November 22, 2014
Dear Family,
I just want to start off by telling
Parker Happy Birthday on the 20th of this month!! I can not believe that you are 17
now...?! What?! 17 years old... it seems like just yesterday that I was
17! Time really does fly!! I hope you had a great birthday little
brother!!
It is always so great to here about your
experiences through out the week! Sounds
like you all have a pretty good routine going on!! It is always nice to hear that all is well
back home, and that you are all enjoying life.
Keep up the good work!!
So I have been great, super busy, but
really great!! Elder Paulino is doing
well as well, just trying to finish up all of the last preparations before he
goes home. We are needing to train his
replacement starting next week, which will be crazy because I have about a
month here in the office, but it should be fun!! We just recently finished up a couple of
Manuals to hopefully help the Zone Leaders to complete all of their
duties. We also made a manual for the
Assistants so that they would know exactly what their duties and
responsibilities are as APs, and that hopefully the week of the transfers can just
be a stress free time where everything goes as planed!! Obviously there will always be unknown
circumstances, but at least we can always try to be over prepared and do
everything in our power to make sure things go off with out a hitch!! The
people are all doing well, just having a hard time with the baptismal
dates... All of the people are hard core
life long Catholics, so we don't want to force anything on them!! It is a challenge, but hopefully the people
will come out of it even stronger than they were before!!
We are going to celebrate Thanksgiving
this year, on Wednesday we will be having a Thanksgiving Feast with the
district, then on Thursday the president and his wife have invited us to their
house to eat!! I am very excited... It has been a long time since I have eaten
traditional American holiday food!
So this week has been full of
work!! We are about to enter in to one
of the busiest times of the year for the mission... We have a Trainer/Trainee meeting on the 3rd
of December, another one on the 4th, the Zone Leader Council on the 5th,
Christmas Conferences the 8th and 9th, an activity of 6 zones (Half the
Mission) on the 12th at the President's house, and then the 13th through the
16th will be the transfers, all with trying to train a new assistant and a new
office elder as well!! We are going to
be so busy, so this week I spent the whole time trying to get everything
finished that I could, so that I could have all of it out of the way. I do not want to have to be doing things in
the spur of the moment, especially because I am still here learning new things
about being in the office as well!! I
have just been working on all of the Agendas and Logistics for those
meetings.... Just trying to stay ahead
of the game!!
Also this week we had a huge new batch
of sick missionaries... all with the same thing!! There is a little virus that is going around
that is attacking the lungs of the missionaries. It has affects similar to those of asthma: It makes your chest feel tight, you feel
short of breath, and you feel like your throat is swelling and closing
off! We are trying to get all of the
missionaries informed of how to treat and prevent this sickness!
So as far as the teaching goes, we are
spending a lot of time on the Book of Mormon with the people. We really want them to have good strong
testimonies of the Book of Mormon because if they know that the Book of Mormon
is true, they will never waver in knowing that this is the one and only true
church!! We have been working really
hard lately with Paulino's grandma and cousin, and they are finally starting to
get it!! It has become a pleasure for
them to read the Book of Mormon, and they are loving it! They have even been reading and marking. We asked them some questions about what they
told us that they had read, and they had basically memorized what they had
read, all of the ideas and key concepts and such!! It was a great experience to see that!!
We also are teaching the Rosado
Family. They are some what progressing,
with their 11 year old daughter progressing more than anyone else!! She memorizes, literally memorizes word for
word everything that we leave for her to read!!
She loves everything about the church, and now we just need to keep her
mom and dad up to speed with things and help them to develop their own personal
testimony of these things!! We are
currently speaking about the Restoration, and they really liked the part of the
prophets and how important prophets are.
They said it was really comforting to know that we have a prophet on the
earth today who talks to God and knows His will! They are a great little family, hopefully
they will start to come to church more often!!
Today, P-Day, I went to San Jose de Ocoa
for the first time!! Elder Paulino had
served there when he first started the mission, and wanted to go visit!! It was
also very convenient for me because I needed to pick up some things that I had
a man out their make!! It was a good
trip, a little bit long, but a lot of fun!!
Tonight in the night we are also going
to have two sessions of stake conference, an adult session and then a
priesthood session. It will be m first
stake conference since like march, so that will be good. This stake seems to working pretty well, even
though the attendance of our ward is a little bit low. We are working hard, and we are going to
start planning a little bit better so that we don't just have to be the
Assistants, but we can be missionaries and teach as well!!
Miscellaneous items for the
week.... Something funny that happened
or any cool experiences.... Not really
anything? Hmmm... I guess one thing that was kind of funny was
that one night, I was so tired that I almost got in the back seat of the car,
when I was the one who was supposed to be driving!! It was like midnight, and I had been up since
5, running on about 3 hours of sleep and I was just dead. It was basically like just lining up under
the wrong player when playing QB, instead of being under the center, I was
under the guard. So close, yet so
far!! I even went so far as to open the
back door and put my foot up in!! The
only reason that I even knew that I had messed up was when I didn't have to
adjust my body around the steering wheel... super embarrassing!!
The final cool thing of the week is that
we received a bunch of new little cards to make contacts with, but these ones
are different!! They were designed in a
world wide missionary effort by the First Presidency of the Church, and are for
ALL members! It is called "El es la
Dadiva"... not really sure what they are calling it in English. All I know is that we are trying to invite
everyone to know, accept, and share the love of Christ, with the focus being on
the immense love of God in sharing His Only Begotten with us!! The project centers on the scripture of John
3:16. As missionaries, we have been
given the challenge to make 10 contacts a day using these cards for 28
days. By the end of the time period,
that will be 280 contacts for the month for every companionship... resulting in 34,000 contacts for the
mission!! Right now we are doing about
7,000 contacts in a week, so this would be a huge change!! We can do it, it just takes a little bit of
extra effort!!
I just want to finish by sharing a small
part of my testimony, that I know that this church is the church of
Christ. I know with out a doubt that He
loves me, and that He does everything that is possible to help me change my
life! I know that He wants me to be
happy, and that all of us can be happy. I
know that if we follow His commandments, He will show us the way.
I love you all and I hope that you have
a great week!!
Elder Garrett McEwan
P.S.:
Please send pictures of just like basic things i.e. the house, the yard,
the cars, you guys, etc.!! ¡Gracias!
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