January 4, 2015
Dear Family,
Sorry for not being able to write this weekend. It seems like there is always some sort of
situation that we have to deal with!!
Today we had some missionaries get attacked and robbed, so we have been
working with that. They are fine and no
one got hurt, so that is good!
I hope that you all have had a good last few days, enjoying
the beginning of your new year!! 2015 is
officially here. I hope you all had a
great time, and that you are enjoying the last little bit of your vacation!!
So this week was anything but a vacation for me!! We have had a ton of things going on
lately. The President has had his son
and daughter here for this last little while, so they have been doing lots of
things, going out and teaching as well as spending some tourist time! So we met them a little while ago. His daughter served a mission in Brazil, so
she goes out and teaches in Portuguese, which people who speak spanish can
understand, and she can understand spanish as well from her Portuguese knowledge, so she was teaching. The
president's son served in France, so he has been teaching the French
investigators. His girlfriend also came,
but her mission experience didn't really help her out at all... she served in
Taiwan. But so anyway, all of them have
been going out and teaching lately.
We have spent the majority of the week running people around
to the doctor. One Elder hurt his ankle, this time the other one, We have an elder here, who had a small heart failure, so we
have been going around with him trying to get everything figured out!!
On New Year's Eve, no one was feeling in a very receptive
mood, so we went and talked to the members and helped them to understand how
they can help us with mission work in this area. It seems like it went fairly well. Then we went back to the house and I went to
bed. I just wasn't feeling New Year's
this year... I set an alarm and woke up
at 12 to welcome in the new year. The next day we wanted to do something cool, so we went to
every cool spot we could think of.... and EVERYTHING was closed!! So, we ate at Carl's Jr. and went back to the
office. We went to play Frisbee, and it
got too dark too soon! So we went to buy
stuff to play ping pong... and the store was closed!! It is like saying that WalMart was closed...
it just doesn't happen!! So, defeated,
we went back to the office!!
We just keep working here.
It is something that is hard, but it is going to be a huge benefit to me
in the future. It is crazy to think how
fast the time is going by, and a little sad at the same time... I just realized something... That in less than six months, I will be
home. It is very weird to think about. But, I am happy at the same time because it
shows progress in my life, and in six months it will be time to move on to a
new phase of life!!
So we have a cool investigator named Maria. She works in the home of our ward mission
leader. She has had a lot of questions
about the plan of salvation because her mother recently died. We have been trying to help her understand
the plan in order so that she will be able to accept the answer to her actual
question, which is "Where is my mother now?" It is a principal of teaching and of life
that we all need to learn. Everything
has a divine order to it... We can't run
before we walk. There is order to all of
life, and we reach our final goals by learning the order and setting goals to
accomplish each part of the order!!
Definitely something that I will need to continue to apply after the
mission!!
Our big plan for this year is to reactivate lots of
people!! We have the goal to reactivate
at least 2 people every month while we are here in the office!! Hopefully we can reach that goal!! I actually need to make some phone calls to
some of these people to be able to see if they would be open to receive the
gospel again!! Hopefully this goes
well!!
Well, I love you all so much!! Happy New Year!!
Love you all,
Elder Garrett McEwan
