May 26, 2014 Transfers...Elder Macias is outta here!

Yup, there were transfers this week and Elder Macias is outta here! He is off to Zona Mante in a little pueblito se llama Xico ( the name is longer than that, I just don't know how to spell it and everyone just calls it that) My new companion's name is.... Elder Osurio! yup, it's gonna be fun :)

This week went pretty well, we have been teaching Ricardo a lot and just trying to keep his faith strong so he can resist all kinds of temptation. We taught him the word of wisdom and the law of chastity this week (how fun is that right? ;) ) and after one of the lessons we gave him a blessing to resist temptation. He is really excited about the church, he just struggles with his addictions but he is working really hard to over come them, but.... he didn't come to church.  We ran into him on the street later and he told us he didn't come because he slept in because he was up until 4 in the morning helping a friend with something. But when we ran into him he told us he was actually going out to look for a place to listen to the word of God because it was the Sabbath day so I thought that was pretty good, unfortunately there weren't any meetings for our church at that time. 

 

With Virginia, well we haven't seen her all week and she wasn't at church, and she is actually moving out of the area soon so we won't get any farther with her, I hope she keeps trying to be a part of the church where she moves to and finds the missionaries there. She was really excited about it, hopefully we can talk to her before she leaves or something. 

 

We haven't been able to meet with the guy that the ward mission leader invited yet but we are still going to do that.

I was wondering when Ponderosa was going to happen, sounds like it was a lot of fun and you guys got to meet some new people (like the people cousins are dating)

Well that's all I've got for now, I have some pictures to send, I hope you enjoy them :) these first ones are from the zone breakfast :)

I love you all :)

-Elder Sampson

May 19, 2014

(This is in response to me letting him know about Fritz)  Wow... Things are going to be really different when I get home and I did not see that coming... I was actually thinking about him the other day... ah it is just so weird... grandma I knew it was coming and it was actually a blessing for her even though it was hard for the rest of us... But I didn't expect this... 

 Anyways, about this week. Ricardo hasn't been doing that great, he went back to his old ways and I think it has gotten him discouraged, we will see what we can do to help him and I don't think things are going well with him and Dulce. 

 

We have been teaching Andy, he is 9 years old and his parents are members but inactive and he wasn't baptized when he was 8 so now it goes to us missionaries. He likes to listen to us and talk and always seems excited. We teach his dad from time to time and we got permission from him to teach Andy but we haven't talked to  the mom and when someone from the primary went to take him to church she said no... so we are going to talk to her and see what we can do. 

 

Virginia is still doing great, she comes to church and reads the stuff we leave her and if she has a question she asks which is good thing because it means she is paying attention and wants to learn. :)  

 

The mission leader invited a friend to church and he came so we are going to see what we can do to teach him.  I think we will get somewhere with him and I hope we can help him change his life for the better by following Christ. 

 

Oh for my birthday we ate sushi and we went to the center and I bought myself a really cool shirt, well I think it's really cool... like all hand woven and stuff and today we didn't get to go to the temple like we thought we would be able to so we got together as a zone and made breakfast and played games and just had a great time. I will send you some pictures next week.

Well... that's all I've got. Love you all! Bye!

-Elder Sampson

May 12, 2014 Happy Birthday Elder Sampson

I don't really know what to say this week because we just talked on skype yesterday and nothing has really happened since then... well I will tell you what happened with Ricardo...  So he wasn't at church yesterday so we wanted to see what happened. We stopped by his house to see him but he wasn't there (this was around 5 or something).  So we just kept working and went on with the day. Later, around 8:30, we swung by his house to see if he was home. As we were waiting there by the door he comes walking up to the house with a woman. He greets us, introduces us to his friend, Dulce. He goes in the house to grab something and we are outside talking to Dulce for a bit. We ask her how long she had known Ricardo and we found out they had just met.... Then Ricardo comes back and we ask why he didn't come to church and what not because we were really hoping he would be there. He said he was working and we invited him to come next week and then we left because I don't think he really wanted us to be there and it was kinda uncomfortable... We had talked about the Law of Chastity before so I hope he kept that in mind... We are going to talk to him today...

Anyways.... Sorry but I still don't have any pictures, I haven't taken any for a little bit because we have just been here in our área and I haven't seen anything I want to take a picture of but I will try to get some of the members and stuff so y'all can see them.  I hope you have a good week and I love you all! It was really great to see you and talk. I have a recording so I hope you enjoy it! :)

-Elder Sampson

May 5, 2014 Ricardo is still going strong!

¡Hola!

 We had Ricardo and Virginia at chuch yesterday. Ricardo is still going strong and that's great, he has been clean from drugs for two weeks which is great. We had never met Virginia before, Hermana Ibarra invited her to come and she did and she really liked it. Later we went to Hermana Ibarra's house and Virginia came over and we taught her about the restoration and she was really interested. She has so much faith and told us how God always answers her prayers and helps her get through everything. She even told us about a little miracle that happened to her. She usually needs glasses to read books or texts from her phone or whatever but in the Gospel Principles class, when Elder Macías asked her to read a passage from the Book of Mormon she prayed and asked for help to read the letters because she didn't have glasses and she was able to read it perfectly fine. It was a cool story for me to hear. We are going to keep teaching her because she really wants her life to change and be part of the church.  We had a bunch of investigators but a lot of them didn't want to progress so we have dropped them for the time being. We still teach Jorge but he still can't really walk very much or sit for very long so he hasn't been able to come to church, but the last time we went he had gone to the doctor and we don't know what happened but he was not happy and he wouldn't even let us in the house, we are going to go back when he has had a little bit of time to calm down. We teach less actives a bunch because there are quite a bit of them. 

In pretty much all the lessons we teach the first two lessons from preach my gospel because we haven't had a whole lot of people progressing, the first two lessons are the restoration and the plan of salvation. They usually go pretty well but sometimes the people get pretty side tracked and it is hard to get them back focused on the topic of the lesson. Everyone here likes to share their life story ha ha :) I always try to bear testimony because that is what helps the Spirit be there and allow them to learn and feel the truth. I sure hope they feel the spirit and I try to follow it as best as I can.

We did exchanges again, I didn't like it much because I stayed in our area so  I had to act like senior companion because the other missionary doesn't know the area and what not. I still am not ready to be senior companion and I felt like the day wasn't very successful... I didn't like that feeling one bit... I tried my best to be effective but I don't know... it wasn't a very good day. I have to learn how to do it some how because I will need to do it all the time eventually and I have to do it again on Tuesday. I feel like we do divisions too many times but I don't know, I just don't like the idea of being in charge again so soon...

Elder Lawson is from Ogden and he has been out for 8 months now, he got here the same time as Elder Macías.

I understand about grandma... I know it is hard to see her decline like that and be in so much pain. 

I agree with you that it would probably be best if that did happen because then she would be able to be with grandpa and not have to struggle so much.

I still haven't got the Easter package and I wonder when I will get the birthday one... I did get some dear elders last week so that was cool.  I got one from Mom, John Holland, and Gma and Gpa Sampson. They were great :)  Thank you so much!!!!

Well I love you all and hope you have a great week :) ¡Adiós!

Elder Sampson