October 20, 2009

So this we has been good. Mas o menos, por supuesto. It is hard out here. It was interesting to read Tracy's email because I think that she is having a very different experience than I am. Because most of the people are hispanic here, they are much more nice and willing to listen than whites. We can pretty much talk to anyone about Christ also because hispanics are generally religious-catholic. We have tons of appointments. We have teaching appointments probably at least 5 to 6 times a day. However, hispanics generally say yes to everything and don't understand the nature of a commitment. So many people say that they will come to church and come to activities or read the Book of Mormon and they don't make a single effort. We will even call them 30 minutes before an activity and they will say that they are still planning on us coming to pick them up and then they will not be home when we come to pick them up. It is frustrating because we have a ton of investigators. We get new investigators cada dia, but getting them to progress is another story. If someone reads a single page in the Book of Mormon that is way good, but it is very rare.

However, last night we had a very successful lesson. It was with a new family: Carlos Cantanilla (creo que si, pero no estoy seguro) and Veronica Suarez and there five year old son Luis. We had taught them for the first time on sunday and we showed them the restoration video and left immediately after becuase the spirit was super strong and we didn't want to do anything to diminish by staying to long. So when we showed up last night we answered all their questions and we brought a member, Hmo. Chavez with us and he shared his conversion story with them. They kept saying things like wow, and expressing their amazement over his conversion and the Joseph Smith story. We testified of the Book of Mormon and how it will change their lives and they committed to read it together and pray together and seperately to know that it was true. He doesn't know how to read so she is going to read it to him. And get this, she was asking her husband if they could go to church! We were jumping for joy because they were so interested. Normally, even with the best of our investigators we have to try to force them to be interested but with Carlos and especially Veronica, they are so excited, they are doing all the work. They want to know these things for themselves. I truly believe they have been prepared.

Miguel is still planning on being baptized as far as we know. He still has not gone to church yet but he promised he would this week. He read four chapters of the Book of Mormon on sunday which is the most that any of our investigators have read so I hope he continues reading. I hope also, that he continues with his baptismal date for the seventh of October.

This week I have not been able to speak Spanish worth beans and it is very discouraging. I hardly say a word in most of our teaching appointments which gets me depressed cause I want to help out but I don't know how to say what I want to say and I cannot understand very well. I know that I will get better but right now it is very discouraging.

I love you all. Please send letters.
Love, Elder Bernard

Elder Bernard arrives in HoustonI am super excited to be in the same city where Dad served. What was pasadena like 30 years ago? Now it is almost en

Pues, finalmente estoy aqui en houston. I am super excited to be in the same city where Dad served. What was pasadena like 30 years ago? Now it is almost entirely spanish speaking. The mission calls it spanish land. We hardly ever use english with any of the people here. I thought I knew spanish in the MTC, boy was I mistaken, I think I may have accidently been learning Russian because what I learned in the MTC is nothing like what we have here. For the most part, my companion does most of the speaking in the lessons and I try to follow along which is sometimes very difficult. I testify in spanish alot and sometimes I teach principles. I wish I could help more but sometimes I cannot even tell what they are talking about. Its sometimes really bad because I am never well rested here and the nice droning of voices speaking another language puts me right to sleep. Some lessons that are very long are hard for me to keep my eyes open in. But it is really interesting because the gift of tongues really comes into play here. I am always trying to speak spanish but sometimes I cannot worth beans, then, during a lesson, the gift of tongues will just loosen my tongue and it is like I can say whatever I need to say and I understand everything. Like, I had one lesson with an investigator, Dora (things were going great with her and then she just dissappeared and we haven't heard from and can't find her), I understood everything and could speak fine. As soon as the lesson ended we contacted three other people and I didn't understand a word of the entire conversation. It's really frustrating because I feel like I could be contributing so much more but I don't know how to express myself. I don't know, I kinda also feel like I can express what I want to say if they will be patient and give me the time to say it but I struggle with understand what natives are saying. I can understand what my companion says cuz he is gringo and speaks really clearly but his spanish is really good. He has been out here for over a year and a half.
So for the first few days I felt like my companion and I did not click at all and we were not really like friends, just people living and doing everything together. Also, I felt like all the missionaries here in the mission were lazy. Nobody has any real direction and they don't set goals with a purpose and they don't set goals to meet them, rather just because we are told to set them. So anyways, all of our appointments on Saturday and Sunday fell through and we were not really doing anything with purpose so I spent a lot of time in prayer and thinking about it during my personal studies. In the MTC, we learned a ton about finding the elect that God has prepared. It requires faith but you have to know that God has prepared people to receive his word and let go of those investigators that are distracting you from finding the ones that are ready. We also learned that if we want to find the elect we have to be the elect. So during my personal study, I wrote up a plan about how to be the elect missionaries and how to find the elect. It included everything we needed to be doing to be 100% obedient and how to be effective in give commitments, and following through with investigators. We talked about all this stuff during comp study. My companion has only had a few baptisms. The most was one a transfer and he has had many that he did not have baptisms during the transfer. However, he is not goal oriented. We decided to change the way we do things and to set goals that we can and will meet that also stretch us. We prayed and set a goal to have four baptisms by the end of the transfer.

We then went out to work and had the most successful two days yet. We gained alot of investigators in two days and it seems like we could double or triple or goal. I hope we do. The Lord guides and there is nothing that we do of our own out here. We have to have his guidance. All the real adjustments we did to our plans were really to allow the spirit to direct us in this work and he truly does just that.

Yes my PDay is Wednesday

My address is
401 Texas St. Apt. A
South Houston, TX 77587

Love ya,
Elder Bernard

Sept 28, 2009

So anyway, I spoke with Nicole Candelaria several times in the RC this week. One time she was really upset about me leaving and the Lady who gave her anti-mormon literature had talked to her again and tried to persuade her out of being baptized. She was so different this day. She said she didn't want to go to church if I was going to leave and she said she wouldn't talk to other missionaries and would not be baptized. This upset me alot. However, the next time I talked to her she had gotten over that hump and said that she now realized that Satan had been trying to deceive her. She is excited about the baptism on the 24th and she has continued having missionaries visit. I am kind of worried though because she expects me to send her lots of letter and she sent me five emails yesterday. She wants me to call her again before I leave but I alreayd told her I cannot and I will not because she needs to learn to have her foundation in Christ and in the gospel. I don't need disciples, I have no power to do anything for anyone. Christ is the only person who can help disciples. Anyway, I hope she'll be alright but I think she will.

Oh ya, for part of last week my Elder Evans and I were so ready to leave we could hardly focus and we slacked like crazy and we were unhappy because of this. But then we decided to focus harder than we have ever focused because many people tend to slack in their last week of the MTC. Since then, we have had the best week of our MTC experience. Finally, I love it here.

I am working really hard and I am actually trying to become a true disciple of Christ. At first it was really hard to invest myself fully and I kept thinking that this was gonna be a long two years. I guess i came here to check the mission off my list so that I could go on to live the life I wanted for myself, my career, my wife, my life. But now I realize that I need to have God direct my life. Not just pretend by being a good mormon. I need to put all trust in Him and forget about all the other cares. I want to get lost in the work.