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.