Sunday, December 21, 2014

December 1, 2014, Thanksgiving Sandwich

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


No comments:

Post a Comment