First week in new area

So my first full week iin Spanish has been great, but we also cover an english ward so its not all just spanish.  I do speak a lot of spanish though.  My companion, however prefers to speak English if we're talking to somebody who knows both, so that's kinda been cutting down on it... The thing is, though that the spanish ward has been having the most trouble getting baptisms, and I imagine that missionaries having that attitude is why.  It's not really a bad thing, because sometimes it does allow us to communicate more effectively, and they can feel the spirit better when they understand better, but I mostly try to just speak spanish to them if they speak it, and I have seen that as we've been doing that, we've been finding more people who only speak spanish, and we've been better able to communicate with them.

 

Also, we found this place that sells the most delicious aguas frescas ever and they are cheap in large quantities.  So that's cool.  It does get pretty hot, but I have honestly found myself enjoying it.  It's kinda wierd... but good because I think it hits 100 degrees almost every day.

 

I've also found that Sundays are my favorite days to do missionary work because it's the Lord's day so it feels like there's extra spirit.  Maybe it's also because we just took the sacrament to renew our covenants and just haven't really had time to mess up yet... haha

 

So yesterday we found this guy named Rey (who only speaks spanish), who lost his wife and kids and pretty much everything he lived for, and now he's alone in this old, beat up house.  He actually takes very good care of it though, and of himself.  He is a very respectable, but kinda sad man... anyways, he had just been thinking to himself, and sort of to God, "What is my purpose here now?  Why am I here alone?," when we knocked on the door.  Then he didn't have to be alone!  Also we started to share our message with him and how it could help him.  We'll be going back tonight, so keep him in your prayers.

 

I've had a lot of cool experiences, but I can't rally remember everything because my brain is kinda fried... That's been pretty common lately, actually.  Time just keeps getting shorter and shorter... which doesn't make sense because the world actually takes slightly (by an infinitesimal fraction) longer to spin on it's axis and around the sun every day (and year).  So really I should feel like I have more time every day.  Oh well...

 

So on the fourth of July ( I forgot to tell this story) the bishops son was riding a unicycle around the ward fourth of july party and doing little jumps, so of course I had to prove that I was as cool as him.  Not trusting myself to stay upright on a unicycle, I grabbed the nearest scooter and proceeded to try and jump on that.  It turns out scooters are a lot smaller than I remember, and I miscalculated how hard I needed to pull on the handle bars.  I basically just pulled the scooter out from under myself and fell on my back in front of the whole stone oak ward.  It was super funny, but my tailbone and wrist still hurt haha. The moral of the story is that anybody who can jump a unicycle is always cooler that everyone else around them.

 

So I've go to go now, but it's been a blast.  Love y'all and talk to you next week!

 

Elder Katzakian

 

new area!

It was pretty sad leaving the stone oak area.  To be totally honest I kinda hoped to leave every transfer before that last one because I wanted to get somewhere crazier and more exciting, but by the end of that last one I loved the people so much and had gotten to know everything so well and saw all the incredible potential in every individual that I really was sad to leave... it was kind of weird.  We didn't really go around to say goodbye to anyone because that would've been an irresponsible use of missionary time, so I just made sure to remember and tell people the last time I would be seeing them over the last couple of weeks.  Lizbeth Flores (Louis' wife) did make me tres leches for our last lesson, though, so that was cool.  Hopefully he'll be baptized soon and I'll be able to come to the temple here for their wedding.

 

So I'm in San Antonio 10th ward now.  It's big enough that there are six missionaries that cover different parts of it.  The cool thing, though, is that each of those companionships also covers a spanish ward that is the same area as the part of 10th that they cover. :)  So we also cover 5th ward.  It's funny because the english ward speaks just as much spanish as the spanish ward...  We are down on the south side of San Antonio.  President Jones told me that I'd worked hard enough on my spanish that he thought I deserved to be in a spanish area (since that is kind of a coveted thing in this mission), so that's what he did.  It's been super cool and I've been excited to see that my spanish really isn't too bad.  Elder Robinson (my new companion) and I can pretty much communicate whatever we want with anyone we want.  It's also way easier to talk to more people here, though it is harder to have as serious of a conversation with them.  There are a lot of people that would like to just talk, but it's hard to get them to understand that we're asking them to do things.

 

Elder Robinson is really cool.  He's kind of a gearhead from Utah (park city, I think), and we like a lot of the same stuff, though he knows a lot more about cars and guns than I do.  That's okay tough because we mostly just focus on the gospel haha.  It's kind of weird because we both teach very differently.  He's very good at simplifying everything so anyone can understand, whereas I'm used to presenting it in such a way that someone who has read all of the bible and knows a lot of history can find it logically feasible enough to let their heart open and feel the spirit when we testify.  It's interesting how different that is and how hard to transition it is.

 

Anyways, yesterday we had planned to knock a specific street, but took a wrong turn and ended up somewhere way different somehow.  There we saw this apartment complex sorta looking thingy that was so incredibly scary looking that we couldn't help pulling over to knock it.  Turns out nobody lived there, but we felt like we should just keep walking down the street. This street was kind of a bigger one that mostly gets used for transportation and you don't realize that there are a few houses spread out kinda hidden on the side until you're walking on it, so I don't think it had been worked by missionaries for a very long time... anyways, most of the people weren't very nice, but we found this family that was having kind of a hard time, and was willing to listen.  The spirit was so strong, and we commited thm to be baptized on the thirty first of this month and they accepted!  It was amazing.

 

I'll tell you more about them next week, and other things too, I'm just out of time now...  I've seen so many miracles here already, I'm very excited for this time.

 

 Love you

 

Elder Katzakian

 

Que pasa!!

Anyways, It's kinda weird to think that I'll be somewhere else in Texas on Thursday.  I've been here long enough that I don't really want to go now... I love the area and the people so much and would just love to keep working with and serving them.  I am kinda excited to see something else though.  I am sorta hoping to go somewhere more "Texasy."  Haha It doesn't really matter though.

So Louis and I totally did the five pound burrito challenge thing.  Also he came to church for the first time, and it looks like he'll be able to start coming pretty often if not every week.  So he should be able to be baptized pretty soon.  It's awesome :) Also, he was telling us about a mormon friend he had in high school who was one of his best friends ever, but they basically lost contact after his mission. The friends name was junior... So yeah, we looked junior up and had junior come to church the day louis made it and surprise him :) so that made it really cool.  Missionaries would make the best stalkers ever.  Also, we took pictures of the burrito thing, so I'll send those some time. I dunno if I'll have time to print them out today, but I did print some other ones earlier of other things that I'll send tomorrow when the mail starts going again.

Evan Tan is still doing super good, too.  His testimony is super strong and he's got some very good friends in the ward and he's planning on going on a mission.  That's really exciting because he could go before I go home.  That would probably be one of the coolest things ever.  We're going to try and coordinate schedules so we can take him out knocking door and stuff with us before I leave.

We have a lot of good things happening right now, and we're looking at about ten relatively solid people who should come to church next week.  So that's awesome.  We only had two yesterday... but everyone else is coming back in town and stuff.

So that's the scoop and I'm out of time.  Have fun and I'll talk to you next week.  Love you!

Love Elder Katzakian