Well... this has been my last full week in the office. I found out on Thursday that I will be having a change back into the "real" mission field where I will be a "normal missionary" 24/7 working full-time. It's going to be a hard adjustment, I think, but it'll be good for me. (Unfortunately, I'm staying in the capital for another six weeks, minimum... we'll see if that changes at the end of March).
This week has been SUPER hard to write in my journal... There is a LOT of traffic getting back to our house because of the University on the way and so I haven't been getting home until about 9:30-9:45, and then I have to plan, and take dats, and report dats, and by then it's already 10:20 so my time is pretty much gone all of the time. But, with me being out of the office now I might be able to get a few more minutes in for journal writing, and I'll DEFINITELY be getting a lot more time in for studying. In fact, 3 more hours than I have now. How's that for a big change? I'm SUPER excited to start studying again! On Wednesday I had about an hour to study Preach My Gospel and the Scriptures and it was absolutely incredible! It really gets me excited to start REALLY studying again. It might be a hard adjustment to go from 0 study time to 3 straight hours, but I'm excited either way.
Last Sunday we had the Book of Mormon class like always, but with quite a bit lower of a turn out, unfortunately. They started doing a seminary class on Sunday at 3-4 but, mormon standard time is even WORSE when you mix it with "la hora chapina" which is "the guatemalan hour". Everything starts or ends about, 20 minutes late. So, some of the people coming to BoM are in that Seminary class which didn't end until about 4:30 and then they all had to leave, which stinks. We had a really awesome lesson with Familia Vega, Julio and Alejandra. They are still waiting on their divorces to be able to get married and then Julio can get baptized, but we're praying for them! Julio has such a strong testimony of the truthfulness of the gospel, and knows almost all of the lessons, so what we did a few weeks ago was we invited him to study a topic and teach US about that subject. He absolutely loved the opportunity to learn more about something that really interested him and he wasn't totally sure of, and found great comfort and knowledge in the scriptures and study tools of the gospel. Elder Barahona said that in that lesson he felt reminded of the conversion of Brigham Young, who converted to the gospel after hearing the simple, down to earth testimony of an uneloquent missionary. Julio's testimony was simple, but powerful because he could truly feel that even though he didn't understand everything, he knew without a doubt that what he was saying was true. It was SUPER cool!
I don't know if you remember me talking about Eddie and Sigrid last week, but we had another visit with them on Wednesday that was great! Eddie was at school, but we were still able to teach Sigrid because her oldest son was there. She has already read all of 1st Nephi in a week. Talk about awesome. She has a sincere desire to learn and she loves to read! We taught her about the Restoration of the gospel, from God is our loving Father, through prophets, dispensations, the ministry of Jesus Christ, the Great Apostasy, and the 1st vision. To her it all seemed to make sense. It wasn't weird or unusual that if God spoke through prophets in olden days there would be prophets today. From what it looks like she believes in the prophets of the Book of Mormon, and if there were prophets in the Bible and in the Book of Mormon, of COURSE there would be a prophet today! The only thing she needs is an answer from God to know for sure that this is true! Tonight we have another cita (appointment) with them, and I'm super stoked about it! Her 11 year old son, Daniel, also listens to us and wants to be baptized as well! Super cool!
That's pretty much it for stories though. A cool little thing about my last week in the office is that yesterday I got to go and deliver 3 refrigerators to some areas in the capital. One of the areas is REALLY far away though, and it's not really the capital. It was super cool to be driving around in a DIESEL FORD F-250. Ya, I got to go around in one of those in Guatemala. Not exactly a common car here. It was pretty cool and definitely not something most people do in their missions. For all of you people who email me, you can keep emailing me on Friday if you want, so that you don't forget when Monday comes around... but my Pday will once again be on Mondays... my next Pday will be on the 20th of February, so you have some time to write me. I'll let you know how my first week goes with my new companion!
Love,
Elder Andrew A. LaPray
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