Feb 6th letter

So my new companion is Elder Turner.  He's from Salt Lake city, and he
started his mission in the Dominican Republic.  He's pretty awesome,
and I'm really excited because he's the first companion I've had where
we could legitimately speak spanish all the time and actually
understand eachother, so i feel like we're both going to learn a lot
really fast.  He also has this kind of laid back energy and fire that
helps us have a lot of success.  He has a deck of Pokemon cards, too
haha.

Anyways, Perla is desirous to be baptized, but her boyfriend needs to
get divorced from his previous wife and he's not in a hurry to tdo
that... she doesn't want to leave him, though, because they have a kid
together... we're going to be talking to her about that and her kids
more tonight.

Also, we're going to be teaching a girl who's nine years old and
didn't get baptized because she thought she had to know the articles
of faith... That was kinda funny but kind of sad, because she's just
barely turning nine before the time the baptismal font is available,
and that requires our teaching and such, but she wanted to get
baptized sooner once she found out she didn't have to memorize the
articles of faith...

I've got to get going now, but i love you and I'lll talk to you next week.

Elder Katzakian

He is back with more letters

So this week has been very busy.  I'm finally seeing real purpose behind the daily records we keep.  We've
been talking to so many different people I can't keep it all straight. That's a good thing, but it's a little exhausting haha.  So little Jorge is pretty much set on going to a bunch of other churches
before he comes back or settles on one, and he's not super
enthusiastic about talking to us anymore, so that's kind of a
bummer... but his little sister is amazing. She reads the Book of
Mormon and prays every day and she says she's received an answer and
that it's true and she is sure she wants to be baptized, but daddy
Jorge wants her to wait because he wants her and her brother to choose
together and agree...  we're still helping him with his vices and
stuff, too.  This last Sunday they accidentally slept in a little
because of a late Saturday, and didn't quite make it to church, but
they'll be there next week and a couple other kids were just left with
them and they got permission from the parents to take them to church
and be taught and stuff, though, so that's neat.

Max did make it to church this week.  He's really committed to
changing his life and coming to God, and he wants to get baptized; he
just wants to get his life more in order first.  We're working on a
goal with him.

We found this really cool family, the Garcias, who are excited to
learn, as well.  We've taught them a couple times, and told them
they'll want to get baptized, but I don't think they really understood
the first time because they just kind of wen of about how their church
wasn't that great, and it was too bad that it was their church, but
they were born into it, so what can you do, right?  Anyways, the
second time, (wow I almost can't think of how to word this because I'm
thinking it in Spanish and typing in English) upon hearing the account
of the first vision and what it meant, they proceeded to explain
unusual encounters with spirits they had had in the past with us and
ask us about what they might mean, and then we had to go, so I think
they still don't really get it... but their daughter (she's like
twenty) is eating it all up.  We left a pamphlet and she studied it
multiple times and answered all the  "additional study" questions in
the back, and told us about a friend who would also be interested.
They all also agreed to read/pray about the Book of Mormon.  We'll see
what happens.

We also met a guy on the street near his house who went to church for
like a year in Arizona, then moved to some town in the sticks of Texas
where there was neither church nor missionaries.  They recently moved
to Austin and we fond them.  They're the Chacon family and they've got
four kids, one of them nine months old and recently released from the
hospital for some sickness she had...  They're really struggling
financially and stuff, but they love God and like the Book of Mormon,
and hopefully we'll be able to help them.

There are a bunch of other random people we ran into and taught, but
those are probably the coolest for now.

The other night, we had a dinner with the Lopez family (Cheeto, the
one who got baptized) and it was really good.  They live on a farm and
killed and cooked one of their own chickens for Elder Sefcik (he's the
one who did the physical baptizing, so Cheeto always calls him
"Padrino" [Godfather]), and we had cake.  Todos le dimos una mordida
(we all took a bite, but "una mordida" is different kinda... we all
went to bite the cake, and had it shoved in our face).  Cheeto said he
didn't want to do it because he had a sore throat, but when his wife
didn't want to he put her in a headlock and put the cake on her face,
the funniest part, though, was that while he was thus occupied, I told
Elder Sefcik, who was sitting closer, to put Cheetos cake in his face,
which he did. It was basically absolutely hilarious.  We got some good
pictures, and I'll send those next week.


Elder Katzakian

Christmas Eve

Christmas eve was a day of much food. I think I ended up eating a total of fifteen tamales, two plates of beans, one of rice and one of carnitas, as well as some chicken salad dessert tamales, sweet bread, and a couple glasses of milk.  That was all just the dinners...  I had a bunch of tres leches for lunch and a sandwich for breakfast. 

Christmas was brisket, beans, donuts, rice, green beans, and fruit salad.  That was also a lot...  It's funny, there's never a consstent balance in quantity of food... We're either hungry or being given so much food we want to die haha.  It's okay though.  Kinda fun.

Nothing else really exciting happened this week.  Lot's of people were out of town or working.  We did have one of our dinners with a friend of a recent convert who is very excited t learn more, but he's going to be very busy until next week, so we won't be abe to see him until then, most likely...  His name is Juan, though.

 
Anyways, today we're on a member's computer because the libraries are closed, so this'll have to be short again... sorry.  I hope everything is going great with you, and I love you guys.

Elder Katzakian

Austin is cold but great!

So this week was interesting.  I talked to people from lots of countries besides mexico this week; cuba, honduras, puerto rico, colombia... and I think that's actually it, but it felt like a lot.  Also it's been raining a lot, and it's pretty cold today.  It's about 40 degrees

 

Last night something kinda cool happened.  Actually, two somethings... the first one is less pertinent because it was in English, so you probably won't hear about it again, but it's cool anyways.  We knocked on this apartment door kinda late at night, well... it was like seven, but it's been getting dark around six and there were a bunch of stormclouds in front of the stars, so it was way dark.  Anyways, there we were, knocking on an apartment door in the dark rain, in suits and intimidating black coats (Elder Sefcik has a longer black raincoat, and mine is a P-coat), and this scared Lady answers it thinking we're the police, not knowing what she did or what happened.  It made some good laughs when she figured out who we were, and then she got pretty serious again and started asking us questions about the Second Coming, infant baptism, eternal marriage, and other cool gospely things.  She's been getting kinda scared by all the things going on and she and her boyfriend have been thinking they need to get married seeing how they already live together and have a daughter, and had some questions about all that.  We explained to her the readers digest version of the history of christianity and that we were messengers sent by God through a living prophet to answer her questions.  She is excited to learn about being sealed to her family and how that was brought back (more in depth) and how she can more closely follow God in her life to ensure happiness and security for her family.  It was awesome to feel the spirit testify through us to help her feel that God had sent us there at that very time to help her specifically to acheive the joy he wanted for her.  Additionally, we were only there because of some other random occurrences earlier in the week and that day.

 

Second cool thing:  We were running out of time and had planned to be somewhere else, but we felt we should finish talking to the people in the aforementioned apartment building, and because we stayed for those extra couple minutes we ran into a couple walking up the stairs with their laundry, and asked if we could teach them a message about the gospel, and they said yes, so we followed them up into their apartment, where we met the three other people staying there who all turned out to be interested as well, so they turned off the soccer game and learned about the restoration of the gospel.  They are all also excited to learn more about the Book of Mormon and what that means.

 

It had been a really tough week before last night, but those people made it all worth it. 

 

Anyways, love you, talk to you next week.

 

Elder Katzakian

Transfer

Hi Everyone

Elder Katzakian was tranferred a few weeks ago and is now in Austin.  If you would like his apartment address please leave a comment with your email address and I will send it to you, otherwise you can mail letters to the mission home.

Thanks!

Baptism

So Cheeto was baptized on Saturday.  He was so excited!  I'll have to send some pictures.  I confirmed him on Sunday, and that was pretty intense because there were a bunch of people there who needed translation for the meeting, so I did that too.  It was all a little nerve-racking, but turned out well.

 

I also saw a kinda funny bumber sticker yesterday... It said, "God's original plan was to hang out in a garden with some naked vegetarians."  First, it made me laugh, but then it made me reflect on the purpose of life, and the plan that God has for us.  It seems to me that the world's declining morals are due mainly to a deficiency in understanding of the purpose of life.  If I thought we were here with all these challenges just because my great great great great great great great great great great great great grandpearents ate some magic fruit, and now we just had to kinda be good and learn about/accept Jesus so we could go back to some garden or heaven or whatever and hang out forever with some naked winged children in the clouds, I'd probably do bad stuff too.  I love God with all my heart, but if the purpose was for us all to leave him so only the good ones would come back, and then just sit there and sing about him for the rest of unending eternity, I probably wouldn't care a whole lot...  What would compell us to be good besides the fear of punishment?  It makes a lot more sense to me for the fall to have been part of the plan, because what do we do all of our life? We learn.  We constantly, involuntarily, take in, analyze, and store information, then base our actions off of that information.  progression and growth cannot happen until there is some sort of damage or retrogression first.  The way that every living thing in nature works, is that it does not become any stronger or better until it faces opposition.  Your skin doesn't get thicker until it's torn.  Your muscles don't get bigger until you tear them with work. Etc.  There was none of that in the garden.  That would've been a boring plan.  We would've stayed the same forever.  Life is only fun when you are accomplishing things...  And our capacity to learn and grow makes it obvious that God want's us to be more than we are now. What more would we be if we did less?  We have our families to help us learn about our relationship with him and his with us.  We don't raise children just so they can come back to our home and tell us how great we are so we'll take care of them for the rest of their lives.  We raise them to be self sufficient.  To be able to go out on their own and accomplish things.  God is the same.  He will always be or father, we will always be under his rule, but he wants us to grow up and become more. 

 

Elder Katzakain

! Me Voy!

I'm getting transferred this week.  Somewhere in san antonio or austin (or somewhere in between) but I don't know where yet.   

 

So the conference with Elder Zivic was cool.  He's from Argentina, so he spoke some spanish and that was kind of cool.  Unfortunately, not every missionary in the mission is Spanish speaking, so he had to speak English for most of it.

 

Yesterday something pretty funny happened.  Well, I guess it was a little sad... but it was funny.  There were a couple people who randomly showed up in the foyer of the church way early because they took the bus, and apparently the friend who invited them told them it was at ten, but it really started at ten thirty. Upon further investigation we figured out that they had been invited to another nearby church that fit a similar description... that's why they couldn't find their friend.  Anyways, we invited them to come in and sit with us until their friend got there, so there they were in their first fast and testimony meeting ever.  They seemed a little nervous, until someone mentioned the Book of Mormon, then they looked scared.  They got up and left immediately after the service, declining the offer to learn more.  It was mildly humorous, but sad st the same time because of how they changed as soon as they found out it was "the mormons."  Even though everything was centered on christ and on gaining a closer relation with our father in heaven so we could be happy, and how the family can be eternal (which was interesting; a lot of people talked about that, and the gentleman there had been invited to church by his friend because his dad had died recently and he was having a hard time), they stopped listening at the mention of the word "mormon."  I'm coming to really dislike the nickname and how so many people seem to think so negatively of the church.  I suppose I can understand disagreeing, but I have done my best to see it from an outsider's perspective, and to think about all of the things that could go agaainst it, but with the knowledge I have of the church, it just makes sense to be true, or at least good.  Not something to run from.  If God is important to a person at all, it's worth learning about.  I just wish I'd been more willing to share it before being a missionary.  I'd be better off now, and so would others.

 

Anyways, I've gotta jet now so I can get ready to ship out.  Thanks for everything,

 

Love Elder Katzakian