Tuesday, January 6, 2015

My New Dominican Haircut

Family,

This week was a really good one!  I'll put a few things that don't need much explanation down in a list:

·  I ate a lot more tamales.  I was sick of them, but the ones I ate this week were good, so it was alright.
·  I played hot potato with a member family during a family home evening, and when you got stuck with the potato (se quemo!), you had to answer a random gospel question.  The questions they had to answer were things like: "Who is the prophet today?" and "Who came to see Jesus when he was born?", while the questions I got were: "When was the Kirtland temple built?" and "Quote a scripture (in Spanish) from memory from the book of Acts."  (which really isn't even a question...)  But it was fun.
·  Elder Elbaba and I won a street-soccer tournament in a trailer park.  Pretty good 20 minute finding opportunity.
·  While we were teaching a lesson, a random wild street-cat ran into the house.  The parents watched it run in, looked at each other, then just turned their attention back to us and acted like it didn't even happen.  So we kept on teaching, and right before we were about to leave their little boy saw the cat a started crying and freaking out.  So we left the house in chaos with a rabid (I don't actually know if it was rabid or not) street-cat running all over the place and a little boy screaming at the top of his lungs for his parents to get it out.  And the parents were still sitting there like nothing happened.
·  It rained super hard, and a lake appeared in the parking lot of the apartment complex of one of our members.  The mini-lake was so deep that it covered the engine of a car and the owner of the car couldn't start it.  So we helped get it out.  
I ended up explaining a little bit more with each of those than I planned on.

This week we focused really heavily on getting people to church.  By Saturday night we had 8 people committed to come the next morning.  Everything fell through Sunday morning, and only 1 of them ended up coming.  It was probably the hardest I've worked to get people to church, and it almost all fell apart.  We were super disappointed.  After church we had nothing set up, and we were pretty discouraged, but we decided to just go out anyways and keep working.  We tried a lot of people, and caught no one at home.  We tried one potential, and he was about to leave, but he invited us in to talk to his parents.  We started talking with them and found out that they had met with missionaries before and that they had missed having them come by.  We talked to them about the Holy Ghost and how it feels, and the Dad told us that since the moment we had set foot in his house he had been able to feel the feelings we described.  He told us that the message we shared was exactly what him and his family needed right now and that we had come at the perfect time.  It was a very spiritual experience.  I know that the Lord will help us.  Sometimes it seems like everything has fallen apart and that there's no hope, but He has promised us His help.  Sometimes He waits to help us so as to test our faith, but if we are willing to push on a little further and trust in His promises, the miracle will come.

I know that this is the work of the Lord.  I know it more every day.  I know it more every time I read in the Book of Mormon and feel the Spirit testify to me that it is true, that it is from God.  I'm so grateful for the opportunity I have to be a missionary and to share this message with those around me.

Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Foote

P.S.  I got a haircut this morning at a Dominican barbershop here in Hamilton.  It was the most professional haircut I've ever had.  It's a little shorter on the sides than I usually go, but the Dominican guy who did it just kind of went for it, so it is what it is...
Elder Foote's Dominican Haircut
Ohio, Cincinnati Missionaries From Eagle Mountain
Elder Foote and Elder Elbaba at Dinner
Mini Lake Caused by a Rain Storm
Elder Foote's New Years Package