New companion, Elder Esplin

Hey,



I think you all asked me how I am doing with Elder Esplin? We are doing pretty good. I got upset with him last week because he manipulated me into buying him a bike lock and a bike pump because he said we would have to have it for the area and also because he wouldn't share a drop of his food with me, or laundry soap or anything like that. It's not that I like to be a mooch or anything but when we do transfers here, we have to leave all our food and stuff behind so it is kind of expensive to transfer because you have to re buy a lot of things. Normally it is not a problem though because everbody helps each other out and if somebody needs something, we share and also usually we buy food together. Elder Esplin would not even share laundry soap, milk, bread, cheese or the basics with me. Because of that I had to spend way extra and I used all of my 130 bucks in the past two weeks so now I have no money for the next few weeks. No worries I will just keep draining my home bank account I guess. Yeah, it made me furious one day when I saw him sneakily snacking on my food. I about put a footprint on his face but now I decided that I am just going to start sharing with him like crazy until he realizes how stupid it is to be a selfish bumsniffer.

Its this whole thing about being companions that have never had a friend in their life. Elder Daniele and Esplin both had never hung out with anyone outside of their family in their life and it makes it so a person does not know how to deal with people in social situations. They need to have better filtering on missionaries that put in their papers. If you didn't hang out at all before and are socially struggling they should require that you go to a social skills class. That's what they need to be teaching in mission prep.

No, i need to stop complaining. Elder Esplin is a wonderful guy. He knows every fact a man would never want to know about star wars and computer games. He also loves the gospel and is amazing at spanish for only having two transfers in the mission.

But anyway, ignore the rest, I am really loving it here in Sterling Green, besides the fact that we live in a smokestack and heaven forbid we teach the word of wisdom with the scent of Marlboros flowing from our clothes. We have an amazing investigator named Amelia Contreras that is going to get baptized this week. She is 55 or so years old and is from Honduras. She is almost deaf and was born that way so we have to yell to teach her. She loves the gospel and is so excited to get baptized but she had a very bad incident at church yesterday. She was in relief society and first of all they announced her baptism and so everybody was looking at her and congratulating her and then the teacher started making some jokes (totally unrelated to her) before they started the lesson. Because she couldn't hear well and that had all been staring at her, Ameila thought they had been making fun of her because of her hearing and she begin to cry. We were in priesthood and so we knew nothing about it until the Relief Society president came and talked to us. We waited for her outside the bishops office as he tried to comfort her and she had a major emotional breakdown. She said all of her life since she was a little girl, people have made fun of her for being basically deaf and she had finally found a place where she felt accepted and loved and then she had been under the impression that she was even being rejected there in church and she was devastated. We thought she mind not go through with her baptism. The Bishop, and the Relief Society Presidency all took their turns trying to helping her understnad that they loved her and nobody would ever make fun of her but she was so upset she wouldn't be comforted. After, an hour of talking she finally understood and felt better and I think it will actually be a good thing for her because it got her to know the sisters in the ward and it got them to feel close. After that Amelia said that she was good and we proceeded to have her baptismal interview and now she is ready to go. This week we will just keep bringing over members and this saturday she will be baptized.

Yesterday evening we had a super miracle. We were about to return to our apartment for dinner but we felt we needed to accomplish more before we went back, so we went to this other street to contact people. The first person we found was this 17 year old kid named Luis Chavez that was throwing rocks at his friends window trying to see if he was home. We talked to him and he said he didn't know if he believed in Jesus Christ and he was really confused about religion. We asked him to come sit down with us and we would share him the message right then. He said sure why not. So we walked to a nearby park and sat down. We started teaching him the Restoration and as we talked he would not make eye contact and was very deep in thought, and then every so often he would ask a deep question. We focused on the atonement and the importance of Jesus Christ and the lesson kind of mixed into a Plan of Salvation. At one point we were talking about agency and he said, " ok I am thankful for all you do but you are not really helping me at all and I have heard enough and I understand that you guys believe all this stuff but I don't because I don't feel it like you do. So thank you for your time. I have my agency too and I would like to leave." He stood up to leave and I said," Wait, I know that you have your agency and we would never want to take that away from you we only invite. You haven't heard the most important part of our message yet. Will you give us ten more minutes?"

He said ok and then we shared the story of Joseph Smith and everything changed. He changed his entire attitude and by the end of the lesson we got a baptismal date set with him and he was super excited to read the Book of Mormon and ask God if it is true. He offered the final prayer and asked humbly for God to tell him if the stuff we were saying was true. That was one of this first times he had prayed in his life. Then he siad "Look I don't believe in coincedence. I will see you all tomorrow."

Anyway, he is a super miracle. Now we just have to pray that he stays on it. I believe he will. Pray for Him. I gotta go y'all but I love you. This Church is so true and our God is a god of miracles.

Love,
Elder Bednar


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