I Love This Church . . .

April 21, 2014

Dear Family,

One of "our" beautiful flowers in the DR

Wow, the flower bed looks really nice, as well as Easter stuff and all of the pictures that you sent me!!  I am so glad that you were able to enjoy all of the festivities, as well as remember our Savior Jesus Christ!!!

I am not going to lie, this last week made me so happy to be a part of the one and only true church of Christ!!!  The Semana Santa is a holiday that is observed by the Catholic church and has been instituted as a national holiday in the majority of Latin American countries!!  But it is like spring break here, and everyone is off from school, EVERY SINGLE store closes, and then every one goes to the campo, the country side where they are from!  In essence, no one is home, so it was definately very hard this week!! WE were doing everything that we could possible think of to stay busy!!

P-day lunch with all the "brothers"

Well, right now our only progressing investigator is Darline, and she is doing wonderful!!  We have decided to really put the emphasis on her, and get her super prepared for her baptism on May 17!!  She is reading in the folletos, and then she circles the words that she doesn´t understand, and we come and teach it to her!!  ALso, we have been reading everything with her to help her understand, and she retains it really well!!  ONe time this week, something super cool happened, and she was trying to explain to us what she learned, and she couldn´t think of a word in spanish!!  She was struggling, so I told her to just say it in Creole, or French, or which ever.  She said the word in french, but in my mind it just sounded EXACTLY like english!!  It was the word for "disobey", talking about Adam and Eve!!  SO cool!!  She is doing amazing!!



P-day in Payless!

So that is about the most memorable experience from this last week, except that this last week was the first time that I have been denied entrance some where because of my Religion!!  We wanted to go into a big residencial area to contact on Friday, and the guard stopped us.  He asked us what we were doing, and we told him all about the mission and our purpose, and then he tells us that this residencial area is Catholic, and that we can´t go in during the Semana Santa!!  He told us to come back on TUESDAY! Wow, it was crazy, but we will be back there tomorrow!!

Elder McEwan and a statue at the restaurant
we went to for lunch

We are also going to have another Zone Conference of Wednesday of this week, because the president is going home in 2 weeks!!  We will be getting a new president shorly!!  Also, we will be going to Chili´s on Thursday for Elder Pedersen´s birthday!!

Today was fun, we played some basketball, and finally me and Pedersen were on the same team!!  We wrecked, and then went home and showered!!  Went to a buffet that was like a chinese buffet, and it was amazing!!  I ate 8 plates and 2 bowls of ice cream!!  Went home, took a nap, and here we are!!  Also, last night we had a fun night, we pulled the mattresses out in the front room and watched two movies, Fireproof and Courageous, both by the same director who did Facing the Giants!!  They were seriously amazing, even better than Facing the Giants!!  Both talk a ton about the family!!

Well, that was the week!!  Love you all!!

Love,
Elder Garrett McEwan  :)