Tuesday, January 31, 2017

Mamponse...



Jan 17-30

Well it's been a crazy two weeks. I've been transferred and now in an area called Mamponse. It's in the Lartebiokoshie Zone. It's a cool place. Completely different than where I've been my entire mission. It's definitely a city area. All the roads are paved and everyone is packed in ridiculously tight and what not. Also my area is affectionately called the dump of our mission. Basically it's a garbage can. It's known for having filthy gutters and awful beaches. The beaches could be gorgeous but they use them to dump garbage and use them and a restroom. It's disgusting. I really like the people here though. They're really cool. I've already gotten really close to a few of the families and I'm really looking forward to spending a while here with them. I think I'll be here for a while too. I was talking to Elder Martineau who is one of the APs and he said this is probably my last area. So I'll be here for a while! My new companion is Elder Gurr from Gilbert, Arizona. I already asked if he knew Ryan and Katie Bowles and the answer is no. He's a cool guy. You'll notice in pictures that he's pretty short. He's fun though. We'll have a good time together. The apartment I'm in is pretty good too. Not as nice as my last but not the worst I've been in. So far the work in the area has been good. Since I've come we have stopped visiting a lot of people. They either didn't care or asked us to stop coming because they're uninterested. That mean our teaching pool is small but we are working on that right now. Also we have this super cool lady in our area named Blessing. She has been an investigator for 5 years now. She can't be baptized because of her circumstances but she asked us to baptize her daughter. Her daughter has been coming to church with her for years and Blessing wanted her to be baptized. My first day here we started teaching her and she got baptized on Saturday. It was so sweet to see the joy it brought Blessing to see Sandra get baptized. She even bore her testimony about it afterwards. It was super sweet. Also big changes to our lives as missionaries. Usually we have what we call "key indicators". 9 numbers that track what we do as missionaries. They are baptized/confirmed, investigators with a baptismal date, investigators who attend sacrament meeting, member present lessons, other lessons, progressing investigators, referrals received/contacted, new investigators, recent convert/less-active lessons. 9 numbers we report. Well that's changed. Every missionary in the whole world now only reports 4 numbers. Baptisms, investigators with a baptismal date, investigators with a baptismal date, and new investigators. Just 4 numbers now. I'm excited about it. It's no longer about teaching a certain number of lessons but about teaching people and helping people. It should be good. Also the schedule changed for us but it's just minor. Now we plan in the morning instead of evening and get an extra half hour for exercise. Not much of a change. Yeah I think that should bring us back up to date. Sorry for the lack of an email last week. Hope y'all have a great week. Love you all.



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