Learning to deal with Failures

Milk!!!! (Mostly the memories of it) This week eating me frosted flakes with powdered milk I was thinking about all the milk drinking contests my sister Emily, my dad and I would have back in the day. Dad would always drink slow so one of us could win but ruthless 8 year old emily would never let me win. Just kidding, haha. American milk is different than both the powdered and cartoned milk here, a common missionary complaint.

This week felt better than last week. I dont know why but last week just felt kind of depressing even though it was a decent week. This week was a little rough only a few days felt bad. So Thursday I was on exchanges? I forget the english word since we either speak spanish or spainglish. My Dominican district leader came to see who are investigators with baptismal dates/goals are. The reason I say goals are  because we often set dates as our goal with investigators and try to fet them to work towards it. Patricia the thirty year old lady said she wanted to get baptized but her husband wasnt that interested and so she was preocupied with that. We shared with her and things were looking up. We shared with Cristofer and had a good lesson on th e word of wisdom and he doesnt have any problems with it. I want to work with him on the music he listens to though because he likes english rap music like Chris Brown and he likes to put it on and rap with Elder Jeppesen what a tigre (dilinquent) haha. That night we had our mission meeting with our super great branch mission leader and we also shared with Leuri the 10 year old. I was super excited with the goals we had and to start working on getting leuris mom to get back into th elessons and with patricias success and cristofer. Back at home and from that point this week got a little hard. My district leader told me to call President to get an interview with Cristofer since he is a minor. I called and President seemed really tired and stressed. In person he is smiley and happy and a super nice guy but over the phone he seems like a different person. To sum up the phone call I was told that we cant baptize cristofer since even though his dad and step mom are members, because he lives with his mom and step dad he needs the interview but he doesnt want to give it until we try harder to get the family taking the lessons. It was kind of a rough call and I felt a little discouraged. 

Elder Jeppesen, Cristofer and me

I also found out Patricia wasn't married and a few days later she started college and told us she can't share anymore. Angelina and Luis arent progressing even though they love when we come over which is heartbreaking. The young girls and cousin Marelyn and Heydi are minors with inactive mothers and we need to work on reactivation. On Sunday Leo came to church which just makes me chuckle. He always says he is to busy to take the lessons but he has been coming to church for months straight. The people we have lessons with we cant get to church and the people who come to church we can’t get lessons with. Heydi´s mom came to church and so did the two girls. It’s a good start. It is really special that even though the dad stopped taking the lessons that both he and the mom want to support their daughter in her decision and so they continue to take the lessons and went to church. 

We need to find some more/new people to share with which is always a challenge and something I’m not good at as of right now. Contacting/door to door knocking (we yell Saludos or greetings at everyone’s front gate since the front doors are always open) is not my strong point and I don’t know why but I get almost a little scared. I think my childhood shyness and fear of people has stuck with me because I have to work hard to have the courage to contact. I think we all before our missions thought that we would always have courage and plenty of people to teach but it’s not like that. 

We got a great reference the other day! A member gave us the name of a friend and a general direction and house color. We found Miriam and Anthony who actually were taking the lessons from sister missionaries two years ago. They seem to have interest and like all of us, great potential to be something more. I’m pretty comfortable with my Spanish now and talking with them and others is fun. The hard part is first meeting people and then getting people to act.

Dominican haircut "tapered sideburns" are really completely shaved off sideburns

Some fun things that happened this week. I got a haircut that looks super Dominican with tapered side burns and straight cut bangs. I don’t know if it’s just me being paranoid, but I think my hairline is receding ha! One of the Hermanas bought Jeppesen some taco bell Baja Blast Mountain Dews. We were watching the New Testament instruction videos and the actor that plays Harvey Dent in Batman is in it! Turns out he used to be lds. Lots of the members are Tabaqueros or cigar makers even though they keep the word of wisdom. They try to find better jobs but here in Tamboril, it’s the biggest job group. There are fruity cigars that smell like tutty fruity candy that actually kinda smell really good. One of the teenagers of the branch and Cristopher want to follow me on facebook and instagram so maybe Josh could get on and accept those. Also if you guys could send me my priesthood lineage. 

We had a zone meeting and training the other day and I really liked one of the training. It was about failing successfully. We are destined to fall short but this helps us to progress. There are three ways to fail and we should always do our best to be perfect but when we do fall short fail in a good way. You can fail from: 

1. A lack of preparation. Bad failure where you could have avoided it.

2. Inevitable failures. Many times other peoples agency causes stress or problems for us that we cannot avoid. These we should learn to manage and control how it affects us.  

3. Failing at the goals or things that push our limits. It’s the things like trying new things which we obviously wont be perfect at, or setting higher goals and stretching our limits

We may not want to fail, but it will happen eventually, but that isn’t a bad thing. We have help and support if we do the right things and have a bigger perspective. If something is within our control, it’s worthy of our effort. The wonderful and perfect gospel of Christ is a gospel of growth. A gospel of changing to become something better. I know God loves us. Jesus is the Christ. I know that if we sincerely work hard to meet our desire to be better we will become what He needs us to be. Light always defeats darkness.  

I’m worried for transfers next week since anything could happen and I feel like something big could happen, but I hope that whatever happens that the missionaries who will be here can help the area even more than we could this transfer. 

Que clase de hombres deben ser? Aun como yo soy. -Cristo

Seamos verdaderos representantes de Cristo

Al final esta equipo va a ganar. -Presidente Castillo

Translation: What kind of men they should be? Even as I am. -Christ

Let us be true representatives of Christ

Ultimately, this team will win – President Castillo (D.R. Mission Pres.)