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| Perspective... |
This has been a pretty awesome week! The week started out with packing, goodbyes and the coming to an end with many Holas y Bienvenidos. Elder Goodman and I knew that he was going to be having changes after 7 months in the area. With this knowledge in hand we visited as many members, investigators, and really just anyone that he had meet in all of his time here to take pictures, say goodbye and exchange all of the information that goes along with these kind of goodbyes. I took this time to be the mouthpiece and gave each of them a challenge in the name of Elder Goodman whether it be to stay active in the church, to start going to church, or to stay strong and make it to the temple.
Tuesday finally came and for those of you who do not know, we have district meetings every Tuesday. At the district meeting before the transfer meeting they announce for sure those who will be having transfers. The zone leaders decided to mess with E/ Goodman by saying that I was leaving and that he would be there for another transfer. He started to get very very red as if a part of him had just died. The zone leaders were going to keep this broma going until much later, but Portillo caved after seeing his face.
Transfer meetings were the next day and they are wonderful! Not only is there mail and cool corte stuff to buy, but there are so many missionaries there and its one of the few times that we have to catch up with the other missionaries. Every transfer meeting has a few common agenda items. There is the messages from President Ruiz and his wife, a video presentation of the baptisms in the mission, a goodbye presentation from the missionaries leaving the mission, which has pictures of those missionaries leaving...usually more humorous pictures than not, followed by the testimonies of those leaving. Then comes the main event, the changes. All of the changes are presented up on a screen with a projector. There were lots of exciting changes and drumroll please.... my new companion in the Area La Verde is.....Elder Garcia. Elder Garcia has about 15 months in the mission, and we are going to get along great. He plays volleyball, was a lifeguard before the mission as well, and is about as big of a nerd as I am. While this area might be a little different than the areas that Elder Garcia has had in so far, he is coming in full force, with lots of energy and the last few days have been really great. We are working hard building the Rama and doing all we can to help people.
Oct 31st or Halloween was just a tad bit different here. Different in that absolutely no one celebrates Halloween. I honestly didn't even know it was Halloween until we were back at the house that night and I looked at my watch. Made me a little baggy to realize that the Menifee City Bowl was probably going on back home while we ate dinner. I am pretty sure The Lord was blessing my football family back home with another win! [Editor's Note: Yes his football family was blessed, and Heritage won.]
The real kicker here is dia de los muertos. Most everyone leaves to go and visit family and to decorate the graves of their family who have passed. As the day started out we kinda thought to ourselves - well no one is going to be home so what are we going to do? Well there just so happens to be three graveyards in our area and so we decided to do some contacting there. It was successful. We came away after 2 hours having already taught 5 lessons that were more or less positive. It is a natural opportunity to talk about God's plan for us here on the Earth and how we can see our families again after this life.
All and all this change is going to be great! We have some great animo going and even started to do work-outs. This comes just in time as it seems President Ruiz is planning to have a 5km Race in our area. At the moment are planning to run the race as superheros, or as a cop and robber, or cat and mouse. We don't really know just yet but we are going to make this time fun and do all we can to make the most of what we have here.
Tell everyone Hi and that I love them. I got a package from the YM this week, did I mention that Missionaries love packages!! Appreciate it so much!
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| Have a Coke and a Smile! |
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| Elder Garcia |
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