Week 15

Well this week was good until Sunday. Our investigators are doing great. We have 21 investigators that we teach regularly, but none of them come to church, which was a blessing this Sunday. We think we will have at least 3 people that will accept a baptismal date this next week, so that’s good. Javier is a cool investigator. I like visiting him, but we need to change completely how he thinks, which is going to be the big task. He likes to teach, so I learn something from him every time I go there.

New Years was good. My comp was a little sick so we didn’t really do anything. The rest of the week was all good.

Now about Sunday.. The week previous, the bishop was gone and his counselor wanted to call a meeting. In this meeting he started talking bad about other missionaries and started telling us that what we were doing was not right. He was telling us exactly opposite of what we learned in the MTC. If we did what he wanted us to do, our investigators would feel no love from us and not much would get accomplished. He basically told us to be robots. Apparently he didn’t like that we told him if he ever has a problem with a missionary that he needs to talk to the Presidente about us, because that is how it is supposed to be done. He talked to his family about this meeting, and then this Sunday his daughter stood and instead of baring her testimony she went off about how the missionaries are hypocrites and how she wasn’t going to attend church anymore because of us. Luckily only one of the sisters’ investigators was at the meeting. I think it hurt her. She even looked sad at the end of the meeting. But we have family night with them tonight so hopefully we can fix this. And I think the reason the Bishop didn’t stop her during her testimony is because he doesn’t like us either. A couple weeks ago his wife asked us to visit a lady that is way out of the way of our investigators and out of our area. So we told the President of the Quorum of Elders about this so he could have someone visit her because she is the wards responsibility. The next week when she [the Bishop’s wife] asked us if we visited her, we told her what we did; and I guess she didn’t like that, because ever since then she has shunned us. And normally we write [email] in the Bishop’s office because we don’t have to pay for the time on the computer, and the computer is nicer. But this week and from now on, we can’t because the kitchen was dirty....we (the missionaries) don’t use the kitchen, and when we are with the group of YM and YW that use it we clean everything. It was just an excuse for him to do something about us. He also called for an emergency transfer for the missionaries. The whole bishopric doesn’t like us, but everyone else here loves us. And if we have to leave, we leave all of our investigators that are all progressing. This bishopric is living in apostasy, and its hurting the people in the area. I wish I could speak enough Spanish to call people out and bring them to repentance, but I can’t and it’s probably a good thing. We are trying to resolve the situation with the President’s help.

I love you!
Elder Newman

My study time. I use four different books at the same time.

It rained a ton one day and all the streets were like a river.