Hola! Two months in the mission!
Has today been a good day or what! As normal for a P-day, we have to
study as normal in the morning with personal study for an hour,
companionship study for an hour, language study for another hour, etc.
Then we clean the house and wash our clothes by hand (my companion and
I decided this was the best way to keep really good care of our
clothes instead of pay someone to do it for us), buy groceries, and
write our families. That pretty much takes up our entire day until six
o´clock when we resume proselyting. However, I am a firm believer that
this day is sagred when you should do something really FUN because we
work really hard the rest of the six days of the week. Missionaries
are the only ones in the world, I think, that do not get to enjoy a
Sabbath day. Haha. Anyway, today my companion, Hermana Reyes, and I
made pupusas. Basically, it is a tortilla stuffed dish typical of
Central America, and yes, Central America is different from South
America. However, the pupusas are filled only with cheese instead of
meat which I have eaten before. The ones with meat are famous in Utah
among the El Salvadoreans. It was fun to eat the pupusas with her. I
showed her how to whip up some really good mashed potatoes. Yes, my
specialties are limited, but I can at least contribute with mashed
potatoes. Anyway, that is how we enjoyed our free time...cooking food.
We are both strong personalities, and often fight to reach good
communication, but we always agree on food. Yum...
As for the obra misional or missionary work, it is going forward. No
one can stop the hand of the Lord in his work. I entitled this email
opposition in all things because we have seen a lot of opposition this
week. Last week, I described how we had transfers and Hnas. Meono and
Needham left. From that day onward, we worked with our zone leaders to
teach their investigators in our sector. Add our investigators to the
mix and we had our work cut out for us. We found we were trying to
teach them all, and in the process, some got neglected. For example,
we had two baptisms scheduled last Saturday (baptisms in this mission
only take place on Saturday), and both of them fell through. One was
Israel Gomez. He is an investigator that we inherited from the other
sisters. We took him last Wednesday to his baptismal interview,
thinking he would be all ready to be baptized and would pass his
interview with flying colors, but come to find out he had drank
alcohol five days before. No worries, he is getting baptized this
upcoming Saturday.
Additionally, Christina Carrascal was scheduled to get baptized
Saturday, but when we verified that she was living the Word of Wisdom,
she told us we never taught her about that. Uh-oh. That was our fault.
She loves to drink her black tea with her Korean friends and coffee at
every meal. We are working with her on overcoming this. She lives in
the northern part of our sector which is a little far, so she ended up
being one of the investigators that we neglected. Thus, we have yet to
schedule another baptismal date with her. I hope this will not change
her mind to get baptized. We have taught her for two months. I have
come to love her a lot and want to see her get baptized before I get
transferred. I am grateful that the Lord put me in this sector one
more transfer to follow through with her baptism.
As for the package you sent me, it still has not arrived. I want to
make sure you are sending them to the right address. If you look in my
call letter, it is the address to the mission office which has the
street name ¨Casilla......Guayas.¨ That is where the packages should
be sent. Not the pouch mail. You cannot send packages through the
pouch mail. I hope this clarifies things.
Mom, I was thinking about what you could put in the package. Please
send me cereal such as the Apple Cinnamon Cheerios and Raisin Bran
Crunch. Yum. And Dad, if you would like to send Dear Elder packages
with chocolate goodies, or cookies, or whatever, I welcome any
goodies. Plus, please send more pedis. I really need them. You have no
idea! Anything else? I am doing pretty good with getting most things
here. It is part of trying to be more self-reliant. Hehe.
Well, I didn´t get a chance to print out your emails last week and
read them, so I will do that today and respond to them next week.
Remember if you want a question answered right away, send me an email
with just that question in one or two sentences in the email. I can
respond to those rather quickly.
I love you all. Know that this Gospel is true. I wouldn´t be here if
it weren´t for the Lord. I know it is his work that I do. Joseph Smith
restored this Gospel. The Book of Mormon contains the fullness of the
Gospel and with the Bible, those two books are the Word of God. Jesus
Christ lives. That is all. Love one another and take good care of one
another. Treat each other only with love and by example.
God be with you until I write next week with some more tidbits of Ecuador.
Love with all my heart,
Hermana Melanie Forbush
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