I now have a new Papi! Elder Bodily is his name. From Logan Utah. Oh how good it is to have another English speaker in the house. Last night we stayed up till like 2 just talking, and much of our conversation was centered around films we had seen. Such a tender mercy it was to be able to enter into a cinematic conversation with someone who spoke my same tongue. He´s a real good guy, with a ton of little tricks he is teaching me that make the small things in the mission life a bit nicer. Like putting drier sheets in your drawers to make your clothes smell ¨not so bad¨! Its all very good, and he´s very excited about the work. I will always love my last Papi Marroquin, but im finding out that maybe he was a bit more dead than i thought he was, being his last month in the field and what not... But now La Victoria will be completely reanimated!
Elder Cornejo has stayed with us, and his new companion in our house is Elder Zarate from Guatemala. Really funny guy. Half of his face is paralized from some kind of virus from a bug bite in his neck. Its a bit sad, but its getting better, and he has a good sense of humor about it. Sometimes we call him ¨two face¨! Great guy. The house is alot of fun. Dominos, chugging contests, and arm-wrestling (of which i am proudly the right-handed heavy-wieght champion... im afraid Elder Bodily has me beat with his left... for now)
The work is good. We have several babtismal dates, and expect to have many more by the end of the week. We´re just starting an english class at the church that we think will get a lot of people to begin lessons with us. One guy, named Adrian is really promising. He´s 19 yrs old, and has only lived here for 8 months. He´s from Venezuala, plays baseball, and is here in hopes to get signed on with someone. We went to one of his games today. It was super fun!
In our travels, we also stumbled upon a catholic sanctuary. Nuns and all! Its the most beautiful place in this area. Really a different world than the rest of the DR. Its a Schoenstatt sect, dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Pretty cool, peaceful place, but definately not the same spirit about it.
Well, the streets here are pretty fun. Every day its a juxtoposition of oppinions of us as missionaries from the common folk of La Victoria. Sometimes, you have days when a random old man with no legs or teeth will tell us ¨Ädelante! Jesus te ama!¨or another example, a little girl comes up to us with a note in her hand that says ¨Les quiero Mormones¨- which here is basically just ¨we love the mormons¨, then when we say ¨we love you too¨, and i start to get out a chacalaca (a small bubblegum flavored taffy that i almost always have on me for the kids) she says, ¨there are three of us!¨So i just roll my eyes and dish out the candy, but its cute. And then, on other days, we´ll be called ¨sons of satan¨and that we need to repent. We´ve met people that tell us were sinners because we work for the devils church, and they know this because God visited them last night and they are a prophet. Its funny, and we just brush it off our shoulders. But its sad to think of how many hardened hearts there are in the world.
Anywho... Love you all! Sorry I don thave pictures this week. My chord is not working... But i still love you all! Thanks for the support
Elder Brady