Elder Steven Shattuck

Elder Shattuck's Homecoming talk!!

2011-08-08T07:46:00.000-07:00

Elder Steven Shattuck will be giving his Homecoming talk on:

SUNDAY: August 21st @ 11:30AM
LDS Chapel
1670 Cienega Road
Hollister, CA 95023

You are all invited! Please come!!

Last email from the Dominican Republic

2011-08-08T07:45:00.000-07:00

Dear family friends colleagues and to whom it may concern..

This is Elder Shattuck calling in the last weekly report, I am ALMOST DONE!! Wow, almost. Almost done sweating, walking, taking insults from random people, getting criticized by random preachers of other religions, sweating, stressing over people that couldn't give a care about what we do, sweating, teaching people that don't know their left from their right, getting stuff thrown at us, getting blisters, sweating and wearing a tie, long pants and long socks in some of the hottest weather ever. Worth it, of course.

This week we had a family go to church! It was pretty cool. They loved it. I will take pictures this week and share them all later with you.

Today I got permission from my mission president to go visit one of my old areas. It was my favorite area. San Pedro! I am writing this email early, because we are going to head out pretty soon. It is about a 2 hour trio from where I am by public transportation. That's where I left the most friends, and had the best memories. I am super excited.

Um there is not much more for me to say right now. I'm sorry I don't write much, but for many reasons there are lots of things I cannot write about, and will just have to tell you in person. Don't worry there are MANY stories. This is probably the most social country on the planet, and it has rubbed off on me. There is never a minute where a Dominican is not talking, and I have the disease. I tried to stop, but I just didn't feel right, so get ready to have your ears talked off!!

OK time for me to go! Love you all

Hi Family!

2011-07-25T16:18:00.000-07:00

Hey what a day! I'm kinda rushed, but I'll squeeze in some details if possible. Today we hit up the DUARTE! Woo that was pretty fun. It's this huge street market where they have more fake shoes and stuff than you can shake a stick at. Every one shoves stuff in your face and grabs you and throws stuff in your hands and tries to get you to buy it. It was an adventure for my comp, it was his first time.

Oh boy we have been hanging in there. Lots of people we are teaching the two Haitians. Prince and Marcelus are still going to church, and now I am teaching them Spanish.

We have a few people who are planning to get baptised on the 6th of August. Bocio is still hanging in there, along with Prince.

Michael and his wife still are being really wishy washy about getting married or not. I'm starting to lose patience, but they always are reading and want us to teach them. The guy just cant give up his USA dreams, even though he is going to leave his whole family behind.

We started an English class this week. We also offer French and Spanish. A new recent convert from the Hermana's area always leaves with us every Saturday. He is going to teach French and he is Haitian. He has 4 years in the country and is graduating next year as a psychologist. It's a blast to go visit people with him. He always does a psychological analysis on people when we teach them. He is actually ridiculously smart, and has the biggest vocabulary in the world. He has us convinced that half the people that we teach have mental problems...

The new mission president is super cool, really REALLY relaxed. Completely opposite than the old president. It's really fun to have him, everyone loves him. He is really funny and his wife looks just like you mom! Did I already tell you that? It's such a difference here in the mission, and he is a great man. He will do a great job. He is also a convert, was baptised with his wife when their first 2 kids were little. So it's fun to see how they always talk about how much this gospel has changed their lives. Few people notice it, but it totally is true. Just a few years living the gospel can and will change a person for the better! I've seen it!

Oh boy hanging in there. I can't lie, I am totally counting down the days. I feel bad for my poor little companion. I love this place, but my time is Definitely coming to an end, and the poor kid has to stay here for another year. Time goes fast!

The poor sister missionaries have had every sickness on the PLANET. They are two little missionaries from Guatemala. They look like two little girls walking around in a foreign country. Well they are. One is brand new and the week she got here her companion got THE DANGUE. It's spread by mosquitoes, and is an intestine infection at the same time or something. She spent the first week of the mission in the hospital with her companion. When her companion got better, the new one got THE DANGUE also. She just got better and the other missionary, that already had Dangue, got sick again with stomach problems!!! WOOO!! Poor sisters, they are finally recovering, but wow not fun. That is all for now, but I hope you all don't get sick or get the DANGUE!!

Adios!

Wait Arsi...I'm coming!!

2011-07-18T12:31:00.000-07:00

Hello Hello!

STRIKE THREE and your out. So much for that strike, pretty much nothing happened. We just couldn't hit the town like we wanted.

Hey it was a great week! It started out when we visited Miguel! We are so excited to teach him. We went to his house and taught him a lesson. He then gave us the Book Of Mormon that we had given him and told us that he was going to move on Thursday. He never moved, and we found out he was not planning on moving....

But other than that really we have had some great success. This man, Bocio, which his name translated to English means, “he yelled”, is still living up to his name. He went to church with his wife and accepted to be baptised on the 6th of August with his family. His daughter-in-law has cancer and is about to head to the other side. It has made his family think a little more about life after death.

Yesterday everybody and their mom went to church. I met some kids on the street and danced a little with them and they went to church and brought their friends and liked it so much they planned on coming back. I like teaching them, cuz its easy to relate.

What else.. oh yesterday I was visiting a investigator that has 6 years waiting for papers to get married and baptised. Her husband has gone to church and stuff, but isn't in this really. He busted out his saxophone and played some awesome stuff. He is a professional sax player for 52 years. Right then a kid showed up with his guitar and we told him to go in and play with us. My comp played the guitar and Parmenio on the sax. It was actually super pretty musical mania. Parmenio is now our best friend!

What else...

Oh we are teaching this lady, Nuris. She has a CRAZY story. I would write it, but I don't want to take 4 years here. I'll have to tell it later, anyways uhhh, yeah she wants to be baptised.

TELL ARSI TO WAIT ONE MORE MONTH FOR ME, I"M COMING!!!
(For Kristina's Restaurant!!) If they close buy salsa and save it in the fridge, ok.
Okey time to go, but have you all a merry little Monday! Bye

Coin Flipping Game!

2011-07-11T11:31:00.001-07:00

Hello familia!

Today the whole country is in strike, but I haven't seen anything at all. It just means we can't leave to take buses anywhere.

We made steak the other day. It was good.

We are teaching this one old man, Miguel. He is super cool. He is bald, and has a huge gut and is a retired police officer, and one of the most humble and nicest guys ever. He went to church on Sunday with his AWESOME green plaid shirt with a striped brown tie. He stayed the 3 hours. We asked him to read this one chapter in the Book of Mormon, and he read it probably 21 times. He memorized the whole thing. He is very humble about how smart he is. He even has a car! There are only 2 members in the ward here that have cars. His wife is a Catholic, and she sometimes talks to us, but doesn't want to go to church or anything.

Things are kind of going south with the families that we have. The dads are trying to fight with us in the appointments, they won't go to church.

We played a game yesterday. We were bored so we got a coin, and would flip it at every intersection to see if we would turn right or left. When we saw people on the street, we would flip the coin again. Heads we talk to them, tails we move on. We met a Jewish person while playing the game and actually found a new family! We would even flip the coin when we saw drunks. Luckily every time it (the coin) fell tails.

Well that's all for now. Have a great week!

Letter from the MISION ESTE

2011-07-07T15:45:00.000-07:00

This is a letter we just received from the Mission home. I enjoyed it so much that I thought I would share it with all of you!!

Dear Shattuck Family,
Issued solemnity by the Missionary Homeward Bound Committee to the family, and loved ones of Elder Steven Richard Shattuck who has served in the Santo Domingo East Mission of the Dominican Republic.

By virtue of the astounding, if not mind boggling, 24 wonderfully accumulated months composed in equal parts of dirt, sun, sweat, tears, and incredible joy in the service of the Lord, the Missionary Homeward Bound Committee has decreed that the time has come for these calloused, blistered, tired, and dirty feet to take a rest. Soon they will once again be in your midst, the rest of the body wearing out-of-style clothing, tanned from the neck up and elbows down, but full of love for the gospel, to once again enter into the wicked Gentile World.

As chairman of the committee responsible for the homeward bound missionaries departing from the DOMINICAN REPUBLIC SANTO DOMINGO EAST MISSION, it is my duty and privilege to inform you of the return of Elder Steven Richard Shattuck to the United States of America, after a completed service to the Lord as a missionary in the “DR”. He will arrive in the designated airport on the designated date of departure (San Jose Airport, August 16th @ 4:55PM) sent to you by the other kind people of the missionary department.

In making proper preparations to welcome your missionary son back into the organized society, it is advised to keep in mind the confined, unusual, and foreign environment that has influenced his life for the past 24 months. One would be advised to stock the kitchen with plenty of Mom's cooking and goodies such as: Oreo cookies, Blueberry muffins, and kind of cheese cake, homemade pies, T-BONE STEAK, pasta salad, cinnamon rolls, homemade bread, and of course your missionary's favorite dish. It would be wise to prevent further trauma by disposing any signs of moldy bread, white cheese, fried food, mondongo (cow guts), goat head soup, yucca (a kind of boiled root that turns to cement the instant it makes contact with your stomach), sugar cane, powdered milk, and boiled or Cloroxed drinking water. Try to be understanding when he has frequent uncontrolled cravings for arroz con leche (Dominican rice pudding), berenjena (eggplant), rice and beans, mangos, fresh fruit juices of every kind, and guineos (bananas).

Don't take it personally when he sifts through the flour and sugar looking for ants, or examines his food for any bug before he actually takes a bite. Don't be alarmed when he washes his fruits and vegetables with Clorox water. Do not think of him as deranged when he spits out bones and raw spices on the floor. Take into consideration and do not be disturbed when he eats with his elbows on the table, uses only a spoon, uses his shirt as a napkin and throws leftovers out the window. You will need to remind him what a trash can is and where it is located.

Be sure to have a full tank of hot water, so that he can enjoy his first bubble bath or hot shower in a long time. Do not be surprised when he wears his sandals in the shower, bug repellant as cologne, sprays Raid as air freshener, uses a butcher knife as a can opener, dumps 3 buckets of water down the toilet to flush it and throws used toilet paper in the garbage can (explanation: We do not flush it here). You will need to remind him not to use the hose in the house to clean, because of the damage it may cause to the carpet and furniture. You can also tell him it is not necessary to set up a mosquito net around his bed each night, and that he will not need candles and matches at his bedside. Yes, you will need to let him know that the camping trip is over.

If he is made aware of an illness of any kind, he will have the tendency to prescribe drinking something with lemon in it (that being the general cure for everything in the Dominican Republic). And if lemons don't work the MAGIC cream will. So for any headache, cough, cold, toothache, or other bodily ailment it would be suggested to buy the ten-cent tin of “Vi Va Pa Ru” (Vicks Vapor Rub).
Please do not be disturbed when he wears the same outfit for a week, judges travel time by how long it takes to walk, prays in Spanish, asks to share a scripture and prays at the end of the meal, or eats his food in 30 seconds flat to run off to an appointment.

Now he might really take it hard when you tell him that he will no longer have to scale cliffs, wade through streams, or jump fences to get to his next appointment. He still will be able to drive a car. You can give him a copy of the car keys, but before doing so you must teach him the rules of driving again. You see, he may follow the example of the “Dominican Driver” which means ANYTHING GOES – driving the wrong way down one-way streets, stop signs and signs are only suggestions, constant use of the horn, not stopping for the police, the largest vehicle has the right of way, etc. You will also want to explain the purpose of the lines in the road – where they came from, why they are there, and where they go, etc.

This poor, wasted person will probably scream, run wildly and become violent if you should mention worm pills, cockroaches, mosquitoes, tarantulas, rats, bats, biting ants and fleas, bikes in the rain, burning tires, gun fights, machete fights, rock throwing, and an elder's Dominican “snake” (over-aggressive friendly Dominican chick that wants to get to know you on the premise of your marital status, or not).

For the first few weeks, or longer, that he is home, accept with understanding his broken English. A simple request for a translation will be sufficient when he involuntarily breaks into a dialogue known as “Spanglish”.

Take into consideration his state of mind when he calls you “Elder” or “Hermana” and insists that it be a rule not to tell you his first name—Elder is sufficient. Do not be bothered if he walks in the door and yells, “saludo” instead of just knocking, says “con permiso” before entering a room, hisses at people to get their attention, points with his lips or face, wrinkles his nose when he doesn't understand, shakes his index finger to say no, asks everyone how they liked the meeting, or carries his backpack everywhere. Do not judge him crazy when his only topic of conversation is the Dominican Republic and the missionary work or think he is a religious fanatic when preaching to strangers and friends about Joseph Smith, the Ten Commandments, reverence in church meetings, and the importance of Family Home Evening and prayer. Do not be embarrassed when he says “Adios” to everyone or “Buen provencho” to everyone who's eating. He will definitely have a great tendency to shake hands with everyone when meeting and parting. Also, when asked to run to the store between noon and 2:00PM, don't be alarmed if the reply is, “We can't, they're closed!” Just patiently remind him that he is in the States now.

You are all hereby warned and duly cautioned to treat the newly delivered missionary with great care, courtesy, affection, and love. Humor him in every possible way. Remain calm when he jumps out of bed at 6:30AM to exercise, study, and beat his comp to the bathroom. He is used to having a companion 24 hours a day, so don't be alarmed if you are followed around and asked to have companionship study and prayer together.

He will surely be suffering from “Dominicanitis,” an extreme love for the Dominican people; so please try to understand that far away look in the eyes and tears brimming and quietly excusing him from the room, when it happens. He will be thinking of that far away land and the people that he has grown to love who have changed his life. But broken hearts are mended with lots of love, hugs, and chocolate chip cookies and with a little bit of patience, tolerance kindness, and time, he will once again resemble the pre-mission specimen that you once knew. However, when he does not respond to his given name, you may be able to catch his attention by shouting: Elder, Gringo, CIA, Mormon, Americano, Majone, Vacano, a comma' hea plis, and and if all else fails, try..................Pssssssst!

So send no more mail to this address because this Elder is COMING HOME!!! I thank you for giving close attention to these matters, and I hope that this information will be of assistance in giving your missionary a warm WELCOME HOME.

Sincerely,

C.U. Soone
President
Homeward Bound Committee

Happy 4th of July!

2011-07-04T15:32:00.000-07:00

Happy 4th of July. Haha I remember my last companion asking me if this country also celebrates the 4th of July.

Today it is raining. We were going to play kickball with other missionaries today, but there is lots of rain.

I fell asleep in the hammock today, and now there isn't time to do fun stuff. Next week we will do something exciting, and thank you for the box! It was received.

I made my last agenda thing, sad! Oh and I did meet the new mission president. He has a funny accent like my last president, but this one is from Puerto Rico. His wife looks just like you, mom, but just speaks Spanish. They are the two whitest Latinos I have ever seen.

On Sunday, Michael and his wife went to church with their little baby and older son and niece. They wanted to do the baby blessing, but the bishop said no. It was still good to have them there. They were planning on getting married and baptised right before I left, but now Michael wants to move to the U.S. This isn't the first time I try to marry a couple that has kids, and after they already commit, the man gets some wild idea of leaving his family to work in the US to send the family money. Satan puts that idea in (his head). Michael was so excited to get married and his wife really wants to also, and now this random idea. So we have to find a way to convince him that ditching his family and his newborn baby is a bad idea. But at least he goes to church and reads the Book of Mormon. Every time we go we just talk about the family. The members are really willing to help out.

Other than that, nothing is new. Have a great week!
Love,

P.S. Here are pictures of a baptism of the hermanas, Jack. He did a psychology test on us to see if we have mental disorders. I don't have any!

The streets are flooded out again!!

2011-06-27T10:23:00.000-07:00

Yesterday it was raining really hard, and we got soaking wet. There were a few kids that were sledding down a big hill behind the church. There was so much water coming down the street it just turned into a big water slide, so we joined the fun. It was fun, crossing the street with water up to our knees,

This week we have been teaching this new family, Michael and Mary! They are both really cool. They have a baby that is 3 months old. Michael is 30 years old and his wife has a boy that is 16 or 17 years old... but they are both really funny. Maybe I can send a video sometime, even though the pictures don't work.

There are transfers this Tuesday. We are staying. They are early, because my president is going home early. Next transfer will be in 7 weeks.

I don't have much more to say but have a great week! love you all.

hApPy HaPpY hApPy

2011-06-20T17:07:00.000-07:00

JOE JOBY DOE!!! Oh I miss those stories!! Haha I remember being so scared when dad would pound the top of the car with his hand pretending with was “Joe Joby Doe”.I'm sorry I don't have a whole lot of time. Today we had a last minute good bye with my mission president again. It was fun.

On Wednesday night something cool happened. The light here has a schedule. It ALWAYS goes out every day at 10:00AM comes back at 1:00PM. Leaves at 6:00PM comes at 9:00PM. Leaves at 12:00AM and comes back at 5:30AM. But it has just been a KILLER hot week. The night before I couldn't sleep with how hot it was. Like 89 or 90 degrees with 120 percent humidity. The whole day I was tired. Anyways, when I was going to bed, we had AC, but I knew the light was going to go out. I thought it was worth a try to ask in my prayers for light just so I could sleep. The next morning I woke up totally refreshed and ready for the day. I asked my companion if the light had left and he said no. I was totally amazed it worked. Apparently not just for me, but for the whole sector. In my WHOLE area the power didn't go out. People were all talking about it. Wow that was so weird the light didn't go out. I thought, “wow”, the one day I decided to ask God to help out, and he DID!! Coincidence? I doubt. I told my investigators and they all joke with me and say, “wow you need to do that more often”!!
We've been teaching this SUPER cool guy “Jerry”. It is spelled “Therry” in French, but kindly pronounced “Cherry and Jerry”. Between the two. Anyway, he is Haitian. That's why he has a cool name. He is SOOO excited when he reads the Book of Mormon. He thought it is so cool the Bible talks about it, and that the Book of Mormon supports what the Bible teaches. He wasn't so crazy at first, but now he is totally excited. He showed up with his white shirt and everything to church!

Hey, well I gotta split, but I hope you all have a good week, next week pictures!!

Happy Fathers Day, Happy Anniversary and Happy Birthday JUNE!

Elder Shattuck Here! reporting.

2011-06-13T15:23:00.000-07:00

Oh the fun, the fun. It's been super mega hot here wow. Talk about mosquito dinner. I got some welts on my arm from last night. The ac does a good job, when there is light.

Yesterday we had a super day!! Haha, we got bashed by a lot of crazy Catholics with some pretty wack ideas. That was fun. Almost EVERYONE lets us in, but it is getting tough to get people that will actually read the stuff we leave them. However, if people accept or not, I'm no too worried. Just as long as I do my duty to teach. That's all that it is... teaching, not preaching or anything. I can't stand people that we talk to and try to preach to us. I like our method... just as a few people told us the other day. We didn't teach much, but we taught them about prayer. I like to tell people about the thing I do. Like write down the stuff they ask for in their prayers just to see if God is really listening, and giving them those things. My friendly helper, the Spirit, has been doing a good job teaching people about that.

Ramon is officially hiding from us. yay

But this kid, Ernesto, finally went to church, after a few weeks.. months of teaching him. I tried Bible scriptures and everything, The Book of Mormon works too, but the (general) conference talks are just STELLAR to teach people about what God is telling his prophets RIGHT NOW. Like they said once in conference, a living prophet is more valuable that a dead one. I have definitely seen people's reactions. Everyone wants to fight us about the Bible here, because everyone knows it, but they never fight with the stuff we teach from the conference magazine. They just can't. So that's what we have been doing.

My personal favorite is asking people what they think their life's purpose is all about. I haven't got a straight answer from anyone yet. I love to teach them the Plan of Salvation. That's fun to see people understand why in the world they are really here.

We don't have a whole lot of people this week (to teach), so.. .but I did give my companion a Haitian military haircut! Yeah, with a razor blade and a comb. You just clip the razor blade on the comb and cut away. I saw some Haitians on the street doing it, so I thought i'd try it. It works pretty good and only costs 5 pesos! My comp tried to cut his own hair, cuz he saw me doing it, and well, let's just say he didn't do the best job. That was pretty hilarious when I found him with a million bald spots on his head. He still has bald spots but it's a little bit better at least.

I get a long really good with my companion. Good or bad we are always laughing at everything, and I haven't had one dull or boring moment. I've learned it doesn't really matter what happens to me as long as I have a plate of rice and beans to eat, and NOT Herring Locrio, opig footot soup, or a big giant gate hasn't fallen on my head. I will be just fine.
I love you all have a week.
Love

P.S. (Commenting on Elder Taylor McBride's accident):
yeah he was in the area that borders with mine. I was going to call him up to spend the p day with him... so yeah I would have been there with them... It was kinda chaotic when our president was trying to have the last conference with us and the hospital was calling every 10 minutes. I think I might end up teaching the people he was teaching so they can get baptised. We'll see.

Please pray for Elder Taylor McBride!

2011-06-09T08:01:00.001-07:00

Our thoughts and prayers are with the McBride family at this time. A missionary from Elder Shattuck's mission had a terrible accident on Monday. He has since been sent home to be hospitalized and is in the ICU in Arizona. Please pray for this missionary! Thanks. Here's his mission blog to read updates: http://eldertaylormcbride.blogspot.com/

Thanks,
Denise

Hey yo!

2011-06-06T20:17:00.000-07:00

Oh boy, what fun you are all having, That's so cool you are taking a sewing class mom. Well ya finished it. I would love for you to teach me some stuff so I can keep rockin on your old machine!! Nice job with helping that lady out. Some people are going some really hard stuff and need help sometimes.

Robbie and Annie are crazy, what it takes for the career and junk. woo!

Well this week has been.. wet, wow 4 days of rain pretty much, and lots of it. We cleaned the house today. I think the bathroom hadn´t been cleaned in.. 30 years? It was nasty. I poured a whole bottle of muriatic acid down it to clean it.

My friend Ramon has kinda been hiding from us this last week. He told us he doesn´t smoke, but we know that he does because his neighbor told us. He got embarrassed that we found out and told us through the neighbor that he doesn´t want to got baptised anymore. He was planning on the 18th of June. We keep trying to catch him at his house, but his sister who is here from Puerto Rico covers for him, and tells us he is never there... or where he really is. But don´t worry we´ll find him. He is still totally in love with his neighbor, so she is trying to help him quit smoking and stuff. Pray for him he needs help!

We found some other cool families. Nelson is the dad's name. I still haven´t learned the rest of their names, but we showed them a 1980´s movie about the family. It was way cheesy, but nice at the same time. They like the message. The next move is trying to figure out how we are going to get them to go to church, they live so far away. But we´ll hang in there. They are married.

As we speak one of my investigators who disappeared, walked in here. Her 2 year old son grabbed my arm. He is the cutest little boy. Haitian babies are adorable.

Oh what else can I tell you. Not too much is new, but I hope you all have a great week.

FFFFFFFFFFFFamily!!!!

2011-05-30T21:38:00.000-07:00

Hello. I am sitting here with my new MOP. We bought a new mop today. We were cleaning the house today and found Christmas lights and put them up! I thought I'd try out an old broken air conditioner thingy that we have in hour house and IT WORKS!! We now have 2- TWO... TWO air conditioning units in the house! One in the study room and one in the bedroom. Life is Good. We went to the park (today). Every first p-day of the transfer we get together at the park, and (today) I couldn't stop talking about the new air conditioner.

My new companion is a champ. He is from Vernal Utah, near Wyoming and Colorado, so he doesn't say “pop” and “fark”, thank goodness. We get along great, and he loves the work and the people love him. We are going to do some good stuff here in this area.

We are teaching this man whose name is Ramon, but they call him “Monkey”. He is super funny. He is like 40 or 45 years old, but he dresses like he is 20 with baseball caps. You know the flat billed ones. That's the Dominican style here... with his chains and cool tennis shoes. The other day I totally caught him with a t-shirt on that said, “I love HIP HOP”. I laughed my head off. We think he has a thing for one of the sisters in the ward. She calls him “My Love” and “Sweetie” so we tease them both. She is a great sister. Her name is Marta, and her son is best friends with us. She was divorced a year or so ago. Anyway, Ramon is funny. He has gone to church several times and he fits right in. I can see him helping out the ward. He used to work on Sundays, but apparently it's time for him to come to the gospel, because he stopped working at his old job! That was a real miracle.

We also have a bunch of other people and some Haitians that we are teaching again. We even met this guy the other day who lives with his marionette (puppet thing) that he dances in the streets for a living. I thought he was Jamaican, because of his accent and his dreadlocks.

The other day we saw this “loco” chasing this 11 year old kid down the street. The kid was running as fast as he could. He looked scared. The man who was chasing him had a HUGE stick in his hand and was going to beat him. They totally ran by in the middle of an appointment. We didn't know what to say after that.
The next day, the crazy guy that was chasing the kid with the stick, came up to us and asked for a booklet and where the church is. We told him only because he didn't have a stick in his hand at the time. On Sunday he went to church, and even brought all his “Watch Tower” magazines....

What else is new. Oh, the other day I finished the Book of Mormon again in Spanish. It was good. It gets more interesting each time, but it is still so complex, however, the message is clear. I'm totally convinced there is something special about that book. Everything goes better when I read it. It's amazing how many people make quick judgments about us and the book, but I've found that there are few that can read that book and deny that its inspired. So that's what we are trying to do. I am trying to help all of the people I teach learn to have their own adventures in it. I love reading the stories and making them real. By going back in time and putting my investigators in the shoes of Alma and Abinadi and stuff. So that's pretty much the only thing I've been teaching them. Little by little they will learn to appreciate it... like how it took me so many years to realize that.

Things are going great here. Today was a very nice day, it has been cloudy and cooler, it rained a little but the sun didn't burn after the rain like usual, it stayed cool.

I am now with a companion that is really easy to get along with. It is strange, because I have struggled with companions so long that now it's easy. I feel different. I really feel blessed to be able to be in such a good area and with a good companion and now I feel like I got to give my last best effort to the Lord because he has given me so much.

Hey I hope you and mom are looking for some people or a family that you are preparing now that the missionaries have to work with members. I would LOVE to teach a family or somebody there in our ward... you've got a few months.

Ok, well its time to go work. I love you all!

We are still here!!

2011-05-23T13:56:00.000-07:00

Hahahahahahahaha oh has anyone been talking about the supposed end of the world? That's the only thing we can talk about because everyone is asking us about it. Yeah there are billboards everywhere, but it seems that Dominicans are a little more versed in the bible.

I am coming home the 16th (August), yes that's a for sure. October is for missionaries that entered a transfer later, and it is unlikely that I extend. The wife of my mission president said that ever since they have been here, not one missionary has asked to extend... He will be leaving in 5 weeks, and the new mission president will be here on my birthday.

I have some pictures I was going to send, but this computer doesn´t work.

We had a baptism this week. Steven and Natalia. They are two kids of a less active sister that started going to church again. It was a good baptism, in spite of the fact that it was pouring rain and we started an hour later, because we had to fill the baptismal font by hand... with buckets. There were LOTS of people and it was a nice service. The parents of Josmer wanted me to baptise their son... and the dad even changed his work schedule and went to church after 10 years or so. He is a great guy, the Hermanas are doing a great job here.

Transfers, my companion is leaving. He has been here for 7 and a half months, and is ready to go. I am staying and receiving Elder Miglioris. No idea who he is.

Have a great week!

Hello family!!

2011-05-16T14:19:00.001-07:00

Great to hear from you all. Sorry I don´t have much time, because I was writing each one of you letters and things.

Well this was another week. We´ve been teaching these two kids of a less active woman in the ward that started to go to church again. Her son, Steven, used to hide under the bed so he wouldn´t have to go to church, and now he is planning on getting baptised with his sister. I´m always a little bit nervous about baptising boys his age. He is 13. The last time we did that, the kid ran away from home a week later and is now addicted to hard core drugs. That was 6 months ago, and he still hasn't shown up. We are thinking twice about this. His sister, Natalia, is doing just fine and has a little friend. She will definitely get baptised this week. They are both really shy.

Eduardo got a job in Bavaro, for 6 months. He will be living out there for the time being, leaving his wife here in Santo Domingo.

The other day I was able to do an interview for a 10 year old kid. His parents were baptised 10 years ago, but stopped attending. I have never seen a little boy understand so much. He not only just knew who the prophet is, but he actually taught me about repentance and being bold in doing what's right. He is trying to help his dad to stop drinking... and I guess it´s working. He has almost a month without drinking too. His name is Josmer. He reminded me of Mormon, when he was ten, way too wise for his age.

But we are moving along. It´s way hot here. Wow.

Have a great week!

Mother's Day!!

2011-05-09T22:09:00.000-07:00

(These are some photos that Elder Shattuck sent after our phone conversation on Mother's Day. It was so awesome to hear his voice! He sounded happy and energetic. It's hard to believe that in a little more than 3 months he'll be coming home!)

The first picture is of a family home evening we did here in the ward.

The other is when we went to an art exhibit of one of our investigators. He is an amazing painter, and his art was displayed for a month in the Conde, which is a famous street here.

There are two pictures of Eduardo and I. The pictures don't do a whole lot of justice... he really does look a lot like Robbie, but I'll have to try taking other pictures to show you.

Oh by the way he went to church!! We were way excited, and the members were way nice to him. He's been having work problems, but he demanded a day off, and it worked. We walked to his house and walked with him to church. We even brought him breakfast, two salami sandwiches and a juice. He laughed and ate it. Oh that's a usual breakfast here btw. It was a great meeting and there were great talks. I hope he will come next week! Now we need to work on his wife...

And the last picture is of my companion and I.

Love,

Hellllllo!

2011-05-02T20:54:00.000-07:00

I apparently am disconnected to everything out there in candy land. I wonder if they are going to make it a national Holiday, Osama's capturing and death.

Anyways the work is moving along here. We had a good week getting wet and getting sick, but it´s all over now and my companion and I both got over our colds. Oh I showed a picture of Robbie to his twin Eduardo. He looked at it and laughed and said, he´s white, I´m black. I laughed my head off. He promised us he was going to go to church this week, and even bought an alarm, but for some reason didn´t show up. We are bummed. He is currently looking for another job. He is a chef at a restaurant and here. There aren´t labor laws, so he works 16 hours a day, no vacation and only gets paid for 8 of the 16 hours he works. They don't feed him at work, and it´s very fast pace and there are no breaks. I really feel for the poor guy. He is really suffering and really wants to have a child, but his wife always has complications with the pregnancy. But we´ll keep praying. I don´t want to give up on this man. He's my brother! haha

We also have some other people that we are teaching. They are all very interesting, and slightly crazy, but they come to church. I´m learning how to work betting with my companion. He is a good guy and has good intentions. Sometimes it takes times to know how to utilize those things. Did I tell you he will be turning 27 this next week? I feel like a little kid sometimes. The people on the street tell me that.

Today we went to the aquarium. It was pretty cool. We ran into some missionaries and took some pictures and stuff by the Mar. I forgot my cable so I can´t send them, but i´ll try me best next week!

OK I love you all. Have a great week.

Semana Santa

2011-04-25T20:11:00.000-07:00

This week was crazy. Here they don´t celebrate Easter, they celebrate Semana Santa. A Catholic tradition, all week long. It means an all week long block party with inflatable pools in the streets and everywhere you can imagine, like in the houses. ALL the Dominican women make Habichuela con Dulce, which is pretty much liquified beans with coconut milk, raisins and a potato like root, and sugar. It is pretty dang good. It is kind of a pain because technically we aren´t supposed to eat anything other than our own cooking,.. its a rule we´ve had for over a year, but I got sick of fighting with the members here. To not eat someone's cooking is like stabbing them in the back here. One sister chased me out of here house with a broom, because I wouldn't take her food. So imagine everyone in the world giving us food, even strangers on the street, I´m not joking. “HEY MORMONS COME GET SOME HABICHELA CON DULCE!!” It´s just a great big block party all the time here.

We haven´t had too many people to teach this week, because so many were drunk, or at the beach all week long.

We did find this man called Eduardo. He looks 100 PERCENT like Robbie. No Joke. Same size and build, but just with darker skin. He even acts like Robbie too. It´s pretty weird for me to teach him. But he is super interested and has really started to understand and believe in the things we have taught about the restoration. He is a chef and hasn´t come to church yet, because of work problems, but we have faith that he´ll pull though. His wife believes more in the Jehovah Witnesses than what we teach, but as long as he says yes to getting married (to each other), we aren´t too worried. I have seen few people in my life humble themselves and really try to ask God if the message is true. He did and got an answer. I really don´t doubt that anyone who really wants to know if the message is true just has to recognize that they don´t know everything, and that God does. Then ask him that He will show them the truth. I´ve tried it several times with several things here in the mission. It works. But anyway I´m going to take a picture to send so you can see.

Hey Robbie HAPPY BIRTHDAY!! Write me and tell me what you want me to send you... I mean bring you. Ryan too, actually the whole family, so I can take you some cool stuff.

I told the people to send me home to the San Jose airport. I leave August 16th and will get back I guess late in the afternoon or early in the night. I just turned that information this week, and thank you for the little package! My companion was shocked... where was all the candy? Americans ALWAYS send loads of candy. Haha, but the mints were just perfect. Thank you!

Have a great week, I love you all

Living life in Las Americas 2a!

2011-04-18T21:12:00.000-07:00

HelllO!!

Okey. Wow... what to say. Where to start. Yes, no, yes, yes. Those are the answers to the million questions I got. jk.

Well I think things are going to work out just fine here. The area is called Las Americas 2a. It is a good size area. The members here are super great, and friendly. They are excited for the mission work, and the people here are open. It´s somewhat of a richer area. It kinda looks like what I remembered of New York, with lots of apartments. The Church building is great, new and RIGHT NEXT to the House!! Wow I think that is the best thing EVER!! The house even has AIR CONDITIONING:.. yes I do not need to say more. LIFE IS GOOD with AC. It´s only in one room, but that's all I need. There is actually power when we are in the house too, and we live on a 2nd and 3rd story. A 2-story house. My companion likes to work hard and is a good guy, and is SO much easier to get along with. I am definitely counting my blessings. By the way my president does things, I will be finishing here in this area.

We have quite a few people. It is going to be hard to visit them all this week, but we can. We are planning for the 2 kids if the hermana Raquel to be baptised on the 30th of this month. They are both DEATHLY shy, but they went to church and seemed to like it. So hopefully it works out. Today was a fun P Day. We got together with all the missionaries in anto Domingo and played Soccer and Football and stuff like that. Oh my companion has 3 years in the church. He left on his mission one year after his baptism, but knows a LOT, and is going to turn 27 on the 16th of May. Yes he is old, but it seems like he is the same age as me sometimes. He likes to workout, haha.

That's all for now. I have a feeling that time is going to FLY now that I´m here. Hope you all have a great week!

Love,

Well I am heading OFF!!

2011-04-11T17:47:00.000-07:00

I´m going to an area that is right under Parque del Este, if you look on a map of Santo Domingo. It´s right near the beach. Apparently my new companion is kind of hard to get along with.. they say but we´ll see. His name is Elder Vargas. I´m excited and READY to head out, as I've walked these streets many times here. I´m happy I´m going to be with a native companion. They are more exciting for sure.

It´s good to hear about all of the fun things going on at home. Ryan getting old, Robbie and Annie travelin' the world, and Kim and Dane in the snow in Yucaipa! And mom and dad skydiving in Alaska.

I´ve been saying goodbye to the members and stuff, and made some cool shirts for the district... haha yeah I couldn't hold off any longer... I made some shirts again.

We´ve been kinda back and forth with the daughter of Veronica, her name is Ledy. She always fights with her children and her sister in law.. and curses in the house, that's been a little hard because her daughter was baptised and follows her example. But we are chuggin' along, and got her to stop drinking, and gave her a blessing so that everything goes well on a surgery she is going to do soon. Even though I´m leaving hopefully she can stay strong.

Also we´ve been teaching this humble little couple, Richard and Amparo. They are both two short quiet little people that have a little meat shop in front of their house. We met them on the street and have been talking a lot about prayer. Richard is so timid he doesn´t like to pray at all, but after a few visits he finally is praying and has noticed a huge difference. He says he has really bad road rage, but now that he prays before he leaves for the street, he has been able to stop. Along with other things, they are really feeling that the message is true. I am realizing that I can´t convince ANYONE of what I teach... that it is our little friend, the spirit, that teaches them in the night when they are praying, or reading. Before they were tough and didn't believe anything, but now that they are praying, everything has changed.

OK well I´m off. I got to finish packing stuff, and tomorrow I´m off to my area. Adios!

Love,

F A M I L Y

2011-04-04T14:06:00.000-07:00

Hello you all.

Oh what a wonderful weekend! 3 days of blazing hot sun, and I didn´t have to be in it! Of course we did take an advantage of the General Conference this weekend. I highly enjoyed those messages. Especially President Uchtdorf's talk and Elder Scott's. Funny because just a few days ago I was talking about the fear I have towards marriage, more like a phobia, that I have acquired here on the mission. Being stuck with a person 24/7, for months on end, and without ONE SECOND to breathe can cause that phobia. Such were my thoughts realizing that as I am finishing that will have to be my new goal and focus. Elder Scott and others spoke wonderfully about how good it can be and changed my mind. Overall very inspiring. I don´t know if i am getting more mature or the talks are more interesting, but I thought they were all great.

This week has been definitely better. I´ve been doing everything it takes to not fight with my companion, because honestly there is nothing worse... I promise. I´ve managed to be able to motivate him a little to do exercise. haha. yeah...

Veronica and Ledy are still hanging in there. Ledy was going to get baptized this Saturday, but she still has some health problems. Those poor women didn´t have money to be able to attend the conference. They have so little and are always baking little breads and really good stuff called “arepa”. We eat it for breakfast. I totally feel like David O. McKay when he was on his mission in Scotland? I don´t remember the details, but seeing lots of hungry poor and ungroomed people, it´s hard to teach them when they don´t have food in their belly, and it´s even harder when we can´t help them. And even worse when they spend the little money they have for food for us. We have rules that we can´t eat it and they get offended. Over all it´s very uncomfortable. I´ve definitely learned some great things. I´ll never let anyone I know go hungry. Dominicans always cook extra food even if they have little money just in case someone passes by and needs food.

Well, I only have one more week here in the area. My president said he won´t make me stay here any longer, so I´ll tell you next week where I´m going.

Adios and love you all.

Beautiful sites in Santo Domingo!

2011-03-28T21:04:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures of Fabio. He was baptised last Saturday. He is a humble guy, 33, who has made a big change. I don´t know if I told you, but he had a big problem with drugs, and was in a institution for 1 year for rehab. He got out, and has one year out and met us. We taught him, and he instantly noticed that there was something true about what we taught, because he felt it. He even said he saw some movies at the rehab center that the missionaries showed him. His mom has some problems and is going to be operated on today, pray it goes well. He even taught himself how to read reading road signs with his friends in the street.

Anyway we had a small baptism. The bishop almost didn't show up, but it was really reverent. Now we are going to work on his brothers, that we just found out we had already contacted a few months ago.
We went walking around a little today, by the beach and saw some cool stuff and ate some really good pizza. Oh yeah, and I got new glasses, they do it 10 dollars here, and my old ones had chipped a few times from falling off my face and stuff.

Anyways that's all for this week.
Love you all and have a great conference weekend takin' it easy.

March Madness!

2011-03-21T21:25:00.000-07:00

Haha no don´t worry about sending anything for Easter, I have too much stuff now, and I need to get rid of it! But I always do love letters, those are the best!

Here are some pictures of some art that someone did on the wall with trash, I thought it was pretty cool. There is a whole block of it, and also me trapped in my mosquito net and stuff.

The first one says, “who says this is trash?”
Oh, and the little boy is a son of a member in the ward.

The first picture is of Francisco, he was baptised a few months ago and is still going strong. He has lost almost everything, even his house, after his baptism, but he still goes to church and everything. Francisco is the bald one, Santo is the one that has the white shirt and tie in the background, and Carlos Manuel an investigator, is the bald one with the polo shirt.

Also the baptism is of Veronica and her granddaughter, Karina. Karina is a handful 8 years old, but the day of her baptism she totally was reverent and also the Sunday after. It was like a dream come true for Veronica. Veronica is super funny. She is a really sweet older woman, she used to live in Texas and Florida, and she speaks English... but not really. It´s more like Spanish with English words mixed in. I just laugh. She LOVES to talk, always. She stands up in Sunday School and always shares 15 minute stories. The members all got to know her RIGHT away, “oh the one who talks a lot? I know her” they say. IT was a really great baptism and now we are working on her daughter, Ledy, who is 40 years old. She has health problems and tension, because her husband passed away 3 months ago and left her with the kids. After a really cool lesson about the Plan of Salvation and calling a member to pick her up in the car, she went to church and loved it!

Yup that's all for this week. I love you all!

P.S. I am a fan of La Bandera, it´s just rice with beans and pollo guisao.
You can throw in some platano frito to make it interesting, or some eggplant fried.
Moro con guandules is really good too, what ever you want.

OK!

2011-03-14T15:21:00.000-07:00

I did it! I´m still going and I´m quite proud of myself. I never thought I could put up with so much in a person, but I think I passed my “Daddy test”. I know that children are hard, but rarely they are twice your size, literally, and want to take you out. But I´m still hanging on besides everything that's going on.

Yesterday we had an interesting appointment with this big fat guy. We started to teach him, and he sent his friend to buy him a bottle of Rum. We told him not to drink it, and showed him tons of scriptures in the Bible and stuff, but with just one tiny little plastic cup he got so wasted it was pretty unreal. He like tried to rip my stomach out or something like that, but you know me, I didn´t let him. Apparently the missionaries had taught him 15 years ago, but we had to take off, he was staggering. Strrrrrrrrrrrrrrrriiiike two.

Beside drunks and crazy comps, we are still chuggin' along with Fabio. He is going to baptised in a week. He was a guy that we met that told us to wait in the shade, because the sun was way too hot, and a month later we are going to baptise him. He is really ready and in just 10 pages in the Book of Mormon is reading amazingly well. Especially for that fact that he taught himself. I´ll send some pictures next week.

Yeah that's all for this week. Tell brother Walters I say hello and thanks for the letter!

love you

Hello family!

2011-03-07T20:52:00.000-08:00

OK, What an adventure this week. Yeah, really tough, but I´m still alive, and haven´t gone crazy.

So the craziest thing happened on Sunday. A member from the other ward called us and told us he had a reference for us. So we went to go see who it was! The member, Santiago, told us that Felix, the reference, knew quite a bit about the church and stuff. I had no idea what I was in for. We went to his house and he was watching The Testaments. On his table was the triple combination, and he also had a blue Book of Mormon. He told us that he had read it several times, and even read the Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price.. and he knew everything! I mean everything. I thought it was a prank, but no, this man has 20 years reading and STUDYING the Book of Mormon, and never had spoken with a member or missionaries. He said he stumbled on the Book of Mormon and triple combination by accident. He knew the whole story, and everything in Doctrine and Covenants and everything. Very strange, but cool. We talked about baptism and hope to help him finally take the last step!

Yup that's all for this week. Love you all

P.S. Wow, thanks for the advice. I´m really having a pretty rough time right now. It´s getting really tough but I´m trying my best to keep my cool.

Ahh Familia, Whats up!?

2011-02-28T20:25:00.000-08:00

I had some pictures to send home, but this computer doesn´t read the files.

Oh whats new, not much. Oh yeah transfers! I´m staying here again with my companion. Ay patience. Oh I´ve been having some fun interesting days here... oh yeah mom you don´t want to know ALL of the details... trust me, but I´ll give you some.

We had a super day yesterday in church. We had 3 grown men go to church on their own for the first time! That doesn´t happen a lot. But they all loved it. One even came to us afterward and asked if he could get baptised sooner, so we plan to help him get baptised on the 12th. His name is Carlos. His wife is still tough and doesn´t want to talk to us, but THANK GOODNESS he is MARRIED!! Wow! Also this short funny man, “who looks Italian”, named Francisco, went too. And Fabio, who will also be baptised on the 12th. I felt so happy. There was such a cool spirit there and everyone left smiling. Also Veronica, an older woman who can´t stop talking, went again this week. Every week in Sunday school she stands up and tells some funny story that never has anything to do with anything ...for like 15 minutes. She did it again this Sunday. We were all cracking up, because at least the stories are funny. I really really hope each one of these people can stay in the church. They all looked so happy and loved participating in the classes. Total success!

This week has been tough as heck though. Easily one of the hardest. My companion drives me nuts sometimes. Especially when we show up an hour late to everything. He sleeps in until 10:30 and just watches movies on his iPod all day, but at least we are working. I tried to help him the other day to not be so lazy, but he got mad, and wouldn´t leave. We had to stay in the house all day, and he told me he was going to go home, because he is sick of the mission.. and me bugging him. I didn´t know what to do. After a few hours he finally started talking to me and I told him that we should pray. We did, and right after the prayer, he jumped right up put on his shoes and we left for the street like nothing had happened. He still sleeps in and won´t get rid of his iPod, but we are still hanging in here

Oh I did get the box you sent me! Thank you so much! It was great! And the shirts fit just fine, and are nice and white! I have some that are so yellow... I didn´t realize it until I saw a white one again. Oh and the food too, awesome, I love how you always send a box of wheat thins, those things are so good.

Oh here is some news, we are getting a new mission president in July! That's in a long time, but we found out last week that his name is President Hernandez from Puerto Rico. Haha, a Chilean, and now a puertorriqueño.

OK well it´s time for me to go but hope you all have a great week!

Love,

Elder Nelson comes for a visit!!

2011-02-23T13:29:00.000-08:00

I´m glad to hear the dog flosses his teeth too!

Today we went to the temple! What a difference from the dirty noisy polluted streets I walk on every day.

Speaking about floss, I feel like my character is being flossed out this week, if you have any idea what I mean.

We´ve been finding some cool people and even a married couple!! Yeah for sure, we are really excited. The husband, Carlos, is very interested and his wife tries to shoo us away when he isn´t there. But little by little we hope to soften her up.

I had my first bump in with some... rude people! Everyone here is really nice and let's us in their house. Last night for the first time, we taught some people that laughed at us and said that we are foolish little boys who don't know anything, and that Joseph Smith is of the Devil. It´s interesting that some people are so against what we do... sometimes I wonder what inspires them. I came on the mission expecting to have stuff like that every day, but I actually found (the Dominican Republic people are) some of the nicest, more open, and respectful people ever! The only hard thing is that so few of them know how to read.

But last week we found one who did know how to read, very well! He only went to school until first grade, but he taught himself with his friends in the street. His name is Fabio, and got out of Rehab about a year ago. He said the “Mormons” used to visit him in Rehab. We were walking in the street and our feet were roastin', and he said, “hey come rest here in the shade for a second.” My companion invited him to listen a little to our message and he said, “yes”. We now have 2 weeks, and yesterday he said to us something cool. We asked him to read the Book of Mormon, and to pray, and he did. We asked him how he felt and he said he felt cool inside, he felt good. He said he felt that way since the first visit, and is sure that what we teach to him is good. He accepted to be baptised on the 12th of next month. I like teaching on his patio where 30 chickens are getting chased by his puppy and all the cats. We really enjoy sitting in his patio under the shade of the mango and banana tree.

Oh and I totally forgot, this week, Elder Nelson of the Quorum of the Twelve (Apostles) came to our mission and spoke to us. Me and 6 other elders sang a cool song, and Elder Nelson liked it so much that he called my mission president and he called each one of us to say thanks! It was an awesome conference.

Hope you all have a super week!

love

Happy Valentine's Day!!

2011-02-14T16:18:00.000-08:00

AWWW yeah Disco. Great Stuff.

The minutes are few this week, writing Rob and Ryan who wrote me after a while. It´s great to hear from them, and man I was saying, I´m totally jealous of all the fun family get togethers they do. Lucky Ducks.

We are chuggin' along here. The ball and chain is getting a little more difficult to lug around...aka compañero. But we´re hanging in here. Nothin' to serious so I think I´ll manage.

Some of our good families we were teaching don´t want to talk to us, and tried to return the Book of Mormon we gave them. Others got caught buying Drugs, and others Drinking, so it looks like we have some heavy work this week. They all managed to get sick this week so we didn´t see any in church. But we had some great success bringing some old members back to church, so that makes me happy.

Also this week, a missionary in my Zone got to go to the sealing of one of the families he taught. Delvin and Alexa and their 4 kids. I´ll take a picture of them and send it next week just so you can see how adorable that family is. They are super people, and spoke in church yesterday. Not a soul in the room couldn´t feel happy for them and feel the joy that was leaking out. I can´t imagine someone saying that living this gospel doesn´t bring happiness. I´ve seen lots of people, in all kinds of crazy situations and all kinds of people that are richer than you can imagine here, and poorer than poor. But I've never seen a happier couple that this one. Now I see what the goal is.

Ok have a great Valentines Day!

(To dad:)
hEllo!

Wow meetings meetings meetings.

I do remember Brent Fisher, he did a few dances at the Helvy´s place. That would be nice to get someone from the church. Ay stake Dances.

The internet is taking over the WORLD!! Wow, But that's great that you have a great job at Yahoo. The jobs here in include driving people around on motorcycles, called “concho”, opening a fried pigskin and intestine stand, working at a corner store 24/7 or cement construction, and yeah that seems about it.

Hope you do something nice for mom today! Now that I´ve seen what it´s like in the REAL world I realize how good of a Mom .. and DAD I have. Oh gee I was such a dork! Good thing God smacked me on the head really hard by throwing me in the middle of this country. I needed it for sure. (Bold print is thrown in for emphasis by his mom ☺)

Love you

Buena!

2011-02-07T14:21:00.000-08:00

Oh bien, here are a few pictures of this week. Went exploring with my companino today. Today we were in the capitol and we walking in front of the government building, when two guards with MASSIVE guns started yelling at us. I pretended like they were yelling at someone else, but obviously that didn´t work. They told us to get to the other side of the street. We obeyed...
A moment later the president of the Dominican Republic pulled in with several suvs flanked on each side, with guys with huge guns inside too. I´ve never seen so many security people with guns, even at the atm machines there are security guards with shotguns.

Also this week we had the baptism of Santo! yay! It was a great baptism and he is definitely going to stay in the church and be a Strong member. during the baptism a bird flew into the room and the bishop said, “oh it´s the spirit in the form of a dove” It was pretty funny.

The picture with all the flags in the background is the capitol building.

Also the weird tree is when we went to the botanical gardens, the red bridge too.

When my companino hit one year he wanted to celebrate, so we took some fun pictures, the bed sheet one is one of MANY... haha

Other than that we have been working lots. The sun is stinging hot, wow and we sweat. Yup the life!

Hey mommy don´t worry about sending a lot of candy, it makes me sick and I can´t eat too much sugar. Plus I´m trying to help my companion lose weight. Yeah it may be a joke but he wants to do it. His family sent him some pills to take with food that are supposed to help, but I think it is a hoax. I just told him to stop eating so much sugar and fat, and whala. We walk 500 miles a day in a blistering sun and sweat to death. He is bound to lose weight if he doesn´t eat so much.

Did I tell you Elder Nelson is coming in two weeks? Me and 5 other missionaries prepared a cool hymn today to sing when he comes. I did it with my old district out in Higuey. I´m excited.

Ok well that's all for this week! Adios everybody.

Familia

2011-01-31T14:13:00.000-08:00

Ay que vaina, aqui toy todavia en sabana perdida. El compay mio ta totao, eta mañana se rayó con un gilette en la mejilla. Nojotro tamo fajando con pila de familia pero toabia niguna ha flojao su horario el domingo.
I thought I´d write you something fun so you can have fun deciphering it.

Ah this week has been hot. The sun decided to get really hot. My companion is a total goon and walks around with a tiny battery powered fan to cool off. He had an extra one so I decided to join in the fun. He has been doing better. He is a really good teacher, very bold and not afraid to ask or tell anyone to do anything. He almost “died” the other day to have to get up at 7:00 in the morning for church.. haha. Little by little I'm going to try to get him used to the regular mission schedule. His parents totally came and saw us last week. They took some stuff and gave him some fruit. His dad gave him a blessing and then they took off. I was a little surprised.. but he is a great guy, and works hard. We have a good time working here.

We went to the Botanical gardens today with the Zone: It was a good time. I´ll send some pictures. We road on a little train and saw plants and trees and lakes, and then the train got a flat right where I was sitting. I guess I am getting too fat.

We have been preparing Santo for his baptism this week too! Wow, he is really doing great. A very smart guy. He is going strong, passed his interview and is ready to go. Last night we pounded him with the big 4 commandments. I don´t want there to be any doubt in his mind when it comes to those. Santo fits right in and that the members were all surprised when they announced his baptism, because so many thought he was already a member. He will be a leader here someday, and the goal is to get him married to Jhoanna who got baptised a few weeks ago. They are novios, even though Santo is 41 and Jhoanna is 21. Those things aren't to weird here.

Mom you are taking a sewing class! That's really cool. And what kind of ballroom are you learning? Sounds like fun.

Well that's all for this week! I love you all

Hello You!

2011-01-24T18:44:00.000-08:00

“How are yousss, my name is My NAME IS!!!” Everyone in the street likes to yell that at the American missionaries. Actually people stopped yelling at us in the street, now I am with a Dominican again. His name is Elder Cabral. He actually grew up in San Pedro, and went to the branch where I was just serving in San Pedro. His family moved to Constanza, which is in the northern part of the country. Now he is here. He is a great missionary and a very good teacher, but doesn´t like to listen to what anyone says, or follow the rules, so this will be an interesting one. I turn off his “reggaeton rap” music in the house, but he just turns it right back up... ahh patience. But I have noticed in just one week his behavior has changed. He tends to listen to me more if I am his friend, and not the bad guy, or leader. I think this will a great transfer though, I am excited. He is teaching me a ton about sounding more like a native. Wow he speaks so fast, and jumbled. Today I also met two elders from England, they also speak very strange, so many different cultures, its a blast.

Santo, or Joselin as they called him is doing great. He was progressing well, but ran into a problem with his work on Sundays... like ALWAYS... He went to the Stake Conference, and then on Sunday he showed up at church again! We went to his house in the afternoon and asked him what he thought about the goal we had set for his baptism on the 5th of February, and he said yes! He talked to his boss and told him straight up that he had been working for almost 9 months and that he deserved a day off. So now his boss can't work on Sundays, and we can send the sister missionaries over to his house now that he has no more excuses!

Jhoanna Ester gave a talk yesterday in church, about baptism, and that was probably why Joselin came. This whole member helping out their friends thing is working. I'm a fan.

We also have been teaching this woman, Ana. She lives next to a sister who was a missionary way back in the day. We went to church, and we kind had to fight a little to get her to pray and and ask God if she should also get baptised on the 5th. She was reluctant, but when we went back, she said she did pray. I was very surprised, because not often people said they actually asked God if they should do this, not many are humble enough. She said she prayed and felt emotional, and even cried. We have taught her so little, I was very surprised. She understood that was God answering her prayer and accepted to be baptised. God answers prayers if the people want it just a little enough to ask, and have just a little faith.

So these next to weeks we are going to work with these people to see two awesome new members of the church.

I love you all... and have a great week!

BUENNNNO What's new.. I´m still alive!

2011-01-17T15:11:00.000-08:00

I told Elder Phair “hi”, and showed him the picture, he laughed. Yeah, he is the great nephew of the Stebbins.

Yup transfer calls were last night, it ended. Elder Phair had to wash his clothes, but then left at 7:00 this morning, and still hasn´t come back. We were waiting in the house until 2:00PM, but we got impatient and decided to come here to the internet center. Here in the Caribbean, the focus on the Mormon.org thing is pretty obsolete (non existent). Nobody has computers, and very few people pay to go to the internet center. If someone has a computer or a motorcycle, they are very well off.

Oh, so Elder Phair is moving to the neighboring Zone, and a missionary from the other neighboring Zone is coming here, Elder Cabral. He is Dominican, and I´m really excited to finally really be able to learn Spanish, or I mean Dominican again. At times I think that the people here speak normal, but then this Sunday there was a multi stake conference for all of the Caribbean, and the translators spoke so differently. Elder Oaks, President Uchtdorf, and Elder Richards from the Seventy spoke. It was stellar. They spoke about the strong points of the culture that help the gospel grow in the Caribbean, and then hammered home that certain things in the culture HAVE to change in order for people to live the Gospel. Like the trend that men leave the women after having several children to go look for another women. Or the fact that nobody gets married. They join together and split up like “bees and flowers...” (That last comment is what I say, not what they said.)

Francisco is still very loyal. He is still a little bummed about his brother, but we were excited to see him at the conference. Also Jhoanna Ester is doing great. She invited her boyfriend Joselín, who is like 33 or so, and very mature, to the conference. He really liked it. He is a great guy, but has been so busy that we haven´t been able to teach him. But Jhoanna invited him to her baptism, and tells him everything. It´s very likely that he will get baptised, and hopefully married! That's the plan. Jhoanna, her brother, and Joselín all work for Jhoanna´s dad, who is the only member of his family that has not been baptised. His sisters are all in my ward, are returned missionaries, and are VERY active. They have been hounding on their brother for over 20 years, but he keeps saying, yea yea not right now though, leave me alone. It has always been his work that came in the way, but if Joselín gets baptised, Jhoanna´s twin brother will most likely reactivate, and his dad worn´t be able to work on Sundays, and will have to go to church. I think we hit the right domino to be able to help the rest of the family. Jhoanna´s dad even told us the other day that he wants us to teach him and his wife sometime in the future..

Yup well, that's all for now my people!

Have a great week!
Elder Shaggy.. as they call me...

(The bowl of food was Amazing btw. It was a 'moro de guandule, carne de re molia y aguacate' YuM!)

Hello, hello, hello!

2011-01-10T19:55:00.001-08:00

Well we did it! Yay one more soul, entered in the waters of baptism. It was a great baptismal service. Jhoanna was happy and she is in good hands, living with her aunt who is a returned missionary.

We´ve been having lots of interesting learning experiences. On Friday, Francisco´s only full brother passed away. We went and saw him and talked a little bit. I´ve never met a kinder, more honest man in my life. He was sad to lose his brother, but very positive. Many people who aren´t religious have a hard time ignoring the presence of a supreme being when they lose a close friend or relative. The interesting thing is that 99 percent of the people here say they believe in God and Jesus Christ. All we try to do is help the people that say they believe, actually do something with that belief. I´ve really learned that who we are has very very little to do with what we say we are, or just what we say in general.

But Poor Francisco almost has lost everything now. He was kicked out of his house a few weeks ago. He had to sell his car and almost everything he owned. He sold his last possession he had, a bus that his son used to work on, to try to save the life of his brother. That man really understands things that others don´t. Please pray for him, he could use some comfort.

We have been meeting new people and new families. We are also still teaching Hilda and Domingo. He has almost stopped smoking, and tomorrow they are going to finally operate on his had to try to reconnect the tendons to his thumb and pointer finger. They still have a long ways to go, but often come to church. I decided to finally give a challenge to the family to read the Book of Mormon from start to finish. In two days they had read almost 14 chapters, which is more than anyone I had ever before seen read it.

Sorry if I write weird things. My companion always makes fun of my English because it´s starting to get a little mixed with Spanish stuff. He is very proper, and talks like someone from the 1800's. I tell him he just talks weird.

I really did like the book. I was surprised to open it, and it started talking to me. But very neat, and will be fun to save through the years.

Ok well that's all for this week! I hope you all get healthy. Haha lots of people are getting sick with the cold streak that came though. I think it even got down to 68º, but it heated up and now we are sweating again, so everything is ok.

Love you all

Hello family creatures!

2011-01-03T15:35:00.000-08:00

Wow, my stomach is pretty full. I just ate a ton of salsa and spaghetti. I´ve been making lots of salsa lately. I had totally forgotten what I had been missing. You´d laugh but my companion, Elder Phair, is actually pretty picky. BUT, I made the salsa. He had some serious doubts, but tried it and fell in love. Love at first bite I tell you. I think he even likes it more than me... which means we make 10 gallons of it, and it disappears in 15 seconds. Imagine that, someone who eats more salsa than me. We were fighting over it this week, so today we went and bought 3 tons of garlic, 5 tons of onions, 6 tons of tomatoes, and chiles and started a vegetable cutting party today. But we ran out of time, tonight we will start up again when we get home to plan and stuff.

New Years was NUTs... There were more drunk people in the street that you could shake a stick at. There were bonfires on every street corner, and rum and beer flowed down the street gutters. IT is not an exaggeration. A 3 day nonstop party. People took naps to only wake up after 20 minutes to drink off their hangovers. Can´t lie, it was pretty difficult to teach people. We usually ended up hiding in the houses of the members.

This week we have another baptism planned. Yoana Ester. She is a reference of a member that lives by the bishop. Yoana has a twin brother, and he was baptised 2 or 3 years ago, but went inactive because his dad always made him work on Sundays, and didn´t go to church. Yoana has been a member since her birth, but it´s been a constant battle with her dad, and the rest of his family (who are all members of the church). He has always tried to pull his kids away from the church, but finally Yoana moved out. She still works with her dad and he pulled her away a few weeks ago from church and we have had to postpone the baptism 3 times because of it. She had missed church 3 times in a row, and I had thought that her dad had got to her again. But we went back with a “cannon and dynamite” teaching the importance of respecting the Sabbath day and church attendance. Yoana´s friend Edward also participated with us for the fist time in that lesson.

We gave it everything we could in that lesson, and I told the stories about when I applied to Baskin Robbins and after telling the boss I couldn´t work Sundays and how she said to me, “oh good luck, I have here more that 100 applicants that can”, and how I was offered a life guarding job, and then they told me I had to go to training on several Sundays that month. I said no and had to turn down that job.
Oh, I also mentioned that the owner of Baskin Robbins called me a few weeks later and told me that I was only one of the hundreds of applicants that was given the job. Also how the boss at the life guarding job called his boss to change all of the training days to Saturdays, or other days of the week, all so I could work there.

They all were moved by the spirit, and our friend Edward that was listening to the missionaries for the first time spoke up after the lesson and said, “oh wow, I guess I need to talk to my boss then, to not work on Sundays.” We returned to his house, and he is praying and has spoken to his boss to be able to change his schedule so he can attend church on Sundays.

After church Yoana told us that she knows that Jesus Christ is her savior, and she wants to be baptised. That was heart warming to hear.

Yup That's all for this week.

Good luck with all your resolutions, and don´t give up on the dieting or exercise after the first week, and sore muscles, or the sweet tooth sets in!
Love,

FAMILY MEMBERS HELLO!

2010-12-27T20:07:00.000-08:00

Yay, great to hear that everyone had a wonderful Christmas, and had some fun experiences. Christmas is still in the air here.. everyone is still on vacation, and drinking. But we have been able to find a few people to teach that weren´t drunk. Today we had a super mega clean session, and flooded out our house. We poured Christmas scent floor mopping liquid all over and everything smells good.

Oh I do have something new to tell you. Yesterday my companion and I had a really interesting experience. We often pass by the family of Encarnacion, and they are all very strong members in the church, except for their youngest son. And we ran into their youngest son in their home. We talked and asked him why he chose not to participate in church, even with his older brother being a missionary. He said he wasn´t in agreement with the doctrine... So we decided to try to teach him. He has had several years attending other churches, supposedly, but I don´t think he really does go to others. So anyway, we busted out the bible, and went at it. His father came into the room and it turned into a pretty heated bible bash... which I´m not a fan of. We finally had to kick his father out of the room, so they would stop fighting. But Francisco is his name, had some pretty serious doubts, but we tried our best to help him, but he still didn´t believe. I had really felt sad, because never before had I ever been able to prove anything with the scriptures. I show people what the scriptures teach, but they keep on believing all kinds of crazy ideas. But after an already very long discussion, I showed him one last thing, about baptism. That killed his doubt, and we watched as all the dominoes fell down. He said, “oh well yeah I guess that is right, prophets really do speak for God and we really do need to be baptised if we want to live with God again.” What appeared to me was years of misunderstanding and fighting in the home was all dissolved in a matter of minutes between him and his parents. They were finally in agreement and stopped fighting. The parents were very grateful, and I was very grateful to the spirit. Francisco promised that he would return to church. We now plan to return to help him understand the doctrine, and so he can teach with us and prepare to be a missionary... which is the plan. Hard work had paid off and I was very happy to be able to do my priesthood duty, and help the family find peace with their son.

That's all the fun stories for this week. Thank you everyone for writing me! I hope everyone has a great new year!

Love,

FELIZ NAviddaddddd

2010-12-20T20:40:00.001-08:00

Hello hello familia.

Great to hear from some of you! Wow, this week we had some fun adventures. And a baptism! yay! Francisco and Alison. Both of them were baptised on the 18th, at 6pm. We had a fun time filling the font by carrying trash cans full of water from the well behind the church for 4 hours, but we got it full in time.

It was actually a really nice baptism. Francisco is a really nice man, in his 40's or so. He is very sincere, and very honest, sometimes too honest, and really has a pure heart. He met one of the councilors of the temple presidency and they talked, and then Julio Cruz invited him to go to church here in Sabana Perdida. And he came! We taught him, and President Cruz came and baptised him. It was great to meet some members that had some really great experiences. President Cruz and his wife were baptised here when the first missionaries had less then one year in this country in 1979. Sister Cruz knows missionaries so well that she could tell I was from California because of my Spanish accent! I was impressed that she could tell, when I had only spoken to her in Spanish.

Alison is the son of a strong sister in our ward. Hna (Hermana) Morena always wanted her children to accept the gospel, and one by one we are doing our best!!

Francisco and Alison were both confirmed and Francisco will already receive the priesthood next week and they are going to put him to work! Which is great.

Other than that, I can´t remember too well what has happened this week, and we haven´t had much success with any of the other people we are teaching, so now we are looking for all new people.. part of the job.

On Christmas eve we are planning to meet as a district on a semi busy street corner and sing hymns and pass out stuff and invite people to church. It should be fun, never have sang in the street before..

Yup well this is all for now, I hope I can speak to all of you on Christmas!

Love

Happy Christmas!

2010-12-13T14:17:00.001-08:00

Well it´s Christmas time and my companion and I are definitely rockin' around the Christmas tree. We have a little tree that sings and dances that an old missionary left behind. We´ve been entertaining ourselves with it.

Well this weekend we Had 10 TEN baptisms planned, but of course, more than half bailed last second.... Sunday was a rough day to not see many of them in church. In the mission you go through the lowest of lows it feels. BUT it just makes me feel like I am getting stronger.

I don´t know if I am superstitious, afraid to count my chickens before they hatch or what, but I will send pictures and tell all the cool stories about those who get baptised.. after it happens.

We´ve been walking a ton trying to reanimate the families, find out why once again they have left us hanging, and keep them happy and excited so they can get baptised a week later. It´s hard to get attached to the people, and care for them so much, just to have to drop them the week after. I really am learning I only have 1 person that I can rely on right now and that's God. A real growing experience.

The streets are lighting up here as well. Some put up lights, for Christmas. The tradition here in to have a big dinner on the 24th, It´s called “Nochebuena”. The Good Night.

We´ve been trying to decide what to do with Domingo and Hilda, because Domingo has a real history. Every time we talk to them they seem more and more interested in getting married. We went and taught them on Saturday morning, and at the end of the lesson we knelt down, and Domingo prayed for the first time. He said a real sincere prayer, and mentioned how he wanted help to be able to get married now, and not wait. When he finished he just knelt there with his head hanging down. We knew he had felt something, and he was ashamed to show us that he had. We have hopes for them. There is still much work to do, but we have seen a difference. Unfortunately the family didn´t go to church because they had to work..

We have been teaching this couple Ramona and Jhonaton. They are a younger couple with two of the cutest kids. One is 4 and the other 5. They always make me laugh. The couple has had some rough times, and have even split up, but got back together, only for the kids so they could have a mom and a dad. They are very noble for doing that. They are still split up, but live in the same home. They want to get married, but just can´t yet. We taught them the simple principle of prayer, and now the two pray together every day. We have seen a difference, and Ramona told us it had made a big difference.

It´s fascinating that such a simple thing can make such a difference. I´ve noticed that in my own life. It may seem silly to some but it really is just reading your scriptures, going to church every Sunday, and really praying with your father in heaven, that solves problems. It brings us some of the greatest joy in this life. It´s interesting how I had to cross land and sea and live thousands of miles away from family, and leave all the comforts of home, and everything behind, to learn what I had already learned in Primary.

But I will be looking forward to talking to you all on the 25th! I can call either in the morning between 8 and 10, 1 to 3 or after 9 my time, whatever you prefer! I don´t remember my cell phone number, but yes I will be calling from my cell phone.

OK have a super week!

Love you

My Family!

2010-12-06T14:36:00.000-08:00

OH gee, you all make me laugh!

Wow, what a week! I´ve really learned a ton. we´ve been fighting a bunch to keep these people progressing toward their baptisms. Now that we are honing in the 18th, all the true doubts are coming out, and problems. The Lord is testing our faith.

Carlos told his life story the other day. Wow, he really has gone through a lot. A LOT more than I had ever expected. The member family helped his four children go to church and they all had a great time. My companion and I went over there to give them some Book of Mormon's and their faces all lit up. They were so excited! The oldest is really smart and loves to read.

Carlos explained how his wife left him, and how all his family, parents and cousins, uncles and brothers are millionaires, and live in the United States, and have abandoned him. He broke his arm the other day, but that still doesn´t stop him from working. His house is starting to fall apart, and all the kids are always in sandals and greasy clothes, because they don´t have anything else. He went through a lot more trials, but I can´t describe it all. Despite all that he sure does have a good attitude. And wow, that man has a gift. An ability to articulate and explain everything perfectly. He pretty much sounds like a doctor when he talks. We have a tough time trying to follow him sometimes. We finally invited him to be baptised in the 18th with another family that we have, and a few other people. He said he wasn´t sure because doesn´t want to jump into this. We hope he can have the faith and courage to trust and be baptised. Please pray for him. We plan to go over to his house to do a huge priesthood service project and clean up his house and fix it up. We also want to give him tons of rice and beans from the bishop's storehouse.

Also, we´ve been teaching this kid, Addison. Funny little kid. He is kind of slow, but has changed a lot. His brothers, all are gangsters, and really are not good news. His mom really wanted him to do this, and now he is finally going to church and praying. Reading is a little tough. He is 17, but still hasn´t learned reading too well. We practice with him every time we are over.

Francisco is a really nice man. I can say “a man without guile”. He wouldn´t harm a fly or talk bad about anyone. He was a reference of a man from the temple presidency. The man, Hermano Cruz, is coming down on the 18th of December to baptise. He calls Francisco every day to ask him how it is going with the missionary lessons. He is running into financial problems like everyone here, but hopefully he can avoid falling into any traps. People take out loans to pay loans left and right.. Everyone has a debt hanging over their heads. I really have learned to fear that stuff. Loans.

Yeah, that's all for now. Oh transfers are tomorrow. I´m staying with my companion again. I´m happy. Today is my companions birthday. I did all the chores for him.

OK time to split.

Whooop!

2010-11-29T18:19:00.000-08:00

Wow what a P-day. I ate, and slept and slept and slept! I feel great, and ready to work. We have a lot to do this week.

Things are going really well and we are teaching more people than ever. We currently have 15 people lined up to be baptised on the 18th of December, and have 15 more we are trying to prepare.

Hilda is doing well. She missed church for the first time this week, because she was up worrying about her daughter who went to a rap battle and Hilda had to go out to find her down some dark random street. Her husband, Domingo, has a few more things than we realized to changed. It´ll be a little tough because he and his family has a history with tiguraje, like they say here, gang problems. I think that is how you say it. But the Relief Society sisters went to visit her, because she wasn't there. The ward here is pretty spectacular, especially some of the members. The biggest problem is that we have some of the greatest people ever, but EVERY Sunday, magically, something happens on Sunday, and they have to go work or something. It´s really a pain.

Thanksgiving was.. haha not much. We made rice and beans, and didn´t do anything, because I´m pretty sure there isn´t turkey here. It´s too expensive. We´ll try to do something cool for Christmas. We want to make our investigators something cool to take to them on Christmasday, like brownies, but we don´t have an oven or microwave, or stove, any ideas? I can´t think of anything...

We started teaching a neighbor of this new member, Delvin, which is really strong. The neighbors name is Fredy, really nice guy. It´s been amazing as we teach him. Delvin has really opened him up so that we can teach him the doctrine. It was like textbook perfect. We taught him the message of the restoration of the Gospel, and asked him to pray to know if Joseph Smith was really a Prophet. So he did it and we came back a few days later and he was there waiting for us. He told us he had prayed and that he felt something really different, nothing that he had every felt before. He felt it was right, and that it was true. We were floored ,because nobody has experiences like that and understands the answers to their prayers. We invited him to be baptised on the 18th, and he accepted. Tonight we have a Family Home Evening with him and Delvin. Now we are going to help get him get married in less then 3 weeks so he can be baptised. Ay ay ay, there is so much to do, so many people, and we need so many miracles this Christmas.

We´ve also been teaching this man Carlos. A really nice man, single father, which is rare, with 4 kids. He is a mechanic, and super intelligent, wow. A returned missionary and his family are helping us teach him. The tough part is that he fell and hurt his arm a month ago when we first found him. He went to the doctor 2 weeks later to find out that it was broken in 2 places. The doctors couldn´t believe that he had waited so long to go with all that pain. He has really been struggling the past few years to care for his kids and work. He has many pastor friends who have invited him to their churches, but for some reason he never wanted to go and we invited him (to ours) and he went! He really needs a lot of help with his kids. One is 14, 12, 10 and 15 or something like that. If you could slip in something small in the package you are sending, for the kids that I could take over to them that would be really thoughtful. Three boys and one girl who is like 12 or 13 years old. They don´t have many clothes I think.. white shirts for church? Something small that will cheer them up this Christmas, maybe food.

Haha, oh my that makes me crack up about the lights on parade. Is Mr. Ostenson still leading the middle school band? That man is Hollister music. Legend.

OK gotta split, time to WORK! Say prayers PLEASE for these families. We need some help these next few weeks from above. Have a great week.

We need some miracles!!

2010-11-22T14:56:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was a great day for sure. We have been working extra tough to bring some less actives back to church, and tons of new people too. The members have noticed, and are really excited to help.

Ever since I got here, we did our best to try to win the trust of the bishop and help him. We ask him how we and help him every time. We go on errands for him, and report back within a few days and such. We´ve really seen lots of success with couples that have split up and now are back together, and people who have years without going to church, returning. Most people here are a little more educated, and have more integrity. It´s a major blessing.

Hilda and Domingo are doing even better. They both went to church again, and brought ALL of their kids. They took up a whole bench in church. That was a beautiful sight to see. Domingo has always been nice but honestly at first we was only going along with all this, because we and his wife had nagged so much. This Sunday in priesthood meeting the teacher asked Domingo what he thought about the spirit or something like that, and Domingo responded and pretty much summed up everything that he had learned in church that day. I was amazed that he had payed so much attention. He also said, "Yeah a few weeks ago these missionaries and my wife started to bug me about all this and I wasn´t too keen on listening or changing." But he said, "At night my wife would pull out the Book of Mormon, and all of the booklets you have given us, and teach me everything that you had taught her." He said he was very grateful, and invited all of the priesthood over to his home to learn more. He even invited us to go teach his mom, who happens to live right next to the high priest group leader. He used to always hide out at his mom's house and had almost split up with Hilda, but now he is almost always with her at home. He really has made quite a change, now it´s time to work on the cigarettes, beer, and get them married! Haha, but it´s going to happen.

We have been able to find lots of people and the members have been so kind to help us out. The ward has a goal of 18 more baptisms this year, and our bishop has really been taking this seriuously. We now have a ward mission plan to help 18 people be baptised on the 18th of December, so we can meet to goal. We have 25 people that could potentially be a part of that, and so we put in a plan of action to help this become a reality. We have a LOT of work to do. I have no idea how we are going to help everyone have faith to do this, and take this step in their life, but if the ward helps I believe it´ll be possible. WOO bring on some miracles eh? More like 18 Christmas miracles. We are asking our investigators, ¿"What Christmas gift will you Give to God this Christmas"?.. I think repenting and being baptised would be sufficient.

As far as Thanksgiving... not sure. We haven´t planned anything. Last Thanksgiving, I had already made a plate of rice and beans when my zone leader came in at noon to tell me it was Thanksgiving. I had forgotten. But we´ll see.

This Cholera thing looks like it´s getting serious. I haven´t heard of any cases here, but there are flyers everywhere, and people walking around informing people to be clean. I´m sure I have nothing to be worried about.

Did I ever tell you that Dominicans point with their lips? They don´t use their fingers to point, they just stick their lips out at everything, and sadly I´ve picked up the habit. My companion was making fun of me yesterday...

Yup well gotta roll, have a great week.

Ay Diantre por fin suerte! Y Trabajo!

2010-11-15T15:03:00.000-08:00

Happy Monday! Today we cleaned the house and painted it! It looks pretty nice!

Wow, so last week I told you about Hilda. Well, we haven´t given up... neither has she. We finally were able to talk to her husband, FINALLY, and he is actually a pretty nice guy. His name is Domingo and is out of work right now. He lost two of his fingers and part of his hand in a machete fight. Obviously he lost, but that was two months ago and luckily they were able to save his fingers. But anyway, we talked to him at his house, and invited him to church, and he CAME!! with Hilda and two kids. One he had to bring is in a wheelchair... that (the wheelchair) happens to say, La Iglesia De Jesucristo de Los Santos de Los Últimos Días on the back. Actually I see those wheelchairs everywhere. This week the church filled up. Almost every single one of our families went. I told them I was going to wait at the door the whole hour if I had to waiting for them to come. I did, and they came! The members really like us and are helping us out a lot.

We met this really cool guy named Felo. He teaches Salsa, and is SUPER good. He is one of the most animated people I have ever met. I really hope he will get baptised. We just found out that his wife is a inactive member, as of 5 years ago. Felo told me he started dancing in the Popping and Locking era, and knows that style. He showed me some moves, and I was very impressed. He is 49 and still got it! haha.

This was definitely a week of miracles. One of our old families that is planning to get baptised in December, FINALLY came back to church after 2 months. That really made me happy. We were teaching this guy Reinaldo, and he was at the point of being baptised, but his crazy wife came and stole his baby. She lost custody of her, because she tried to kill her a few months back. Now she wanted her baby back. Reinaldo´s wife threaten him that if he tried to get her back that she would send her family to kill him. He was a little worried as you could imagine. He went to the police, but as they are corrupt, they wanted 400 dollars if they were even going to go look for her. Nobody has money here btw .... He wasn´t eating for a while and was stressed, and finally left to the campo somewhere.

After teaching Hilda I thought I should call him (Reinaldo) and check on how he was doing. We lost contact for 3 weeks, so I was hoping to get though to see if he was ok. He answered, finally and said he was ok and that we could go visit him again! I heard a little girl making noise in the phone, and asked him who it was. He told me it was his daughter. We put set an appointment and went to see him. He was so happy to have his daughter back. She was a little scratched up, but other than that she was pretty healthy. We put a baptisimal date with him for the 27th of November.

Wow there are so many people we are teaching it´s impossible to tell all of their stories, but they are all very fascinating. Now the work has begun!, lots to do!

My compañion and I have almost fell over several times, because we laugh so much in the street.
We´ve noticed that people see us as Zoo animals. All the little kids yell at us and say, ¨SPEAK ENGLISH! Mommy make the Mormons speak English. The Mormons are so boring¨. The women all say, "Wow their eyes are so pretty!" Yeah, the women are all bad news. We avoid them at ALL costs.
Sometimes we feel like we are in a parade as we walk down the streets. I just mentioned that to my companion then they said, "Now we have the Mormons coming down the street!" "Looked how they are gringos dressed in white shirts and ties". Right after I said that, a man came walking down the street on stilts. I am NOT joking! This country is so random. I Love it.

Oh boy, time to go and help some couples get over their fear of marriage! Wow, we need to help so many people get married, this is ridiculous. I´ve really learned to rely on prayer! Trust me it works. And I RELY on it every day. With out it I would probably toast is this crazy place.

OK I got to go, but have a great week all!
I love you

It's a freezing 68º!

2010-11-08T13:17:00.000-08:00

Well my shoes just dried out! And there is sun!

To say the truth, I have been really cold lately. I froze last nigh. I even put my socks on and everything. Haha and I think it got down to 68 or something. I´ve really adjusted.

Rain Rain rain.. lots of rain, and wind. We didn´t see anything from the hurricane (hurricane Tomas), just lots of rain, but no wind.

All of the people we are teaching fell through this week on us, except for one. Hilda, she is a older woman, very quiet, but has hopes of marrying her husband and being baptised... this month. We have lots of work to do. Her husband is out of work and spends all day at his mom's home and only comes home to sleep. In the morning he takes off, and comes back every night drunk. Need some prayers and miracles here. Hilda really has faith that he can change and that they can be married and baptised. She is a slow reader, but always learns more than anyone when we leave her chapters in the Book of Mormon.

We have been working with a TON of inactive members this week. They are a peso a dozen here. Every 2 in 10 contacts we do are baptized non church going members... The church is still very young in this country and need lots of help.

Today we took a fun day and played soccer and basketball and stuff as a Zone. I had the Nicaraguan on my team so we whopped the other team. Haha! My companion and I really get along well. It really is nice like I said to be with someone that is from California. We just see things the same. I´m so glad he doesn´t call soda, “Pop”!
Hopefully this week we can get people moving again and get lots of these inactive back to church. It´s funny because EVERY SINGLE ONE said they were happy in the church when they were going. It was the best part of their lives, and they don´t regret doing it. But they have a lot of pride to eat up to say that they would go back.

I compare the church to exercising. Maybe it´s not the most fun thing to do, but we all know we should do it, and maybe don´t have tons of excitement to do it, but after wards we never regret the results of being in shape, physically or spiritually.

But it is time to go, so all have a great week.

Nos checkeamos.. con amor

Hola Hola Hola Familia!

2010-11-01T18:01:00.000-07:00

Wow! Great to hear from you all! Crazy Halloween is over!! Wow I was sitting in bed About 10:30 when I said, Hey comp, today was Halloween, I forgot to dress up! Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, bummer I missed out. But I ain't missing the next one! I´m glad you were able to have a fun birthday too with a few friends.

So cool to hear about the Dickson's neighbors!! That's really really exciting! Hearing about a family getting baptised is probably the coolest thing ever! That's personally my dream, I still haven´t done it, because well it´s SUPER hard, but I´m hoping that some of the families that we are teaching work out. I hope the ward is just super way too nice to them and you mom and dad help out a ton! And I am very pleased to hear about the challenge by Bishop Starkweather. Good luck on your challenge, and don´t be afraid. People here would be overly excited to take a free book, so we have to wait until they take the book from us.

Well, I was transferred to Los Palmares. That is in the Far North sector of the capitol, Santo Domingo. The area is gorgeous, not as dusty and dry desert like San Pedro. It´s not as hot, thank goodness, and there are lots of hills, yeah! Strong hiking legs now.

The part of town where I´m at has a lot more culture than I have seen in the whole country. I´ve never been to Europe, but from what I´ve seen in pictures, it has that kind of feel. Small skinny streets, only big enough for 1 car to fit through, plants on the balconies, tons of people. Really cool actually, I love it. I would send a picture, but the area is a little more dangerous... so I can´t carry my camera.

And we finally have a church building! Wow what a blessing! The first time in sacrament meeting in the chapel in 1 year! It´s really nice. The members are great, willing to help, I´m pretty sure there will be lots of good stuff that will come out of this place.

My companion is Elder Phair, from Pleasant Hill, California! Yeah a Californian! I really didn´t realize how great Californians were until I went 1 year without seeing any. He is a really good missionary. Actually my old companion Elder Pimentel trained him, and now he is in his second transfer with me. He really likes to work hard, so everything is going to work out great.

Right now we are focusing on this couple, Ramona and Jonaton. Really cool couple, They are really excited about the gospel, and read and study and even go to church! They have two of the cutest little kids, one 4 and the other 5 years old. The only thing is that we need to get them married, and he isn´t working to be able to save money. He leaves every day at 4 in the morning until 7 or 8PM just to try to find work to pay the house. But we are hoping the members can help out a little with the marriage. They accepted to be baptised at the end of the month. They are really excited to go to the temple too, and we have taught them almost all about that. Pray that Jonaton can find a good job to be able support his family and get baptised on the day we put!

Tell Trent Congrats on his mission call!! That is really awesome, I´m excited for him.

Ok have a great week! and Merry Christmas! Christmas already started here. It´s crazy everyone already has their Christmas tree, and we sing Christmas songs in church. Yeah

Love you all,

Last area...October 25, 2010

2010-10-25T23:17:00.000-07:00

Here are some photos of Elder Shattuck's last area (San Pedro).

Hey!! Familia!

2010-10-25T18:40:00.000-07:00

Good to hear from you all!

Wow, sounds like there's some real action going on in the Hollister 1st ward for sure. That makes me really happy. My mission president has been teaching the members here to take care of the missionaries, not by inviting over for dinner, but instead giving them referrals of their friends!

There were transfer calls this week, and you guessed it right, I´m heading out! I loved this area, and had a great time,and success, but it is time for me to go. Today I´m going to take a million pictures. I'm going to Santo Domingo now, Las Palmares. Actually my old companion Elder Pimentel is there right now and I´m taking his spot. I´m looking forward to the change.

We finished here with the baptism of Billy, the nephew of Robert, who was baptised 4 months ago. It was a small little baptism, but nice. Billy is a really REALLY smart kid, 11 years old, he reads the Book of Mormon every day, and is really mature for his age. I´ll send some pictures.

My companion is really doing well now. He has learned tons of Spanish, and really focused on the work and learned to love this place. He will be a great missionary,

Oh, we´ve been teaching this really cool family of 8, Familia Cruz. Lorenzo the dad is a shoe man.He actually was the one that fixed my shoes. He wants to raise his children in a good environment. He believes in Jesus Christ, and actually belonged to another church, but had a bad experience so now he is looking again for a place to attend church. There is lots of hope for success. He needs to get married, but that is done easily here. It´s amazing the people that live together without commitment, and just separate when things get rough. So many single moms, and kids without a mom or dad. It´s insane. I've really learned the importance of those types of commitments.

That's all for this week. Have a great Halloween, and Happy Birthday MOM!!!

Love you

Hello, hello Family!

2010-10-18T18:28:00.000-07:00

Alright! Good to hear from the family!

No machete fights, hurricanes, or huge earthquakes this week. Thank goodness. So more pants kickin, but we are still workin.

The other day my companion and I stopped to watched a checkers game that these two kids were playing, and contacted them. All the kids came to the English class, and one of them even went to church for 3 hours, and says he is even excited about being baptised. He came from Haiti 2 months ago, but knows little Spanish. I feel bad for my comp because he understands so little when we teach him. But Marcilen, is his name, doesn´t understand a whole lot of Spanish, but sat through 3 hours of church and felt the spirit. Wow, there is this member Hermano Castro, he is in the high council, has been helping us out with the Haitian investigators. He is a total champ, he takes on his motorcycle to people that he wants us to teach, helps all the new people in church and is always willing to visit someone with us. So anyway, we are going right now to teach Marcilen with Castro!

The other day Castro took us to the house of a couple that he knows. We showed up and realized that we had actually contacted the couple before, but we never returned. We taught the wife as the man wasn´t back. But as we were leaving we noticed that the neighbor had recently had a bad motorcycle crash. We talked to him and he asked for a blessing so we gladly gave it to him. Castro did it in French as the man was Haitian, and even though I didn't understand much of what he said, I could tell and feel that something different was happening. The man that was hurt noticed as well and was grateful. As we were leaving Castro said he was going to return with some medicine, and gave 100 pesos to the neighbor to care for the man. I hadn´t seen many people before really love and care for someone like
that. Most would have just said, ah bummer, and keep on walking. I learned something really important that day.

Wow dad's birthday, and Mom´s birthday is coming up! CRAZY!! and so is Halloween! Too bad they don´t celebrate Halloween here. That was one of my favorite holidays.

Happy birthday all!

love you.

A Kick in the pants!!

2010-10-11T16:04:00.000-07:00

Hello Family!

Oh what a week! Some weeks are awesome, and some just kick you so hard in the pants that you can´t even sit down. This one was a pants kicker. We are working really hard, harder and more effectively than ever.. but well it´s just hard. I don´t have anything really good to say so I´ll say little.

On Friday I saw a machete fight while we were buying food. It was pretty crazy, An old man snitched on this guy for robbing and he was thrown in jail. When the guy got out of jail, he attacked the old man, but the old man won the fight actually. Don´t worry the other guy just had a little cut and the people broke it up. This country is crazy. I love it.

Other than that, that's all I have to say. Everything fell through literally, but I don´t want to complain. I'll just keep doing my job. The Lord Knows what he´s doing, not me.

Have a good week. Love you all

P.S. These are photos of me gining Elder Kekoolani a haircut (from our District) and me doing a handstand on the coast. (The handstands are a joke between me and my comps.)

General Conference was so inspiring!

2010-10-04T14:03:00.000-07:00

Oh Yeah don´t worry mom, I´m taking my vitamins and drinking lots of water. Thanks... Haha

Whoo hoo more Rain! It don´t seem to stop. I bought a really big unbrelly today, no more gettin wet!

Families Families Galore! Everyday we´ve been looking and praying and looking and asking and finally we found some pretty cool people. It´s amazing how the humbled ones are the ones willing to listen. Sandy and Yumi are a new couple we are teaching. Very friendly and acceptive. They have 3 daughters, 8, 4, 3. We taught them about how the Lord knows each one of them and how he answers every single one of their prayers. Little Billy, the nephew of Robert, likes to teach them with us. It was really powerful when Billy, a little kid of 11 years testified of the fact that God does answer prayers, and how he answered his. We found out that Sandy lost his only son when he was only 3 years old and has been grieving that for several years... so we are trying to help him understand that he CAN see him again if he goes to the temple. Sadly, they didn´t go the General Conference.. along with all the other families that we have. BUT that's not going to get me down, because they are really sincere people and as soon as they understand the doctrine (they) will understand the importance of the church.

We are also teaching his neighbor, they call him “Chino”, which means Chinese. But no he isn´t Chinese. Actually there is a strange number of Chinese people here, but they are ONLY found in restaurants called PICA POLLO, and they sell fried chicken 'n stuff.

This man Bernardo showed up on his own to the conference, he went out of his way to go in the RAIN, which nobody does, and went to the Stake center, which is far away. He loved the Conference too. He is really sincere and very grateful that we make him excited about his salvation. The only holdup is that he isn´t married and his wife is a Haitian.. which means it´s a tons to marry him. Last night he told me he has a ton of debt to pay off before he can pay for a marriage.... ugh Don't be in DEBT. It´s bad. But we are gong to need some prayers for him and his family so they can be baptised!

I really loved the Conference this weekend, wow. I was pondering this morning about the talk that President Monson gave on Sunday morning. Wow, a prophet of the world, with all the things going on in this world. All the problems and such, of all the things that he could have warned us against and God wanted him to talk about gratitude. That's really a big deal. He looks so content and happy, laughing and telling jokes, and he´s the prophet of the world. He is in charge of the church and plays a role in the salvation of so many... and he was happy and telling jokes. Sometimes I get worried and frustrated, thinking, ahhh these peoples salvation, how do they not understand!!??? But the Prophet really knows, a wise man is a HAPPY Optimistic man. I have a lot of respect for someone who can just be happy. Plan of Happiness.. Right?

Thanks for writing everyone, It´s great to hear from so many. Have a great week. Time for me to go work.

HELLLLLO! Bueno, Today is Monday!! If you didn´t know.

2010-09-27T12:27:00.000-07:00

Well things are going pretty alright. Haha, what a new experience this is to train a new greenie. Haha yeah he´s still pretty green right now. His name is Elder Hatch btw. Today I took him to make his first pair of pants with me. Ate massive hamburgers at this Boriquan place and played dominoes. It was a good break. We´ve been coming home exhausted every day from talking to so many people and running around everywhere.

We teach English class and we found this really cool Haitian man, his name is Bernardo. Actually that's his last name, but I guess in Haiti their last name comes first, before their own name... interesting. He is a really humble little guy, has several children and a wife. He speaks perfect Spanish and very good English, so it´s been nice for my comp to be able to teach him in English. We started teaching him and invited him to be baptised with his friend, and he said flat out no. Haha, BUT he really tells us that he is looking for his salvation. The fact that we asked him really made him think about what he wants and now he is working on getting married so he can be baptised, with his family. He repairs televisions and things, very smart. This week we invited him to watch the conference in Creole!! I´m really looking forward to this weekend!

So there has been some new things going on in the mission about how we teach and such. It´s a really awesome plan as well. We really get to focus on what the real purpose of missionary work is. That is teaching the doctrine of Christ. My companion is new and so he gets all teary eyed whenever we teach this new stuff, but he will get used to having the spirit around more often. I had a super experience staying in the capitol for 2 days during the training for the new mission plan. We´ve been inviting everyone to get baptised and such. I even invited my taxi driver to be baptised on the 9th of October. They are teaching us to be more bold. I wonder what will happen to him.

I have been looking like crazy for some new families, and finally I have found a few. Now we have trouble bringing them to church... and getting them married. That seems to be a real problem here.

This has been a week full of meetings so I don´t have too many cool stories to tell ,but I hope you all have a super week!

I love you

Alo!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ay, wow, what a kick in the pants this week was! Whoo!!

2010-09-13T16:42:00.000-07:00

Yesterday it rained a TON! The street flooded out, but luckily the rained stopped in time so the water level went down, but it was a good 2 feet high. It didn´t reach the house, but it sure filled up the streets. I´ll send some pictures of it.

But no joke kick in the pants for real. Nestlé and Sove and Nicolas didn´t go to church and it looks like Nestle, the most interested one of the group, who has almost a month and a half going to church, has hardened his heart, and no longer wants to listen to us, or keep any commitments. Bummer.

The family of Fausto we were teaching, promised us like 50 times they were going to church, and for the third time in a row, when we showed up at their house, they weren´t there. They are the nicest people, but can´t manage to keep that promise. Oh integrity, I hope some missionaries in the future will be able to help them later.

But Gordo DID go to church, and is really understanding well all of the doctrine. He loves it, and it´s strange, because as we teach him, many of the teachings aren´t foreign to him at all. It´s as if he already knew it. I am praying this Saturday that he will be able to get baptised!

Oh, and last Sunday Robert blessed the sacrament. That was really cool to see. He was nervous, but it was awesome to see him in his white shirt and tie. He is totally one of the strongest members here now. Haha, now we are trying to find him a woman! That guy needs to get married. He´s 35 and still lives with his mom! He acts like he is our age though, he is really cool. He wants to find someone he tells us. He is just very, chwipi when it comes to the dating scene. Like not smooth, you know.

And Cesarin was asked to give a talk in church next week! Haha, we was nervous, but we gave him some good pointers to help him prepare. He will speak with Ricky the other youth that we baptised a while ago. Ricky loves teaching with us. We have fun walking down the street pegging the millions of chickens with rocks, they all just squawk and run off. Its very entertaining.

Well Transfers are tomorrow. They called... and I´m staying again. I was very happy to hear that. I absolutely love this area. Here the members are really great! My companion is moving out to the capital. He is excited, he was ready to go. I could really tell in his attitude toward working here this week, kind of tough, but we made it. I guess I´m going to get to train a newbie here, and I´m in charge of the District now.. yay responsibility! Haha, nah it´ll be super fun with a newbie. I have no idea who it is, but i´ll find out tomorrow. If he is American I´m going to trick him and tell him that I´m from Puerto Rico, and talk to him really fast and only in Spanish for the first few days until he figures out I'm from California, or learns Spanish really fast. I already hid every sign of English books and stuff in the house. Haha it´ll be fun. When he comes it'll turn out he´ll probably be a Dominican or something...

But that's all for this week but I love you all and have a great week!

Hola Mi Gente!

2010-09-06T15:54:00.000-07:00

Yeowweee! El Sol pica! as the Dominicans say, which means, “the sun stings”! Today was a pretty nice day to be able to relax and write some letters and stuff. In the afternoon I went to a gym that a member in the ward owns. And the kid that we baptised 2 weeks ago, named Ricky, and I break danced there. My Comp worked out. Haha it was fun, and insanely hot. Wow.

This week has been pretty alright, extra normal, you know. Thanks for the advice, I will definitely put it to practice.

I don´t remember if I ever told you this in a letter but the other day I was in La Romana and I saw my friend Hector Registre. He is the really, really poor man that sells coconut in Higuey. All the coconut pictures I had were the one's I bought from him, We met him and taught him for almost 5 months, but always had problems when it came to him getting baptised, because he wasn´t married to his wife in Haiti. Well, I saw him and he was getting his interview to be baptised and I found out he finally did it! When I saw him I jumped with joy and ran to give him a big hug. He is probably 55 or something, and SUPER Haitian, has such a thick accent, it´s hilarious. But I love him. Apparently, the new church in Higuey opened up to, so he won´t have to walk an hour to church like he has been doing in the past 8 months. Wow, I remember the last time I saw him, before I left Higuey he was selling his coconuts in the street. He said, “Hey so when can I get baptised”? We felt so bad to not be able to tell him when, and that I was going to leave. The problem is that he didn´t have enough money to go to Haiti to get married with his wife. I told him, “Hector, you keep working hard, you keep going to church every week, you keep reading your scriptures, and you keep praying,” and I said, “I promise you the Lord will bless you so you will be able to get baptised, you will have enough money”.

For the several years that he was selling coconuts he would sell just enough to buy some eggs and platanos, to eat for his one meal, and buy from the vendors enough coconut to sell the next day. He lived with his cousin because he couldn´t pay for a house. He sold about 5 or 10 on a GOOD day. Some days none. I don't think he ate those days either. This man had literally nothing. A machete, wheelbarrow for coconuts and 2 shirts and 2 pants with holes in them. That was ALL.

When I talked to him in La Romana he told me he is selling 30 to 40 coconuts, if not more daily. He moved out and bought his own apartment, not just a shack. It looks like he is eating well too. I´ve never felt so sure when I´ve promised blessings, but I KNEW that the Lord loves this man and knew he would bless him for doing simple things such as sacrificing his day to sell on Sunday, to instead go to church. Sometimes we have trials but the Lord will never leave us alone if we do whats right.

We have also been teaching a new family, Fausto and Ani. Really nice people. They just moved here from the capital, Santo Domingo. They are looking for friends and stuff to help them out here. They moved to the right branch, because this is a really friendly one. We taught them a few times with our Ricky Dance friend, and they liked what we teach. We gave Fausto a Book of Mormon the other day, at four thirty in the afternoon, and when we returned to teach him at 8:00 PM he had read, and just “destroyed” the first several chapters in the book. We were just blown away that he had read so much, well just because so many people don´t know how to read here, or don´t have the interest to read a book from two Gringos. We taught a really spiritual lesson, and kneeled and prayed with the family. It was really cool. He promised that he was going to church with us the next day, Sunday. So in the morning when we passed by an hour early to say get ready he was already ready, and was waiting for his wife. We were stoked. At 9:00 we returned to get him, and saw him in grease clothes and was working on some junky motorcycle. We said, “whoa man whats up? You promised us...” This was the second week he had promised us and blown us off. He said “yeah but i can´t pay the house and I have to sell this fruit here at the market so I don´t get kicked out.” I was just bummed. I promised him, “Look you got to put the Lord first, and he will put you first, you can´t blow off him and do whatever you want and think he is going to bless you to be able to pay your house. If you come to church, you will have enough to pay for the house.” 3 hours later, he didn´t show up, I asked him, “What happened man?” He said, “Well I fixed the motorcycle and was driving to the market and the back tire popped, I had to walk several kilometers home in this killer sun, with the bag of fruit and the motorcycle with the bad tire. I couldn´t sell anything.” I told him... “So I assume you´ll go next week then, right?” he said, “Yeah I guess I learned my lesson.” Once again, the Lord helps us IF we do what's right.

We´ve been having some troubles baptising Gordo and Nestle. They are both hard to find, BUT we wont give up.

My Family I love you all and hope you have a super Week! Adios

Hit by a hurricane.....NOT!!

2010-09-01T17:27:00.000-07:00

Hello I´m ALIVE! Wow what a crazy Hurricane! Wow, we´ve been working the last two days repairing roofs and helping people. Luckily only HALF our house was destroyed, but...
NOT!!

We didn´t see any part of the hurricane here. Only really windy weather for a few days. Actually it was really nice because it cooled everything down. Sorry for not sending the long email last week. I was in the middle of writing it and the power went out before I could send it.

This week hasn´t been too eventful really. Today we went to the temple, that was nice. What a difference inside. That's why I´m writing today and not Monday. This is probably the noisiest country ever... wow. So it was nice to have a break from all the blasting music and cars and engines and whatever, inside the calm, quiet, peaceful temple.

We were able to baptise one kid. His name is Ricky. He is a crack up. He loves dancing, break dancing. Haha we get along really good. We didn´t teach him really, he just needed to be baptised, because they lost his information or something. Well the guy that actually baptised him didn´t have the authority. We brought his friend Gordo and the 3 Haitians to the baptism. Looks like Nestle is the only one of the 3 Haitians who really understands the restoration message, so he will probably get baptised with this kid Gordo.

Gordo is a crack up. He is friends with all of the youth, and likes going to seminary every morning at 6:00AM! Valiant KID! Well, he is 18 years old, not a kid anymore. The leaders here are really happy with what we are doing and already have plans on giving Cesarian and Robert the Melchizedek priesthood! They are just excelling. Robert is (excelling) more than anyone. He studies the Book of Mormon a bunch and already knows more than all the members. That's the miracle of studying everyday. He wants to speak English really bad. We help him a lot.

Things have been going well. I´ve been kinda having a harder time dragging my companion around. He hasn´t been a real fan of working HARD, so I´ve been trying to make everything fun for him. Haha you know making it all not seem like work. I´ve been running out of ideas and games. So this week he hasn´t wanted to do a lot... Oh all the fun things I am learning. Haha.

Wow, mom I DID get the package, thank you! You always know all the stuff I like. That Oreo pudding was really REALLY good, didn´t expect that.

This is random but I´ve decided I want to join like a group like Young Ambassadors or something when I finish the mission. That just seems like so much fun. Haha I got your genes mom. The kids all know me. They stop me everywhere I go and ask me to dance for them, it´s funny.

That's it for now folks.
Ok I love you all. Have a great week!

Hurricane Earl

2010-08-30T19:46:00.000-07:00

Do to hurricane Earl, Elder Shattuck may have temporarily been evacuated. See article here: http://english.cri.cn/6966/2010/08/31/2021s591980.htm
We haven't heard anything this week, so please keep him and the other missionaries in the Dominican Republic your prayers!

Thanks,
Momma Shattuck

Hello family!!! Good to hear from you!!

2010-08-16T15:46:00.000-07:00

Wow, sounds like all kinds of fun things are going ON!! Here are some pictures.

We went to this country home where my branch president works. We played with lions, toucans, flamingos, monkeys, parrots and emus and peacocks and deer and elk and lots more!

My branch president built the house for this rich guy and he has all the cool animals. Wow, things are going great, we are working hard and sweating... it's hot.

The branch here is really getting things in gear. Wow, they are teaching “Preach My Gospel” to the members and they are really taking it seriously. Anytime we ask any member to leave with us they are really so willing. These members are really awesome.

I feel as if I am in my home ward. They are so friendly. Especially to people like the Haitians. Usually Dominicans and Haitians don't get along, but it's really cool how it´s not evident here in this branch. I´m taking Robbie's advice and putting them all to work. He has good advice!

We are still teaching 3 Haitians. We can hardly communicate, but it really shows how the Spirit talks, (not us). We are not the teachers (The Spirit teaches). One of them stood up to share his testimony of the gospel. One of the members said even though he doesn´t speak Spanish, it was as if he did.
Really cool. They will be baptised next Saturday. (NESTLE, NICOLA, and SOVE.) Please pray for them so that it can all go well in preparation. Nestle is just the most humble little guy, and this week he's been coming out of his shell ALOT. Hehe. and we think that he is kinda interested in the Haitian girl that helps us teach when we get stuck. BUT, that's not the reason why we wants to get baptised. He really has a testimony and asks some great questions.. Sometimes I feel bad for my companion because, he is still struggling with his Spanish. I try to help as much as I can. We are really learning some cool stuff.
I love teaching with the Book of Mormon. I´m really getting to know that book left and right. It has some real power to help people understand doctrine, and come unto Christ and change. For real, I´ve seen it. 5 of the 6 guys received the priesthood. The youngest is too young (not 12 yet). They are all just doing so well. We think Robert, the oldest, is going to be a branch president someday. He is really a good guy, funny, and he speaks really good English!
Wow. I don't have much time.. pictures.. you know.. but I love you all! Have a great weeek!!

P.S. This is that house that my branch pres built for this rich guy.. I want to take the family there! And me playing with some flamingos! It´s 30 min out of San Pedro. Supposedly he is going to get some crocodiles this coming week... COOL!!!

It is huge and has an indoor water fountain... and that's the only all wood house in the DR.

Happy Super-dee-duper “Hump” Week!

2010-08-09T16:27:00.000-07:00

Hello!!!!

Woo I have 3 minutes! Sorry!

Wow it´s going great here. We are working extra hard. I´m pushing my comp a lot and we are sweating more and more walking and talking to everyone. We put a baptismal date with 4 Haitians! They are coming to church and all. I even taught one of the hardest doctrines in Creole. Vicarious baptisms. I´m still don´t know much (they understood) but the spirit and the scriptures teach.

Cesarin and Robert are doing really good. I really have no doubt that they are going to stay in the church for a really long time... hopefully forever. They got the priesthood too along with 2 others!!
Ok got to go love you all!!

Que lo Waa. Maningo!

2010-08-03T18:58:00.000-07:00

Super duper! Good to hear from you all. Things are going real good.

Haha so the Book of Mormon challenge is ON! We All started. All the 6 that were baptised and a few other members! They are all reading it pretty fast! Wow, I can hardly keep up. My comp is winning in chapter 15, but Cesarin is right behind in chapter 12 or something. We started just a few days ago. Our Branch President comes home today from New York. Haha he called his son and told him to tell us to start the English Class here. Haha I guess he didn´t understand much while he was gone. It will be great to have him back again, and his wife too.

Really, I really love this Branch here. They are really friendly people. An older Haitian lady's husband passed away a week ago. The ward helped her a lot. We also stopped by many times to help her out. She shared her testimony in Creole, and it was very sincere. The members, although most of them couldn´t understand, they could feel her love and gratitude. I was also really excited, because we had a few investigators there that didn´t speak much Spanish. One is called Nestle, yeah like the chocolate. Haha he´s a crack up. Haha, he is the most timid little guy ever. He´s like 25 or something, and is studying English, and likes to talk to us in English. Haha, his hands trembled the first time we talked to him, but he is really good at doing everything we ask. The Haitian members are great helping us out with teaching him. Really cool.

Oh yeah, our mission president invited my comp and 10 other missionaries to his house today for lunch, because of all the success we had. It was fun to go there. He´s sure got a nice house. We also saw Elder Viñas, from the Quorum of the Seventy. Today was fun, but I got to run, Have a great week!

Oh yeah, They called. Me and my comp are here for another transfer! YAY!

Love you Family.!
Orevwa!

Be Prepared!!!

2010-07-26T15:21:00.000-07:00

Dear Family,

This was another week. Wet. The sun came out finally and my shoes stopped getting stuck in the mud. YAY!!

Wow ya I´ve been so happy to see the sun. Really sweaty again but I think I like it. Things are going well. The 6 guys are doing great. They were all confirmed. Cesarin is also doing great. Haha he is such a cool kid, always just so happy go lucky all the time. Haha, really would love to see him go on a mission. The members are so good here, he is already asking for a calling!! Wow, and he TEARS UP (talking about) the Book of Mormon.

Speaking of Book of Mormon, on Sunday I found out I had to give a talk in church right before. Had about 4 seconds of preparation, but thankfully I had finished reading the Book of Mormon the night before..So I talked about that. Wow, reading the book of Mormon in Spanish has really helped me out a lot. The grammar structure actually makes things a lot easier to understand. Good book, highly recommend it to everyone. But anyway I spoke and I felt prepared.

Oh yeah and the youngest 3 who were baptised all showed up in shirt and ties. I didn´t expect that a 10 year old and two 14 year olds would be motivated to do that.

We are trudging along looking for new people. It's going alright. There is this new sister in the ward, SUPER Haitian, doesn't speak 2 words of Spanish. She helps us teach other Haitians. She was a ward missionary there in Haiti. It´s been good practice for me, but wow, I still don´t understand much. We have about 6 Haitian people we teach and 4 of them don´t speak Spanish, so I guess I got to study harder, AHH. Many things to learn.

Tell the truth I´ve never learned so much in my life wow.

Happy Father's Day DAD! Yesterday was Father's Day here. They don´t go all out like Mother's Day here though. But I love you all and have a great week!

Hooray! Everyone's wet!!

2010-07-19T12:47:00.000-07:00

It is WETTTT!! WE just rode through knee deep water on a Motorcycle with 3 people!! That was a first! Wow, this place is totally flooded out! I´m soaking wet right now because a car passed us on the motorcycle, and send a 2 foot wave at us. It was pretty intense.

Wow, what a week! Talk about heart attack. But they did it!
Cesarin, Juaniko, Adonis, Luis, Chillín and Chael were all baptised Saturday night. Wow, they are all doing great, and are really happy. We had more problems with Adonis´s grandma but your prayers helped! Thanks! Wow, we took the branch president over when his grandma wasn´t drunk, and he talked about how he left smoking 60 cigarettes a week, always being drunk, and gambling and cheating on his woman, for the gospel. The Lord has blessed him ever since, and now he has 4 children in college. He is on a one month vacation in the United states and a huge house, and cars. Along with a spiritual peace that he has never had. He helped tons. Also, we started teaching Cesarin´s mom, she is happy again, and Cesarin is as happy as ever. Thankfully we were able to see them resolve their problems! Also Chillíns parents are very interested too!! They are so nice. His dad is a cop, and his older and younger brother like to come with us to church stuff.

Wow, although the (baptismal) water was very VERY low, I was still able to get them under, and thankfully we found the white baptismal clothes last minute so we didn´t have to baptise them in their street clothes. They were all so ready. Those guys are so cool. They offered and said, “yeah we´ll go in like this, doesn´t matter to me!!”
I´ve never had to learn so much patience in my life, and had such a trial, no joke. Wow, I won´t go into all the details but I´ll just say we went through a LOT to help these people be baptised. But, All the pain and trouble was worth it every bit. Amazing to see how much joy the gospel has brought in their lives. They are all super important to us, and I hope to never lose contact with them after I leave.

So anyway hope you all have a great week and don´t get wet like me!

The power of Prayer!

2010-07-12T21:54:00.000-07:00

Alaska? Is that in east or the west of New York? Haha, that's what people would ask if I'd tell them about Alaska. How's the TRIP!?

Thanks for writing me before! Wow and thanks for the packages, holy Cow they were HUGE! That was a joke trying to get home with me holding 3 enormous packages (my friend Marina sent me a package too!) and my companion with another package and lots of Book of Mormons, and other books and stacks of letters and our backpacks... oh did I mention we were on a motorcycle? That was quite a sight to see I imagine.

Wow what a week! We've been working hard to help these people actually go through with their baptisms and not back out. Javier hasn't seemed too excited these days.. it looks like we'll have to give him some more time, but those 3 little dudes are really super excited about this. I am really impressed with them, they have really been good about going to all 3 hours of church, and paying attention, and reading the assignments and everything. We don't have the permission from Adonis, the oldest one's, grandma. We went over with the Branch President last night to talk to their parents, but we couldn't get to Adonis' guardians. They were all drinking and stuff and we heard them shout through the fence. "Tell the Mormons to go away, we're drunk!" Hahaha Yeah.. we'll need some help with that, Pray for that kid's grandma so she will give us permission to baptise him! HE want's to be baptised so bad, but is stressing out about what she'll say.

Juaniko seems well prepared and such, I'm really happy about that. We go to teach him and he just seems to understand the things so well. He's practically a member and really doesn't need us that much. I always think of the Words of Elder Bednar when he taught us here a few months ago. He said, "When they say I love you, but I don't need you anymore, that's when you know you've completed your work", He is a really funny guy. Apparently he was a HUGE weight lifter and people told him to stop working out because he was TOO Muscly... Haha.

Wow, so did I tell you me and my comp had to play Dr. Phil this week? Ugh, Cesarin and his mom have been fighting BAD this week. That kid is such a good kid, but his mom has been treating him.. uh with not so much love. She stopped giving him food and takes his money he earns working to go gamble and all kinds of fun stuff. Wow, and yes I do thank God every day for the AMAZING parents that I have. So we have been over at the house a lot this past week trying to convince his mom not to call the cops and take him to Youth Jail.. the police even came.. but luckily they didn't find him. Yeah, so.. we've been trying to help that situation out.. When we showed up yesterday morning I guess he and his mom were fighting again.. with all the neighbors around all arguing whether she should kick him out of the house or not. He told us he thought he saw two angels coming to his rescue when we showed up. We sat and talked with them for a long time.. wow I felt like I was Dr. Phil. But well, we just can't have our friend who is supposed to get baptised on Saturday be thrown in jail the same week. He is the really cool kid that wants to be a missionary, this kid is AMAZING, the members all love him and he is so smart as to things of the Gospel.

A few days before the whole incident he asked us to give him a blessing, because he has lots of back problems... it turns out scoliosis. We gave him the blessing and I couldn't help but feel inspired that he was going to be a missionary, and that the Lord required his health so that he could serve. Juaniko, Javier and Miguel were all there. The environment of the room was dramaticly different after we gave him a blessing. They had sensed that something special had just happened. They all sat there for some time, without saying anything. It was obvious that it was the spirit. The priesthood is real. It's not just some made up thing that the founder of the Mormon church decided to do. It IS the power of God to do the things here on the earth that he would do if he were here. It talks about it in the scriptures everywhere, and all the prophets do too. I have learned for myself that it is real, and blesses the lives of all those that surround.

Tell Mom thank you for being so kind and sending me the packages! All of the stuff in it was Perfect! I hope you have a great Time on your Cruise! WOO!

Love,

Mosquitoes and rocks won't stop us!!

2010-07-05T16:11:00.000-07:00

Haha, that's a crack up!
That gang (Kim & family) is such a blast! I bet they are having a super fun time there (Hawaii).

AYYYYYY wow it´s HOT!! Wow, lots and lots of sweating, wow. The other night it got down to 89.. We´ve been soaking up this Caribbean sun wow! The mosquitoes are getting quite... numerous, it looks like there´s another plague!

The other day we took some little kids to a baptism to see if they still wanted to be baptised. They are funny little innocent Dominican kids, that have had tons of interest in going to church. One has almost 1 year going... we don´t even know why, he just started going. So we taught him, and he brought all his friends. They are 10 and 12, Jael, Adonis and Chillin. Well I don´t know if Chilllin is his real name but that is what they call him.

My companion has been having a hard time being sick with a back cold and fever and stuff. Also the other day some people threw some rocks at us, pretty big rocks, not sure why. Luckily none hit me, but they got my companion in the head. He bled a lot, and they ran off. The neighbor saw him coming home and the blood running down his face and went and got some “alcohol” to clean it. Haha San Pedro Bay Rum is what he used and cleaned it real good. Thankfully, also it wasn´t big enough to get stitches.

But all that stuff didn´t stop us from working. We have been working hard with those we have. Juaniko's mom seems to not understand who God is... OR her perception of him is strange. So we´ve been trying to help her with that. We have been teaching this guy who is 19, Luis, really friendly kid. We taught him the Plan of Salvation, or his purpose in life. Where he comes from and why he is really here. And where he is going after death. He seemed to really understand. I could tell he had questions, so I asked him what he thought about what we taught. He said, “Well, then this means that there are so many people that just don´t get why they are here.” and he said, “Well I believe it is true. I don´t know what it is... but something tells me it´s the truth. If this book is true, than that means that this is really why I´m here.” he looked dumbfounded. Then he asked, “so how can I know?” We told him he had to pray, and ask God, just like the boy Joseph Smith did. It was a really cool experience, and later that night writing in my journal I realized, wow I just help someone really understand their PURPOSE in life. Why he is here, and what he needed to do to return to his FATHER in heaven. He really understood. Wow, what a responsibility we have to teach people.

Thank you for everything and I hope you all have a good week!

I love you family,

Happy 20th birthday to Elder Shattuck!!

2010-06-28T15:47:00.000-07:00

Hey!
Thank you so much family for all the funny pictures and stuff, that was a blast. You all make me laugh. I DID have a good birthday. We spent it buying some food, playing dominoes with other missionaries, and then we went and got some REALLY good hamburgers at this puertorriqueño place again. It was really good.

We also had a pretty good week teaching especially the group of Jauniko, Cesar, Javier and Sota. And Javier went to church, for the first time!! After 2 years of the missionaries teaching him, he finally went, and liked it too! haha (besides the fact that he was starving during the 3 hours.) We are also teaching this group of 5 kids. One of which a missionary previously had taught in Higuey. He was a good missionary and planted a really good seed. The church is starting to fill up. Now instead of people commenting on how few people there are, they comment on how difficult it is to move around with so many people. Haha, that really makes me smile to see lots of people coming.

Cesar,one of the group of four is SOO excited about everything we teach him. He is always smiling from ear to ear, and loves the Book of Mormon. He made a bet with one of his neighbors that he is going to last longer in the Gospel (he says)... Haha ,the members are really quite friendly and help so much here. They take in whomever and make them feel at home. It really makes me feel good to see that they are doing that. We are going to have another family home evening again in the house of one of the members. They are a total riot, and we do it with almost 20 or so people. That's where I´m off to now so I don't have much time.

But thanks again for all the birthday saludos and I love you all!

BTW mom, I haven´t gotten the package yet, but the office should bring them on Thursday.

Thanks again,

P.S. Hahaha, I love the balloon stuck to the side of dad´s head. It´s pretty funny. I also love that fact that Joey is in the picture... that goofy dog. Haha.

P.P.S. (commenting on Ryan's photo) hahahahaha! Oh this one is great! totally made my day!

PLATANO PLATANO DO PESO!

2010-06-21T22:11:00.000-07:00

Haha no I didn´t lose my camera, it just doesn´t load the photos in the internet center computers is all. I took some funny pictures today of some Dominican Kids Running with this makeshift cart they made through a huge puddle. They were having a blast spraying through (the puddles) with that thing. It´s been RAINY today. I´m completely soaked, and all the streets are flooded out. Today we went to the supermarket with some missionaries and when we went home we took a motorcycle. That's how we get around here, on the back of motorcycles, they´re called moto conchos. We had fun riding all three of us with my comp and the driver through foot deep puddles on the way home. Our area is really muddy too. It´s fun rolling through the mud and ankle deep water in the streets.

Things have really been turning around lately. Wow, we are teaching many families and lots of really cool people. But the coolest ones, (I love all my children btw..haha) are called Juaniko, who is 32, but he looks and acts like 22ish. His mom, Sota, who he lives with his friend Cesar, who lives right next door to a member, and Javier... who has almost 2 years talking with the missionaries, but never had interest to take the next step.. or discussion as we say. Javier is a really cool guy. Last night we had a great appointment with those 4. We talked to them and explained what the apostasy is again. They asked LOADS of really good questions. So anyway, Cesar asked us, “Why is it called the Book of Mormon and it doesn´t say BIBLE...” I was like “oh haha let me explain that...”. Haha the kid reads the book and loves it, but because he was working, he wasn´t there when we explained what the book is to them. So I asked them, “well the Bible consists of two major sections, the old and new testaments. What is the old Testament of ?” Cesar said, “Jehovah” I said, “exactly... and the new Testament?” He said, “Jesus”. “And the book of Mormon is...?” haha and he shouted, “OH THE BOOK OF MORMON IS ANOTHER TESTAMENT OF JESUS!!!” We all laughed and the power (electricity) was out at the appointment, but I put the flashlight on the cover of the book. He was like, “OH I get it.” Wow! Haha, it was funny, but then all of it started to make sense for them all that we had taught. So I asked them, “so what do you think about it all... all that we´ve taught you about the Son of God visiting the American continent, and that a young man translated that record and all...?” One by one they all began to explain.... “Well everyone had always you Mormons were from the CIA, but then we learned that you teach religion and stuff. I never really knew that until we started to study with you. I was reading the book or Mormon, when a guy in my class was saying that Mormons are all crazy and they believe in the devil. I had no idea about you guys and what you do.” Said Juaniko.
Javier Said. “Wow I had almost 2 years with the missionaries, them passing by for my sister (As she´s a member) And we always talked. I´ve always been interested in people from other cultures like Haitians and stuff. But I´ve never believed in anything they taught me, nor was I interested, but for some reason I dunno, I just....” he didn´t want to finish his thought, but we knew exactly what he meant. He asked lots of very intelligent questions. And for the first time ever, read the Book of Mormon (3rd Nephi chapter 11). I would love to see him get baptised. But Cesar, who went to church with Juaniko Sunday said.. “Oh yeah, I really believe this is true, that Joseph Smith by the power of God translated the book Mormon and restored the first Church.” Wow, it was awesome. We went home to put some plans for them to all be baptised after they go to church for a few times. I have NEVER felt so happy to teach someone so accepting and friendly. Very awesome people.

Today I bought a box of Lucky Charms (cereal) they were selling for 60 pesos at the supermarket. My comp and I sat outside eating Lucky Charms while watching the rain pour down. We sat under the covered patio of course. We´ve been eating also a lot of fried platanos. They sell them way cheap off these huge trucks that drive around selling them with a guy on the back shouting in a megaphone.. “PLATANO PLATANO DO PESO DO PESO PLATANO...” Do peso.. means two pesos btw...

Also the Mosquitoes have been eating us lately. Wow, with all the rain there are LOTS! But we try to put on lots of bug repellent.. They seem to like that stuff though.

But anyway that's all for now. Oh and I´ll be staying another 6 week transfer. They called today with the same comp, so we were pretty happy about that.
Anyway, I love you all and have a great week!

Hello hello!

2010-06-14T21:05:00.000-07:00

Not much more to say this week... Other than we've been EATING LOTS OF MANGOES!! So good. Mango season! The missionary work looks more.. uhh I forgot the word, better? We´ve been working with new families. I Love teaching families, but had never had the chance before!

I was blown away with this one family that we have been teaching for some time now. One by one the whole family has been accepting the gospel message.. And they really wanted nothing to do with us at first. We started teaching this guy Miguel who is 17. He is super smart, but is not in his home a lot. We started talking to his mom and we just shared the blessings of attending the church on Sunday, and well, invited her many times, and finally she agreed. And CAME.. and Miguel came later. Yesterday we talked to her husband. He seemed interested enough to invite us back. Yay a FAMILY!! I´ll let you know how it goes. I´ve always wanted to teach a family, seeing that's what the Gospel is all about! Ok That's all for this week. Good to hear from you all.

P.S. Oh yeah the Mom´s name is Cookie. I laughed. She is a funny lady. Her and her husband are very Dominican, it´s great.

LDS Charities: The Boys' Home

2010-06-12T22:45:00.000-07:00

This message is from the Dominican Republic in Santo Domingo where Elder Steven Shattuck is serving his mission. Your help would be greatly needed!

Wheypah familia!

2010-05-31T20:35:00.000-07:00

Bueno what a week! Wow, sure isn´t easy here working our faces off. We had a straight week of utter shut down, not fun, BUT today was sure fun. We enjoyed our day off by going to this nice indoor basketball court and playing basket ball, and goofing off, eating huge hamburgers at this puertorriqueño restaurant, and then crawling around in this old abandoned Masonic temple. Wow, that was cool, we saw it walking over to the restaurant with our Zone leaders and I said he lets check it out when we get back. So we went over and were admiring all the strange symbols and words on it when a man came up to us and tried to sell the property to us in English. I finally asked him, “hey can we go inside and look at it?” he said yeah sure, and if anything happens just say I let you in. So we went it. It was pretty creepy, and interesting, that Masonic stuff is very strange. My companion took pictures and I begged him to send me some pictures, cuz his camera works, so yay pictures this week! Finally.

We´ve been working lots with some references of the members. There are some members here that are really stellar people, and really know how to help the missionaries. We are still working with Julio Cesar. He is a good guy, and little by little he is progressing. He has lots of time, but we finally taught him about temples. He loves the idea of temples and hopes to enter some day. That would be really awesome to see one of the people I teach enter the temple. But other than that we don´t have much more progress. We'll see if things get better this week though. The city I´m in is quite big, but we have the smaller section of it. Everyone knows everyone here, you know. People like to.. talk and play baseball. Not a whole lot more than that. Everyone is very social. Oh haha and ride bikes and do wheelies. The new trend with all the kids here is take off the front tire and do wheelies all day through town, on the new paved roads.

Well it´s good to hear about all the fun things going on there back home, with all my old friends and such, there are so many people I know that are going on missions. It must be a good thing to do!! haha. Wow.

Oh well I hope all goes well this week. Love you.

Hello Wello Hello Familia!

2010-05-24T16:57:00.000-07:00

Weeellll, everything is going good here. Not too much different. today was a fun p-day, we spent it playing dominoes with all the other missionaries in the Zone, and then we went to a Mexican restaurant, haha, wasn´t the same at all. You all better be lovin' up Kristina's and Super T for me.

We tried our best to baptize Julio Cesar, but he had some personal problems, so we are going to help him out this week, we´ll try. We also found this man, Samuel that the missionaries were teaching earlier. He is a good man and completely ready for his baptism, but he´s just scared, like all of them. Hopefully he will be able to overcome his fear. He is 56 years old and has had a hard life, very hard. He started working when he was 6 shining shoes in the street. He has a little store that sells knik knacks, but he makes hardly anything, All he wants is his salvation he tells us, very humble man. The other day he shined our shoes for us. He didn´t accept the money we tried to pay him so we just slipped it on the counter when he wasn´t looking.

If there is one thing that I have ever learned is that these Dominican people are VERY giving. It´s a tradition here if you walk into a room of a friend or anyone, (and there is food in the room), the person who own´s the food has to say, ¨A buen tiempo¨. The person that comes can either take the food or say, ¨Buen provecho¨ which means more or less ¨good eats!¨ We never want to take anyone's food, but people are ALWAYS giving us something. It´s very funny, even when I try to make up an excuse and say I´m deathly allergic they still give us food.

I also helped my companion give his first talk in church this week too. He did pretty good. It´s been very different as I´ve always been the confused one, and now I´m helping my companion out. He is a real humble guy and easy to get along with, of which I am thankful.

I cannot believe Scott comes home soo soon! That's so crazy. If you do go out to see him, tell him I say hello!

OK, well that's all the fun adventures I have to share for this week, but I hope all is well with you!

Fun in Las Colinas!

2010-05-17T15:36:00.000-07:00

Well I´m here in LAS COLINAS, in San Pedro, and well.. I absolutely LOVE it here. Wow, it's like a pueblo.. I have no idea how to say that in English, but you get it. It´s a branch of 50 or so people and everyone is SO friendly. I really am just having so much fun getting to know everyone. I really like getting to know new people, talk with strangers that I never have met before is exciting! Haha it´s a good thing I do, cuz well that's what missionaries DO! We didn´t have many people we were teaching when I got here, but our numbers are growing, because everyone is just so willing to sit and talk. I Love it! Very different than Higuey. So they also paved the first road here about a week ago. All the kids pulled out their bikes and spend all day doing wheelies on it 24/7. We have planned this Saturday a baptism for Julio Caesar. He is a humble man, in his 30´s or 40´s and he has come to church many times. He was hit by a motorcycle or something and it messed up his foot pretty bad, but he still hikes up the hill to go to the church on Sunday. I don´t know him too well, but the members are all so friendly they all act like every visitor is their best friend and sit by them and show them how to sing the hymns and everything. (haha I hope you do that too!)

Oh yeah it´s like south west, closer to the capitol.

Oh yeah my comp. Elder Rich. He´s from Ogden Utah. Very friendly guy, and humble, we get along well. He´s pretty new, 3 months, but I´ll help him out all that I can with his Spanish and stuff. He loves telling me awesome stories about his life and family. they are a blast to hear.

Oh yeah that's all for this week ,but I´ll keep you updated in the future to let you know how everything goes here! Good to hear from you and I love you!

Goodbye Higuey, Hello San Pedro - Las Colinas

2010-05-10T13:20:00.000-07:00

Well it was sure good to hear from you mom and dad! Sounds like things are going well there at home!

Well we got the call last night and.. I´m leaving Higuey! Ahh! Yeah I was pretty sad to go, but I will be excited to serve in a new area. I´m going to San Pedro, Las Colinas. It´s a branch out there, and I´ll have a new Companion, Elder Rich, he has a little less time than I have, and American I think. I will miss Higuey, as difficult as this city has been and as many trials and stuff it´s brought, I´ve really learned to love it. Like I have been saying, I also have made so many friends and such, it will be hard to leave them all.

Today I spent the morning cleaning and packing, and then we went to see the break dance friends I invited to church the other day. Today was our P Day, so I spent it learning how to break dance, Vladamir, the Haitian was teaching me. He sure does know a lot. Tonight we are going to visit him and teach him about the Book of Mormon. Like I said, he came from Haiti 2 months ago and is learning Spanish still, but he speaks good English, so that's how we communicate. He said that in his 2 months of living here nobody has ever gone over to visit him. He´s my age, 19, and has a heart of gold, he said he loved the church and left just smiling from ear to ear. He said he came here because both his parents died in the earthquake, and now he is living with his brother. He wants us to teach his brother, who is a painter. I really am bummed I wont be here to see all that, but my companion will still be here.

We´ve been having lots of tough days walking LOTS, but Sunday finally turned around when we counted 14 visitors in church. These people have lots of faith to come, and between the work of us 4 missionaries, we counted 23 visitors in church. It was fun to participate in the Creole Sunday School class that one of the members is teaching. It´s only a matter of time here until they open up a branch here for the Haitian members. Haha Oseito the man we baptised can be the branch president! haha, he is such a good guy. I´m gonna miss him.

Well that is all for this week. I will keep you updated to let you know what happens in the new area. I hope you have a great week. I love you.

Wheeepaaaah Familia!

2010-04-26T15:17:00.000-07:00

Wow what a week. We just got back from Punta Cana today. Wow that place is gorgeous. We went with the zone out there and ate some killer food, and saw some sweet stuff there. Sure was a nice P day.

Wow I just can't believe Chris Russell got his mission call to Russia. That's so crazy. And I had no idea that Ryan Whiteside was going to Peru too! How exciting! I've met several Peruvians here on the mission and they are funny people. Always short too. Haha, anyone from central America is always smaller, but not here. Dominicans are either tall and skinny, or just insanely muscly, hardly ever in the middle.

That is so exciting to hear about Trevor! Wow, how cool. Tell the family I say hello! It seems so crazy how many people I know that are leaving or preparing for missions. Good stuff.

Oh so as far as the shoes, they completely split in half... but do I really have to mail them home? That costs a fortune on my end. I ended up buying new shoes, and I've been enjoying the new shoe blisters this week! Yay!

So the success hasn't increased a whole lot. We are working every day trying to find new people. BUT last night we had a cool experience. We had an intercambio.. uhh interchange? of companions yesterday. We are teaching this couple in the home of one of the members, they are a strong family, but it turns out that the girlfriend of one of the sons got kicked out of her house, and is living in their home. And she has lots of desire to be baptised, the only thing is... we can't baptise her until she gets married first... and she is 17.... and we need her parents permission so that they can get married. Seeing that they kicked her out of the house, they are not too happy with her. But we've been teaching here anyway, because she is going to church and has lots of desire! So we've been praying for a miracle, and we got one. The parents of her name is Paola, softened their hearts and said that they can get married! But now the whole family says they don't want to rush it, and they want to get married in January.... that was a week ago. So my companion and I went over and explained to them the situation. We told them, Paola and her boyfriend, Nelson, who is a member, that they needed to pray and ask God what they should be doing, because they couldn't be living together, an not be married. We explained that they needed to ask sincerely, and that the spirit, would give them an answer, but that it wouldn't tell them to keep living together without being married. Well, anyway we have been trying to follow up with them since to see how they felt, and... they kept letting us down as Nelson was always working. But finally last Sunday we were able to teach them, in the Intercambio. I was explaining to Elder Hopkin the whole situation, and ask him what should we do.. we didn't know, because they didn't seem too keen on separating, nor getting married. But we felt that we just needed to teach them the Plan of Salvation and follow the spirit, so we did. There was a very strong spirit in that lesson, more than ever. We could tell it in their eyes the importance of keeping the commandments of God so they can live in his presence again after this life. We saw in the Father's eyes as he had tears forming, as we explained only simply the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, but yet how it was the spirit that worked in all of them, not what we said. The whole lesson I was thinking, ok when to I ask them about their prayer about separating or getting married? I wanted to ask them in the right moment, I wasn't sure and worried, but as we began to teach that I just didn't need to worry and that I'd just know. Well, we taught the whole lesson, and the expected moment that I thought I'd know when to ask them never came. I was a little confused, but I just felt something that said to me, say the closing prayer, don't worry. So we didn't. After the prayer it was silent, and then Nelson, who said the prayer, looked up at me and said, "So... what else do we need to do to get married?" I was very shocked, but they agreed it was the best thing to do. We made the plans, and we hope to marry them by next week, and Paola's baptism soon after! Major miracle, and I could tell that was the help of God, because that was not what they wanted to do, but in the end felt was right. I could tell they had prayed to know. They say nobody can know the truths of the gospel without prayer. We all have to ask, either convert or raised in the church, if it's all true. They put it too the test and wow what a miracle.

Yup, oh also this week I got to see this Meringue group play in the park, that was a blast. Haha at night, when the colmado next door is blasting music and we can hear it in the house, my companion teaches us all how to dance meringue and bachata. Its a crack up.

Ok I love you all and hope you have a nice week!

Whoa WHOA WHOA HOW COOOOL!

2010-04-19T10:40:00.001-07:00

Wow that is SOO exciting to hear about Sean's parents!! Wow, that is so awesome! And mom you are already her visiting teacher!! WOW that's what I´m talking about! That is a ward that Works!!
We´ve still been waiting for the ward to assign home teachers after our investigadores were baptised five months ago! Wow, I hope you help them feel super welcome to the ward. This new assignment you have mom is Super important! I´m so excited for Sean! I remember when his parents told him that he couldn´t be baptised intil he was 18! Wow cool.

Super, well, yeah, we are here in Higuey, and having fun. My companion is a blast, haha he is way funny, he loves to paint and draw, and he is really good at it too. He´s from Santiago, and his younger brother is in the west mission here. I´ve been having fun teaching him English this past week. Especially words like DUDE and SWEET! haha.

We´ve been eating mostly spaghetti everyday, Italian style that is. The Dominicans have their own style of spaghetti but I´m not a huge fan of it. It's like with condensed milk and onions and peppers and stuff. I´ve been getting pretty creative making different types of rice and stuff. Pretty good stuff.

It's pouring rain right now. When it rains here, It RAINS!! Wow, I learned something neat yesterday. We had passed by many people and invited many to church, and they all said they would go if it wasn´t raining, so I prayed real hard for no rain so this couple we had taught, Warkilia and Jose, could go to church. Woke up Sunday morning, blue skies, all the day. Warkilia and Jose didn´t go to church, because she got sick. We had tons of people there anyways and it was a great reunion! Haha, funny how things work out like that.

Oseito is super awesome, we still love teaching him. He invited us to his friend Junior, he is WAY interested in our message and went to the church and showed up early. He says he wants to be a member, but he´s not married to his woman here, and he´s Haitian. Foreigners are Super expensive to marry here... That seems to be the case with all the Haitians here, but they are all so friendly.

So the area here is funny. All the houses are smashed together, and there are salons every 2 houses, and barbershops every 3 houses. There are little boys that walk around everywhere with their shoe shine kits, trying to shine shoes, and there are tons of Haitians that work all day pushing around coconut, bananas, mangos, and things called chinas, (it´s like an orange) in wheelbarrels selling them. That's what our friend Hector does. Oh yeah, and every person, meaning every single person here rides a motorcycle. The Suzuki AX100 to be exact. I have seen more that a million of those motorcycles. Haha!

ok that's all I have to say for this week. Good to hear from you all and have another great week!

Thanks for the advice Roberto!

2010-04-07T14:02:00.000-07:00

Hey Family! This week I don't have a lot of time, because we went to the temple today and stuff, but anyways yay, great to hear from you all. We had a great Easter here. I spent it in La Romana watching the conference. And it was awesome! I even got to see the last session in English.

Wow, so talking about walking lots of miles, I´m already starting to wear out my second pair of shoes! But its all worth it. So Rob, I took your advice, and wow, what a difference! I´ve never thought about that fact before. We had just been teaching so many curious people, and not anyone that was sincerely interested. Two Sundays ago the other missionaries here in Higuey did a contact of a Haitian man named Oseito. And he came to church. It turns out he lives in our area. We could tell he was very interested, and so we taught him everyday that week, and put a baptismal date for the 17th of this month! His progress is going well, so we we are super excited. Well, it turned out that he wanted to go to the conference with us in La Romana, and well I asked him if he wanted to be baptised on Sunday in between the 2 sessions with two other cool Haitian guys. He said sure! He was very nervous, but willing and we baptised him! And he was so happy after. Haha, it was a really great experience. He´s 31 years old and super humble. He has a stutter when he talks, but is very sincere about everything. We had a blast all together at the conference and cracking jokes on the bus ride home. On Monday night we went to go teach him again, and as we were leaving he stopped us and said, ¨Hey, thank you for helping me be baptised¨ (with his Oseito stutter). It was probably the nicest thing I had ever heard. Wow I felt like crying. We are SO lucky to have been guided to such a good humble man. He lives here with his 2 slightly crazy brothers, but he´s really nice. I had been praying so hard for guidance, and to know what to do to help someone be baptised. Well, when the opportunity came, the spirit helped and I knew exactly what to do, and wow what a blessing! Thank you for all your great advice! Got to run, but have a great week. I will mail home the pictures when I can. Oh and thank you so MUCH for the package! I did get it! It was great and the books are exactly what I need.

Things are starting to heat up around here!!

2010-03-29T09:09:00.000-07:00

That's a pretty cool story. Yes so transfer calls were yesterday night.... and.. I´m staying here again! With the same companion! 6 months in the same area with the same companion! That doesn´t ever happen, ever, but obviously we are here to do something important together. But even though this area is the most remote area in the mission and probably one of the most difficult, I´m still excited. The church that has been in construction since I arrived will open up in 3 weeks! Thank goodness, so no more walking 40 mins. to the church, but now just down the street, and we wont be smashing tons of people in a small little room! And we will have a baptismal font! Wow, I´m very happy. Also my companion is a awesome guy and we get along very well, and he works hard, so that will be nice here.

Other than that nothing too much different. Its starting to heat up here. Wow it can get HOT! This week is Semana Santa, (holy week) So everything is going to turn crazy. Also we have conference too. We have no idea how that is going to work out, because we will have to catch a 1 hour bus ride to the stake center, to watch it. We might have to miss conference just because we can't stay at the stake center all day. Not sure.

But we are working hard and its all worth it. Days are flying by, and we still don´t have any people or families or cool stories to write about yet, because we still are lacking in that aspect, BUT some members gave us some references so we hope to more forward with them, and help those people take that step in their lives with baptism!

Thank you for your prayers, I literally feel every day that I am getting stretched, (Haha more than I want) But definitely for the better. Have a great week and Happy Easter,
Remember to celebrate that Bunny this week! Wait that's why we have Easter right?

Hey family!!

2010-03-22T09:42:00.000-07:00

Haha that sounds like so much fun playing with the kiddoes this weekend. I really loved that picture of Jet in the snowboard get up. He is such a cool kid. hahaha.
So this last Monday we bought FANS!!! Wow it's been nice! Probably the best thing since, well the guy that invented fans. Woo.

So this week again we've been getting kicked in the pants again. It just plain Tough here. Ugh. It's been a number of days since we have been able to teach one of our appointments, everyone has been disappearing. Dunno, it's rough and we walk a lot but man after months in this area we are hoping we can find someone who will keep their commitments. We've still been having fun and doing goofy stuff everywhere, because well, a sad missionary just isn't successful. But we will be waiting for the day we can be happy to someone to accept the gospel, and stay too! I would send pictures, but it didn't work again... but I printed a CD that I am going to mail home. Oh, and thanks for the letters! I got them a few days ago mom. Wow, and thanks to the Kovandas for sending the card! Wow that was very generous of them! Okey dokey, I have to go but have a great week! I love you all!

PS. KIM did you get that letter I sent you?

Dad,
OH yeah, almost everyone here has family in Florida or New York. Haha the people here ask me, where are you from? And I tell them California, and they ask oh is that in Florida or New York? Haha, yeah according to them those are the only two states. Hahah

That's cool with President Merrell setting the example. Our stake presidency is doing the same and the first counselor who came and spoke to our ward yesterday spoke about how he is doing on the challenge of helping one person a month to come to the gospel. In 3 months, he has already brought 5 people to the gospel, and baptized. I think it's so great how he is showing the example. But then again I felt pretty bad that I can't manage to baptize any, and 1 of the 2 that were baptized went inactive already.. ugh. We've been doing all that we can, but these people cannot seem to keep their commitments. We call and visit and tell their neighbors and they always seem to disappear on the day of their baptism or on Sunday for church. I don't get it. We found this awesome man, he was a reference of Gary J. Coleman of the Seventy! We started teaching him and he was SUPER prepared. He had learned everything and had a huge testimony, but before the missionaries could put a baptismal date with him, he moved. But we started teaching him here, and he is extremely intelligent, and we've been helping him try to stop smoking, but just like all of our investigators, he disappeared, and we tried to call him to see why he didn't go to church but his phone didn't work.. and that has happened every week now for more than 4 months. We see soo many miracles, SOO many people that are so prepared and are ready to be baptized, but something always comes up, and they disappear. It's been rough, walking and walking, we managed to teach 10 appointments this week, that's the day average the mission president expects... but everyone has been standing us up. We walk no joke 30 minutes to every appointment and take buses and call the people before to ask if they will be there, and when we show up they disappear. I've never walked so much in my life, Like you say I see no success, but wow I pray that all this work that I am doing will be worth while.

All we can do is just keep working and hope somebody wont stand us up. But yeah that's how it's been here, haha but like I always say, if nobody is changing for the work that I do, at least I am. Good to hear from you and have a great week, and tell the Home Teaching families I say hello!

HELLLO Family! Wahoo!

2010-03-15T09:54:00.000-07:00

Good to hear from you all again. Sounds like you are all alive and happy! I have some pictures to send I hope they work, about the TV thing we did.

Shoot, it seems the computer doesn´t read the pictures, but oh well. I´m going to make a CD and mail it home with Loads of pictures.

But anyway we were on TV this week and it was a Blast! Channel 18, haha and it was the 4 of us missionaries. We sang and then spoke a little bit. and we sang another song, and talked about the life of a missionary. I didn´t think many people saw it, but it seems like so, because both of the companionships here have been stopped more than 5 times each because they really liked our message.

Yesterday in church we had a special musical program that I put together. It was done by the 4 of us missionaries and we had some cool piano stuff and also some neat singing. Really we have gotten pretty good and have a handful of hymns that we have learned 4 part snazzy acapella stuff. I just kind of decided that I like music and stuff on the mission I guess. The 4 of us also sang at Zone Conference and stuff too. Its fun. The program I put together was to teaching about the prophet Joseph Smith and his life and trials. We sang many hymns to help portray the story, and the members really enjoyed the program. Afterward one of the less active members we have been trying to help out came up to us and said, wow now I really know who Joseph Smith was, and why his life was so important for this gospel. Our investigators enjoyed it too. Total success!

Other than the music we haven´t had any other success. Actually it´s been extremely tough times here. Once again we´ve had to drop almost all of our progressing investigators again. But I don´t like to tell you about all my problems.

Oh this week, actually yesterday I was finally able to teach my first lesson in Creole! It was quite rewarding when i saw our investigator (who doesn´t speak a word of Spanish) understand what I taught her! Creole is a really neat sounding language. There are still lots of Haitians moving in to the city that were affected by the earthquake and are looking to start a new life. I´m glad I´ve been studying hard to be able to speak to them and help them out! But wow sometimes my head just hurts thinking in 3 languages! Total brain stretch! but I love it.

Nada, that's all for this week. My faith has been tested a lot and times are hard these days, but really I am happy, and i´ve learned to just make the best of everything, and crack lots of jokes and laugh, and I realize it´s not so bad.

I hope you all have a super week!

love you

Whey! Another week disappeared!

2010-03-08T08:45:00.001-08:00

Super duper, well this weeks been another tough one. All of our baptisms fell through again.. Hector won´t be able to be baptized it turns out... ugh not fun stuff really been happening this week so I won´t talk about it.

But we´ve been having fun singing in church every Sunday, I think we´ve been getting better. This week we prepared a special program in which we´ll sing the whole sacrament meeting with scriptures. I think it will help the members understand who really was Joseph Smith. It´s amazing the amount of people that think we worship the man.

I HIGHLY suggest reading Joseph Smith History, and then right after read Doctrine and Covenants 135. DO IT! For sure, like Sunday after church. It´ll change how you look at why we are the church we are. Or at least it did for me. I really have no doubt that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God, and reading that really help me strengthen my testimony. I learned this week that our testimony is like a glass sculpture. We spend our whole lives carefully etching beautiful designs, so that when we put light on it, everyone cans see it's beauty. But Satan is throwing rocks.... That's why we always have to keep working on it. Hahaha.

A Brother in our ward liked our singing so much that he´s going to try to get us on TV this week so we can sing and share a message. That would be really cool if it´ll work out!

Ok mom, these are the things I could really use here. A flashlight that you can strap to your head, you know. Any books to help learn Creole like a dictionary! And hot chocolate. Haha and please don´t send any sunscreen or cream or soap or anything like that. I have way too much, plus I can buy it here for cheaper. Oh but do send good food!

Haha you´d laugh about the hot chocolate but wow today I woke up freezing! I was bundled up in my bed sheets studying this morning, my comp put on two pairs of socks, and we were shivering, Haha and the best part was I looked at the thermometer, and it says it was 69 degrees! Haha I´ve sure got the Dominican cold blood. Speaking of Dominican, I´ve finally mastered my accent that people don´t think I´m American anymore, they are confused because I talk like the people, but look nothing like them. So now they are starting to guess that I am Haitian. Haha. The other day my mission president told me to tell you that he is happy with the work that I am doing, and also very impressed with my Spanish too! Ha ha that made me feel a little better about the work we have been doing, because we still haven't seen any success... but we´re still working hard. But that's about all for this week.

I love you all and hope to hear from you!

Hello hello!

2010-03-01T14:00:00.000-08:00

Ahh well I was going to send some pictures BUT the computer isn´t working. I´ll have to send them later. Yeah pretty crazy what's going on over there in Chile. I have some friends in that mission too!

But it´s been all safe and sound here. Haha, and don´t worry mom I´ve been eating too! Today we went to Bavaro, and WOW, that place is amazing! We visited Brother Probst, who has a condo right there on the beach, and it´s one of the most beautiful beach resorts ever! Ha quite an experience. I´ve never seen a more beautiful and tranquil place in my life. Haha, I´ll have to take the family there sometime! He also bought us food, hamburgers and french fries! First time in 6 months, and it was super tasty.

The work has been picking up for us here. We still haven´t been able to baptize Hector, the coconut man, but we are planning this week to have a big service for him and Jose, the retired police officer. Those two people are amazing people, so humble and willing to do whatever the Lord asks them. This week we had a stake conference, so the ward rented a bus for us and our investigators, and ward members that don´t have cars, It was a BIG bus, for 50 people. This week we worked hard and filled it half way up with investigators, (the other half members) It was an awesome sight to see. I´ll send some pictures I took of us having fun on the bus. We had a super stake conference, Con mucho GENTE!! (A lot of people!) Hopefully we can baptize a lot of the people that went. There were lots of Haitians that went, and they seem to be the most humble people around. The only problem is they are never married... and it´s super expensive to get them married here.

But the other day my companion and I were walking down the street, when a lady called out to us and said ¨hey come here!¨
We talked to her, and she led us to her friend, who pretty much asked us what he needed to do to be a member. His name is Roosevelt, and his sister is a member. They came in a group of 5 from Haiti. They lost absolutely everything in the earthquake, and when I say everything I mean, they came here with only the clothes on their back. I guess their friend is letting them all camp out in his house or something here in Higuey until they can find work. We told Roosevelt´s sister we´d teach her Spanish (because they don´t really speak any Spanish) if she would go to church again, because she has been inactive. Luckily Roosevelt does speak ok English. He is a cool guy about 22 years old, and super humble. I´m really blessed to be able to meet and teach so many humble people these days. There is nothing like teaching the gospel to someone who is sincerely interested to learn.

Other than that it´s been the same ol working up a sweat walking to appointments, knocking doors, (actually we don´t knock doors here really, you just shout out really loud, BUENAS!!! haha, it´s great) and teaching!

That's all for this week, thank you all for writing me, and stuff! Tell Ryan I miss his funny emails every week too! okey dokey adios

Love,

(Elder Chatoo)

P.S. OH yeah, and my mission DID get 3 new islands added on. The rumors are true. I knew a while ago but I forgot to tell you. It would be awesome to go to one of the islands, but I don´t think they´ll send us because they speak other languages that we don´t know and president hasn´t told us to learn them, but still cool!

Hello hello!

2010-02-22T11:22:00.000-08:00

Hey good to hear from you all!

Really not a whole lot happened this week. The usual missionary things, knocking doors, teaching, trying to find people to come to church, visiting inactives, ya know the gig. It´s really tough but I tell you, there is nothing more rewarding than to see an inactive member that has years of not going, finally go to church because we´ve been visiting them. The members here are going to go out and visit all of the inactives there are... Maybe that's something everyone could do, because sometimes people just need a little push. With over 3 months with the same comp, it´s been fun, 3 transfers is actually a lot for missionaries to be together in this mission, but it´s been fun to get to know elder Pimentel. We are very different, but I´ve really learned to find the best in people that well, we almost have nothing in common. It´s fun, and I´m sure a good life lesson. We are hoping to have a baptism this Saturday. Although we´ve been trying to have one every week, we are thinking we will finally have success... Ha ha I´ll send the pictures.

If anything I´ve never realized how important personal study is, Those people that cannot keep a simple commitment to read a booklet, are not ready to keep eternal covenants, but the people that do, holy cow, it´s amazing that just by reading and studying sincerely, almost always gain a testimony. I´ve learned I can´t just give an answer when people just ask, AS missionaries, we don´t just give out fish, but teach to fish. And well it´s funny how the answer is always in the book of Mormon. I promise that book is inspired. there is no way Joseph Smith could have written it with Oliver Cowdery in two months. It has everything we need to help us with our problems, we just have to Look, and study! We are out here to teach people to fish, with the book of Mormon! haha cliché maybe but it´s true. Read it! I´m out here sweating and hiking miles trying to get people to read it, and if you´ve got a Book of Mormon sitting on the shelf really dusty.. haha yeah you get it.

Haha that's my message to you all family, an I hope you all have a great week!
Love you all,

DR Santo Domingo East Mission adds Puerto Rico!

2010-02-20T13:22:00.000-08:00

As of February 13th, 2010 the church announced that the Dominican Republic Santo Domingo East Mission will be joining with the Puerto Rico East Mission. This includes Puerto Rico (East), U.S. & British Virgin Islands, Aruba, Bonaire, & Curacao. Pretty exciting! See map with mission boundaries in red.

Happy Monday!

2010-02-15T18:17:00.000-08:00

HA, you (mom) and dad are a crack up. your letters are almost exactly the same, and ordered the same. But Whoa I had no idea the Olympics are going on right now, ha the winter Olympics are the best, yeah I´m not sure if the word snow is even in the vocabulary of people here... no jk, but wow I didn´t realize how out of the world I am. I absolutely have No idea of whats going on anywhere.

So transfers are tomorrow, we got the call to know where we are going last night and I am going to.... dromroll.... STAY Here! haha, with the same companion too. I´m glad I´m not going, even though we have to walk 4 times as much as any other area and I´ve already busted my first pair of shoes, and food is 2 times as expensive here, I just really don´t want to leave some of these awesome people I´ve been working with.

Our word mission leader came back from Haiti this week, and went to church for the first time since I´ve been here in Higuey. It´s been a real blessing to have a word mission leader again. George is his name, and he spent the last month in Haiti with his family to make sure everything is OK with his family, he was also doing some work helping translate for the people helping out there in Haiti. Wow, he´s got some wild stories. He said the thing that left the biggest impact on him was seeing tractors scooping up piles of unclaimed bodies and loading them into trucks to take them out of the city. BUT on a lighter note, his family is all fine, which he was very grateful.

George has been helping us teach Hector the man that sells Coconuts. We were finally able to get him a book of Mormon on Creole, and he´s been reading quite a bit. It´s amazing, that book. Really if you think about it, without the Book of Mormon, we´d be just like any other religion. It was great to see Hector really understand the message we´ve been trying to teach. We´ve been teaching him in Spanish, but he really doesn´t understand much. In every nation, in every language! Man if I have come to appreciate anything, I have realized the importance of Humility and integrity. Hector is probably the most humble man I have known, He has so little but still is so willing to dedicate his Sundays to God. It´s so hard for people to leave work on Sundays here. That is probably the number one stumbling block for these people, but wow if there are two traits that will bring a person to salvation, it´s humility and integrity. Hector left to go to church on Sunday and looked and looked for the church but couldn´t find it. He had gone 3 times before, and said he knew how to get there, but still got lost. I felt so bad for the poor guy. But he still is excited to go next Sunday. Ha one time we were teaching him behind his house and during the lesson we were sitting outside, and some huge bug fell on my arm, I thought it was a spider, but luckily it was only cockroach. Ugh the spiders are way too big here.

We are hoping to have a successful week, and not just hoping but working hard to make it happen. Oh cool experience. My companion and I were walking down the street pretty far from the house to go visit this kid we are teaching. As we were walking down the street a thought came to my head, ¨never be too much in a rush that you can´t stop to help¨, and I wrote that down in my little planner. We were walking kinda fast, like we always do, but I decided to have my eyes open and not just race through the streets. I noticed this Haitian man, and he didn´t look too healthy walking down the street. I asked him, “Hey are you alright?”. And he responded something really faint, and then doubled over as if he was in pain. We found out he left his family in La Romana for a few days to look for a job here, and he hadn´t eaten anything in more than two days, and had been walking around in the hot sun. We ran and bought the guy some bread, oranges and some water at a colmado, and took him out of the sun, and asked this older lady who was sitting on her porch if she could watch over him. We left him with the lady and went on to the teaching appointment. About an hour later we came back and the lady said he regained his strength and left. We saw him later walking down the street off looking for more work opportunities. We waved to him and he said ¨Thanks!¨. God Looks after every single one of his children. He knows when they need help, and when they do he sends US to go an help them. There was no doubt the spirit put that thought in my head, ¨Don´t be too much in a rush that you can´t stop to help¨, because as missionaries we are always in a rush, just like everyone. That's my advice for this week, because we never know who is in need of our help. I´ve learned we can´t just expect someone else to help out, We need to do it.

But yeah that's all i have to say for this week, i´ll been looking forward to another 6 weeks here in Higuey!

Wee! Haha, love you

Super di Doopers!

2010-02-08T16:52:00.000-08:00

Heyoo Familia!

Whoa super crazy Week it´s been. This week for me has been all about music! The choir I´ve been working with has been a little tough as the members here have very little knowledge of music, but I´ve been doing what I can to help them. I´ve never realized how important music is in the church, that is reverent music.
We sang again in church this Sunday, the 4 of us missionaries, we did a cool version of “Nearer My God to Thee”, and we did some cool harmonies. I´m really enjoying putting together songs to sing in the church, because it really brings in the spirit. IF you have a talent don´t hide it, use it for good, and you can bless lots of people!

I think I told you before we are teaching this guy Kaleb, and we left him for a time, because he wasn´t progressing. We ran into him the other day and decided to talk to him. He told us to come by his house again, so we did. He is a singer and is pretty big here, and has a huge hummer that he gives us rides in when he sees us walking down the street. We talked to him the other day, and finally convinced him to go to our church, if we would go to his. He came and we had a great spiritual sacrament meeting. I was excited. And then last night we went to his church and wow we had a crazy experience. Wow! Three words: Free Rock Concert! Haaha, oh my, it was insane. Kaleb also knows how to play the drums so he played yesterday, it was pretty cool. Interesting how they were using what I have to say, awesome rock music, to worship. We just kinda stood there and observed the service, but I was able to see the difference between the spirit, and just having a good time. But wow, there were had to be more than a 1000 people there! A lot different than our little humble church. But something good came out of it. Afterward we talked to his Pastora (female pastor) and also the bass player and piano player of Kaleb´s band, who are Super talented are going to church with us on Sunday!

Pierre kinda disappeared off the face of the earth, we waited 3 hours for him to show to his baptism, which he said he was on his way, but never showed up, we talked to him, and ´Things keep coming up´. I dunno he just kinda lost interest. BUT We´ve been working SUPER hard, and wow, the other day we contacted this man, Jose. He is a retired police officer that lives alone. We gave him a booklet to read about the Restoration and came back and taught him. We found out he read and studied, and wow, when we went to teach him that the authority of God was lost years ago (Apostasy) he understood completely. Wow, what difference it made to teach a man who was intelligent, and willing to listen, we taught him that the authority of God was restored, and my companion recited Joseph Smith´s first vision, my companion started, and Jose finished it!! It was soo crazy, I didn´t know what to say, and he told us he knew what we were teaching was all true because it just felt so right. We invited him to go to church, and he said he would go for sure. He arrived with only 45 minutes left of church, but right in time for the testimonies. He waved and smiled and shouted HOLA to everyone while someone was sharing their testimony. Haha, it was funny. He seemed to enjoy the church, and all the members were friendly and went and talked to him afterward. We visited him that same afternoon. We went in and he started to tell us about his life and some of the hard thing he´s gone through. He said when he entered the church, all of the thoughts of his trials in his life came rushing into his mind. He remembered he had been in jail, and lost work, and got in fights, and finally his wife divorced him just a few years ago. He said he used to have such a hard heart, and was just rough with everything, and he realized his wife tried so hard to get him to soften his heart, but he didn´t listen. But he said all of those things prepared him for the day when two young men stopped by and told him about the Restored Gospel, that exists today. And he got that far, and then started to cry. He recognized the spirit that was there in the church, the spirit we brought with us when we entered his home. I decided to invite him to be baptized, He will be baptized next Saturday with Simon, the guy has almost read the whole Book or Mormon. We´ve been working hard, racing from appointment to appointment talking with everyone, and we have been extremely blessed. We´ve really learned to forget about our problems and troubles and just go, just go and talk to people, just go and serve. Haha, and the stories don´t just end there, we´ve been seeing miracle after miracle, it´s amazing how the Lord prepares these people so much! We just have to work really hard to find them.

Haaha, so oh yeah I forget the Superbowl happened, I didn´t realize how out of the loop I am here, but really I know absolutely NOTHING that's going on outside of Higuey. That sounds like soo much fun taking Jet Snowboarding!! Wow, tell Dane to take him a lot so that me and jet and Dane can go later! That would be so fun to go snowboarding with that little goober! hahahaha, ah and Kimmee, I'll write you letters but I can really send them from here... but when I can I will send them ok? Thanks for writing me paper letters, I really appreciate those! OK well that's all for now, next week I´ll have to send pictures of all the awesome food I´ve been eating. Loads of coconut for sure haha, and guava, and tons of bananas and platano and yuka, and of course loads of rice and beans. I love the food here, especially all the awesome fruit. haha, I´ll send you some.

OK I love you all and have an awesome week!
(Elder Chatoo as they call me)

Sorry I don't write much. Emails are a pain.

2010-02-01T08:02:00.000-08:00

Here are two fotos of Hector in front of his house, right before leaving to church, and his cousin Batoleme preparing his coconuts to go to sell them.

Well, the computer deleted my email I had written.. but I have 5 min still.
The picture I sent you is of this guy Hector, he is awesome, way humble, and funny. He always tries to give us coconuts, but he really has nothing at all. He doesn´t speak a ton of Spanish, but enough to communicate. We´ve been visiting him a lot, and he told us he has 3 children and his wife in Haiti, and he´s working here to support them, because he lost his job in Haiti. For a while he didn´t know his family was alive, but said he was able to call and found out they are all fine. I was so happy to hear that.

It also turned out that Pierre´s dad is still alive. He lived for 8 days pinned under the house on his stomach somehow. I can still hardly believe it. But yeah, it´s all good.

OK have a great week I love you.

Well hello!

2010-01-25T16:05:00.000-08:00

Well this week sure was a lot better! Hahaha, That's all I got to say. We´ve been Killing ourselves we've been working so hard, and well my body hurts from hiking and running everywhere. Yesterday was Sunday and we decided to leave early to try to find tons of people to bring to the church. We walked miles and miles, and tried to bring everyone we could. Between the 4 of us missionaries here we had 22 investigators in the church, which is probably a world, no galaxy record. Haha, we were very happy to see the fruits of our hard work for the first time.

Unfortunately Pierre wasn´t able to make it to his baptism on Saturday. He got tricked by a pastor of some church that said he´d give him money so he could send stuff to his family in Haiti. Pierre´s family is sleeping in the street there, and they get wet at night when it rains, but this pastor said he was going to give him two tarps and stuff to send to his family so they can stay dry at night... but he never gave him anything. BUT, Nesto did show up to his baptism!! That was super awesome to see. I did the baptism in the river again, but this time a really clean and pretty one. When I can I´ll send the pictures. It was a miracle he was able to be baptized, as usual everything that could have gone wrong did, but after an hour of running around town and finding a member with a truck and a member of the bishopric, we were off on our way. God sure does expect us to WORK. We can just roll around here hoping good things will happen. We have to work and work, and after we can´t go anymore, and when it looks like there is nowhere to go, we have to keep working, and finally something will come. I never had my faith tested so much, but wow, I´m learning lot´s about faith.

Ha, WOW, had the MOST AWESOMEst experience this week, WOW. My companion and I were walking down the street when we decided to turn down this dirt road and see if we could find some people to talk to in the cement houses, set back in the trees. We started walking back when a man said “Hello” out of nowhere. He was sitting under the big palm tree leaves. I said hello and saw he was reading a book, that looked like the bible. I thought oh cool stuff lets talk to him, and we started to talk. I recognized something way too familiar about the book he was reading. The letters and print looked way too familiar, I read the top line of the book upside down and thought, NO way! It said Alma 42:10-45 I asked him to close the book, and as he did it read on the cover, The Book Of Mormon, Another Testament of Jesus Christ (in Spanish) I could´t believe it! It was a SUPER old copy too. HE said it was his uncle's book that he picked up and realized was the work of God, so he´s been studying ever since. He says he reads it on his free time and likes to mark and study and take notes. We showed him on our plaques that the name on the church on the side of the book is the same name on our plaques. We have been visiting and teaching him, he knows loads, he´s almost finish with the book of Alma. We are hoping to be able to baptize him in the next 2 weeks.

Oh hey, and did I tell you that I got Kim's package? Well Thanks! Those ties you sent were SWEET! Haha, and thank you to aunt Cherie too!! That was way too nice of you.

But yeah anyway we´ve been fasting a lot and stuff for the people in Haiti, but as for now I´m not involved in any service groups or doing anything of that sort, to answer your question mom. OK got to run now, but I love you all and have a super week.

OH wait! I forgot to tell you about the SUPER experience with Elder Bednar! Wow, it was amazing he spoke to the 40 or so missionaries here in LA Romana, and wow, That man is an Apostle of GOD!! Yikes, do what he says, I tell you it works. He spoke to us a lot about faith, and about teaching with the spirit. We are only here to help the spirit teach and convert people! Yeah super awesome, but anyway cool stuff, adios!

Earthquake... YIKES!

2010-01-18T10:13:00.000-08:00

Yeah wow what an insane week. As you are probably wondering we are all fine here. We didn´t feel anything here in Higuey, and there is no damage, but wow what a horrible week. We heard the news on Tuesday at the bishop's house, and didn´t think it was a big deal, this earthquake, till one by one, the calls starting coming in of people saying they´ve lost brothers, sisters, parents and entire families. Ugh.

As you know we´ve been working really hard with Pierre. This man has gone through more trials and anything I´ve ever seen. On Friday we went to visit him an we had planned to teach him about a topic in specific, but when we arrived I felt a strong impression that I should teach him the plan of Salvation and the importance of temple work for the dead. It was crazy as I´ve never felt so impressed to teach him about something like that before. We left him and went to teach other people the rest of the day. At 7 o´clock at night we got a call from him, he told us him mom called him. He was in tears, and could hardly speak, and gave the phone to his friend to speak. His friend told us his cousin, his two brothers and his dad were killed in the earthquake. We went to go see him and he was pretty devastated. I tell you it´s sure not easy to see someone you really care for hurt that much. We did the best we could to comfort him. He showed us a picture of his old house, and showed us where supposedly his dad´s body is. He said the floor opened up, and his dad fell though and got trapped underneath. They still can´t get his body out..

And that's been the story with almost every single of our investigators. Almost all communications are down in Haiti, and the only calls that are coming through are reports of deaths. Hebert lost a brother and a aunt, and left yesterday with his brother in law to see if his family is still alive, because he hasn´t heard anything. Pierre was going to be baptized on Saturday, but had to leave to the capitol to find papers to try to go to Haiti. We tried to do the baptism on Sunday, but he didn´t come back in time. He leaves today for Haiti. I´m really worried about the people that are going there, because it´s absolutely insane. There are supposed to be tons of diseases going around there, because of all the dead bodies. The government I guess is in a wreck, and they are trying to keep people out. Every Haitian outside of the country wants to enter to see if their family members are still alive, as they haven´t been able to hear anything. It´s been a huge mess, and not fun hearing about so much death.

But I have to really be grateful that I everything that I have. It´s been raining all week, and the other day my comp was complaining about his shoes being wet, when I thought to myself, I HAVE shoes! Wow.. we have so much to be grateful for. After Seeing Pierre who lots his job, house, everything, and now his family, I´ve been thinking, wow I have so much.

But on a much lighter note, I decided to start a choir in the church here, and the members are pretty excited for it. It´s been pretty successful and also fun to teach them about music. Music is quite amazing, and relieves a lot of stress, because i´ve been insanely stressed out this week. Our mission president has been pressuring us a LOT to find new investigators, and so we worked really hard all week trying to find new people and inviting them all to the church, calling them and teaching about the importance of it and everything. On Sunday, not a single person went to church that we invited, only Nesto showed up. I´ve been having a tough time working so hard here without success when I see other missionaries meeting the standards baptizing families of 4 almost every week, and we still haven´t seen anything come out of our work here. But Nesto wants to be baptized so We are hoping we can baptize him and Pierre next Saturday, if Pierre can return safely! Whoo. Tomorrow Elder Bednar is coming! That will be awesome.

OK yeah that's all I have to say, crazy! Hope you all have a great week, and Count your blessings!

I Love you all.

HA well shoot dang!

2010-01-11T08:33:00.000-08:00

Another crazy week here.
I am here with Elder Pimentel and a new elder named Elder Hopkins moved in, and the other American moved out. Elder Hopkins has the same time as me and he is an awesome guy.
We´ve been working hard trying to find some new people. It´s been really tough, but hopefully we can have some success. Like Elder Bednar says, “it's the missionaries job is to be full time teachers, the members job is to be full time finders.”
Remember that one, lots of members don´t understand that. Oh yeah and Elder Bednar is coming here to La Romana for a zone conference! I´m STOKED!! That will be super cool.

So this week we went to go help out Nesto, and he got a new job! Which is a really good thing, but he can´t go to church on Sunday because he has to work... which is a real pain. And we went to go visit his sister, but shes been acting very strange, and her mom said she is going to kick her out of the house and she is going to move to the capitol. We stopped by one more time just to see what wee could do. We had no idea what to say to help the family stay together, but just tried to listen to the spirit, and well.. it worked! And even better Joemary (Nesto´s sister) and her brother Joann and her mom all came to church!

Pierre has been progressing super good. I have never seen a man with more faith in my life. He moved into his new house, which is a lot better, but still a shack. He walked more than an hour to church on Sunday and loved it. He was also blessed with a new job, but every time he´s showed up to work, they didn´t have work for him. But we are praying he can finally start work, because if he doesn't he´ll get kicked out of his house again...

The work is super SUPER hard here. nothing is easy, but it´s all worth it. Every obstacle we could have imagined has been showing up and trying to stop our investigators from going to church, but like Pierre, who does whatever it takes to do whats right, was able to go.

Hebert has been doing good, and he invited his friend Emmanuel to church on Sunday again and he loved it. That was really good to see.

Oh yeah and I forgot to tell you Pierre is going to be baptized on Saturday. I´m super excited for that.

OK I don´t have loads more time, but I hope you all have a great week and stay to those new years resolutions!

(P.S. The photos are of the outside of Pierre's new home and Elder Pimentel & I with Pierre inside his home.)

Love you all,

Yip Yap Yippeee!

2010-01-04T17:52:00.000-08:00

Bounjour fanmi!

Hey howdy! Sounds like a fun Christmas and new years for you all! I laughed my head off when I watched the video that Ryan sent me when jet hugged Santa. That's priceless.
We had a super new years. We ate some killer food at the bishop's house, he did an awesome bbq! Yeah! And we did celebrate at midnight, haha we went to bed early but set alarms to wake up at midnight, and see all the craziness, and eat root beer floats! Yeah there is a dollar store here that sells root beer and ice cream, its awesome. But it actually wasn´t that crazy here on new years, lots of people usually shoot off guns and drag stoves and refrigerators and stuff behind trucks to make tons of noise but that didn´t happen here. Only in the capitol.

But it´s been pretty super this week, because we´ve been blessed to see some more success. We have been working with the kid, Nesto, I told you about, and he told us, “yeah man this is my church”, and is super excited. We invited him to be baptized and he said, yeah of course! whohoo!

Also this week Elder Pimentel and I were standing in the street trying to figure out what to do when this Haitian guy game up to us and asked, how can I become a member of your church? We were super surprised, and we went right away to his house and taught him. He accepted the Restoration super fast, and told us he wanted to go to church. His Name is Pierre Lupson. HE doesn´t have a penny to his name, and when he came to church Sunday morning he told us he hadn´t eaten in a day and a half. He also is moving out of his house, which is literally the size of the upstairs bathroom, and has a tin roof. He has to move his bed, but the only time somebody said they would do it for free was Sunday morning, but he decided to go to church instead. I´ve never seen a man with so little, but with so much faith. Wow, we went over to his house Sunday night and taught him again, and sadly he still hadn´t eaten anything, but still listened so intently and told us he really wants to change his life, and live the gospel, ¨until the end¨ he said. He is 23 and was born in Haiti. He grew up in the Bahamas, and lived in Haiti, for a time after that, but had to move out here because his step dad was threatening him. He taught himself English and Spanish and Chinese, and was a tour guide here but has been out of work for two months. After this we are going to help him move into his new place. A member volunteered his truck to move his bed mattress thing across town. But yeah this guy is super nice, and more humble than anyone I have ever seen. Hopefully we can baptize him this week, and hopefully he can also start working again too. It's tough because we can´t give money to people, because that would cause major problems, but wow, quite an experience! Pray for him that he can find a job this week!

What more, uhh the members have been helping us out more! A guy walked almost an hour and a half to church with his 3 year old kid and wife, just because his friend Hebert talked so highly and told him about how great the church is. Hebert is the man we are working with, who can´t afford to divorce his wife in the states the left him. We´ve been teaching him Spanish and helping his family, and wow in return, he´s really helped us out as missionaries! Hebert´s friend Emmanuel said he liked church so much he is going to return to go to all 3 hours next week. pretty cool-

Well yup that's about if for this week. Transfers were this week, and I´m staying here for another transfer with the same companion. There is another new missionary coming out to work here. I hope you all have an awesome week and I love you!

Heyyyyyyo!

2009-12-28T17:49:00.000-08:00

Super duper fam, how are you?

Wow this week has been nuts. Haha, as you all know Christmas was great. We ate LOADS of good food which was AWESOME! We put another baptismal date with some people that are actually progressing. Nesto and his sister JoeMary and I got to even perform my first baptism!

This past while hasn´t been exactly easy. We´ve been dealing with lots of rejection and have had to drop almost all of our progressing investigators, and we´ve had people chase us out of apartment complexes, and throw stuff at us and yeah all that fun stuff. But we were super blessed to find a mom and 5 children who were super ready and prepared to accept the gospel, named Atris. We first found her in the hospital, she was a reference of somebody. We gave her a blessing, and she felt much better, and the next visit we were able to visit her in her house. She had already been to the church number of times, and when we taught he she said, “I want to be baptized in the church of Jesus Christ”, which wow that was amazing. We put a baptismal date that following Saturday for her and her children. We went to visit her again and she was sick again, we gave her another blessing and she felt better and was even able to return to work, but come Saturday she was sick and couldn´t be baptized. We found out she was sent to the capital to find out what was really wrong with her. Come Sunday we saw one of our friends in the church who looked really sad, we asked him what was wrong, he said that Atris had passed away that Sunday morning. It´s tough because she left behind 5 children, the oldest the age of 13, they are all over at the capital now, but we are trying to locate some of them to have the missionaries teach them.

We´ve been helping out this Haitian man that lives here. He is trying to learn Spanish so he can get a job in Puerto Plata. HE has absolutely nothing, and his wife left him 3 years ago and went to the states and is living with some guy he doesn´t know. He can´t afford to divorce his wife who is in the states, and he also can´t afford to marry the woman that he has 3 children and lives with, but.. he has tons of desire to know about the gospel, and is reading the book of Mormon in Spanish and all kinds of books we give him and is giving us tons of references. It´s been interesting working with people like him. Now we have to get him to ditch his “wife” for a time until he can afford to divorce his wife in the states and get remarried. Crazy situation, but his brother lives with him too and he is super strong, so we are doing all we can to get his brother Wilkins to go on a mission. Wilkins works and earns all the money for the family and is super strong in the church. We taught the family a super lesson about the temple and the family has loads of desire to go. They´ve also been teaching us some creole which has been fun. Hebert is his name that need to divorce his wife, luckily he knows English because he lived in Jamaica and the states for a few years. This man needs a miracle, he has lots of desire to do whats right, but has to learn Spanish, and leave his family to do so. Tough situation.

ohh what else cool happened this week. OH I baptized someone in the river on Saturday! It was the other missionaries investigator, but they wanted me to baptize Filogem. He is Haitian, and doesn´t really speak any Spanish or English, he doesn´t have a job and he lives alone, we have no idea how he is surviving, but he walks more than an hour to and from church every Sunday. This man has dedication, wow. I was super blessed to be able to baptize him. We went to some river in the middle of nowhere and we arrived late, so it was dark out. Haha I´m sure I felt stuff swimming around my legs when I was standing in the water, but it was really cool experience, and one I´ll never forget. It´s because of people like him and Nikel that I am dedicated to learn creole, to be able to help them more.
This week has been super too because we were led to a SUPER family named Castro Feliz. They are very friendly and are progressing well, and they gave us a killer reference. We went to the references house, her name is Ruth, and she was so happy to receive us, and told us she had talked to the missionaries years ago when she was pregnant with her son, and that she was very blessed by their visits. We saw her son and he is 10 now, but he wasn´t doing so well. He was attacked by some man like Ruth´s old boyfriend or something, with a machete and has a huge scar on his side, but the mom is so humble and willing to listen we are happy to teach her. We have another appointment for Wednesday.

Yup that's about it for this week. Crazy stories. It was great to talk to you all this week! have a super happy new year!
love you all,

Buenas!

2009-12-02T16:49:00.000-08:00

Mi familia! Como eta to? Ahora tamo en el conde en el capitol. Fuimos al templo hoy, y ya yo tengo sueño! Levantamo a la 4 y meida ete mañana!

Haha have fun using a translator to understand Dominican! So my companion is Elder Pimentel. He´s from Santiago, and he´s an awesome guy. We have fun. It´s been a big help with my Spanish because he doesn´t speak English, neither do the other elders in the house, but they´ve been helping me to understand. I´m in Higuey. We also have a branch in Barvaro, but the other 2 missionaries mostly go there. Higuey is huge and it has a little bit of everything. If you look on a map you can see the Visilica. I live about a mile west of the Visilica, which is a HUGE catholic church. Higuey is on the far east side. Btw, it´s the furthest area in the furthest zone. We are about in the middle of nowhere it seems, and then bam there's a huge city.

As far as thanksgiving I didn´t even know it happened. We were eating rice and beans when the zone leaders passed by to drop off resources when one of them told us it was thanksgiving! Haha. But we decided we are going to cook a turkey for Christmas and stuff it with morro. (rice with guandules)

Hahaha Elder Marte ,my district leader, is standing behind me and trying to read my letter. He doesn´t know English and pronounced rice, reese, and the word like.. leek. I´ve been helping him out with his English too. Its hilarious.

This week we´ve been meeting lots of people. We are really lucky to be working here and to have a ward with so much excitement to be helping us. That is really a blessing when we don´t have the drag the members to give us references, because if a ward is excited about missionary work, the work, fourples. Or more. Btw, did you do your homework and give the missionaries some names to teach, and even better, go with the missionaries to the appointments?

Had a fun experience riding on a back or a motorcycle to an appointment with a member. We had 3 people on it, but wow you´d be amazed what Dominicans can fit on a motorcycle. One elder once told me he saw a family of 7.

Oh yeah and thankfully we do have electricity most of the time, our shower is broken so we bucket shower. At least we have water. Oh and my p-day is still Monday. It´ll stay that way, we just had it today because we went to the temple.

OH Yeah! I just remembered. I stopped by the CCM after the temple and I talked to one of the teachers there that also lives in my old ward in Mi Hogar, and I found out that Nikel WAS baptized! Í was really happy to hear about that.

Okey dokey have a great week family! Great to hear from you!

Love,

Recipe for Dominican Habituela ~ Elder Shattuck style!

2009-11-23T14:48:00.000-08:00

Half pound of beans, soak overnight.

Hour or so the next day before you want to eat it add water and boil the beans until softer (you can squish with fingers) . add a bouillon cube, cilantro. pumpkin cubed too!

Cook onions and green peppers in a fry pan with 3 cloves crushed garlic for a little, add about a cup of tomato sauce.

Add all that to the boiling beans, simmer for 20 or more minutes. add oregano if you want. White goya beans are the best for this recipe. Serve on top of white rice.

Half pound of beans and pound of rice is good for 2 HUnGRY
people. Enjoy!

y.... yo voy pa´ Higuey!!

2009-11-23T14:45:00.000-08:00

Whoo Thanksgiving week! Haha I heard some people celebrate Thanksgiving here.. with a turkey and rice and beans. hahaha.

Well, tomorrow is transfer day y.... yo voy pa´ Higuey!! (as they say here). Yeah so check this out. I´m going out the the furthest area in the mission. It´s at the very very far end of the island, near Puerto Rico. It´s supposedly super campo or dirt poor. And...I´m opening up a new area, with a Dominican that has the same amount of time in the mission as me! Yeah ,two 3 month missionaries opening up an area in the most remote part of the mission. I am Super excited! This will be the real adventure! And rumor is I´ll get to be learning some Creole (Haitian dialect of french if you didn´t know). I don´t know the name of my companion, but he is supposed to be a real good guy. I´ll really get to learn cuz I'm sure he doesn´t speak English.

Well, it´s been really a pleasure to teach Nikel, (Anikele Ouvila is his whole name). We asked him about reading the Book of Mormon and he said he can read it all day. Before, he would attend other churches and they would give him reading material. He said he could never read it, because every time he would try, it would just give him a headache. But this is the first time he says he can actually read something. Because of that he has a huge testimony of the Book of Mormon. He will be baptized on Sunday and I´m sad I won´t be there for that, but I´m very happy for him.

Haha oh yeah, to be married here costs about 30 dollars, which can be much for some. If they are willing they can always make it happen, the Lord will help them!

Haha yeah it´s been fun without power. We´ve been eating food mostly from a comedor (dining room?) I have no idea what that would be in English... ,but yeah it´s good and we just cook with gas and have dry storage food. I´m a king now at dry storage cooking.

For sending packages I´ve seen people put Mary and Jesus pictures on them... I dunno just make sure you send it through the Florida pouch.

Haha and don´t worry mom, I´m safe here and on the biggest adventure of my life! And loving it. Have a great week family!

love you all.

The Biggest Adventure of my Life!

2009-11-16T18:28:00.000-08:00

HA! I got one thing to say, tell Trent to NOT delay putting in his papers! Man alive, this is the biggest adventure of my life, (of anyone´s life!) why would anyone wait?

Boy oh boy, it´s been a Crazy two weeks. Sorry I didn´t write last week. My comp and I didn´t have a chance to get to a computer cuz it was a big holiday, and all the internet centers were full. I guess most of the mission couldn´t write home. It was D.R. Independence day.

This week has sure been a week of having our faith tested. So the mission norm is we are supposed to have at least 1 baptism per week. Last week we had our 5th time being stood up. It was not fun. We had to drop every single one of our old investigators that we had been working on for the past month, because they all stopped going to church and ya... We were praying hard for these three boys to decide to be baptized, but the mom put so many lies into their heads, and kept hiding from us that now they denied feeling the spirit and all that. But we didn´t give up and they are starting to come to church again.

Two weeks ago we met this Haitian man on the street, Nikel. He lives close to us and we stopped by and taught him a little,.We don´t know if he understood a whole lot, but he was very friendly. We came back again and gave him a folleto (pamphlet thingy?) in Creole. We read it with him and we was very accepting. He is such a humble man and is working so hard to earn money so he can return to Haiti and see his two kids and get married to his girlfriend. (People have kids, then get married here). He has been working for 4 years now and was looking for a church and searching for the Savior. We invited him to church and he said no.. , because he didn´t have clothes nice enough to wear to church. We struggled with him and he said it didn´t matter, and he said no. We even offered to give him clothes if he´d go and he still refused. We left and couldn´t keep teaching him if he refused to go to church. As my comp and I were walking home I got the thought, let's just give him some clothes anyway. We went to our house and I got one of my shirts and a tie and put it in a bag, with some cookies just for fun. We dropped the bag off on his porch that Saturday night. Sunday came and he didn´t show up, few investigators were there at church and it was rough, because we didn´t know what to do. We are really only supposed to teach those who go to church. Well, later that week the Zone Leaders gave us a book of Mormon in Creole, so we decided to try show our faith one more time and give the book to Nikel. We gave him the book and hoped for the best. This Sunday he showed up to all 3 hours of church, which the members don´t even do here... and wore the clothes I gave him! We visited him last night and asked him how he liked it and he said he had goosebumps all over and really enjoyed church. He says he is going to go every Sunday now. He even asked when he could be baptized! We were blown away and now he is going to baptized in 2 weeks! He doesn´t know perfect Spanish, well neither do I, but he asked for a Spanish book of Mormon, so he can participate in Sunday school. Also a man who was baptized two months ago, has been helping us teach his daughter. She was baptized last Sunday! It was great to see him baptize her. She was SOOO happy after her baptism and just beaming. I´ll send pictures next week.
But yeah, the work has been tough here but definitely worth it.

Haha, and no we still don´t have electricity... 4 weeks now. But at least we have water which is a HUGE blessing. We have been learning to cook habituelas (beans) and rice, and we´ve been living off that and fruit and it´s pretty tasty.

Hey TELL ROBBIE TO WRITE ME!!!! He still hasn´t written me and I want to know what the heck is going on with him! Sorry some family if I didn´t write you specifically much, I love you all! And I hope all goes well at work and you will be able to slow down the hours!

I love you! Have a great Thanksgiving!

From Elder Shattuck or "Elder Shack" as they say!

2009-11-02T14:47:00.000-08:00

Hello Familia!

Sounds like fun! Haha yeah it was about 9 at night and Elder Blanch and I were walking home when I realized “shoot today was Halloween!” any idea how many people came this year? OH and by the way... HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOMMY!! I hope it was wonderful!

Ayyy so this week has been.. just tough! We have been working with so many people and inviting them to church and to read and all that, but sadly few people have been interested. We had our 4th no show to a baptism last Saturday, which was sad. A lady in the ward made a cake and everything! It was going to be for Hector and his little brother Davidson, (Peña) and Hector was so excited for it, but right before his mom told him he wasn´t ready, and that he will just be baptized and fall inactive, (like she did). So we had to cancel all our plans to work with him to help him out. We had many investigators that are planning for baptism and are happy to hear our message, but we´ve had to drop them because they won´t attend church. Sadly we´ve had to drop more, because their grandparents wont allow us over. It´s been tough getting yelled at and kicked out and stuff. But we will keep working, and keep hoping we can find someone.
We had a fun run in with another priest the other day. We tried to commit him to read the Book of Mormon ,but he wouldn´t.

These evangelical priests keep showing up at our teaching appointments, it´s tough to try to teach the investigators with the the spirit when they are all trained to bash the missionaries.
But yeah wow, this week has pushed me more than I have ever been. It really made me think about what I´m doing here and if what I´m sharing is true, especially when everyone around me is telling me it isn´t. But one thing they can never deny is the Book of Mormon. Pretty cool.

I had a fun intercambio (exchange in english)? with an Elder that doesn´t speak any English, and I´m surprised at how much I actually know. Elder Blanch is from Colorado he has 16 months.

Our apartment is new, it´s with cement walls and tile floors. and thank goodness we have water. I spent 24 hours with Elder Beriguete, who doesn't have water. But it´s been a week and a half without power.. hopefully that will get fixed soon. I live in El Brisal which is near Mi Hogar, look up Mendoza, or Oriental, Tres Brazos. I dunno. Haha and nobody cooks and cleans for us, that's a joke. I´ve been living off rice and beans and oatmeal and fruit and other stuff. The beans here are REALLY good and way better then anything I've had before.

Haha yeah i´m getting eaten by mosquitoes and there are cockroaches everywhere. It´s fun to shake the bugs out of my bed each night when I go to bed. Haha and I´m not joking. We don´t wash in a river, we just wash by hand. We don't have bikes and we buy water bottles to drink.

Oh yeah, that fan cut my hand, nothing serious though. Haha you are funny mom. Haha do I miss luxuries from home. Yeah you bet like a hot shower and electricity and... yeah lots of stuff, but it´s a way fun adventure here. Haha it´s like a 2 year camping trip! Haha you know me I love all these adventures.

I´ve been pretty down this week having to drop so many people, but hopefully something will work out with some new people. For Christmas.. uhh money so I can buy new pants. I grew out of half of them. and good candy? I´ll have to think about that and get back to you. Yup, that's about it. Haha yeah I never can think of stuff to write so ask questions if you want details, haha. But really I know what I´m doing here right now is really tough, but I´m doing the work of the Lord and he will bless us if we stay faithful and keep working. Have a great week and eat lots of salsa for me! haha

Hola familia, ¡Kawhoot!

2009-10-26T21:15:00.000-07:00

Sounds like an adventurous past few days!
Tell rob congrats, and get his bum to write me and tell me how it all went! Haha that's cool he (and Annie) came to California.

So as far as pictures send them to here to this email address. I can only use this account. Pictures and video without sound, I found out DO work.

Haha, yeah as far as the smell... haha we just won't talk about that, but i´m really loving it here. This last week was very tough as every single one of our baptismal dates fell through. It feels like we have been walking forward and moving backward. But that's how it goes sometimes. Anyway, this Sunday it felt like the work turned around. We meet this man, Carlos, who came to church twice without us even teaching him yet, which never happens. So after church on Sunday we snagged him and taught him a lesson and he was so grateful for the missionaries. He was saying he was so glad there are people like us and it gives him a lot of hope to know we have a prophet and all kinds of crazy cool stuff. After the lesson my companion and I were in shock, because that never ever happens! We committed him to be baptized right there. He just called us up today and asked if we could come over and talk to him more about being baptized, which never happens also! We are way blessed to have found him. I have never thought of a person being so ready as him. Pray all goes well.

We have been working with the members a lot. That is really the key here. Even more, the inactive members are great. If we use them to teach, they go around telling people, “hey I got baptized so you should too. When are you going to get baptized?” I don´t ever hear members saying that.. so family you all have a homework assignment. That is each of you give at least 1 reference to the missionaries. I promise you if they accept the missionaries or not you will be blessed. We also had a baptism planned for last Saturday, and we were trying SO hard to make it go through. It was this lady, Andrea. She is very sweet, but I think she is just afraid of water... arg. She studies her scriptures better than us missionaries and knows so much and has a testimony. We can´t figure out how to help her overcome her fear.

Oh what else... It´s just been fun teaching lots of people. Some are just absolutely hilarious. I´ll send a few pictures of some fun stuff around here. Hope they work. Oh, last Saturday we had a zone conference with president Hinckley´s son, Richard Hinckley. That was awesome.

Haaa, oh so our (electrical) power was cut the other day. We've been out for 4 days now. After a few days one of my neighbors was kind enough and noticed we didn't have power and let us hook an extension cord up to her house. It's nice to have fans again at night. One thing that is a blast is when light leaves, we get to teach lessons by candlelight! Lots of fun.

What else is exciting to tell you... Spanish is tough sometimes, and I´m lost a bunch, but that's expected.

Well, yeah just working hard, and every night I go to bed sore and with blisters and headaches from trying to understand everything. But yeah, the work is great! This is really pushing me in every way possible. It's tough and I love it. We are really hoping to move forward as we have been preparing many people. Pray that they all get over their fear to be baptized!
Have a great week and I love you all.

P.S. And yes DO use a cardboard cutout of me for all the pictures please. Haha and I´m not joking.

Exciting Times in Mi Hogar!

2009-10-19T21:50:00.000-07:00

How is everything? Sounds like Lots and Lots of exciting stuff is going on! oh by the way Happy Birthday pops!! Too exciting too!

So you probably want to know what I´ve been doing. Arrived in my first area here in Mi Hogar, it's the oriental zone.. if that means anything to you. I´m in the city area, and I´m absolutely loving it. The ward here is tiny, but everyone is very friendly and easy to talk to, but as soon as we say we want to invite them to church or say we want to teach them, they are.. busy... haha. So it´s been a little tough to keep people to teach now. But there is this new guy Luis that was baptized right before I arrived and now he is a ward missionary and he has been helping out lots with us teaching. The only thing is I can´t understand a single word he says. My companion Elder Blanch, who is really awesome and very helpful. (btw, he says that if I can understand Luis I will be able to understand everyone.) For the most part though, I say what I need to say, and teaching is much easier. But regular chat is tougher, however, I´m getting better every day.

The ward is really small, about 50 is people more or less. The bishop is 25 years old too. Crazy but he is a good guy. Hmm what else.. oh yeah it's hot... really hot. I´m always dripping wet, but it´s not that bad. There are tons of green trees and cool stuff like that all over, but the streets are pretty dang nasty. We like to play games with my comp like name that nasty smell. “Is it a dead animal or garbage.. or other gross stuff?”

We have been teaching lots of people. We have 5 people with fechas (dates) to be baptized, and we hope those will go through in the next 2 weeks. I´m learning a bunch from listening and teaching. My companion and I had a run in with an evangelical preacher at one of our appointments. That was interesting. It really made me realize that this Book of Mormon it so so true. Every false doctrine he (the preacher) was saying and trying to catch us with was the same that Nehor used in Alma 1 verse 4. Read it. It´s interesting... super fun. I love teaching and talking to people. Not everyone is straight forward here all the time, but its kind of a game to get the real information out of them.

Oh wow, so the other day a huge school bus driving down the road had flashing lights and huge speakers. It was blasting super loud hip hop music. I waved at the people at inside and it turned out to be a bunch of elementary school kids!! haha Everyone here is open with their music, everyone has enormous speakers that blast 24/7. The culture is very open with everyone. They like to always share, especially their music. I rode a taxi the other day with 7 people piled in that thing. I thought I was going to die! The driving is so nuts and I almost fell out of a guagua (bus) that took a fast sharp turn and I barely caught myself before falling out. Super fun! But don't worry mom, us missionaries are really protected if we do whats right!! ahh... lots to say, but I´ll write more details in the cartas (letters) or something and send it snail mail. Have a great week and I hope all goes well with my brothers!!!! hahaha.

¡Hola Familia!

2009-10-08T10:41:00.000-07:00

Well to answer your question they kick me out of the CCM on Tuesday morning, (Actually I kick myself out. haha!) I'm anxious to go, as most are. I guess my mission home is 30 min away, so they throw us on guaguas (buses) and ship us all out, and meet out mission president, then by the end of the day we are out doing work, or something like that. Fun!

Wowzers so Conference sure was AWESOME! Sheesh, I suggest watching it over and over.. and over. They have it up on the internet, and also i think on podcast.. eventually? Anyway the prophet and apostles spend months preparing these talks, there is so much we can learn from them.

And speaking about learning, I've never been so into reading the Book of Mormon, That book has more truth in it than any other book that's out there, so why not read it all the time eh? President Holland's testimony and talk only added to all that. Wow. and we were able to watch it in English to, that was nice for now.

OH haha, if you want to ship something ship it through the Florida pouch, it's much cheaper i believe, and safer. For now i don't need anything. Oh and packages take about 2 weeks to ship so don't worry about sending anything now. But thanks for thinking about me!

This week has been fun, and slightly tough to study, everyone has been going crazy here anxious to get out, especially those of us that have been here for 6 weeks. My companion and I had an awesome experience the other day contacting a man who was very interested in what we had to say, after a while he told us he can speak English, haha and that was a relief, we ended up talking to him for 30 min on the street about the Book of Mormon. He has taken a few of the lessons previously, but his mom kicked the missionaries out. Now he lives on his own and is interested again. Awesome experience because I could tell he had been prepared.

Well that's all for this week, once I go into the field next week I'll be able to write more because we get an hour to write emails.

Adios have a good week!

Hola mi familia!

2009-10-01T08:09:00.000-07:00

Whoo Hoo! Sounds like life is busy!!

I had to laugh that dad knows Michael Olsen, Elder Grant is actually sitting next to me right now. Small world. Haha and don't worry Mama, I'm doing much better now, there are lots of bugs that have been going around here from who knows what, but nothing serious to worry about! :)

That's great you still have a chance to read the scriptures dad! I've really been getting into reading them and the amount of stuff we can get out of them is insane! There is ALWAYS something we can learn from the scriptures, so keep it up! I've been using every free time I have to study from them, and I learned something this week, it isn't scripture study if we don't have a pen in our hands! That's my challenge this week.

This week has been fun, one of the Seventy in the Caribbean area came and talked to us on Tuesday, I actually met the same man in Puerto Rico at the airport. It was a super fireside/talk thingy.

OH bummer I haven't received Kim's letter yet! :( I've been looking forward to that, but it hasn't come. I got your letter mama though! Thank you! Haha you crack me up with those pictures you sent and want me to label. funny

Whoa that sounds pretty cool about what Bruce is doing! All of us missionaries think it would be really cool if there was a hurricane and we could spend all day doing service. I'll have to write Bruce.

Oh gee what else fun and exciting has been happening here that i need to tell you about.. It's been really HOT here, and humid, but I love it so all is good, It's crazy when it rains here, It storms crazy like with huge lightning and rain for 20 minutes then stops, its pretty fun to get caught in the middle of it.

Oh yes and conference is something we are VERY much Looking forward to, haha, probably as much as Christmas as you said in the letter.

I´ve noticed something while being here, old men are impossible to understand, Haha, I never realized that but do old men mumble and talk weird in the U.S.? My companion and I tried to talk to this old man, at the university, and I'm sure he was trying to tell us something that appeared important but I didn't get a single word he said, we just gave him a folleto and left. It's not fun not knowing what people are saying to us half the time! :)

Okey dokey I got to go now but keep being awesome!

-love

More Pics from September 21st Santo Domingo Temple

2009-09-27T20:28:00.000-07:00

And YOU Thought Utah Drivers were Bad!

2009-09-24T13:38:00.000-07:00

Hahah, yeah it's pretty good Spanish, except we don't say “letra” here, we just say “carta”.
Sounds like crazy times. That's really interesting that the church is starting to do part time . I never heard of that.

Today is an exciting day. 20 neuvo nativos arrive here at the CCM. Sadly I won't be getting any new roommates, but the people here will double from 30 to 60, and it's already packed. Still not sure how they are going to fit all those people on one floor.

We had a chance to go to the store this week. we took a “guagua” to the supermercado, and wow, I'm still amazed how we didn't get into a wreck. I thought Utah drivers were bad, it's like a free for all on the roads here, and nobody drives in the lanes. You just drive wherever you want.
Spanish is coming along, I can talk to people on the street, except the funny thing is I'm still not sure what language they are speaking back to me yet, for all I know it could be Italian. They ask my companion and I questions on the street about the Book of Mormon we gave them, and all we do is smile and nod. Haha

Thanks for sending the letter! I looked at the date it was sent and it took 11 days about.
What else fun happened, oh past Saturday I got some weird bug and I was out for a day but it wasn't anything too bad, all is better now. Well I'm just about out of time but I hope everything goes well with family! adios!

Hello hello!

2009-09-17T07:51:00.000-07:00

Sounds like fun times at home! Sorry I've taken forever to get this to you, but my Favorite scripture is Isaiah 12:2. Oh and I can't get on to the link but next time if I send pictures, I'll try to send only a few and tell you what they are.

Weeeelll, this week went by very fast! It's been fun and I really enjoy the food here! Some meals we have may I say are... interesting, like this grease that they add some bologna meat to.. or whatever it is to it. But other than that it's tasty, and the Mexicans sure can't make good abichelas compared to here! The facilities at the CCM are very nice, our rooms are pretty fancy with our own bathroom and showers, it's nice! Some days get long staying on the 4th floor of the building, (CCM lever) for over 48 hours sometimes and not seeing the sun. When we do go outside it's always cookin hot, but I love it.

Haha, oh the traffic here in the city is RIDICULOUS! Hahah! The other day walking to the university we saw 10 taxis, with no joke 8-9 people in each car with people hanging out the windows. Keep in mind, these cars are no bigger then any other taxi. Stop lights are optional here. If you want to go, you just lay on your horn and keep going, almost every car has a huge dent in the rear or fenders, well pretty much every car here looks like a demolition derby car.
I got a new bible two days ago, it was expensive but well worth it, you might have heard, it's the new church issued bible. It's the Reina-Valera version but a different translation so it's a little more accurate, or a little bit closer to the King James we use in English. It's awesome with all the footnotes and cool stuff!

Oh what else is fun to tell you about... Oh thank you for the letter Mom! Letters are great! That's so wild about the fires and the helicopter dropping water on Kim's car!
Oh sorry there are no pictures, they are kinda funny about when we can and can't take pictures, and we were only allowed the first day to do that.

Well, that is for stories. My testimony has been growing loads here, and it's been fun to share it in Spanish with a lot of people, that are so polite and willing to listen. Actually I was turned down for the first time by someone who didn't want to listen to the missionaries, it was quite a shock! Other than that, I just love talking to the people here. My Spanish is not the best, and I tell them that. We just laugh and I share the gospel with them and they in turn teach me a few things in Spanish!

Oh so I have a message for Dad or whoever to pass on to the priest and teachers in the ward. (actually the deacons too.) But tell the Teachers I was thinking about them and tell them I have some super advice on what they can do now that will make a big difference on the mission. Tell them to SING THE HYMNS!, and learn to sing them well! If any of the priests are being bums tell not to be. Few FEW people can sing the hymns well here, I don't know why. Music can really bring the spirit in... if you know the tune, and can sing half decently, and anyone can do that if they just sing them in church and such. Let the priests know, all one or 2 of them, how important it is to learn to teach from PMG (Preach my Gospel), that's a huge one too.
OK love you and have a great week!

Photos from the MTC Provo & CCM Santo Domingo!

2009-09-11T20:47:00.000-07:00

Hello hola como esta!

2009-09-10T09:51:00.000-07:00

Well I've been here a week and it's been super DUPER awesome!

I Just got back from the temple. It's literally right next to the CCM. It's pretty nice to be so close.
I pretty much love this place. I tried to send some pictures but, these computers won't let us do that, and it'll cost like a bizillion dollars to try to print and send them home. I'll just have to wait til l I get out into the field to send any.

Elder Upshaw (From Texas and my companion) and I had a chance to go contact at the university. That was quite an adventure. Most people are very open to us, and only a few started laughing when they heard our bad Spanish. One man came up to us and talked to us for 30 minutes... too bad we had no idea what he said. We gave him a book of Mormon anyway and told him to read it.

The food here is pretty good. Lots of beans and rice here, and they make them really good. And we still haven't figured out what kind of meat they give us for lunch here.. We are thinking it's cat or something, even though they tell us it's some part of the pig. Who knows.

What else fun and exciting has been happening here... Mostly I've been studying lots of Spanish! All day every day in the classroom studying, except for the once a week we went to the university. The city is beautiful here. Tons of huge towers that look like people decided, oh I'll just add another 10 floors to this building and support it with sticks so it doesn't fall over. Haha, probably not, but I do love the weather here. It's not too hot, like 80-90ish it's really sticky, and i love it.

So I guess Labor day happened? That's neat that so many people went to the temple! The temple is really pretty here because it's a orangish color. I like it.

That's weird to hear about uncle Doug.. The time difference is 3 hours here.. Maybe it'll change to 4 when to US does daylight savings. I dunno how that works.

Oh hahaha, on the plane flight over from slc to Dallas, we flew with the cougar club, and they were talking about BYU the whole time. I heard they won and it was crazy. My companion heard that in a letter. Tell people to send letters! Mail is great! OKey dokey got to go! Hope all is well!

Elder Shattuck