Good Intentions

Banana Bread

Service with Hno. Cabanilla

I got Elder Ostler back this week. Last week, he decided to serve me, and wash my garments. So, while I was in the shower, he grabbed all my garments, every single pair, and threw them in our wash bin. So, when I got out of the shower, they were all soaking wet, and had to spend half an hour drying my garments out in front of the oven. He had good intentions. This week, I shined his shoes. I thought they turned out rather well. When he pulled out his shoe trees (little wood blocks that more or less have a foot-like shape, which I had removed and re-inserted to shine his shoes) to put his shoes on, he got super mad at himself for putting the wrong tree in the wrong shoe. He went off for a solid 5 or 6 minutes about how dumb he must have been to mess that up. He showed me the two shoe trees. To my eyes, there is no difference at all between the two, not even a little "L" or an "R". But he sees the difference. Then something on his shoe caught his eye, and he rubbed his shoe. Then went off for another 4 minutes or so about how stupid he must have been to get "soot" (aka my terrible shoe polish) all over his shoes. I just about lost it. He also lost it when I told him the real story. I had good intentions.

So even 9 months in the mish, I still make embarassing errors in my Spanish. We were talking to the Villega fam, and they asked what kind of stuff we drink in the States if we don´t drink mate. I told them water, juice, gatorade, etc. Then I said we also drink cola. I have seen that on a few bottles, and figured they´d understand I meant something like Coke or Pepsi. I, however, had forgotten that "cola", literally translated, means "butt". They died laughing. It was a friendly reminder that, despite my best efforts, I am only going to get this language 100% down with the help of God.

On Saturday, we played sports with the ward for a ward activity, it was a blast.

Met a Rastafarian. Dude is a marijuana and Bob Marley worshiper. Not trying to bag on other peoples belief´s or anything, but, it seems like a pretty funny religion.

Trying to balance the fun with the work is a pretty big challenge. Integrating the two is even harder. I have definitely seen though, that when I am having fun, I have way more desires to share the Gospel, and people are way more willing to talk. If all we do is just talk about Jesus, people are gonna get bored, and aren´t gonna want to talk to us. We gotta have fun. It´s called the Plan of Happiness, right? So, we gotta have fun with this whole deal.

Elder Ostler´s sister got home from her mission in Brazil this week. That made me realize something: we are a part of something way bigger than us. Something with infinite and eternal impact. Also, it´s really weird and crazy to think that a ton of people just got their mission calls, and that all the people from school that were on their missions when I got my call, are about to go home. That´s insane.

Found some sweet new investigators, I´m pretty excited to work with them.

Elder Brown

D&C 18:15-16