Hey guys! Que lo que? This week was pretty alright. Yesterday I had a pretty insane moment and I am proud of myself. If you don’t have time to read anything, you should at least go read that. It was pretty epic. It will be near the end of this email.
Living in a foreign land as a missionary leads to some pretty funny stuff.
Street Contact
There’s these kids that are usually in the street and we stop and talk to them. I always try and entertain them with something. I tried to do a trick where you have a coin in your hand and you hide it and then pull it from behind their ear but I was wearing a short sleeve shirt and forgot that I couldn’t hide it in my sleeve so the coin just fell on the ground. They still thought it was cool though haha. There’s another trick I actually do know so I was able to show them that and they liked it.
But now when they see me they expect me to have something to show them. Yesterday I was out of ideas, but I didn’t want to disappoint them so I searched my pockets. I pulled out a pen and without really thinking I unscrewed it and reassembled it so I could shoot the lid of it off like a gun using the spring. I accidentally launched it right into a kids face. He was totally fine don’t worry. It was just funny. But then we couldn’t find the spring so people came over with flashlights and eventually we found it. I felt kinda dumb but it was good.
Food
The food situation here has gotten better. I’ve gotten used to the selection they have at the grocery store, but still feel a little uncomfortable looking down at my grocery list and seeing the words “milk powder”. Just doesn’t sit right. I feel like I shouldn’t be eating that stuff. But it’s actually pretty efficient. You only have to buy a bag of powder once every couple weeks so that’s nice. Except I haven’t even been able to use the milk powder because the ants here are demons and they invaded my bag of fruit loop knock offs.
But the trick to surviving is eating out. An average meal is between 200-250 pesos which is less than 4 american dollars. It’s pretty cheap. So usually we cook something for lunch at the apartment and then on our way home for dinner we stop by a fast food place. So that’s fun
Tormenta
This week we had a “tormenta tropical”. It just means “tropical storm” but tormenta sounds super intense. But it was big enough that we weren’t allowed to leave our apartments for a day. We also didn’t have power. By the end of the night our phone was out of battery and we couldn’t charge it, and we couldn’t go outside, so we literally had nothing to do. But it was fun.
Chino/Feo/Mono
All the people here have been so nice. Especially the kids. They are awesome. But the other day we were walking and this little girl who was probably 5 or 6 was glaring at me. I waved and then she stuck her tongue out at me. Then she was like “feo!” (ugly). That kind of hurt my feelings haha. Jk I’m fine. So we just kept walking. Then from behind me I could hear in the distance “Feo! Mono! Feo! Mono!” (ugly monkey). So that was nice. A lot of people call me “chino” though. I don’t know why they think I’m chinese.
Bug catcher
Hahahah I was reviewing the email before I send it and the title "bug catcher" was accidentally put in as "but catcher". Haha man that's funny. Good times.
But taking care of bugs has been going good for the most part. I do have some nasty bug bits on my right pinky that have been driving me crazy all week and still isn’t healing. Some of the bugs are too big to use my electric swatter with so this week I made a big bug catcher thing by taking a container and then I “fastened it upon the end of a pole” (Alma 46:12). It’s been working good. I’ll attach a picture.
Cockroach
I had my first big cockroach this week. We killed him pretty quick. Then I went to the bathroom. When I came back, the cockroach remains were gone. I asked Elder Lugo what he did with the dead cockroach and he said to check my bag.
I still don’t fully understand his sense of humor and when he’s kidding verses when he’s being serious, but I told him that if I check my bag and find a dead cockroach I wasn’t gonna be happy. I still haven’t found anything yet so we should be good.
Fasting
Yesterday we fasted that our friend Jeremy would know whether or not he should be baptized. And yesterday was hotter than normal so fasting was rough. As we were walking to Jeremy’s house I jokingly said to Elder Lugo that we should act extra exhausted to make Jeremy feel sorry for us and want to get baptized. Then when we saw Jeremy, Elder Lugo limped up to him dragging his left leg behind him as though it wasn’t working, and then said in an out-of-breath tone, “no hemos comido casi nada por ti” (we haven’t eaten hardly anything for you). Probably not the best thing to have said but it was fine and kinda funny. In the lesson Jeremy said he does feel good about baptism. So hopefully we can get that all sorted out. Fasting works!
Las drogas
A couple weeks ago we had a lesson with a guy who wants to get baptized as well but has some things he needs to do to get there. In our last lesson we asked him what parts of the word of wisdom he was struggling with. He was like “well there’s tea, coffee, tobacco, alcohol, and illegal drugs”. We sat there quietly for a second. It was kinda awkward.
But it’s funny because we saw him again yesterday and asked him if he has been able to give up illegal drugs yet. He jumped up and was like “que!?”. Apparently in our last lesson he thought we were asking him what things the word of wisdom prohibits, not which ones he was taking that he shouldn’t. So he’s doing good. Hopefully he can get baptized soon.
La Obra
Quick update on some of our friends we're teaching-
We had 9 of our friends come to church last week which was awesome. We are working with all of them towards baptism. A big problem though is people not being married to their spouse so we're still trying to figure out how to get over that. But there's some really elect people here! Christopher (mentioned him last week) is cruising through the book of mormon. I love having lessons with people where they ask questions like "why did Nephi kill Laban?". It's just so nice to see someone really digging into it. And Christophers cousin Dioscarolin (not sure if I spelled that right) is wanting to get baptized too. We had a great lesson with her where she was like "if we need to be baptized to go to heaven, what happened to all of those who didn't get baptized?". Best question ever! I don't know why more people don't ask that. So we talked about baptism for the dead and she really enjoyed it.
But honestly I can't keep track of all these people and it's been a lot of work. But that's why I came so it's been great.
Epic Moment
And now, for this epic story.
I mentioned this last week, but the music here is just awful. No offense to los dominicanos. There’s like three songs that everybody plays over and over and over again. Every other house has a speaker blasting it and the cars that drive by have it too. I don’t know if it’s the same in other foreign countries, but it gets pretty obnoxious sometimes.
Next to our apartment there’s a big baseball field and a bar. So there’s constantly people there having a good time and being noisy. Yesterday there were more people than usual. The music was so loud. They had these giant speakers that you’d have at like a football stadium attached to the back of this trailer and were blasting it at full volume. And then there’s crowds of people just hanging out with their drinks right in front of the speakers. I don’t understand how they do it.
As we were walking through the crowd of people to get the apartment, the concrete ground beneath our feet literally shook. That’s how loud this music is.
So we were walking through these people. It was about 7 oclock at night. At this point I was so fed up with the music haha. I can’t fathom how they can stand to listen to the exact same songs over and over and over again. And the lyrics are awful. They are just screaming about drugs and sex and stuff. There is so much good music out there and this is what they’re listening to? And they, unlike us, have permission to listen to whatever they want. I just don’t understand it.
When we finally got through the crowd, I stopped with a genius idea. I turned to Elder Lugo and said “I’m gonna find the guy with the aux”. He thought I was kidding and laughed, but I had never been more serious. So we turned around and went straight into the belly of the beast.
We walked through some crowds of people and found this one guy who looked like he might be in charge. I asked him if I could change the song and play some music I thought he would like. He told us that his brother was running the music and where we could find him. So we walked through some more crowds and made it to the guy who was running the music. We could barely hear each other because of how loud the music was, but I was like “que lo que hermano. Can I request a song?”. And he handed me the phone that was hooked up to the music that could be heard across all the Republica Dominicana.
I’ve seldom felt so much power in my life. As much as I wanted to play something like Motab, I knew I needed to pick something that was clean but that was also kinda groovy. So I looked up “Ain't no Mountain High Enough” by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terril and it started to play.
It was one of the most epic moments of my life. If you don’t know that song you should go listen to it. The beginning especially is really cool. The song started, I looked up at the guy and gave him a fist bump. We turned around to leave and I immediately made eye contact with an old dominican man. He was digging it. He looked at me and gave me a toothless smile and a thumbs up. He was also probably pretty drunk but that’s not important. It was so epic! Then we walked through the crowd again and made our exit. We had a lesson to get to so we didn’t have time to see everyone's reaction, but it was great.
I felt like a superhero walking away from an explosion.
Well after all of these non spiritually related things I should probably share something spiritual with you guys.
Spiritual Thought
I have learned a LOT as a missionary. A lot to come still. But one of the things I have noticed is that the adversary works in small steps. Here’s a story to illustrate.
When I was growing up, I remember microwaving a bowl of popcorn one day. To my dismay, the whole bag came out burnt. I put it in a bowl and started to look for pieces that weren’t burnt. There were just a couple. I was disappointed, but left the bowl there with all the burnt popcorn and went on with my day.
Whenever I was in the kitchen I would stop and check the bowl again and look for pieces that weren’t burnt. It was great! I always happened to find a couple more pieces. This happened throughout the day.
By the end of the day, I came back to the bowl, and realized that I had eaten nearly the entire bowl of burnt popcorn. It blew my mind.
The adversary works in the same way you guys! It starts off little. We may pick and choose a bit with the commandments, rationalizing that it’s okay and not technically wrong. Then time goes on, and we gradually move farther and farther along the path that leads, in the end, to unhappiness. But we hardly realize it because we are moving at such a slow and steady pace. And then finally, we realize that we have gone too far, but it’s too late. We’ve already eaten the metaphorical bowl of burnt popcorn.
But really it’s never too late. Because of the atonement of Jesus Christ, we can always find peace. But why even start down that road in the first place?
To sum up, I’ve just realized that like Nephi said, “by small and simple things are great things brought to pass”. This goes for things good and bad. Satan pulls away little by little, until he has such great hold on us that it’s really hard to shake loose.
So my invitation to you guys would be to stop now. Don’t even fiddle with anything that could lead you off the gospel path. Hold on to the iron rod for dear life. Cling to the gospel. Pray every day even if you don’t understand why it’s important. Read the Book of Mormon every day even if you’re not yet sure if it’s true. Partake of the sacrament EVERY WEEK even if it seems like it doesn’t make a difference. Trust in God and that if you give it time and are faithful, everything will work out just fine. I know they will if we keep the commandments.
I have a lot of questions but I really know that this is the true church of Jesus Christ. At this point, if this church isn’t true, God can’t exist. Nothing else makes sense to me. If there’s a God, then he has to have a church, and if he has a church, which one is it?
But like I’ve said before, the only way that I have come to know this is through the Book of Mormon. I testify along with millions of others that it’s really God’s book. And if that book came from God, Joseph Smith was a prophet, and this is the Church of Jesus Christ on earth to prepare the world for the second coming of Jesus Christ. Which is coming soon. Fingers crossed.
If any of you want stronger faith that God exists, go study Alma 30. It’s really great. Here’s a verse from it that I’ve always loved.
(Alma 30:44)
“Thou hast had signs enough; will ye tempt your God? Will ye say, Show unto me a sign, when ye have the testimony of all these thy brethren, and also all the holy prophets? The scriptures are laid before thee, yea, and all things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator.”
Love you guys! Novemo
- Élder Wride
