La vida es buena!

Meto! (famous saying here in Chiriqui)

   Well, first things first, i`m feeling a lot better, nearly completely better so don`t worry. I went on some hardcore drug that this doctor gave me, and it made me super, super sleepy every day - and i was falling asleep in appointments and everywhere.  It was embarrassing but it worked so it was worth it because i`m better now. 

    So news on all our peeps... R_____a and S____ are progressing towards their goal of baptism for this Saturday; i put a picture of them on Skydrive and pics of the dinner they gave us. A very typical dinner here with patacones (fried and smashed plantains, pretty much a Latin french fry), a hot dog, a salad which was tomato and lettuce plus some aguacate this time. Anyway, so we announced their baptism this week in church, and we forgot to tell them that we were going to do that and they were really surprised to suddenly hear their names in sacrament meeting, but it all worked out, and it`s as sure as it can be that they are getting baptized this Saturday. They really are our golden investigators because since day one they have been progressing and understanding everything and they prayed and accepted a fecha the first lesson. 

   With M_____l it`s not so good... So we put a baptismal fecha with him, but when we asked his mom she apparently got offended because she felt that we were pressuring him;  we do push a little but with him we didn`t really push because he already had come to church for 8 Sundays, and he had told us he wanted to get baptized. We just had to ask him in front of his mom to get permission from her because he is not 18. Well i`m not sure what it was but i think they have very anti-Mormon neighbors, actually we know that but we think that the neighbors are telling them bad things about the church, because all of the sudden his mom won`t let M_____l go to church or even talk with us and when we go over they pretend to not be home.  We went over to apologize with sodas and other stuff but nothing worked.
    We have the two super smart girls named W____ and H____ that we are teaching but they are always involved in recitals or some activity and so we have lost contact with them for a week or so but we have an appointment today with them, and a we'll take a few young women from the ward to make friends with them. They could very easily be baptized on the 7th of Sept so we`ll see if they accept. 

    Also there is this lady named Z____ who has been going to church for a few months, but is living with this guy who didn't`t want to get married, so she couldn`t be baptized - but now all of a sudden after lots of prayer and fasting on her part, he suddenly left her. She had been praying for an answer because lately he hadn`t been letting her go to church and she didn`t know what to do, but the Lord helped by getting him out of her life so that she can not only go to church but be baptized too, so we put the goal for that baptism for the 7th of Sept because she is gone this whole week working or else we would just have baptized her this weekend, she`s so ready ha ha. 

   I think that`s all the big news for this week. Thanks for the recipe for pumpkin chocolate chip bread;  we are going to make it with our dinner on Sunday. Thanks for looking up all that stuff for USU, the closer going home gets the more stressful it gets too, ha ha. Mom I hope you had a great birthday and that you got my birthday email. 

   Everything is going great for me here, i think we can have lots of success here in the ward, we are really gaining the confidence of the members and they are helping out alot. I know that this is the work of the Lord because every time i testify of the truthfulness of it, which i do alot as a missionary, the Spirit testifies to me and my own testimony grows as well. This gospel is the best thing in the world, and I`m glad i was born into it and that i can help people to find it and enjoy the same blessings it offers to all. I love you guys, take care and say hi to everyone for me!

Love,

Elder Pfister

todavía enfermito

Hey hey hey,

    Well i´m still pretty sick, during this week i felt like i was on my death bed a few days and so we didn´t get that much work done this week sadly, but i feel that this week i´ll be feeling good enough to work hard again. Anyway i guess i can catch you guys up on what´s going on here.

    R_____ and her son S____ are our golden investigators because we meet them on a referral from a member and just from the first appointment they haven´t stop progressing. They had gone to lots of different churches, but they didn´t like any of the other churches, and one trip here to the LDS Church, and they already know that it is true. They read everything we give them and they actually try to re-read it a few times to understand it better and they pray and read together always. S_____ is only 10 years old, but he is understanding alot of it, as he is just really into it and always excited to go to church. They have a baptismal date for the 31 of August. Satan is already working on them because since the first appointment they have had friends and even her Mom come up to her saying that the church is crazy and teaches lies, but even so, with the very little knowledge they have, they have defended it. So even though i´ve been really sick, we´ve always gone to these appointments to keep them progressing. 

    So the reason why i was sent here to this area is because in my old area we were working with pure families and families with lots of marital problems, and in a lot of the cases we were able to solve problems, or help out a lot, and to me that joy of seeing a broken family get fixed with the gospel was the best in the world and it got me super pumped to go find more families like that to help them. So when i get here, i was talking to my comp and he was telling me how they were thinking about dropping a few families because... take a guess... they had marital problems. But i arrived super pumped and prepared for just that so now we´re doing work in that area. I know that God was preparing me in my last area to come here at this time and help these families we have right now and i´m really hoping i can do some good. 

    M______ (the determined kid) is this 12 year old kid who comes to church on his own every week for the last 8 weeks or so. We finally had a formal appointment there with him and his mom and she was telling us how she has noticed a big difference in his behavior, as he´s a lot more respectful to everyone and does better in school and everything now that he is going to church. His mom also said that she was looking in the Book of Mormon for something to prove that it is wrong and she couldn't find anything like what she was looking for, and she kinda admitted that she thinks the church is true, so we´re hoping that the baptism of M______set for the 31st can help her to progress, and what's more she told us how her husband is shy but would like to learn more also and M_____´s little brother said he wants to hear the lessons too, so there you are, through this kid coming to church and allowing the gospel to change him, a whole family might find that joy and peace that there is to find in the gospel. 

 

Questions: Is Mckay going to go to the same mission in Ukraine? Can you guys send me the recipe for pumpkin chocolate chip bread that we make every Christmas? When are sign-ups for class for spring semester at USU?

    

Anyway i think that´s all for now; i am getting better health wise so don´t worry too much, but keep me in your prayers. I know that this is the work of the Lord and i´m pumped to be an instrument in the Lord´s hands to help bring families to Him and make them eternal. I love you guys and miss you, take care!

Love,

Elder Pfister

¿Cómo va todo?

Hey fam!

   Well this change is going great so far, but this letter might be short again, i`m really sorry it`s just that being a ZL I have to report all the numbers of everyone online, plus take pictures and put them online of all the baptismal registros and that usually takes half an hour or so - just so you know why i can`t write too much lately - and now our zone went from 14 missionaries to 26, little bit bigger haha but it`s cool, other than reporting things i like having a bigger zone. 

    To answer the questions... My comps name is Levi Wright from Pleasant Grove i believe. Elder Collier is still in David, and Elder Stegelmeier is actually in the same ward as me so we have church and a few lunches together. I got the package you sent last, and in thinking about it i can`t really think of anything i need that i can`t get here... 

    So we have some really positive investigators right now and a few have fechas for this month. Next week i`ll make sure to write a better letter and explain in detail everything but for now a quick overview. R_____ and S____n are like golden investigators that we just found, but are going to get baptized already. M____ is a cool determined young man who wants to get baptized and through him we might be able to baptize a whole family of 5.  And yet again we are fighting the government bureaucracy because we have 3 people who would get baptized right now, but they need to get divorced from their past spouse, and married to their current partners, so we`re in that struggle now. Those are the most positive i can think of for now. 

   Overall my comp is cool, the ward is nice and my area is sweet, really hot sadly but oh well, i`ll lose more weight sweating alot. Right now i`m actually really sick with a terrible cough but nothing else, my comp thinks it is bronchitis because he had it earlier in his mission and it was the exact same thing, i went to the doctor and they gave me some meds which i`m taking, so this week is the test to see if i get better, but the bummer is i think i may have to take some sick days and stay in because in the house i feel fine but once i go out to work in the sun is when it hits me hard. We`ll see but don`t worry too much i`m not going to die and i won`t do anything dumb like work myself beyond my capacity. 

    Anyway, I know that this is the work of the Lord because I am already seeing a purpose for me being in this area, remind me to tell you next week about that story. I love you guys and you are always in my prayers! Take care!

Love,

Elder Pfister

Hola Familia!!

Hey hey hey!

    Well this week is full of surprises! This Wednesday are changes and in theory i was supposed to get a new comp but they are changing me. What happened is that there were two zones here in David but now they are making them into one zone and they are sending me to be ZL but working in the other ZL area so i already know who my comp will be and where i`m going. I will be in Barrio 2 here in David with Elder Wright a gringo that i think is from Utah, but i`m not really sure. I`m always excited to have changes and meet new people but this time i`m really bummed too because i`m not going to get to work with A____h to get him baptized - and the new missionaries won`t know him so it`ll be hard for them to get to know him like we do, just a big step backwards in his progress i think because even if we explain everything it`s not the same because of the confidence and trust we've built.  But it will work out ok I hope.

    So this week the mission work has been tough because we`ve been going back and forth from my area to Elder Collier`s so it slowed us down alot but everything is pretty much the same. A___h is still on the fence on whether he wants to get baptized or not. I____ doesn`t think that she will be able to go to the temple for work reasons but she`s doing good and will go in November on the next ward visit. N____ is being tough especially when we went with the hermanas, as he doesn`t take the sisters as seriously as he does the Elders for some reason, so that`ll be tough. 

    My finger turned black in Colon when we were doing a service project. We had to get cement blocks from one side of a little river to the other so instead of walking that whole distance we started throwing them. A crazy Tongan would throw them to me and i caught them so they didn`t break, but one time he didn`t throw it hard enough and i went down to catch it and my finger got smashed  and it did hurt. But the fingernail just barely fell off recently. 

    We have actually gone to Boquete nearly every p-day this change, it`s amazing there because its cool and fresh, i don`t sweat constantly over there in the mountains. We usually eat and then just find a hike or something to do. 

    The last bus ride to Panama city was ok, i was able to sleep a little. None of the bus rides are really that great but oh well. Luckily this time i don`t have to go, they are only paying for one of the zls to go and i think it'll be Elder Wright not me for the next meeting. 

    Speaking of mission blogs president just send me the link to his blog this week here it is...

http://sunshineinmysoulpanamamission.blogspot.com/

    Well i gotta go but i`m excited to see my new area and what it has in store for me; they say that it is a cool area and i know that my comp is chill. I know that this is the work of the Lord and that if they are changing me it`s for a reason and i have a purpose there! Love you guys!

Love,

Elder Pfister