Hola familia y amigos,
como estan? (slowly getting
better)
so everybody says that when learning a new
language, you learn how to read, then how to understand, then how to speak...
those people are dirty rotten liars. My spanish is weird, i feel like i can say
basically anything that i want (or at least get the point across) but i can’t
understand what the heck is going on in conversations, and i can’t read it at
all. (at least not scriptures) but i have definitely noticed an improvement
from when i started. i can’t really tell exactly what people are saying, but i
can usually get a general idea of what they are trying to get across. it’s good
that im starting to understand more because pretending to communicate in a
language you don’t actually speak is a dangerous art. This week alone i think i
may have promised some guy one of my tie clips (which i really don’t want to give
him) and i very nearly got myself a flu shot that i already have. I’ll tell you
the story in the next paragraph (oh, did you notice how i just used i´ll?,
yeah, i figured out where the apostrophe is, i´m pretty proud)
so we were going to visit an investigator (an older guy with one
leg) and this lady was going into the house as we got there, elder velazco was
trying to ask me something, pointing to his arm, i wasnt understanding so i
just pretended like usual and used ambiguous responses. we get in the house and
she´s giving our investigator a shot, i just think "oh she´s his nurse,
he´s getting his old people shots." so we start talking to her, i think
we´re contacting, so i just go along with elder velazco. she has us sit down
(oh cool we get to teach her now)
"so what are your last names"
(oh good, i know this one) "Elder Gàndola, soy de California"
(nailed it)
*writes our names down* "ok, sign here"
".... .... ... ... .. why?"
"oh for my register"
"... ..... ... ... why?"
"so you can get your flu shot"
"... but i already have my flu shot"
"really? for how long?" (the question was actually how
long ago)
"i dont know 2 years or more"
"2 years or more?"
"yeah! exactly!"
".... yeah youre getting this shot"
etc.
Eventually it was all cleared up and she figured
out that im just an idiot who doesnt know how to talk
but anyways, in other news, we had
intercambios this week. (not sure what the word is in english) and i was
companions with the zone leader, elder m, for two days. it was great,
he´s a good elder, i learned a lot from working with him, and it was nice to be
able to talk and joke around in english again. they share a house with two
other elders, e and w, but it is seriously a mansion, like elder w hadn't even been in all of the rooms there. Unfortunately however,
intercambios was on thanksgiving, and his comanion didnt have a lot of food, so
thanksgiving was pretty dinnerless. not to say i didnt eat good food that day
though. right before switching, i was able to eat a freshly slain peanut butter
sandwich, and you know how my favorite has always been candied yams? well they
werent quite yams, and they werent candied, but i did have fruitloops. oh, i
even ate a banana, soo... you guys missed out.
and to end, i´ll share a cool experience that
we had this week. so we contacted this lady a couple days ago in the street,
and went to visit her last night. she wasn't there at first, her daughter and
daughters husband were though, so we talked to them for a bit, they listened,
but it wasnt anything especially different. then the lady we contacted came
home and we started talking to her, and she started breaking down. she was in a
really rough place in her life emotionally. i couldnt really understand what
her problem was (i later learned that 2 of her kids had died, still dont
know specifics) but i could feel her pain and knew that the gospel could help
her. We had a great discussion with her and i could feel things being given to
me to say, including a scripture (i only had my Spanish scriptures so i couldnt
look anything up) that i had just looked up for somebody else but didnt end up
using. we ended by blessing their home and giving her a blessing, after which
she couldnt even talk, she just sat there crying. we left and afterwards i
realized a few things. we (or at least i) always think that if we are obedient
and doing the right things, that the lord will send people to us, thats wrong,
he sends us to them. we had a goal this week to contact 70 people (we´ve been
averaging about 45) we didnt accomplish that goal, but it pushed us to contact
more, and without it, we never would hae contacted that woman. Many people are
prepared to receive the gospel, she wasnt, she NEEDED the gospel. i dont think
we were an answer to a prayer, because she didnt know how to pray, but i think
we were the tool that god used at that time to help his daughter.
anways, all is well, thats it for this week,
love you guys (family)
-Elder Gàndola
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