Week 49 San Juan de Maguana: "Challenge accepted!"

Dear Family,

Well this has been a very good week.  We have been doing a ton of tracting, which I’m actually starting to enjoy. Ha-ha. In some areas it’s easy to tract because people are very accepting, but in my area it’s pretty tough. But now when I’m tracting I take it as a personal challenge. “Challenge accepted.” I think of it as a test to see if I can be charming enough to get a return visit. It’s funny to see these people all cold when they answer the door, but then you crack a joke or ask a question and they just open up. It’s pretty fun and I’m getting quite good at it.  You also meet some really interesting people. Like the other day we met this lady who was talking about how she had great grandchildren!!! Anyway, it blew my mind because she looked like she was only 55 (really she was 67), but then we invited her to church and she said that she couldn’t come because she was going to visit her mom. And when she said that I almost freaked out. That means that her mom has great-great grandchildren!!! 

This week we had a farewell party for the branch president here because he got transferred to Santo Domingo for his work. This is terrible because he is one of the few truly converted members here in the branch, but we will see what happens. I’m nervous for the future of this branch though. But we shall see. 

Also, it’s really weird right now because I almost never speak English. I live in a house and district with all Latinos. It’s really interesting that I am the only person in this branch that speaks even a tiny bit of English.  I’ve been teaching an English class to try to find investigators, but it’s really weird explaining my own language in a different language. 

But yeah, I love you all and hope you have a good week and I’ll see you soon!

Elder Stark

Week 48 San Juan de Maguana: Just a short letter

Hey everybody,

 I don’t have time to write a big email home, but just know that I love you all and pray for you. Thanks so much for the emails. Just so you know I am with the same comp, Elder Qu. He goes home December 16th so I’ll be with him for a little while. He is really anxious to go home, so I’m ready for Christmas to come for a few reasons, but that’s when the next transfers are. That’s funny to hear about Owen and his wisdom teeth. I remember I was saying very dumb stuff and touching my tongue a lot! I’m super excited for Owen to get his call, but I had the super sad realization that if he goes this next summer, it will be a long time before we get to see each other :( But the mission is where he needs to be.  Could you send me some pictures of Owen and dad with their bows? I think that would be cool. I too am super excited for next month to Skype and am excited for the December after that when we can go to the temple together! I think that would be super cool!!! Love you,

Elder Bailey Stark

Week 47 San Juan de Maguana: Another transfer here

Dear Family,

Well this week was a lot of fun. We planned a bunch of ward activities. The first activity we had was crazy. We planned a movie night for families and we wanted to watch The Incredibles to show how families need to work together. I thought it was a genius plan! We needed to use the projector, but the only problem was that the stake president wasn’t answering his phone. Anyway, we were working in this super far away part of our area when we got a call from the stake president saying that we could use the projector, if we could get to the stake center in ten minutes. We started running, but that failed quickly because my comp has a hernia and can’t run. So we tried to hitchhike! Sorry mom... but nobody was giving us a ride anyway.  I just kept praying that a ward member would see us and give us a ride. Wow, it’s amazing how quickly God answers prayers sometimes, because minutes later our next door neighbors show up and give us a ride to the stake center and back to our chapel. A real miracle! Then my comp and another elder went to the chapel to set everything up and I stayed in the house and started making a mountain of popcorn!!!! It was pretty fun.  Unfortunately, the only people that showed up to the activity were youth, but it was still a lot of fun! A good way to end the night.

 The other activity we had was called a “service day” that was put on by the ward. It was really interesting because what we ended up doing was going to an orphanage to cut hair! One of the weirder services I’ve done, but whatever, it was a lot of fun. Then the women in the ward washed the orphan girls’ hair.

As for the work here, it’s going really good! We are working with a lot of families. There is this little kid that we are working with name R he is my favorite! He is always a reminder of the joy of the gospel. We taught him the plan of salvation and he said, “Wow, the plan of salvation is like a board game!!!” His dad is inactive, but we want him to be able to baptize his son. When we presented that idea, R ran up and had his dad get in to the position as if he were going to baptize him. Hopefully this will give the dad the motivation to reactivate. But we will see. If not, R asked me to baptize him! But yeah, I’m super excited for this next transfer here in San Juan!!!!  I Love you all and I’ll see you next week.

Elder Bailey Stark 

Week 46 San Juan de Maguana: A bit of a maggot problem??!

Hey everybody,

Everything is going good here in San Juan and we are working really hard. We had a good p-day today. We stayed home this morning and cleaned as usual. It was a little different today though, because this last week I bought a giant trash can for the house. Normally, we just put our garbage in blue shopping bags and make a pile of it in the kitchen, but it always stinks really bad and we ended up with a bit of a maggot problem. So I was sick of the smell and went out and bought a huge trashcan for around twenty dollars. I bought it from this really cool, sketchy market. I also was tough with the guy and argued the price down like 300 pesos. Just some good third world experiences. Then we walked all the way home with a huge red trashcan on our back. It was quite and interesting sight. So we got the trashcan back to the house, but the other elders in the house forgot to buy the trash bags that were the right size for the can. Anyway, we ended up throwing all our trash into the trashcan without a bag. Today I ended cleaning out the trashcan because, once again, we got a maggot problem. It was really gross. Afterwards, we went and played some baseball, which was a lot of fun. We were worried about using a real ball, so we ended up playing with plastic bags rolled up with a sock wrapped with packing tape. It worked surprisingly well!  We got back to the house, ate, took a nap, and talked and now I’m here at Internet. It was a pretty good p-day

As for our investigators, we just got a new one named R. He is nine years old. I assumed that he was a member because his mom is super active, but we visited their house because the husband is less-active, and the mom told us she wanted us to teach her son so that he could get baptized!  He’s a super good kid, so I’m excited.  The other is an 18 year-old girl who is a reference from a recent convert. She is progressing really well with the exception that she likes to drink. But she promised to stop. (We think there might be a law of chastity problem because she is a model, but we will see.) Her name is J. We have take a member with us to go to her house because the last time when we talked to her, I was sitting in a chair talking to her mom and she came up and greeted me in the typical Dominican way, which is by kissing me on the cheek. Not a real kiss, but it’s sort of like a cheek bump and you make a kissing sound. Guys do not greet other guys like this, but girls greet most people that way. Then at the end of the lesson, I held out my hand for a handshake, but she gave me a hug instead. Sooooo, we are going to take a member over there to explain the rules.

This week we also started doing a Preach My Gospel class for the youth. I know that before my mission I didn’t have tons of interest, but now I’m super pumped for it every week. I love working with the mission prep youth group!

As for everything else, I am coming up on a year soon so I’m going to live this year to the max and leave nothing behind. Also next week is transfers so I’ll let you know what happens!

Love you all, 

Elder Stark