April 15, 2013
Hey family,
Hey family,
Well, that’s great to hear about the
news. Over the week I was just thinking about who would become the new bishop.
But I had pretty much thrown Dad out as an option because he had just received
a different calling. But seriously, that is the best news I’ve heard in a
really long time. It is super, super exciting, and when I read that, a big
smile appeared on my face. Yeah it will be tough, but it will be super awesome.
We work with our bishop a lot, and we have a lot of success in our ward here in
Bello Horizonte. Maybe someday Dad can become as legendary as the Obispo here
in Bello Horizonte. He is legendary throughout the entire mission. Not too
shabby. But yeah seriously, I’m super super excited. Even Elder Rodgers emailed
me and said "dude..... Your dad's the Obispo now". But now we'll be
able to sit on the stand together when I get home and give my homecoming talk
in my broken Spanish/English. Good times await.
So this week has been pretty good for
me. Nothing too exciting happened, but we just worked and worked and worked
some more. I'm always doing one of two things: Teaching or Contacting. They are
both pretty fun, and it ends up being about 50/50. Every week my Spanish gets a
little bit better, and my English gets a little bit worse. It will be a pretty
big shock when I finally come home, but its all good. I really love it here,
all is going very well. I’ll throw down some stories of stuff that happened
this week/highlights.
Tuesday: We worked for a while,
contacted a lot, and had some appointments. We visited a recent convert named
R. He bought us some Coke (see, were not actually supposed to drink coke here
for whatever reason, but when new converts/investigators give it too us, we
can’t refuse it. Manners please). I taught him about the oath and covenant of
the priesthood, and then we left. Later that day, we had a meeting with the
sister missionaries and the legendary Bishop H. It all went well, and we made
some jokes.
Wednesday: We had our
zone/district meeting. After, we contacted for a while, and taught some
lessons. We have a family that we are teaching that the wife has been to the
temple, but is inactive, and the guy named A is not a member. We taught him
a little, and I taught him how to pray in English, because he wants to
learn. I can’t really remember what else happened.
Thursday: Just contacted all day. Oh,
and I started reading Jesus the Christ, and it’s a pretty good book. We just
contacted for a long time, and taught some lessons, but nothing that I really
remember. The days kind of just mesh into one big blob, and at the end of the
week, I have a hard time remembering the specifics.
Friday: In the morning we had an
appointment with a family. We ended up just teaching the guy, and after the
lesson, I said to my comp "I wonder if that guy will be able to be
baptized". He had explained to us that he was in the war of Nicaragua, and
had killed a ton of people, and now he is part of a gang, and is still killing
people. So, he was a cool guy, but he is also a murderer. Sometimes we find
people like that, and we usually stop teaching them, because their chances of
getting baptized are super slim. Later in the night we taught one of our
positive families named V and J. It was going all right, but then some drunk
guy came up and was harassing us. The spirit left the lesson, but my comp
distracted the drunk guy so that I could teach the family. I taught mostly V,
because J was distracted by the drunk. But while I was teaching V, I asked him
if he had prayed about the book of Mormon. He told me yes, and I asked him if
he knew that it was true. He looked at me and nodded his head and said yes. It
was awesome! Then I said something like "bueno, entonces ahora ya sabe que
nuestro mensaje es verdad. Y por eso, queremos invitarle ser bautizado el 20 de
Abril" So I invited him to be baptized on the 20th, and he said yes. His
wife J is super hard hearted, and hasn’t been to church yet, but I think that
we'll baptize V, and then focus on J later. Super cool though. I love those
types of lessons where the people are all ready to get baptized. PT2 So
later in the night, we went to the house of M and M, the family that we brought
to the General Conference. They are super cool, and had invited us to eat
dinner with them on this night. We stopped by, but the parents weren’t there,
just their 5 kids. So we had an impromptu FHE and watched The Restoration. It
was all right, but the kids were pretty rowdy. So anyways, we left and
contacted for a little longer. Then at like 8:30 we stopped by the house in the
night to see if the family had arrived. The wife was there, and one of their
kids was there with blood gushing out of her head. It was crazy, and apparently
a hammer fell on her head????? So we were like "ok Hermana, we will pass
by tomorrow....." and then we left. Kind of random, but yeah.
Saturday: Just contacted all day, and
taught some lessons. In the night we went back to the house of M and M to teach
them. Luckily they were home, and there wasn’t some girl with blood gushing. So
we stopped by, and they were like "LET’S MAKE THEM DINNER!!!" So it
turned into full out operation mode, and we started cooking. We offered our
services, and I made the Gallo Pinto. It was super fun, and I gave some little
my girl and told her to take a lot of pictures. So I have some pictures that I
sent home. Very, very fun. After the food was all cooked, we served it, and
went into their living room area, and watched the restoration again. It was
super rowdy, but that is to be expected with a house of 5 kids.
Sunday: Just went to church. We brought
4 people. Sacrament went well, and after we went to the principles of the
gospel class. It started off well, but then one of the investigators asked a
question about why we don’t believe in the cross and why our church is
different from the Catholic. Then it just turned into a giant argument, and it
was pretty funny. I guess that’s to be expected when you have Mormons,
Catholics, evangelicals, and people with 0 religion, all in the same room. But
luckily, it turned out all right. After church we went and ate, and then worked
in our area until nighttime. We came back to the house, and Elder B walked into
our room and said, "Do you think our neighborhood is safe?" I said
"yeah, why?” He then pulled out of his pocket a loaded gun clip. He said
that he and his comp Elder F were outside the house relaxing when a taxi came
screaming through our neighboorhood and hit a dude who was running away.
He said that then a bunch of dudes got out of the taxi, and beat the snot
out of the victim, and tried to shoot him with a makeshift gun, but it
didn’t go off. Then they beat some more snot out of the guy, and threw the
victim in the car and took off. It sounded pretty sketchy, and I’m glad that my
comp and I were out working when it happened. But Elder B and his comp said
that after the fighting was over, they walked over, and found the loaded
gun clip with some ghetto Russian ammo. It was a pretty crazy story, and is
really strange, because our neighborhood is super safe and rich. Craziness.
Glad I wasn’t there.
Well, that’s all pretty much what happened
this week. It was pretty normal. I am super excited about the new Bishop Stark
(see, it even sounds cool). Today for P- day we are just relaxing and taking it
easy. We went to the Coca-Cola factory (there is a huge coke factory in my area
that makes all of the coke for Nicaragua, and most of the coke for the
neighboring countries) and tried to get a tour, but it didn’t work. Then we
went to Rolter, a flip-flop factory, and tried to get a tour too, but we didn’t
get one either.
That’s about all that happened, Love you
all and I miss you all. Cuidense,
Elder Stark
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