lot better out here. I hope I can remember all of these feelings I’m getting. 

Love you guys

- Elder Wride