Week #24 - God is Great, Dewskie is Good, and People are Crazy

Hey Fam!

Bienvenida a Ciudad Española (Welcome to Spanish Town)

This week has been great as usual!

We have starting improving our street contacting skills a little bit, but not enough. We still need to get better at it.

Wednesday was alright. Our house gets pretty hot sometimes. We were about ready to go to bed....and then the power went out, so we were just kind of waiting, sweating profusely, hoping, and praying that it would turn back on. After about an hour, it finally came back on. Big sigh of relief there.

Thursday evening, Sister Harrison fed us ackee and salt fish which is always great. Ackee usually kind of looks and tastes like scrambled eggs. Anyway, we were headed home for the night, and some dude (different from the Utah Jazz guy) just yells "Provo Utah!" Hahaha I don't know where they get this stuff, but their taunts are getting less clever as you can see. That guy definitely needs to take some notes from the first guy. It was funny either way though.

We were riding through a neighborhood with a mediocre basketball court on Friday and people were actually playing on it! Obviously my first thought was, "Alright all we gotta do is earn their respect by beating them and then they will want to know more about our message." So we played with them for a few minutes, proved ourselves, and then I invited all of them to hear more about the message of the restoration. None of them were interested. Well that didn't go the way I hoped it would, but while I was basically preaching a sermon to these ballers, Elder Jackson was talking to a guy who had just walked up to the court. He was more than willing to sit down and talk with us, so we set up a time and then left. So it was successful after all.

Saturday, we had an investigator break down during a lesson. It was kind of hard; she is going through a rough time, but we will continue to support her as time goes by.

Church on Sunday was great as always!

That's all for this week. Love and miss you guys!!

Love 

Elder Graham

 

Nice missionary tan, eh?

Week #23 - Civilized and Elegant... Unless You're a Puppy

Wagwan family,

This week has been pretty crazy itself.

Last Monday, Elder Jackson and I found a bull frog just hopping around in the street, doing whatever bull frogs do. We had some fun with it to say the least.  Elder Jackson is awesome, we get along great! He's a goof ball haha and big ups to him for losing almost 100 pounds in the mission field.

Both Tuesday and Wednesday were some of those days where you have a great day planned and everything is going to be good...and then the whole day falls through. Kind of rough but that's just how it goes sometimes. Days like those definitely keep us humble haha.

Thursday was the exact opposite of Tuesday and Wednesday. It was super great! We got a ton of work done. We have started meeting with members of the ward to get to know them better and to get the member work going here. Sister Harrison fed us some curry chicken back which was awesome. She also asked us to help her prepare for a Sunday School class she was going to be teaching on Sunday about the Sabbath Day. It was cool to see her mind enlightened. We started talking about it, and then she just connected some dots herself and then bam. She is now a Sabbath pro.

We got pizza on Friday for lunch. It's nice to be in a civilized community with so many luxuries haha. No hard feelings about Yallahs, but there's actually places to eat and real grocery stores here! So later on Friday, Elder Jackson and I were riding down the road and as we passed this random dude, he just yells, "UTAH JAZZ!"  We had to stop our bikes and catch our breath because we were laughing so hard. Out of all the things people have yelled at us, that might have been the most creative one.

Anyway, we have been playing ball each Saturday morning with the rest of the district, but as we were leaving our house, we saw a little puppy that had been ran over by a car, that was pretty sad. What was even worse was what Elder Jackson and I saw later that evening - other dogs in the area had been eating some of the insides of the puppy.  The only part they wouldn't touch is the head, so that was just like in the grass off to the side... super gross. That's definitely up there on my top 10 most disgusting things I've ever seen. I probably should put some parental advisory on this part haha but I guess it's too late now, sorry.

Sunday was average. Sister Harrison bigged us up a ton during Sunday School for helping her with teaching. Not sure we deserved that but cool. We continued laying a foundation for member-missionary work in Spanish Town. It's going to be really good for us and for future missionaries who serve here, but, more importantly, it will be good for people to hear the gospel! 

We actually got fed Sunday night by a recent convert and It was the most elegant meal I've had here so far haha. We had like an actual table and chairs to sit on, we had glass plates and dessert and everything. It was crazy haha. I freaking love rice and peas though, I'm trying to learn how to make it. Everyone here says it's not hard.  Rice and peas is actually rice with kidney beans – Elder Graham conveniently forgets the days when he used to pick the kidney beans out of any meal that included them…

Not sure what we're doing today, we'll probably just tag along with whatever the zone leaders are going to do. 

Miss you guys!

Nuff love

Elder Graham 

Our house in Spanish Town

Elder Ostrowski just sent me this pic of
when we ran into my cousin, Sierra in the MTC!
She's serving in the Taiwan Taichung Mission