Service with a smile

Love you more than…Homemade crepes!!

Made them this morning and even though I found out I'm terrible at flipping them and putting the stove at a good temperature, it was great. Brought back memories of general conference mornings when we'd all be waiting, with conference on the t.v. and eating crepes or waffles in the kitchen.

 

Service with a smile

Another email, and I have to say that I don't know what to write. I thought I'd grow out of this by now. So yes, I have three months in the mission! I'm also proud to say that I haven't been sick this whole time, probably from all those days choking on lake water while water skiing haha, but hey so far I think I'm immune. Some cool stuff that happened this week were a service project we did for a menos activo. We cut down banna/gineo trees with machetes and then planted the roots again. 

Using a machete to cut Banna trees

Elder Coombs has some admirers in the branch, which is funny for me, but could be difficult if it progresses. We are continually finding menos activos as we do street contacting and then after a few minutes of talking with them, they're like “hey I'm a member by the way” haha.

 

This week's summary: We have a few really promising investigators, some newly found menos activos that like us a lot (one lady gave us juice, fritos/fried platanos, spaghetti and jello; a miracle) and a ward mission leader now! Also this Sunday we had the normal amount of people show up for church. Lots of them were investigators and menos activos. Also frammi was finally able to get confirmed. I went on my third entercambio in three weeks with our new zone leader from Idaho. He is kind of like your stereo-typical jock, but he's a good guy. I was nervous because I had to take him to our less good area in Carbonera, but it was a better day than normal! Lately I've been feeling like I don't get to talk a lot in our lecture, like lessons, but this week we improved a lot in our simple but powerful lessons, and I've talked a lot more, with more success.

A few other things from our week. We sing hymn number 153 “Oid el Toque del Clarin” like every sunday so I almost have it memorized. We have had some amazing first few lessons with a boy named Jeffri/Yeffri and Jean Carlos. The zone leaders gave us mangos. Maria Jose is trying to make us fat off of club crackers and Dominican brand coke and it rained yesterday so me and Elder Coombs thought about skipping down the street at 9:00 singing “Singing in the Rain” haha But we didn’t.

 

Singing in the rain

I'm 99% sure we will watch conference in English but you never know. I'm super excited even though that much English will probably destroy my Spanish haha. I think we'll see it delayed, not sure. We will get an English and Spanish copy of the talks like the other monthly Liahona's so don't worry about sending me one.

Made applesauce popsicles

Sounds like you guys are doing great! Samuel keep up the work with basketball, Jacob take care of your pets and learn to be a vet, Joshua stop growing. Mom be careful how much you work-out, I feel like I'm getting skinny in the arms and getting a little chubby rice/dominican belly and I can't have my mom be stronger than I am! Dad you are my hero.

For a spiritual message I want to share a few things. We found the amazing kid Jeffri/Yeffri when looking for a contact. I didn't expect much since it was this small wood house behind two others and these two adults who just stared at us the whole time. As we talked and when we shared the second time, I realized how special this was. Jeffri is 14 and really quiet, but with a lot of spiritual knowledge and a great heart. He really listens and wants to know more. His father works in the military and his mom hasn't said more than a few words to us, but I know they are prepared for progression. Gold is found by sifting through the dirty silt in rivers. Yeffri is gold not because he is perfect but because he has the desire. Physical wealth, and especially spiritual wealth comes from the desire to do more. This desire coupled with prayer is priceless. Prayer is literal communication with the Being that created and knows everything. If you say you don't have time to pray, you really just say you don't want to be better; to progress. Please pray. Pray about everything. Father is there for you and me. I know it, and you guys need to know it to.

Con todo de mi gringo corazón (with all my gringo heart)

Elder Sheffield

Our zone is being re-organized

Arrived 23 sep 2015

Love you more than….Homemade mashed potatoes and gravy!! I made them for Sunday dinner, classic huh? It was great and even though I had to use hot dogs instead of roast beef and clumpy gravy. It was super good! Kinda funny that just a few days later I would get those gravy packets you guys sent, haha. I’m gonna save them for super special Sunday dinner sometime.

My version of Sunday Dinner

I never know what to say in emails, and I probably say that every week but it's true. starting with responses/stuff for the fam. Samuel I'm jealous that you're so good at football, I only played one year and I wasn't that great. I have to agree with you, special teams isn't as fun as defense. Keep working and soon you'll be playing for BYU. Jacob you sound like such a stud muffin in your soccer games, I hope you don't grow up so much that you can beat me at soccer in a few years! Joshua some tips for you in high school are never stay home, I did a lot and I regret it. You better use your time wisely, it goes fast. (Mom make him have fun and invite people over ;) ) Emily it sounds like school is getting a little less complicated but is still as much fun. Keep working on guitar so we can make a band someday, ya? Grumpy gills and Neigh: world tour hahaha. Mom your letters and the talks you sent me make me so proud to be your son. I look back and think of all the times I was difficult and I'm sorry. Families here aren't very stable and I am so very grateful everyday for  how hard you work for me and the rest of us. Dad - you as well. It amazes me how something simple like "I love you Elder Sheffield" or “From mom and Dad" gets me to tear up, every time. Dad, thank you for your example and the advice you give me, I'm so glad you're my dad and I think about the times you'd get home from a tough day at work but you'd come in the door and I could run and jump into your arms. 

Thanks for the new bag!!! I feel so spoiled with pounds of candy and a fancy bag with a thousand secret pockets. I use the little bag for p-day and loved it, the big bag I'm saving until the old one falls apart, "use it up, wear it out" Special thanks to Jacob's note in the bag. I am glad you say that you want to be like me because I feel like I kinda failed sometimes at being the best “older” brother. I started tearing up again reading the note, love you boys so much.

Elder Coombs and me

Reactivation is starting to get better. We have found and are finding more and more of the many menos activos. I sometimes just wish people would have the desire; just the desire for change though. In answer to questions about the house we live in. We almost always have electricity and water and heat. We really have a nicer house than most missionaries. 

This week in the mission, I thought would be a normal week, but I've come to except the fact that there is no such thing in this extra-ordinary work. I went on intercambios (exchanges) with a hero of mine, zone leader Elder Whitworth from California. He has a few transfers left, so he is like my mission great-grandpa or something in mission slang. He came to our area and I took him to our lessons. Normally I would’ve gone to his area and he would’ve had the main job of teaching but he had to interview our two baptism candidates and so he came and the pressure was on me. I only got lost once and the people we taught, could understand me, I think haha. Elder Whitworth says I have the gift of tongues. I learned a lot that day and we celebrated with cookies when Frammy and Maria Jose were declared ready for baptism. Maria says american chocolate chip cookies are ugly but delicious. 

Cleaning for the baptism

Preparing these two for the baptism

A better picture of the Baptism (Elder Thornear, in the middle, is the Elder
that began the teaching)

We had a zone meeting in Navarette with Elder Zivic from the First Quorum of the Seventy and Second Counselor in our area presidency. I learned a lot from his wise words from being a apostle and mission president in Spain etc. We are focused and teaching with more clarity, simplicity and the power of the spirit. Saturday we spent working out all the little problems to get ready for the baptism, it was a busy but good day. Elder Thorner who is now home haha came up and did the baptisms at Frammi and Maria’s request. He was the elder that began teaching him and it was his first and last baptism. Elder Coombs and I are working hard to keep up with the mission standards. We have a list of menos activos and more members are offering to come with us places. Members are a big part in the work and help a lot when you are whitewashing. We got to eat at a few members houses and I was filled on this rare occasion, lots of yuca (kind of like boiled potatoes) and the milky rich avena con leche (oatmeal, cinnamon rice drink) The food was good but as always hot and so we were sweating and trudging to our next lessons with that sluggish feeling of a bursting stomach haha. Our zone is being reorganized with this new transfer, one of my favorite elders, Elder de Leon is leaving as well as our other zone leader Elder Rodriguez. 

Our old zone minus Elder Rojos and Elder Verde

Or new zone will be almost all gringos and everyone but the zone leaders with be training, pretty exciting. Today for p-day we celebrated the first completed transfer with empenadas from a street cart (amazing) and some of the sour gummy worms you sent from the states. I cleaned the kitchen and did laundry. The best part is now, writing and reading those amazing talks mom sent. Wowowow are those amazing. Thank you. 

Empanada and Taque (ball of fried rice)

Spiritual thought. I'm going to redo the talk mom sent me from Elder Holland called “Remember Lot's Wife”. I love how the message is about change. Change for the better is the meaning of life. Our purpose is to use the atonement and gifts we have been given from God, to work on BEING better. (Be is better than do from the other talk mom sent called “What manner of men ought ye to be”) We can never check off being something, like we can on our to-do list. WE are to be better every day, so then why do we so often focus on the past? To grasp on to the past and resist change, is to distract us from our Heavenly Father’s plan. The road to heaven requires change, but gives improvements to everything. We remember the past just enough to not make the same mistakes and to realize that no matter how happy we might have been, there is and always will be something greater; living as eternal families with our Father.

Thanks for the love, support, jokes, quotes, support, pictures, everything. I'm lucky to have you all in my life.

-- 

Elder Andrew W. Sheffield

Personal Purposes

Arrived Sept 16 2015

Love you more than…The ocean breeze!

Over the past ten days, I’ve got to travel to both sides of the country and visit the ocean both places. My area, Dajabon stays around 90 degrees Fahrenheit day and night, not including humidity. We are here in the hottest part of the country. So when we visited the beaches and felt the breeze, it felt like heaven!

 

Typical colmado (grocery store) shack

I write from an Internet building, like an internet cafe thing. We normally go home for lunch which we typically eat American spaghetti, hot dogs, ramen noodles, omelets or oatmeal. These may not be super good or healthy but its fast and we are learning to cook other things right now.

 

Our area of Carbonera where we serve

Thanks for the bag/package, I haven't gotten it yet, but thanks for the concern. The oil container isn't that important since I have a bottle. It’s just less convenient. 

I love hearing about how you guys are doing. I was praying that you’d have a great race mom and dad for his tests and the rest of the friends and family in general. Sounds like it won’t be long before Nate gets the real family joke of the army game hahaha - exciting. I’m a little jealous to hear about fall and cold weather, but I guess I’ll be bragging in a few months when it’s freezing.

It rained more this week in Dajabon than when it was a hurricane

This week was so crazy and packed full of stuff that it felt like a months worth of a mission in a week. Some funny/interesting things: Elder Coombs and I got asked for our passports from the DR border patrol and I thought we were going to get deported. I guess they thought we were Hatian,  just kidding- ha ha. I had to go to Santo Domingo to work on my Visa/Passport papers last Wednesday, so I spent around 12 hours sitting in the gua-gua/van and another 24 just sitting around doing nothing. It was long and boring and we didn’t eat a lot and I was with latinos I didn’t know the whole time, but it meant a lot of time to ponder, recuperate, learn Spanish and learn how to play the 2nd national sport of dominos. I met an Elder Tyler Skinner, or something like that, whose trainer was Ben Story from Ogden High to! Kinda cool how small the world is. 

My Spanish is actually pretty good. I sometimes feel super confident, sometimes a little discouraged but all in all, I have been complimented a few times by how far my Spanish has come this quickly. Prayer and fasting really do help. I know I wouldn’t be this far without it.

Heading to Santo Domingo with only Latinos I didn’t know for part of the way made me really nervous, I was praying that I'd be ok. I mean I would be with Elders the whole time so it couldn't have gone bad, but you kinda feel alone in the world when it happens. Anyways, I learned a lot and got close with some great elders. It boosted my confidence for the splits and proselyting we did during the time as well. I'm hoping to ride this confidence and get really good. 

Grew real close with Elder Verde, on our trip to Santo Domingo, and I love Elder de Leon

We had a few cooking lessons/appointments this week which I really enjoyed. I learned to make "la bandera" or the national dish of rice, chicken and beans. I also learned the other Dominican staple food of "E-spegetti rojo" or just their way of making spaghetti. 

cooking lessons= people making it for us and telling us what they put into it

The chicken we got from the neighbors house and it was as fresh as it comes haha. I enjoyed the chicken feet which is the weirdest food I've had so far. I'm going to practice the two dishes till I'm really good. We made cookies today from a recipe Emily sent me, they turned out really good. Thanks for the recipes you've sent me, hopefully I'll get more for other foods? :) I got a hair cut today and bought some instant mashed potatoes that I'm really excited to try.

 

The traditional dish of beans, chicken and rice
Bonus was chicken feet

As far as teaching goes, we kind of have a shortage. Since we are whitewashing and our branch is working on it's own strength and our area book wasn't the best, we have found ourselves teaching the same people and half of them are just menos activos. We are needing to find more people to teach, except it seems like nobody wants to hear us. How amazing it would be if people just wanted to hear it for themselves, that the gospel of Christ is once again on the earth. I am confident that we will grow these next couple weeks and get better at door-to-door contacting. There are two baptisms this week which is exciting. The other elder that began teaching them will be baptizing them but it is great to help the investigators progress with their goal of baptism. 

I love the Mangu or smashed potatoes with onion on top,
it reminds me of Sunday dinner with mashed potatoes
This was a special P-day treat to buy a meal from the bakery

 

The bakery where we bought Mangu

I never know what to say for a spiritual thought. I want it to be a part of my email, where I can try and help you guys, even from here in my mission, hopefully it helps. 

I was thinking about the idea of personal purposes. We taught a lesson to one of our menos activo families about grace and doing all that we can. We all are different personality wise or physically, so of course we are all different spiritually. We all have different things we are supposed to do in this life. Just because somebody has to work on something, or another is more successful in some certain things, it doesn't mean we aren't doing our part. The Lord gave each person a certain amount of abilities and only asks for them to work on progressing it; fulfilling their purpose. I wish we all understood more of our personal responsibilities in this life. I know we all have certain things that we should/must fulfill in this life. I hope we can all recognize what our personal purposes are and work harder on not being the best, but doing our best. Play your part and no matter how big or small it is, and there will be an equal result of eternal joy. Our goal is obtainable but it takes our all. 

"Did you not think there would be a price, it requires your all, for you to change. HE has called you and you cannot go back. IF you don’t, it will not only break my heart but His heart." -Elder Holland in MTC video/address

 

We stopped at the beach in Santo Domingo with everyone needing to get their papers

Love you , Elder Andrew W. Sheffield

We do have a stove and an oven but it doesn't have temperature readings. We made cookies which went well. Our super mercado karl store is like a small smith's so we do have stuff available to get, but some stuff is pretty expensive. Everything is cheap compared to US but our support money/apoyo takes into account cheap prices so we get 4,000 pesos every fifteen days, the equivalent to like 80 dollars or something like that for traveling and food.

We've had good days and bad days

"Monte Morro" We went as a zone for P-day

Love you more than…Arroz con leche (Rice with milk) It is kind of like oatmeal but it is sweat rice. An inactive member invited us over to teach us how to make it. It tastes good both hot and cold. I hope I can become really good at making it.

URGENT! Elder Coombs promised our investigators, that have baptismal dates, chocolate chip cookies but he doesn't know how to make it and I can't remember the measurements! Please send a recipe for easy cookies, even other cookie recipes would work.

Making juice

Cool stuff that happened this week! Elder Coombs and I have gotten a few appointments to learn how to cook from members, so we are excited for that. We have also been trying the different types of tang that the colmado/shack stores sell. Juice here is big! I tried a fruit called Jagua (Hog-wa) which I think is Emily's Indonesian stinky fruit, I couldn’t get the juice to taste good. 

Jagua and juice, which smelled weird and didn't taste good

The streets here don’t have signs, so street addresses are hard to find and house addresses like don’t exist. As far as I can find out, We live about four streets down from the main road. The bakery we like is on Calle Gaston just off of the mainstreet Calle Dulce de Jesus.

This week had a lot of great and difficult moments. We have gas and water and everything so don’t worry, it was only iffy for a few days. We are having great lessons with our three teenager baptismal candidates. I love Frammy because he is teaching me Spanish while I teach him English. He also likes the same music I do, imagine dragons, coldplay, taylor swift, its like a blessing. I also love the familia Rosa because even though we can’t get them to come back to church, they love to share with us and talk and laugh. The members are stepping up their game too. One girl just got back from her mission and came with us to teach us a few lessons and show us how it’s done. We had a lunch with a great old lady who makes my favorite guiaba juice. The branch is setting a goal to get a hundred steady strong families active by December which is definitely possible but will be work to get those less active/in-actives to come to church. The law of opposition is true. We had some great days, but then the next ones we couldn’t get anybody to share with. We went to everyone we knew one day and only had one lesson, besides contacting super hard. However enduring to the end is the way. Yesterday after all the failing lessons we finally had a lesson on the restoration with a man we’ve been trying to teach for a month. It was really spiritual, great, amazing and spiritual. Wow! Blessings come after our trials. 

 

Pan Dulce to celebrate 4 weeks in the field

Mom and Dad I've been praying for your guys' challenges; the bike race and the medical tests. Things will be great. You can do it! Si se puede! Yes you can! For the boys I saw a pick up truck drifting around corners the other day and thought about how I could picture you guys driving it.

 

Monte Morro

Part of my zone

For my spiritual thought it’s just about families. The basis for a good life is a family that loves each other and the key for a great life is a family that loves to live the gospel together. Keep working on reading scriptures together and praying together. 

Thanks for the love and support and the pictures and the funny quotes every week!

Love,

Elder Andrew W. Sheffield