So the first night here in San Antonio, we went down to the Alamo and placed copies of The Book of Mormon. It was pretty awesome. The weirdest part is that I got to be very confident and good at talking to people in the MTC, even people who acted super real, but as soon as I got here and started to taking to people who really need it and really matter, I got super nervous. I'm way better by now though. If you haven't figured it out yet, my P-day is Monday here.
On Thursday we got our companions and our first assignments. My trainer is Elder Lish. He's pretty cool, and we have his old companion with us until Wednesday when He goes home. Elder Lish is the district leader as well. We are both Spanish-speaking elders, but we're in an English area, so it's really hard to keep up on the Spanish. I'm doing alright, though. My first street contact in my area was actually in Spanish. She would've taken a Book of Mormon, except I only had English with me, so I just left her a pass along card and referred her to th Spanish elders in the area. Since then I always carry Spanish and English, and I have had the opportunity to use both. There are also some members in our wards that speak Spanish, so I can practice with them. We cover three wards here, and it is the wealthiest area in the whole mission. the worst aparments here push two thousand dollars a month, and almost every community is gated. It's really hard to find people, but when it happens, they are solid.
One of the things I like most about Texas is that almost everyone is really nice. Much nicer than in California... However, there are still very rude people every now and again. They especially don't like us, which is silly because all we do is come and ask if we can help them in any way. Even if they don't want to listen to our message we are always happy to just do service for them. It's kinda silly.
It has been way awesome to see miracles every day, and feel the Spirit guide us to the things that God wants us to do. The kinda frustrating part is that I know it could happen even more, but not everyon in the group wants to be totally obedient to all of the rules... and people who have more experience or are in authority or about to go home are not very open to corrective suggestions. That's okay kinda.. but I need to be a little more forceful when I know somethng needs to be done differently but the others don't want to.
Anyways... probably the coolest little miracle I've seen so faris this: We had an appointment cancel on us, so we didn't really know what to do. We pulled over to the side of the road to pray and seek guidance. As we then looked at our area map we felt prompted to go to a certain apartment complex and check up on some old dropped investigators. While we were there we had a bunch of doors closed on us and a bunch of people not home. we got down near the bottom of the complex and were knocking on a door, when a black woman pulled up and got out of her car to put her trash in the dumpster, which was pretty close to us. We decided it was a good idea to talk to her, you know since it was three men in the dark, by the dumpster going to talk to one woman. Makes sense. Anyways, she was a little freaked out at first, but then recognized us as Mormons. She said she wasn't interested because she's "non-denominational," but her sister is Mormon and lives in the complex if we wanted to visit her. She called her to ask, and the sister said she'd like that. We went there and found out she had moved to Texas from New Jersey about a month ago for cancer treatment, and had just had chemotherapy the day before. She was living there with her husband, son, daughter and daughter's two sons, who are all not members. The folks in New Jersey said they'd send her membership records here, but haven't yet, so nobody knew she was here, and she hasn't had the energy or strength to go out and find someone. Her husband can't walk, we didn't figure out exactly what was wrong, but he was sitting there on the couch with some big things on his feet and a catheter. He has some serious depression and is losing his voice because he very rarely uses it now... The son was asleep, but the daughter was there, and wants to take the discussions because she remembers when the two white boy missionaries knocked on their door in the projects. Good story. Anyways, we got all of the woman's info. (her name is Kathy) so we could pull her records here, and shared a spiritual message with them. It turns out they picked up and moved so fast that she forgot her scriptures, so we left some there for the family. At the end we gave Kathy a blessing and it was way awesome. The husband and daughter wanted one too after that, so we gave three blessings in that apartment. They were all really awesome, and I know that family is going to have a lot of help and support and miracles over the next little while. Kathy insisted we come back tomorrow for some fried chicken. That made my day. It was awesome to see how the lord puts His servants where they will be able to succor his children. The church is true.
Okay, so my address is:
Elder Brock Katzakian
20211 Huebner Road #915
San Antonio, TX 78258
Anything that's been sent to the mission office I won't get until the next big meeting at Christmas, so the apartment is the best place to send things, unless it's close to transfers. I'll let y'all know when those are coming up (they are every six weeks, and it's the only time that I'm guaranteed to have a big meeting where I'll get the stuff that's at the mission office). I did get the blankets, though. Thank you :) I know packages can be sent to the apartment too. I don't know if there are any mission rules or anything about where they are supposed to go or whatever, but I do know that the apartment office is able to recieve them.
There is so much awesome stuff happening all over the place here and so many awesome people that I can't even come close to sharing all of it, so I'll just try and do the best ones. I've got to go now because there is a lot to do today. Oh, by the way, I know why missionaries get fat. We sit in the car all day, then peole feed us ridiculous piles of food. We had three desserts yesterday. Three. And people get all excited to give it to you, so you can't say no. And since there are so many members in this area, they always have our dinner, and it's always something special, and there is always some ridiculous dessert... every day. We have three lunches scheduled for tomorrow, and a dinner. I don't know what to do. and most of the missionaries don't want to get up early to exercise, and don't want to run. We're not supposed to get up witout our companion and I definitely can't run without them. I'm doomed. It's okay though. This is way more important than my health stuff. I'll just deal for two years, then I can do what I want. I'm just a little worried about all the sugar because I was starting to have some issues before I left and now I can't really get away.. but yeah. Love you all :)
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