Busy P-day

We're doing our best to plan out next p-day right now so we'll have more time.  So you should get a better email and we're going to try to go to "el mercado" after everything else is done.  There's this big, apparently pretty cool, mexican marketplace that isn't too far.

 

These last couple of weeks have been good.  We've taught a lot of people, but a lot of them have been defaulting on appointments and things , too.  There were going to be several families at church, who were going to get baptized in a few weeks, but everyone disappeared.  It's going well, though, and we're learning lots.  Anyways, I've got to go again.  Love you again!

 

Elder Katzakian

Another week...

This last week was pretty cool.  We've been working a lot with member families lately.  We've been helping some cool less-active folks come back.  It's really interesting to see how people will really only remember the parts they still apply after long enough, and the rest of the gospel becomes lost to them.  What our mission president is having us do is treat them like someone who isn't a member and start at the beginning of the lessons and teach them everything, inviting them to do those things which bring the spirit into their lives so that they can feel conversion again and rebuild their testimony of the church, the prophets, and most importantly the saviour.  It has also been cool because it has helped us to find more part-member families and other people who haven't experienced it yet and help them to live the gospel as well.

 

Also, Louis finally was able to get work and everything off and will be getting baptized on August third. :) So that's really exciting.  I don't get to be there, but I should be able to go when his family gets sealed :)

 

So with active members we've been teaching them about the value of and how to do role plays to help share the gospel.  As misionaries we practice teaching or talking with people every day.  One of the ways we do that is with role plays.  One of us will pretend to be one of our investigators, or just a random person that fits the profile of someone we may talk to that day, and the other one is the missionary, and we practice.  It's great because we come up with new ways to answer questions, and can pause and re-do things so that when the real situation comes it is fluid.  Something very special about this practice is that when done in a spirit of prayer, the one who is actin often has impressions come to mind of things to say or do that show the real, hidden concerns and needs of that person, so in this way we are able to discern what the people need.  A miracle I see every day is that when we do that well, we will find a similar situation, or will have found the real concerns of an investigator and already know how to answer them.  This is one of the ways of "treasuring up the words of life," so that God can "in the very hour, yea in the very moment" give us the words we need.  The greatest thing about it is that it applies to members who are not full time missionaries too!  As people who have taken upon them the name of Christ, and covenanted to support those around them, we are all entitled to revelation as to how to share the gospel with the people we know.  This is probably the easiest way to do it.  We help families to think of someone they've wanted to talk to about the gospel and figure out an appropriate invitation for them, such as FHE, church, reading the Book of Mormon, talking with the missionaries, etc.  Then we help them to practice extending that invitation.  It is a powerful tool to add to the repertoire of even the best member missionaries, and I would suggest trying it for family home evening, and maybe even inviting the missionaries to talk about how the do it a little.  One good thing that comes from it is seeing how simple and easy it can be.  Many feel it has to be a big, dramatic, earth shaking moment when they invite their friend to church.  It is not thus.  You can be talking about the ingredients in the sandwiches you're eating, and then just mention that you'd been thinking it would be cool if they'd come to church with you one time, since you enjoy it so much, then, regardless of their answer, you can just get back to the salami.  The coolest thing about the role-plays, though is that you will often know beforehand how they'll respond and already be ready to help them overcome any of the problems they might have with it.

 

Anyways, that's been going well.  Also I made some great quiche this week.  And something else too, but I don't remember what...  It turns out I have retained much of the knowledge I gained at the bakery, so I'm pretty dangerous with a bag of flour haha.

 

 

Gotta go now...  Love you a ton :)

 

until next week.

Elder Katzakian

New bike is coming....

For those of you who have been following this blog, Elder Katzakian is doing great!! We have not been posting the last few emails because they have been directed to our family and have been very sweet and personal.  We can assure you that he is enjoying his misison and growing up!!!  Reality is opening his eyes and he is loving it! Here is a small portion of the most recent email for a general update...


I'll have a new bike in a couple days when it gets here. So if I haven't told you about teaching members about role playing, let me know and I'll tell you next week.  It's pretty cool.  Also, transfer calls were yesterday and Elder Robinson and I are both staying here.  I just realized I haven't said much about him before...  He's basically like me, except more easily distracted, a heavier sleeper, and his sports of choice were football and wrestling.  Also he's more into cars.  Other than that we are pretty similar.

 

 

Much love

 

Elder Katzakian

!Se me robo la bicicleta!

We were low on miles in the car because of a time that we got lost, so we decided to ride our bikes so we wouldn't go over.  We'd been riding for three days I think... anyways we locked them to a stop sign to knock some apartment doors for twenty minutes (on the side of a busy road) and the lock was cut when we came back and my bike was gone.  They left Elder Robinson's though, so I jogged home while he rode so we could get the car and get to our next appointment.  The good news, though is that I did have insurance on it, so I should be able to have it replaced. I'll be talking to them today to find out.

So, things I need for my birthday...  I don't know.  I can never really think of anything,  Mostly just money would be good though, that way I could get stuff without a shipping charge.

Anyways, I've been picking up texas stuff like "howdy y'all," "fixin' to," and a touch of an accent, but more california is coming out than even did in california... I keep finding myself saying things like "right on" and "gnarly" without meaning to... I never did that before though haha.  It's kinda weird.

So there was an Elder Rodriguez in my ward at home from San Antonio who went (or came, rather, because of my point of reference) home a couple months ago.  It was pretty funny because he found me and took us out to lunch, which was fun.  Another one of those changey things where someone who was a missionary when I left is now a pool technician who took us out to lunch haha. 

As missionaries we do role plays every day to practice teaching and talking to people and stuff, and we've started teaching it to the members now too, so they can use it as a tool to help them be more comfortable with and know what to say when talking to friends and neighbors and other people about the gospel and extending invitations.  Basically the goal is to help people see how easy and casual it can be.  An invitation to come to church doesn't have to be super dramatic or a big deal.  It can just be casually interjected in a conversation about anything, really... It's cool though because I think it'll help a lot.

I don't think there was anything else really exciting this week...  Definitely keep up the prayers, the help is always appreciated.  Thanks for everything you do.

Love Elder Katzakian

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