Esta semana fue muy muy buena! [This week was very very good!] So
we had 2 exchanges this week. One with one of the district leaders here
and his companion, Elder S** from Bountiful and Elder B** from
Guatemala. It was really good. There´s always so much to learn when you
have some random day to teach with someone who´s not your companion.
Then on Wednesday we had another exchange with the Assistants, so I
stayed here in Mangales with Elder T** and Elder F** went with
Elder S** to their area. Usually when the assistants do their
exchanges, they don´t go to the offices like they usually do in the
morning, but they had to do some stuff that morning, so Elder F**
spent his morning in the offices haha! So glad that I got to stay here
in our area instead of going back there haha! I´ve spent way too much
time there, it´s someone else´s turn. But he got to talk to Pdte
Zambrano all morning and that´s always nice.
So we had tons of lessons planned right? Then, like normal, lots of
them fell through, but at least it wasn´t as many as it normally is.
Now that we´re used to planning like we´re planning now, we´ve got a few
more things that we´ve decided to do to make it even better and to
really help out the ward more. We´ll see how it all goes.
So cool story. Yesterday was really kinda weird for several
reasons. Stake meetings that changed lots of stuff and we were going to
have a ward activity/fireside type thing at night with empanadas and
then everything fell through because the stake changed the meeting
again, and well, not like any of this is really important, but ya, it
all worked out in the end.
But the story that I´m still thinking about:
So we were walking past this plaza/park area where, like every Sunday in
Santa Cruz, there was this BBQ type party where everyone was drunk.
Normal no más. But there were these 2, no sé [I don't know], interesting-looking people
I guess you could say, sitting on this one bench separated from
everyone else. Felt like we needed to talk to them, but they were
staring at us weird, so I just kinda blew it off and told myself that we
were already on my way to this one former investigator´s house. So I
told Elder F** that if the investigator that we were looking for
wasn´t there, that we were going back to talk with them. Well, she
wasn´t home, so ya, we went back. (To my luck, they were still there -
DON¨T BLOW OFF SPIRITUAL IMPRESSIONS!!!) So we went up to this one guy
because the girl that was staring at us ever since we first saw them got
up and left like 5 seconds before we got there. We weren´t exactly sure
if he was right in the head and straight up lied to us, so we just
kinda left him there after inviting him to church. But I felt like we
still had to talk to the girl that was there. So after walking to the
other side of the plaza, we saw her sitting on another bench on the
other side of the plaza, still staring at us. So ya, we went up to her
and she got up to meet us, and it was weird, it was like she wanted us
to talk to her, but she was nervous or who knows what and at the same
time didn´t want to talk. Kinda weird, but we stopped her and she
immediately started doing all of these signs showing us that she was
deaf and mute. Elder F** and I just looked at each other and well,
we felt like we had to talk to her, so it was worth a shot. (Thank you
Laura and Sophie for being friends for all those years because somewhere
along the way I picked up a bit of sign language too I guess without
knowing it haha!) So I signed something to her, and she got really
excited and probably thought that I knew sign language and she began
signing really fast........ ya didn´t get hardly any of that. But we
ended up having a really interesting conversation. Yes, I was using sign
language on my mission. Basically just the alphabet that practically
everyone knows and some other simple signs that I knew and that she was
using, but ya, who knew that I´d be using sign language on my mission
haha! We ended up going with her to the next street over and right as we
got in front of this one house where she signed to us that there lived
this one lady there who knew sign language a bit and helped her
sometimes communicate with other people. Y justamente [And exactly], right as we were
just about to knock on their door to see if she was there to help us,
their car pulled up and we were able to talk with the wife for one sec.
The deaf and mute lady was taking us to her house, but by what we
understood, it was a bit far and with all of the crazy stuff that was
happening, we weren´t sure if we were going to have time to walk all the
way over to where her parents lived. So we had the sign language lady tell
her that more clearly than we could´ve, then we had her set up an
appointment for us with her for a day that we were going to go to her
house and teach her family and she seemed happy about that. Then we
explained to the lady how we were missionaries so they wouldn´t think it
was so weird as to why we wanted to go to her house to talk with her
parents and the sign language lady was like, ¨ah, sí, somos testigos de
Jehova.¨ (they´re Jehovah´s Witnesses) Haha so ya, the Jehovah´s
witness set up the appointment for us! Yes. We´ll see what happens this
next week. We´re going with one of the members here to her house on
Wednesday. Should be pretty interesting. Basically you never know who
you could meet when you follow spiritual impressions. But don´t just
disregard them like I did at first!
So that´s basically it for the week. It´s been pretty interesting.
We´ve found some great people and had some really awesome, spiritual
lessons. (The best one probably being this super-smart investigator that
we´re teaching... He was really confused for a sec. It´s like he wants
to know the truth, but at the same time, he´s not too willing to
change..... He´s interesting. And when we made some really inspired
questions (like really, there was some cool stuff that was leaving our
mouths in that lesson - I love it when the Spirit just surprises us like
that), he got this huge smile on his face and sat back in his chair
half-laughing.... ¨Haha .....psychology......¨ No hermano.... El
Espíritu.........)
It´s been a good week. Glad Florida was good.
Que les vaya bien!
Hasta la próxima,
Elder Groneman
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