HEy hey heY!!
I´m sorry to hear that it was a rough week for ya (at work); this week was kinda rough here too but for very different reasons. To start out, we have this investigator named Emma who we met a week or two ago, and the past visits with her have been super spiritual and good, so spiritual that she cried during one. She is really into her family and she wants the best for them and is ready to be a good example for them and the best part, she doesn´t have a church right now but she said she´s looking for one to improve her life and to help her kids. So that´s all super good and i have high hopes for her; the downside is she didn´t come to church after so many good lessons, and neither did our 5 other investigators with whom we had good lessons last week, and they all promised that they would be there in Church on Sunday. Well we had zero investigators, zero recent converts and zero of the less/non active members there who we had been focusing on. It was a super bummer, disappointing, and kinda killed our spirits. But we are re-grouping, and decided that since this upcoming week is the last full week we will likely be companions, we wanted to make it the best, so we made a goal of 50 lessons this week which is over double of what we´ve been able to complete on our best week here so far. We´re kinda off to a bad start because the week started off weird with us having p-day on Tuesday but we´re determined to get this goal even if it kills us.
Our other investigators are Watson, the old frail lady, but we haven´t been able to visit her lately because she can only have visitors at certain times of the day and those times have been super busy for us. We are also teaching Florencia, who is still struggling to recognize the Spirit and says she´s not receiving answers to her prayers, but we have a great lesson planned for her. We have the Moreno Family who are just working to get married, then most of them will get baptized and we´re hoping the example of the rest of the family will help the dad to get baptized too. The sad thing is that they´re moving, so i don´t think we´ll get to see what happens with them, hopefully everything works out for them in their new area. Those are our positive investigators for now and we plan on trying to set baptismal dates with all 5 of them this week.
So as you probably noticed i´m writing this a day late because we switched our p-day from Monday to Tuesday so that we could go to the temple since it´s closed on Mondays. So yeah, today we went to the temple, which was amazing as always. I had kinda forgotten how peaceful and amazing the temple is after not having gone for a while, but i loved it. Then we went to the canal which was pretty fun. We got to see three ships go through, one small one and two huge cargo ships. It´s amazing how fast they do everything for the size of stuff they´re working with.
We haven´t played baseball once yet, i´m guessing because you need bats, mitts and all that but we have played kickball, but to be honest, i´m not a huge fan of it. As for soccer, i can keep up pretty well with the average latino and i´m better than the average gringo but there are some locals that completely school everyone and some are only like 14 or even 12 years old, it´s amazing!
Pouch letters usually get to me about 2 or 3 weeks. Well yesterday i got the Dearelder version of your email that you sent on the 30th. It´s alot faster since i´m here in the zone with the office elders so i get them as soon as they get them. But if i leave for some other zone, especially out of the city, it usually takes alot longer for anything to get to me.
Thanks for the music and the other stuff that you´re sending but don't stress out over anything, those were just things i had in mind for my birthday, haha. One other thing i thought of that i can´t find here is black duct tape, for fixing my shoes. And as for the shaver, i´ll just look around for something cheap. I have plans to send some packages home, one for sure will have boring stuff -just things that i want to keep from my mission but i don´t want to haul around with me. But i also plan on sending home some Panamanian stuff that i think you might like. Anything specifically that you can think of that you like to buy when in foreign countries?
One funny thing that happened with our service project putting in the floor (for the lady with the little cafe) was while we were excavating the backyard there were some banana trees that she wanted out too. So to set up the scene it goes her house, then our muddy hole about 7 feet deep, then the trees, then the rest of her yard, hope ya understand. But so the first tree we just took out with a pickaxe and it was super easy because as you may know banana trees are kinda soft. So with the second one i decided i wanted to try to tackle it to see how my football skills were and to see if i could. I started at the back of her yard and got a pretty good running start at it but i kinda didn´t think about the fact that if i did mange to take out the tree, we would just go tumbling down to our muddy deaths in the hole... which is what happened.... but we didn´t die... well the tree did, i didn´t, haha. So yeah i hit the tree and it broke and i just went flying down into my super muddy hole and the tree just came down with me. Once i got up i was so muddy and covered in banana tree juice, which does not come out of shirts by the way. It was super funny to experience and my comp and the lady were laughing pretty hard, and it was fun too. I showed that tree :) Anyway so on the topic of the floor, we finished it finally and it looks good. I´m just waiting to see what big project she has for us next, because she always seems to have something.
I went to the doctor on Monday and he told me that i have a skin infection and he gave me a prescription for some antibiotics and a creme that is supposed to heal me up good. The weird part is that he told me i need to put the cream on from head to toe and everything in between, it´s kinda difficult, haha. But now i´m all healed up, i still have a few little scar things on my chest but they´re going away too so i´m ready to go!
So this week i got some nice Christmas cards haha. I got a letter from Dad, Bishop Anderson and a few other people and they were all from Christmas. They were postmarked Dec. 11 so it only took over 6 months for those to get to me haha. That proves how slow sending mail to the Marbella address is. Speaking of which, could you give the better address in Carrasquilla to anyone that may write to me so that i can get it before i finish my mission haha. But i still enjoyed getting them, thanks!
I¨m super excited for this last week before changes (transfers) because of the goal we set. I´ve already had many personal testimony builders that when in the service of the Lord and as we commit ourselves more and ask for Him for help, He will come through and help us if we keep pushing forward always, even when it seems pointless, the blessings will come in one way or another. I¨m going to put my faith to the test this week and do all i can and i know the Lord will help with the rest.
Thanks for everything you guys do and all your support! It´s always a boost to get to read about what´s going on at home and in your lives. Thanks and i love and miss you!
Love,
Elder Pfister
P.S. Dad, i think you should go through with the biker boy look with the pony tail and all, it´ll be a good look on ya i think :)
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