Pasando con los Paisanitos (Hanging with the Country Folk)

Dear family,

Elder Marquez, Ludlam, Castro, Retuerto

I hope you all had a wonderful Día de Accion de Gracias (Thanksgiving Day).  I spent mine in Cuenca!  This transfer came as a shock.  I am in a ward they just recently created a few months ago called Las Americas.  Great News: Monay is now a ward!  My new companion's name is Elder Castro from Trujillo, Perú.  He has only been here about a week longer than I have, so we are still trying to figure out where all the members are. 

We have a few people we are working with.  We are working with the son of a member named Javier.  He used to be close to accepting the church, but his catholic wife doesn’t like that he is listening to us.  We are going to try and see what we can do for him.  We are also working with Rosa, the mother of two young daughters.  She was going to come to church this week but then left town, so we still need to figure out what happened to her.

So far, I have felt I am a much better missionary than I was the last time I was here in Cuenca.  Things are much more peaceful up here in Cuenca.

Well, I am looking forward to another Navidad Andina (Andean Christmas).  It has been great to see all these old faces again.  Make sure you give the Calamardita (little Squid, our cat) a good squeeze for me.

Love,

Elder “Douglas”

Well, this change came as a shock.  When I first learned about it, I was kind of sad I was going to be leaving Elder Johnson.  I guess this has happened a few times.  When you learn about a change, all those silly, petty differences no longer feel important at all and you kind of feel you lost an opportunity to be a better friend.  Then I slapped myself awake and said, "What am I talking about?  I'm free!"  I guess the last few weeks I did a lot to try and have a really good relationship with Elder Johnson.  I guess he reminded me of Elder Sanchez a lot.

When I first realized that that was where the relationship was going, I made a promise to myself that I would do whatever it took to make sure we could leave each other as friends.  I decided I'd find 20 things I liked about Elder Johnson, things that he did really well and that I could learn from him.  He was really good about jumping over the little barriers that people make when you first try to get to know them.  He also was aware of the investigators and remember the different people we talked to.  I geared myself up to try and watch and learn everything I could from him right when they changed us.  I guess I will have to try and follow his example here in Cuenca.  Those skills will be very useful considering people here in the Sierra are known for being very closed.

So far I have felt that I have been a much better missionary than I was the last time I was here in Cuenca.  I also found the great value of humor in a relationship.  One time when Elder Johnson was angry, he called up the district leader.  The DL asked us if it was possible to make each other laugh.  I thought it was really good advice.  I put in practice what you wrote me earlier, Mom, about forcing yourself to talk and it really helped a lot. If you are at least talking, then you have to work to be angry.  But sometimes, you need to make good feelings, too.

I made it another goal to try and make him have a really good laugh every day.  Having him beat me in chess provided many opportunities to put him in a good mood.  I am not really sure what went wrong.  I keep thinking it has something to do with passive aggressiveness.  I am still not exactly sure what that is, Dad, but I think that is what you used to talk to me about.  I think sometimes he would try to get a reaction out of me on different things and I would just say, "uh-huh" or a distracted, "Oh, wow."  I think that is what drove him up a wall.  I guess that was a much more painful way of learning what you had been trying to teach years ago. 

Turkey Week

Hello Family,

Is this Turkey Week?  I think starting this week, we are only going to sing the Christmas hymns for companionship study.  The transfer ends the day after Christmas.

We had a good week.  This past Saturday, there was a Stake activity.  The youth did a "pioneer dance" to Cotton Eyed Joe.  It was fun.  Jefferson, one of the kids we are teaching, participated with his friend.  Since the rest of the young men in the ward were not man enough, Jefferson and Joel represented two of the four young men who participated.  They really like Mutual (youth program).  They just asked them if they wanted to dance in the performance and they said "yes".

We have found some really good people this week.  During one of our lessons, we were teaching a mother and her daughter, Karol.  It was the second lesson for Karol, but the first for her mother.  I am not sure what the mother was expecting in the lesson but I think she was pretty impressed by what she felt about what we taught.  They seem to be a pretty heavy Catholic family.  She said that if her daughter received an answer to her prayer that this was the true religion, she could continue listening to us.  We asked Karol is she had read and prayed about the Book of Mormon.  She didn’t say anything at first but then started to cry and said that her father did not want her to continue with us.  We still need to figure out exactly what happened between them, but we are hoping to try and teach him to soften his heart like the mom.  I think sometimes people accept to listen to us because they think they will be able to poke their finger at our beliefs because of all the things they hear that other people say about our church.  Sometimes they are a little dismayed when they find that the Book of Mormon contains the purest form of Christianity they have ever seen.  I have taught a few pastors like that.

Things are going well.  We have got some good people for our program in December.  Things are pretty cool.  I am excited for the package.  Elder Johnson keeps beating me in chess.  He’s got me twice now.  If he was just beating me, I wouldn’t get so frustrated.  I think it doesn’t matter how many comebacks you can make if you keep making stupid mistakes.  It is kind of the house of cards thing.  Anyways, it has been fun, but I think we need to watch the board games.  Things got a little out of control last year on Christmas and New Years when we were locked up in our house and played about 10 games of Monopoly.  It got a little crazy.  We have just been playing the chess games over the span of several days during our free time.  For example, one guy moves while the other brushes his teeth.  I think we are going to have to limit it to a p-day activity because it has been getting a little too emotionally involved for me.  Sometimes I have trouble studying because I find myself staring at the board. Je Je

Well, hope to hear from you soon. 

Love Mr. Viktor

Feely:  Here are a few of the questions bounding around in Nan's soul:
In a relationship, why does it only need one smart comment to completely knock down the other 50 times you decided to just bite your tongue because you didn't have anything nice to say?  It is kind of like building a house of cards.

What does it say about you if you always feel someone is implying something about you but never comes out and says it?  Is that just your conscience freaking out or do some people have an innate ability for the implicit?

Internet trouble...

Dear Family,

How are you all doing?  I am sorry, but I don’t have much time.  I could not get into the internet for about half an hour.

We had a good week.  It has been weird.  For the last week, we have had all these unexpected people show up to church, but then they never come back.  It is a surprise batch every time.

Zona Puerto Lisa/Centenario

I liked your last few letters.  I don’t know why, but your last one reminded me of all those winter smells as I read about your holiday activities.  Burning fir wood, wassel, juniper.  I forgot about all that stuff.  Now I get a cold if the temperature drops below 80 degrees.  Actually, I don’t really ever know what the temperature is.  34-36 in Celsius.

Sorry I can’t write much.  I will send you a happy Victor picture to make it up.  Your last email about the smile got corrupted.  If you wouldn’t mind sending it again.

Love you all,

Mr. V

Caption for picture:  

Back: Elder Romney, Narvaez, Verduzco, Klingonsmith; 2do-Zuleta, Ludlam, Quishpee, Johnson, Díaz, Roviro, Demke, Juan Pedro, Whitney; 1ra-Brazo de Gomez, Lewis, Linares 

A picture, por fin!

Elders Johnson, Ludlam, Whitney and Demke

Famili!

How are you all this week?  I hope you are all well.

This week the feriado (holiday) took its toll on our program.  Everyone left town so we did a lot of looking for new people.  We might be getting a new house soon.  We don’t live in our sector right now so we want to move.  The new house has a nice, big view.  Hopefully we’ll get in pretty soon.

Feely:  I like what you said about singing in one of your letters.  I think I have gotten a lot better.  Before I just sang kind of softly so that way it kind of sounded like I was in tune with all the harmonics bouncing around and such, but I am getting to be a stronger singer. I sound pretty good in the middle of a South American sacrament meeting.  Elder Castro helped me with that.  He did not like it that I sang softly, being a military man and all.  He had no sense of pitch, but sure liked to belt it.  "Compañero, no quiero decirle otra vez, ¡tiene que cantar DURO!"

I had a really cool experience the other week.  I was on an interchange in another area.  The zone leaders called and said they wanted to come and see a few of the investigators of this area.  When they showed up, they came with Assistants (to the Missionary President), too.  I thought to myself, six missionaries, this is going to be a missionary sting. 

Anyway, that night they went around to a few different people.  For the last visit, we all gathered back together at the last house.  We couldn’t all fit in the house so we just set up a few chairs and sat in a circle and the rest of the Elders standing behind.  It was pretty cool to just see so many excellent missionaries teaching together, feeding off of each others teaching abilities while still having their own personal teaching manner.  Looking around, seeing all those white shirts together in the dark, I realized all those missionaries were my heroes.  After the interchange, I ran home and tried to get down on paper everything that everyone talked about.  It was a lot of good stuff.

Well, I hope to talk to you soon.

Love,

Elder Grant