June 27th, 2018
Not gonna lie, this week was a bit of a rollercoaster. Every time things start to look good, they kinda get bad again. It's been hard to stay in contact with our investigators, since many of them are busy. We did find one that was really good, Onial. It turns out, his phone just wasn't getting our calls. Many people who are poorer here only have "Whatsapp", so they can't call us and our calls may not go through.
It's been tough getting people to church. In the morning, it gets really cold so they either get sick or they're Haitian and can't bear the cold temperatures that they're not used to.
This time of year, in this area, it seems like it's especially hard. It's weird because my last area was 20 minutes away by city bus but it feels like a different world in terms of missionary work.
Alexandre's been progressing a good deal. He came to Spanish class and we've taught him a couple times more and we've read the Book of Mormon with him. He's had some questions, but things are going well. We're, hopefully, going to have our Haitian RM with us in tonight's lesson. It's harder to help him with more complex questions or doubts with my basic creole.
Overall, things have been a bit crazy and there's been some disappointments.
Yesterday, after an appointment fell through at about 9, we went to see a reference, close by, that had never been home before and we found him! He's a Colombian and is quite friendly. He invited us in and explained that he was actually baptized when he was 14. The situation slowly turned into something we just hadn't expected. He pretty much had gone inactive because, well, he's gay, and members accused him and his young men's president of being more than friends when they weren't. So he started going to Evangelical churches and has stopped believing much in the idea of a true church. He's impressive in the sense that he's gay but still tries or recognizes he should be chaste.
He then explained how he got back into smoking drugs and not being chaste (he gave us many details we definetely would not have asked for). He saw the misisonaries as a sign that he needs to return to God, but is not for the whole chuch thing.
Bascially, we decided we'd come back to answer some questions he might have but it doesn't look like there's much to do there based on his disposition. It seems like many people here (probably everywhere) decide their own truths after they get mad at something. If they get mad at God for the death of a family member or some tragedy, they stop believing in God. Or if they get mad at a church for being rude or something, they stop believing in the role churches play in religion. From what I've seen, that's how 90% of the cases are and it's hard to help people with a mindset like that.
That same night, one of our favorite members got his truck stolen and it's the truck they use to sell gas, that being what he does for a living, so that was sad. Also, we thought we would have been the missionaries with the strangest story, but right after that, we see we have two missed calls from the sister missionaries and it turns out they were in a lesson when a nasty case of domestic abuse broke out. It was really sad and the sisters were affected hard.
So after all that, it was just a tough end to the day/week coming up on P-day. We're not really discouraged but it's been hard nonetheless.
Happy news: Last night we made a haitian-style potato smoothie! That's right! Potato, carrot, banana, milk and some sugar! Haitians would give it to us and it was so cool we had to make it ourselves. We tried making it and it was a wild success. It makes for an easy and good breakfast and it's storable for the next day. I will certainly be making them in college.
That's about it. Today, we're planning on wathing the Sweden vs Mexico game and then having some arepas with a Venezulan, soon-to-be convert, that my comp and I interviewed for baptism. Have a good week. See you all soon!
-Elder Sierra
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