Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Derik's 10-2-14 Letter



Well, life is fun. Many things are happening right now.
 
We have one baptism scheduled for the 23rd, with the Hermana 
Virginia, who has a fractured leg (not sure exactly what, 
but problems) and FIVE baptisms scheduled for the 30th. 
Because that is my birthday, I get to do all of them. J Our 
baptism with Hermana Imelda fell through. We cannot convince 
her about divorce, and we are unable to teach anything because 
the conversation gets changed to it. Hermana Virginia is 
progressing really well, though.
 
I found out today during the missionary activity that the 
president invited everyone to that almost no one wakes up at 
6:30. And almost no one exercises. Well I am going to. I am 
losing weight. Like a lot. I moved down two belt holes, and all 
of my clothes are gigantic.
 
Tiangues (not tianges) are my favorite thing in the world. You 
can buy a good pair of shoes for 80 pesos and a tie for 10 (12
pesos is 1 dollar). They also have all kinds of fun knick knacks 
to look at, which is a good bonus.
 
Solfege here is different. The basic clef is do, re, mi, fa ,so, 
la, si, do. That is confusing. Si is sharp so in the states, but 
here it is ti. Bleh.
 
Did you know that I have been in the field now for a month and a 
half almost? I was thinking about that today. It seriously does 
not seem like it has been that long.
 
I have discovered four things that every missionary should become 
very good at because they will be doing them a lot: waiting, 
walking, worshipping, and wondering. I was unaware that being a 
missionary involved so much waiting. We wait for everything. 
We wait. Always. We walk absolutely everywhere, unless we need 
to get to the missionary center at the stake center. Then we ride 
rickety buses. They are fun. Bus fair here is 8 pesos, or 67 cents. 
Worshipping, because we spent 4 hours (3 after I finish my first 
12 weeks) studying the gospel, and everything we do is centered 
around it. The wondering, well, that is because everyone has this 
annoying little trait known as ´agency´. Sure, someone may promise 
to come to church or an activity, but they have the ability to 
decide not to. That can be hard sometimes.
 
Life is mostly fine. I do not think my companion likes me anymore. 
We are quite a bit different, and as hard as I try, you cannot 
build a one-sided bridge. We have exchanges Saturday, though, 
so I just need to endure to the end (hah, 5 principle of the gospel).
 
I discovered something that I find fascinating. In The Book of 
Mormon the story of Alma the younger is an amazing story. But, 
when applied to the language of Spanish, in which Alma means “soul”, 
the levels of meaning can get pretty deep. I thought that that was 
awesome!
 
Have to take care of a bunch of things right now, entonces. Saludos, 
y amor por todos,
Elder Scott
 







 

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