"Swayman? Is that your hood name"?




Here's a pic of some of the Hispanic members in the ward I attend! There's Luis Arriaga, Hermana Rosa, Flor, and Hermana Quispe. Luis is a convert as of two months.

Hello again!

 

This week was pretty decent in terms of success. Not a lot of people like to remember that we made appointments with them, nor do they like to answer their doors here. 

 

I went on a tradeoff/companion exchange this week with Elder Degroff for a day. So I got to speak English during the lessons, and it felt fantastic! Elder Degroff is super awesome and he's from Mesa, AZ. We were riding our bikes and we stopped to talk to these two black people outside. We were talking for a while and they were super cool, and when we asked them their names it was Courtney, and Swayman. So Elder Degroff was like "Swayman? Is that your hood name?" haha And they guy said "No! That's my real name. It's Swayman Clements George!" Or something like that. 

 

There was a new group of people that came to the English class this week. They're from Honduras and know basically no English at all. So we ended up splitting into two classes for the beginners. I taught the new people and it was ridiculously hard! There was this kid that kept confusing himself and making everything way too complicated. I was writing stuff on the chalkboard, and I wrote el (with an accent it means "he"). And he was like wait, wait, wait, what does that mean?? EEELLLLLAAAHH. And I was like dude, that's your own language. haha You're making this way too complicated. 

 

Rudy is STILL in New Orleans! We're going to push his baptismal date back since he's been gone so long and there won't be enough time for lessons and stuff. Luis is scheduled for September 14 and I'm praying hard that it's going to happen. He doesn't know for sure that the Book of Mormon is true yet and there's a chance he's not going to be baptized but I think he'll want to. He leaves the 16th for Ecuador so it's like make it or break it. Pray for him!  Rigoberto still hasn't picked a new baptismal date, so we're waiting on that. 

 

So the other day we went to visit a ton of people but no one was home or couldn't meet right then. So we were running out of people and it was too late to knock doors, so we were driving and thinking. Then I got the impression to go visit this guy named Manuel we totally forgot about. So we did, and he wasn't home. But there was this Hispanic party going on the other side of the street and this girl saw us and came walking up toward us immediately as we got out of the car. Her name's Sadie and she is from Honduras and moved a year ago and is baptized but hasn't gone to church since she moved! It was super cool that she just came right up to us. But now her flippin phone number won't work and we're trying to call her because she wants to come back to church and everything but we can't contact her. It'll work out.

 

We met with two other legit people yesterday. Jose Luis and Edward. Jose Luis was working on his car when we went to visit him, which was funny because he was fixing another person's car for free when we first met him. He's a stud and read some of the Book of Mormon and wants to learn more and him and his wife are looking for a church because he's not diggin on his catholic religion right now. And Edward is a stud and knows a lot of answers to our questions when we have lessons with him.

 

The good thing about working with Hispanics, is that a ton of different people live together in one house. For example, Mario. We went to visit Mario after we met him but he wasn't home. But Edward answered the door and invited us in (a couple weeks ago). And the next couple times we went to teach them it was a new guy every flippin time! I don't know how many people live in that apartment but we're up to about 6-8 guys that aren't really family or anything, just roommates. And then next to them lives at least four other Hispanic roommate guys. So a ton of people live together as Hispanics to save money so it helps sometimes to meet new people when the other people aren't home. But everyone still works until like 7 or 8 at night so it's so hard to have a complete day of lessons.

 

Alright that's it for this week! Pray for Luis and Rigoberto especially this week! Love you guys!

Elder MacLay