Week 76: Herrera: Not so fun times

Hey,

So I’ll start with your questions.

1.  Transfers are next week. I’m not sure if I’ll leave. I think its kind of 50/50, but I’ll let you all know next week. 

2.I am healthy, but these last couple days I’ve had diarrhea, but that’s nothing to worry about. I get it every few weeks or so.

3.The investigators are good. We are just struggling to get them to come to church. That’s the hardest part of the work here, but we had this one lady who came this week and is looking ready to be baptized.

4. And as for my guesses: I think that Owen will go to Hawaii if it’s stateside and foreign will be Poland. 

          I’m super excited to hear where he’s going. Also tell Jake and Anndi congrats again. I hope they are happy. 

I’m really excited to hear about you going to Washington DC with mom. One of these days I think it would be really fun to go with you sometime on one of those trips! We could go to all those museums and eat lots of crazy food!

What happens to Owen if he goes to regionals with welding? Does he get some sort of prize? Because that would be cool if he could win himself money for his mission with his welding obsession. 

This week has actually been pretty hard. My comp and I don’t really talk much. We don’t fight, but it is just us two in a house and we never talk unless we have to. So we will see what happens. We are still working hard but it’s just not fun... I guess I’m kind of used to doing jobs that aren’t fun but it’s a lot better when you’re working with friends. I’m glad that you and the family are doing lots of service. Have you ever thought about prayerfully selecting a family to help out in the ward? I feel like service is the best when it comes from the heart when you truly have charity for the people you are serving. Well dad, thank you for writing me and listening when I have problems. Mom too! Tell everybody over there I say “hi” and I love you tons!

Elder Stark

Week 75: Herrera: Bailey's words of wisdom

Hey mom,

 I love the name of the chicken. It’s great! Sounds like Owen is going through the same things as I did with high school with the lack of ambition at the end near graduation. Haha. But that’s all right. I’m very glad that you’re not too overwhelmed with all the stuff going on. I really liked the story of your “ah-ha” moment. Its hard asking for help sometimes, but the truth of it is that we have to do absolutely everything we can and then God makes up the rest. So first we need to get on our knees and pray like everything depends on God and then get up and work like everything depends on us. It’s a tough thing to do, but it works. I love you mom and hope that everything is going great. I sure miss you mom. But in a few short months I’ll be back and you can enjoy all my weird Dominican habits.

Love,

Elder Stark

Week 74: Herrera: Post Mother's Day

Hey,

It was great seeing you all on Mother’s Day! Don’t worry I’m not too trunky, but I sure love you all. Things are going good. I pulled out a bit of money and we went out to eat. How is everybody back home? I feel bad that I didn’t talk too much to Anndi, but I really didn’t know what to say. Umm, it’s very hard to think of stuff I want. I don’t really need anything besides the little oil vile for blessings. 

Mom, I just wanted to let you know how much I love you and I was thinking you a lot this week and how much it means to have a good mother. Here in the Dominican Republic there are a lot of parenting values that these people don’t have. I have seen a lot of bad mothers and it just reminds me to be grateful for what I have. And I am proud to say that I have the best mother in the whole world!  You have always been a great example to me even though I may not have always been the best son in the world. But I just really want to tell you thank you for everything you do for me. Even while l’ve be out here in the mission I’ve never been without your support and your love and it truly means a lot to me. I love you mom!

Elder Stark 

Week 73: Herrera: I should have listened to Elder L

Hey everybody,

So this week has been pretty good. We taught a lot of lessons, and they were very good lessons, but the problem was that nobody progressed. We only had one investigator at church but there was a kind of funny story. There is this member who always wants to leave with the missionaries. His name is E and he kind of looks like a goblin. Now when I got here Elder L told me that it’s not good to leave with him and I never asked why. But this Sunday there was a member who asked for a blessing and E said he would show us where her house was. So we met up with E and left for the house and gave a blessing to an old man. We had to explain for about 5 minutes why we needed to use oil to do the blessing. But anyway, we left the house and I told E that he could go home. Then he said “No, it think I’ll stay with you guys till about 6:00.” I told him that we were going to be walking a lot and he was like okay I can do it. So we left and we really did have to walk super far and the whole time he complained about the heat and about how he was tired and then we got to these super sketchy concrete stairs and we had to hike a bunch and he kept complaining. Every time he saw a girl on the street he would say, “Hi.” But then we got to the lesson with a very cute less-active girl and E started being super flirty, like poking at her and trying to grab her hand and touching her and it was super frustrating. So I told him to stop like twice during the lesson and he kept going, so finally when we left the lesson I gave him a huge boche. (boche means like a scolding and usually it involves one person talking and the other person feeling awkward shameful looking at the ground) So I gave him a huge boche telling him that the way he was acting is never acceptable, especially while being with the missionaries because we are representatives of Christ and that because of him the spirit was not in the lesson. It was a huge boche! I was quite proud of it actually. And so we kept going and had one more lesson with a joven (youth) named Er and before the lesson we had to pick up another member who gave us Er as a reference. So we got to the member’s house and he lives on the fourth floor. We had to go up a kind of sketchy spiral staircase hanging off the wall to get to his house. So we climbed up and got to the top where E started yelling at a girl on a lawn chair down below and he told us that it was his cousin’s ex-wife. After which E freaked out about the heights and said he wanted to go down. When we got down to the bottom of the stairs there was E flirting with his cousin’s ex-wife! We then went to the appointment with Er and afterwards when we were saying goodbye to everybody E disappeared. So we went to drop of the member and there we found E hitting on his cousins ex wife! Hahah, so that’s why we can’t leave with E. He is a super flirt!! But yeah, that was the adventure of this week! It was super funny in real life, my comp and I were laughing about it the whole day.

Love you all and hope you all have a great week.

Elder Stark