#finding #grace #Spaniards

Family!

Super awesome week!  I'll tell you about it!

We had a ton of meetings this week, one of which was our mission zone conference.  It was one of the most powerful meetings I've been in on my mission.  We set a goal as a mission to reach 345 baptisms by June!  To help us reach that goal, we have another goal of baptizing 100 people in the month of March!  In this area of the U.S. the record for most baptisms that have ever happened in a month is 68, which we set last year.  So 100 is a huge stretch!  To help us get pumped for March, all this month we are participating in March madness: missionary style.  Every week we are competing with all of the other zones to see who can find the most new investigators, extend baptism the most times, have the most members present at lessons, or have the most people in church.  This week the focus was on new investigators.

We really focused hard as a Spanish zone, and at the end of the week we came in with 196 new investigators!  The previous record was 60 in a week!  As we really focused on working extremely hard and doing all we could to achieve our goals, we saw tons of miracles and we were accompanied by grace all week long.  It really helped me to see that there is always more we can do.  We can never get complacent.  This week helped me to realize that it is possible to accomplish more than we think we can as we rely on the Savior.

So here's some miracle (and other things):

·  We started meeting with a family of former investigators this week, and they are super prepared!  Their 10 year-old son loves reading so much that he has been reading by himself in the bible that previous missionaries left them and had questions for us about Enoch walking with God in Gen. 5!  They all accepted a baptismal date for March, and we're helping them work towards it!

·  We met with one of our newer Dominican investigators named Jr. and had a really good lesson.  I learned some Dominican slang, and we invited him to be baptized in March, which he accepted!  He came to church on Sunday (more to come in a bit).

·  One of our less-actives is one of the only members in his family, and he decided that it's time to have us teach the rest of his family.  So this week he's going to have his wife and all of his kids sit in on our lesson for the first time!

·  We extended baptism to 3 of the kids of an inactive member, and they all said that they really wanted to come to church and be baptized!  Later that week we went by with the branch president and talked with the Mom about returning to church.  The man she's living with also said that he would like to be baptized!

·  One of our appointments fell through, but immediately after they canceled we received a referral, which we contacted and turned into a new investigator!

·  Jr. (from before) came to soccer on Saturday, and he brought 2 of his friends with him!  His friends turned out to be from Spain (which is super rare...)!  After soccer we invited all of them to come to church the next day, and they all came!  They stayed for all 3 hours, participated in the classes, and loved it!  So now we're teaching some Spaniards!

So yeah, it was an amazing week!  The Lord is hastening His work, and I definitely saw that hastening happen this past week.  I am so amazed at how involved He is with us and with the people here.  I know that He loves us so much.  I know that we are all here at this time because we have the strength to make it through these difficult times and to help others around us come unto Christ.  I love this work so much, and I'm grateful every day to be a part of it.

Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Foote

¡Me enchilé! (AKA I got burned by a super hot pepper)

Family!

The saga continues.

We went to a less-active's house to eat one night this week.  They are Mexican, so they eat very hot food.  The local Kroger had a clearance on habanero chiles this last week.  This family bought the habaneros and put them on the table while we were eating.  The dad (like a true Mexican)  starting eating the habaneros like candy.  We decided that we have been out here so long that we are basically Mexicans as well.  We both did what the dad did.  We grabbed a habanero, braced ourselves, and ate it in one bite.  Instant pain.  After a few seconds my poor mouth couldn't take it anymore.  I had two options: spit the partially chewed chile onto my plate or swallow it.  I chose poorly.  It burned all the way down.  Within seconds my stomach was burning as the chile mixed with my stomach acids.  After a few minutes of trying various remedies to take away the burning in my mouth, it slowly began to subside.  There are few things in my life that I have regretted eating.  That habanero was one of them.  My quest to become Mexican continues.

I hope you enjoyed my epic story of the habanero chile.  

In other news, we had a very powerful lesson with one of the families we're teaching this week.  They have been meeting with missionaries for a long time, have come to church, read a bit of the Book of Mormon, and have had many powerful spiritual experiences confirming that this is the truth.  But they still aren't baptized.  We have been trying to help them get back into the habit of reading the Book of Mormon, but it seems as though whatever we say just doesn't stick with them.  Well, we brought a member with us to the lesson this week, and he was able to connect with them in a way we couldn't.  He told them the exact same things that we had been telling them, but this time it all seemed to make sense to them.  They expressed many concerns that they had never brought up before, and in the end they told us that the believed both the Book of Mormon and the church were true.  They just were afraid to take the leap of faith and leave their church.  We testified of the Book of Mormon and how God will answer us if we read it and then pray to know if it is true.  The Spirit was there strong.

This week Elder Elbaba had a meeting to go to as District Leader, so I got another day of English work!  It is really tough trying to not speak in Spanish all day long.  It's also weird doing English work in your same area.  We were in the same area I'm always in, but we were visiting different people.  It was pretty weird.

This week was stake conference.  It was a really great meeting.  One of my favorite things about it was the fact that I got to do part of the translation!  I got to wear the fancy headset and have my voice broadcast into the ear of all of the Spanish speakers in the congregation.  It was really hard because everyone spoke super fast and didn't quote the scriptures they used, but it was also really fun!

Recently I have begun to notice the Lord guiding me in preparing lessons for people that will help them with their specific challenges.  We visited a member family this week and had planned on sharing a short message about missionary work and the power of simple invitations.  I felt impressed to prepare a certain scripture for them, so I did.  As we talked with this family, one of the members told us of some of the difficult experiences she had had over the course of her life.  When the time came to share our message with them,  I opened up to the scripture I had prepared to share.  I found that the verse before it applied perfectly to this Sister, and we shared that scripture and applied it to her.  I know that the Lord truly guides His work and is conscious of each of us and our specific needs.

Hope you all have a great week!

Love,

Elder Foote

Elders Elbaba, Gunnoe and Foote

The Legacy Meeting

Family!

Here's the rundown of what happened this week...

·  I finally went to Jungle Jim's!  It's this huge store where they sell food from all around the world.  We bought a papaya for a less active.

·  We started having family home evenings with an awesome member family in our area.  They have a lot of goals to progress in the Gospel this year, so they have invited us to come and help them start doing regular family home evenings.

·  We helped a less active clear out some wood in her backyard, then as we were about to leave she asked us to translate for her at Kroger, so we went and did a little bit of translation.

·  We had a super cool meeting that they called the Legacy Meeting.  It was for all missionaries in the mission who have 6 months or less in the mission.  They held it because when our mission started, we got a ton of brand new missionaries and we were one of the youngest missions in the world experience-wise.  Now that almost 2 years has past, we are one of the oldest missions in the world experience-wise.  So the meeting was to help the nearly 130 of us who are leaving in the next 6 months to think of the legacy we want to leave behind for the coming generations of missionaries.  The Spirit was very strong in the meeting, and I'm very excited to see what happens with the work here in the next few months.

·  One of our investigators dropped us, but we also taught a lot of great families this week who are very interested.  It seems like a cycle that happens pretty regularly: as you lose investigators, you find new ones who are even more interested.  I believe that those who want to change their lives are definitely out there!

·  We went over to an investigator's house and he was trying to put a new door on one of the door frames.  We tried to help him, but he was dead set on doing it his way, even though he had no clue what he was doing.  It was pretty funny.

·  We met a lady named Ricarda this week.  We tried to figure out what that name would be in English, and the best thing we could think of was Richardette...

·  We had three baptisms in the branch this week!  One investigator of the other Elders, and two little boys from member families.

·  We had branch conference yesterday.  I got to translate for the stake guy who sat in on Elder's quorum.  It was kind of difficult because I would translate some American-Spanish, then some Colombian-Spanish, then some Dominican-Spanish, then some Guatemalan-Spanish, and so on.

·  We had 100 people in sacrament meeting yesterday!  The week before we had 108, which we found out is the branch record!  The branch is growing!

·  I met my first person from Spain!!!!  I've almost met someone from every Spanish-speaking country!!

That's about it!  Hope you all have a great week!  Happy late birthday Dad!

Love,

Elder Foote

Elder Foote at Church

Elder Foote and an Investigator

Refrigerated Dominican Mondongo

Mondongo After Being Heated in the Microwave

Mondongo Before the Microwave

Elder Elbaba, Elder Foote's Companion

Hamilton: My third home.

Family!

I am writing you from a library here in the Hamilton/Fairfield area to tell you that I will staying here for another transfer!  That's right, here comes transfer 3 in the Hammy town.  And Elder Elbaba is staying too!  That means this will be our 5th transfer together!  Almost every Spanish missionary is staying in their areas this transfer.  Elder Taylor is going home, his last companion is leaving Dayton 2, and Elder Bradford is leaving Dayton 1.  And this transfer we're getting our first new Spanish missionary in over a year!  Everyone's super excited!

This week was a week of firsts.  I met my first real Cuban.  I met my first real Nicaraguan.  I ate my first pupusa.  I had my first apartment check in over a year. (passed with flying colors by the way...)  I also learned how to make Mexican cheesecake, had a birthday party for a 69 year-old Dominican lady, and got permission from a less active to call him over and over and over until he woke up and came to church.  We gave up when he still didn't answer after 20 or so calls.

I also met with a few less actives who were really suffering.  It was very difficult to see them in such stressful situations, but it helped impress upon me that our actions definitely have consequences.  Sometimes we can't see it until it happens, but choosing to not obey God's laws always brings misery.  We can always trust that we will be the most happy when we follow His commandments.

We had a really good sacrament meeting yesterday.  There was a mix up with the program, so there ended up being no speakers prepared, so Presidente Maya changed the theme of the meeting to missionary work and had the 4 Elders, our mission leader and a Priest who recently decided to serve a mission bear our testimonies about missionary work.  We also had a full house: 108 people in sacrament meeting!  It was packed!

I also had two really great experiences that impressed on me the importance of following the direction of priesthood keys.  In the stake that I'm serving in the stake president has asked the missionaries to teach a very specific lesson to all of the members about how to invite others to increase their faith in Christ by the Spirit.  The lesson is a little complex, and so we were a bit worried that some of our members wouldn't be able to grasp it very well.  But we decided to do what we were told and teach the lesson.  We taught it first to a less active Guatemalan man who hadn't been to church in over a year.  The Spirit was strong, and it caused him to really think about his goals for his family, and rekindled his desire to come to church.  We next taught it to a pair of Colombian sisters who are very active.  Partway through the lesson they thought of someone they could invite to the upcoming branch family home evening, and the rest of the lesson we just watched as they came up with idea after idea of things that they could do to help this person they wanted to invite.  These experiences helped me realize even more that those who have priesthood keys really do receive guidance from the Lord.  If we will pay attention to what our Bishops, Stake Presidents, and other leaders counsel us to do, we will be blessed, even if the things they tell us to do don't make sense to us at the time.

Well, that's about it!  Hope all is well out there!  Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Foote

Elder Foote and the Big Boy

Elder Foote and a Spanish Family

Mystical Hispanic Cures...

Family!

Really not too much to report this week.  I got pretty sick during the first part of the week.  I got over it pretty quick, but for most of the rest of the week I had no appetite.  That normally wouldn't be a huge problem, but we get fed by people pretty often, and most of them get offended if you don't eat at least two servings, so I had a constant feeling of being way too full for most of the week.  But I guess having too much to eat isn't the worst problem I could have...

In response to me being sick, I received a few mystical Hispanic cures.  One was by a Pentecostal man we're teaching who believes he has a mighty gift of healing.  He got me a shot glass, poured in some apple cider vinegar, mixed in some water, then had me drink it.  Then he pushed on my stomach and told the sickness to leave...  Another family gave me four teaspoons of olive oil to drink.  I also got some super thick Dominican cough syrup even though I didn't have a cough...

We made empanadas with some members this week, I'll send you some pictures.

Other than that it was a pretty average week.  One of our investigators believes the church is true, and he wants to be baptized, but he just can't give up smoking.  We've tried everything, but he just hasn't been able to give it up.  Well he finally started coming back to church last week, and yesterday during priesthood we all introduced ourselves and he said "My name's Jose, I'm Dominican, I'm coming to the church because I know it's true, and hopefully soon I'll be baptized."!  Yeah Jose!  So we're working with him on that.

Hope everything keeps going well out there!

Love,

Elder Foote  

Elder Foote and the Missionaries at Church

Elder Foote

Empanadas

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

Feliz Christmas y un Happy Año Nuevo

Family!

Just in case you were wondering what language I speak on my mission, the subject line to this email is a great example...

Well, this week was Christmas!  We got invited to eat at a ton of places.  I was more full on after the 24th than I think I've ever been in my whole life!  I also got super sick of tamales.  I had a ton of normal tamales as well as some Dominican tamales made out of yucca root and platano.  Between the 24th and the 25th I spent Christmas with people from: Mexico, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, and the U.S.  

It was good to talk to you all on Christmas!  I enjoyed hearing about all of the crazy stuff going on in Eagle Mountain, and it was good to be able to share a little bit more about what's going on out here.

I'm trying to think of anything out of the ordinary to write, but really it was a pretty average week other than eating way too much and trying to develop some better relationships with the members.  I tried to take more pictures than usual this week, so I'll send a bunch to you.

Sorry this is shorter; time is once again pretty limited today.

Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Foote

Best Tamales He's Ever Eaten

Christmas Skype

Elder Foote's Christmas Stocking

Christmas Tamales

Elder Foote and Elder Elbaba and a Dominican Family

Christmas Crab

Elder Foote's Family Photo

Elder Foote's Fierce Family

Elder Foote, Elder Elbaba and Luz

The Elders at a Member Christmas Party

Christmas Pinata

Lots of Rice For Christmas