Great week, just like every week!

Love you more than... OUR FIRST REAL RAIN.

There is some tropical storm that just got here and today it started to rain. It feels great to have like 70 degree weather instead of the usual 100 or whatever it is with humidity. 

This was a great week, just like every week!

We cleaned out our ancient area books this week to help more with actually having contacts for lessons and people to teach. We compiled our three books into two books and we now call the them the new and old testaments, haha. They don´t actually have a lot to use in them. But I guess most missionaries don’t want to do paperwork, so we still have a lot of work ahead to do for finding all the inactive members here and possible investigators. Please tell other missionaries/future missionaries to do their area books, it may seem like a pain but it helps a lot when an area gets white-washed. We also had a special training with an ex-president´s assistant named Elder Dastrup, who used to play with all the super star basketball players at Lone Peak High School. He has one transfer left, so it was great to get his help and advice on what we should be doing. He is someone that I  hope I can become like.

As far as investigators go, we found this golden investigator in typical missionary miracle fashion - at the end of a dirt road, at the end of a long day. His name is Alecs and his family met with missionaries once so he had a pamphlet, which he said he read before we even came to teach the first lesson. A real cool guy. One of our investigators with a baptismal date is progressing more. She is fourteen but has difficulties with alcohol and probably with her 28 year old boyfriend, but she hasn´t been drinking since we gave her the word of wisdom lesson. Hermano/Grandpa Blanco´s wife passed away this week. She was really frail and sickly and weak, but it was still sad. But he seems to be doing alright.

Hermano Blanco

Food wise things have been interesting haha. Elder Coombs and I have trouble keeping money I guess so we are eating cereal, ramen noodles and hotdogs. However our gas stove ran out of gas, so we can´t really do that either haha. 

Cooking dinner without any gas for our stove

Ramen noodles and hot dogs for dinner

I have some money, but it´ll be nice when we get our apoyo (money) this next week. One night we did eat birthday cake with an investigator. It was made with like marshmallow frosting stuff, which was super good but sweet. I think each slice I had, had enough calories for a weeks work of our walking.

Dad, if you want to know more about my mission and companion Elder Coombs, he is a mix between: Tin Tin from that one movie, Ron Weasley from Harry Potter and the panda from Kung Fu Panda. He is really nice and innocent. I went on exchanges with Elder Verde who is the other trainer who lives in our house. I was kind of nervous because he likes to do things different than Elder Coombs and its kind of hard to understand his gangster Spanish from Honduras. It turned out great and I gained a lot of confidence in myself as well. We had a two-week reunion/training in Santiago which was great. I love our president. He is really spiritual and loving and has funny jokes. I loved seeing my group from the MTC, everyone seems to be doing great. One of the elders had dangue fever somehow. But he got better super fast as well (must be because he and his companion are Polynesian), love those guys. Oh and there’s this store exactly like Costco and so the Mission President got us amazing pizza.

 

Picking fresh Guiaba

Also HAPPY BIRTHDAY AND ANNIVERSARY TO MOM DAD SAMUEL AND JOSHUA. Sorry it’s late, but I was trying to get pictures of what I would send you if I could, sadly I couldn´t even get pictures. Samuel, I would get you a Super Gato motorcycle, with pink underglow like the one I saw the other night, you need to google that. Josh you get the sweet/scary driving skills of Dominicans and the car that I saw do a burn out and fly down the main road. Please take care of the jeep. Mom and Dad all I have for you is my love and thanks. I don´t think you could of done any better preparing me for this with my stubbornness and thick head. All the time I´ll think about how you prepared me to handle the certain situation I’m in. I wish you could understand it though this email, but I don´t think I could even express my gratitude if I was there with you right now. Big bear hug and a sloppy jalopy kiss on the cheek.

 Samuel and Jacob I found your Dominican twins- Leonardo and gabriel. Oh I was reading though some Liahonas in my house and I found an old picture of me and Sam Turpin, Alex Benitez, Abbie Lund and Brother Reed, the seminary teacher, that we took back in sophomore year for a church thing. It was the April 2014 Liahona though, kinda cool. Movie quote this week: "Stop it , I mean it! Anybody have a peanut?"

Found this 2014 Liahona in our house with my picture (of the back of my head)

Spiritual thought is about what happens after this life. It is interesting how we will kind of judge ourselves if we are worthy to enter into the presence of our father. Just like how our conscience/the Light of Christ makes us feel guilty when we do something we shouldn’t have, when we arrive at the gates of heaven we will have a perfect knowledge and remembrance of what we did on earth. We will feel so guilty of our sins that we will not want to live in the presence of father. The key is to be willing to repent now and work to be better. Never think you cannot make it through a struggle or life. We are not measured by the amount but by the effort. I testify of this in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

--

Elder Andrew W. Sheffield

            

I actually have two areas - Dajabon and Carbonera

My Mission President and his wife
Presidenté and Hermana Castillo

Love you more than…. Strawberry popsicles!

I bought myself one for my one week anniversary. It tasted like strawberry jam on a popsicle stick, reminds me of good old strawberry jam on moms fresh bread- yum!

So this week kind of went by slow, mainly just because it feels like I’ve been doing this for years already. I don’t know the language or the area or anything super well but it doesn’t seem like there is anything else I could see myself doing right now.

For starters, some cool and funny things. There are little lizards that crawl on all the walls of everyones houses, and they get me distracted when we go to teach people, because I try to think of ways to catch them and show the boys. I also really like seeing jeeps. So far I’ve seen a jeep from the 50’s, a pickup truck jeep (Comanche), some wranglers like the wrights down the street have and then some new Jeep Grand Cherokee’s. It always makes me smile seeing these pieces of home here. Amerika!! 

The motorcycles here are small but id love to have one like them back home. I found a “Saturdays Warrior” cd at our house which is great. One of our members named Hermano Blanco reminds me of Grandpa Anderson, Ill try to get a picture sometime. There is this family that reminds me of ours who raises chickens but these are for cock-fights. Also one of the girls likes to fight like the boys do. My bag wasn’t that good and looks like Frankenstien with all the sewing I’ve had to do to hold it together. I think I’ll have to get a new one soon with my credit card.

 

The view from the internet place we email from

More about my area. My companion, Elder Coombs, and I actually have two areas, Dajabon and Carbonera. Both of these we are whitewashing (serving in an area that has not had missionaries before) so there is a lot of work to be done. Both areas have a lot of menos activos (less active) which we are going to reactivate and get them to invite friends to meet with us. But for now, its mostly walking around most of the day doing sweaty contacting.

Everyone here talks soooo fast. As far as understanding goes, from easiest to hardest: gringo spanish, mexican spanish, dominican spanish and finally our branch presidents Spanish, haha. The people speed through words and mumble, especially the branch president. Also when you ask people to repeat themselves they don’t slow down but say it exactly the same, good thing people here are so nice.

We did some service like painting the inside of this ladies house and grinding up corn for a member to make bread. Hard work, but they fed us the traditional chicken, rice, a salad thing and a soda and then spaghetti. It is a little weird but spaghetti seems to be pretty common dish here. For our own meals we don’t know how to make a lot so we keep it simple with oatmeal, cereal, hamburgers, hotdogs, tacos and fried plantains.

We went to the Mercado (market) also which was crazy. Imagine a warehouse full of sweaty people shouting in Creol or French if you’re Haitian, Spanish if your Dominican and then English if your me. Everyone is trying to sell stuff and buy stuff and get good deals. I got a tie for like an American 75 cents.

My bed in the room, with authentic Dominican sheets, because I forgot to bring some from home.

Little bits about each day this week. Elder Rojas and Elder Verde who we live with, had baptized a little boy named Gerson (or Harrison) this week. I gave a five minute testimony/talk in church which was decent. We visited this sketchy hospital and gave a little girl a blessing. We, (I used one of my memorized phrases) challenged two girls with baptism and we have dates with them in September, which means we have Yaritsa, Maria Jose and Dios Mari who have dates for September. This is great but the challenge is making these investigators solid members who won’t go inactive. It is sad to see so many people who are inactive here. I’ve heard this mission called a baptizing mission, but one that needs a lot of work with reactivation. We tried to hitchhike the other night to get home from our second area. We couldn’t get any cars or trucks to stop so my companion kind of made me get on a motorcycle taxi or “motoconcho” with him and the driver. Its okay in some areas but I don’t think it’s allowed in that area, which made me feel guilty. But it did feel nice to have the wind in my face and to look at all the stars. We decided that that will be our last time riding on the squished motorcycle in that area.

For my spiritual moment I want to share a scripture from second Nephi. You’ll have to look it up for yourselves, but it is about acting or being acted upon. Just like cars or birds or airplanes, we were made for a special purpose of going somewhere. We are meant to act, to improve, to move forward. This life is a time not to be acted upon, but to act for ourselves. Making mistakes is part of the process are acting. Acting doesn’t mean being perfect but to do, to work hard and get better. I have two years to act on my mission and we all have the rest of our lives to act, do something with yourself. Do what we were sent here to do.

P.S. a few questions/requests: send some recipes for how to make foods!!!, like simple stuff and rice to. If anybody has questions about packages send them through DHL. I haven’t gotten my new personal card, but when I do what is the pin and what do I do with the old/my current card. 

Movie quote: I love kung fuu!!!!!!!

Thanks for the emails, with all my love

--

Elder Andrew W. Sheffield

I am in my first area!

Love you more than....

Pollo Fritas!! Otherwise known as chicken strips and fried plantains. Its my first real meal out here in the field.

Holy cow I hardly know what to write about this week since I’m now in the field. I guess I’ll just start from the beginning. 

So for splits last week I was nervous again but I kind of realized I just had to suck it up. I was with an Elder Obrien from the field and then an Elder Hunt from the CCM. I am proud to say that while I am not fluent yet, nor will be for another 8 months, that I was pretty comfortable with how I did. We did all contacting pretty much. One of the houses we went to we kind of gave the first lesson to this Catholic lady. I started talking and then passed it off to the others and when I got it back, I shared the first vision. Holy cow! I was sweating so bad, I was doing pretty well and feeling the spirit, but then I had a Peter (lack of faith or beginning to fear) moment. I got a little worried, and then missed a few words and the spirit wasn’t as strong. I powered through it and it turned out to be a pretty good lesson and a great learning experience.

Hermana Keith and I showing off our Captain America shirts

I can't help it... I keep breaking the mission rules ;)

The next few days in the CCM we kind of wasted on writing goodbyes in journals and taking pictures. I for sure like all that stuff, but this isn’t my time. I’m going miss the CCM. I am so grateful to Hermana Romney, who put music back on my Ipod including Sons of Provo stuff, and I love Presidente. I will also miss the hamburger and brownie night as well as intense fuseball games, where I beat Elder Wayman and I will miss street soccer with the sprinklers spraying us.

 

"Hamburger night" at the CCM (MTC)

Oh by the way we heard Nick Jonas performing at the park last week. I guess he was having a concert in our park or the park of lights. We went outside for a little bit and heard all the screaming and him singing that one song "I want somebody to love me for who I am" Cool stuff. 

On a similar topic our district decided if I was a disney character, I would be Flynn Rider, the smolder and everything. The last day in the CCM was spent entirely on in-field orientation and was kind of long and boring. We said goodbye to the rest of the missionaries in the CCM and then packed our bags until late in the night. 

The Santiago Group

The next morning we woke up at 5:30am, put our stuff in a van and ate breakfast. I said my last goodbyes to Hermana Romney, Elder Ourth and Elder Wayman. The 8 of us elders and 4 Hermanas going to Santiago took a van to the bus station and then a bus for 3 hours to Santiago. At the bus station we were met by President and Hermana Castillo and the office missionaries. I really like Presidente since the first encounter where he laughed a lot and gave us these big bear hugs.

We then went to Presidente’s big house and had another orientation all day long. I had my interview with Presidente where I understood a lot actually. I got assigned to my companion and area. 

I’m serving right next to the Haitian border in a place called Dajabon which is supposed to be really hot and like a really rural area. My trainer is named Elder Coombs from Texas. My CCM roommate Elder Rojas will be in the same house with me and my companion with his companion Elder Verde. What are the odds that Elder Rojas/red would be serving with Elder Verde/green.

 

Home sweet home and Elder Coombs

Today/Wednesday/my new p-day started off with us gathering at a Caribe tours bus station. I went with one of the APs, Elder Dastrup, in one of the mission trucks and picked up some of the Hermanas. He was a cool guy but a crazier driver than most of the natives. All eight of us crammed into the five person truck and went back to the bus station. When we got there, I met my trainer Elder Coombs. I really like him so far. He’s a “ginger” from Texas and he’s been here for 8 months now. He is district leader and we are white washing the area and I’m his first son, or the first missionary he has ever trained, so we will be figuring all this out together. We got on the bus with Hermana Rire & her trainer and Elder Rojas & his trainer Elder Verde. We are up in the northwest part of the country where its pretty tranquil compared to Santiago and Santo Domingo. 

The shortest my hair has ever been

Elder Coombs has had some tigres (or rebels) as companions, so our goal is to be really obedient. I got a quick tour around the house, we walked to a resturant or a garage looking building had lunch and now we are here emailing. I’m really excited to serve and do what the president challeged us new missionaries to do -place the Book of Mormon.

Spiritual thought this week is that we should always be obedient. There may be no control over anything in your life except for how you act, so being obedient is the most important things we can do in life. Obedience is the first law of heaven and the first law of everything. Perfect obedience doesn’t bring perfect days or easy times, but it brings perfect knowledge and increased growth. I know that if we follow the words of the living prophet and the promptings of the holy ghost with perfectness,  we will have such a better life. I know that because our savior Jesus Christ was perfect in his obedience that we can live with our families with our Father in Heaven forever.

"Kia kahaw" (forever strong)   

--  

Elder Andrew W. Sheffield