Week 72: Herrera: New Companion

Dear Mom and Dad,

Wow, that’s really cool about all the stuff going on back home with nose surgery, root canal, chickens, marriages, and baby and Kingsburg! Sounds like a really fun week. By the way, good luck beating my score on Kingsburg. Yo soy lo mejor! y nunca perderé.

Well this week has been very interesting. So first off, right after I got done writing you guys last week I got a call from president and he told me two things. One, that I would not be getting a mini-missionary, but an Elder R from Guatemala. What happened was that they were going to send Elder R to be with Elder Le, but they had already been comps and they did not get along. Anyway Elder Le is a good friend of mine and so I was pretty nervous to get Elder R. But we are working things out.

Then the other thing the mission president told me is that this week he and the Stake President here in Herrera were going to go out on visits with me. So I was kind of freaking out about that. But this Wednesday it went really well. We visited M and she was super happy and impressed that they came to her house. She made a comment at one point that they should be staying in fancy hotels and stuff, but that they came to her humble house!

We also went by the M family’s house and they shared their testimonies with us. Wow was it powerful! They are recent converts and the mom’s testimony made me cry it was so sweet and genuine. Anyway, we had a few other lessons with them, which also went very well.

But yeah, it was a great week and we are working hard. Sorry I can’t write much.

Love,

Elder Stark

Week 71: Herrera: Healthy Food and Coded Messages

Dear Family,

So this week was pretty good. Elder L and I worked really hard. We scheduled a bunch of members to go with us to lessons and it worked out very well. On Sunday we had 5 investigators at church, which is the most that I’ve had in my time here in Herrera. 

Unfortunately, this week we have transfers and Elder L is going. We had very little time together, only six weeks, but it was a good time.  I am getting a mini-missionary. A mini-missionary is a joven (youth) that is preparing to serve a mission. The mission calls him when they need him and he can fill a spot and live with the missionaries and work with them everyday. So for the next six weeks I will be the only missionary in Herrera... haha we will see how it goes. I´m excited though.

On some personal news, I have officially gone on a health diet. I noticed that I haven’t had much energy and it was because I had been eating lots of rice and oil (typical Dominican food). So I started eating granola with yogurt in the morning and whole-wheat chicken cheese peppers and onion tacos for lunch and dinner. I also put Tabasco sauce on the tacos and it makes them great!  Then in the mornings I´m jumping rope on the roof to stay a bit more active. I checked my weight a few weeks ago and I have 160 pounds, so I’m a bit skinny. At the start of my mission everybody called me fat and now they don’t. The miracle of living in a third world country.

Then a bit of a funny story, last night a less active girl gave Elder L her journal so that he could write his contact info in it. It was the journal that all the other missionaries who have passed trough Herrera have written in. Anyway, we saw in there that somebody had written in coded letters. So Elder L and I spent the whole night decoding it and figured out that it was the less active girl that had written it and they were confessions of love to different missionaries!!! It was really funny to read it, but the code was super easy to crack, so I don’t know what the girl was thinking writing it in there. 

But yeah that was my week. I’ll let you know how it goes with the mini next week.

Love,

Elder Stark

Week 70: Herrera: Semana Santa

Dear Family,

Well this week was all right. It’s just been kind of full of ups and downs. We haven’t been having a whole lot of success like we want. This week has been full of parties in the streets and it’s just been kind of hard to preach. We didn’t have a single investigator at church this last week, but there were some good parts. We had a lesson with C where we taught him about the trinity; how God, Jesus and the Holy Ghost are separate beings. It was a bit of a difficult concept for him, and we taught him using his own Bible. In the end he seemed to understand that we were right, but he just kept saying the Bible has errors so we cant trust it. It was kind of frustrating because it was at 9:35 when he said that and we couldn´t stay to explain it more.

Also this week we hand an intercambio (exchange) with the district leader. That was fun because I always like walking around with a Dominican comp. The people are a lot nicer to you and accept you a lot more. We had a really good day and visited a lot of people. One of the highlights was a lesson we had with this Haitian investigator. We took a member who is also Haitian and we started teaching about the Trinity and the investigator and the member were being obstinate. Out of nowhere he and the member just started fighting it out in creole and it was crazy. At the very end of this huge creole battle, of which I understood very little, the member looked over at us and told us, “he says that God is a spirit because that’s was the Jehovah’s Witnesses taught him and he won’t listen to reason.” So by that time the Spirit was gone and we couldn’t get it back, so we set a return visit and left it was kind of a shame. 

Anyway, like I said this week has kind of been a downer. There have been a ton of parties in the street. This Sunday we were at a recent convert family’s house and there was the most disgusting party going on right out front. It was like no matter what we did, the Spirit wouldn’t stay. We were shouting to be heard over the music.

But anyways I hope the best for all you back home and hope that you all have a great week.

Love,

Elder Stark

Week 69: Herrera: Conference and Congratulations

Hey mom and dad!

So this week was actually really terrible, but it ended well.  This week here in Latin American countries is Semana Santa, or holy week, so that combined with Dominican means that everybody left their homes for the country or for the beach. And everybody got drunk for the whole week straight. It was really tough and on top of everything, it was really rainy the whole week.

But we were able to have a few good lessons. We talked with our investigator named C and we had a very good lesson with him about the Spirit. We were talking to him and he told us that he really likes church and stuff but he just wants a confirmation from God. So we asked how he thinks he will receive the answer from God and C told us that he needs God to send him a dream. We explained that most people receive answers through the Holy Ghost and so C was like, “Oh, I’ve never felt the Holy Ghost.” So we were a bit confused and turns out C thought that feeling the Holy Ghost meant talking in tongues and rolling around on the ground like a snake. (And he has never felt the urge to do that.) So we had a good lesson explaining the Holy Ghost and C even showed up to conference and liked it a lot. I think that he will get baptized soon.

It was really tough to get investigators to want to come to conference. Everyone said that they wanted to go to the beach instead. In fact a bunch of people invited us to go to the beach with them! hahah But this month we are going to work really hard to get people to start coming to church. Part of the problem is that the ward doesn’t talk to new people in church. They have a bench reserved for the missionaries and investigators and nobody talks to the new people. So I have been trying to change that. A lot of investigators come once and don’t come back, but we are working on that.

I’m happy to hear about Jake and Anndi. I bet they are very excited. Also, I feel like when I get home I’m not going to recognize anything with all the changes to the house and family. It will be like a whole new world.  How’s it going with Owen and his mission application? Also did I tell you that Anndi has a class with Elder Mooney my old trainer? He said he talked to her a bit and I gave his number to Jake. Maybe you could invite him up to Idaho sometime. He’s one of my favorite comps. That man taught me so much! 

I did watch conference. I don’t really remember who said what but, I tried to do a thing where I apply each message to my personal life and was able to take a bit from each talk. I set a bunch of goals so that I can keep progressing.

Well have a great week mom and dad. Miss you guys tons!

Elder Bailey Stark