June 15 2015

So this week we went to the colonial zone in the east mission to see the old cathedrals and other historic things about cristopher columbus and other stuff. It was pretty cool, learned a bunch. The country's past is a lot more interesting than I thought it would be. Lots of intrigue, the natives here were actually really nice and peaceful and like just kind of mixed into the spanish race for the most part and most of the wars were with Haiti and such. If I remember right they didnt actually fight for their independence here, it was kind of granted kind of like in Canada. Turns out that even though columbus didnt land here first, this was on of his first colonies that was actually successful and made it all the way into current times due to the Taino people who helped them and stuff. They suspect that columbus was actually buried on Dominican soil, but the spanish deny that and yeah who really knows? Also lot of stuff about catholicism, its kind of weird all the stuff in the churches. Lots of paintings of demons to keep the demons out.... the old catholic religion was really into mysticism and stuff like that. Its a lot different nowadays.

The rest of the week was pretty good we taught some people and found some new people and are teaching stuff. Regular kind of thing. Francisco is in good spirits and we visit him to keep him happy and such. Haha. At least he has lots of time for reading now. Those less actives are a lot less less active now, they come every week and are doing super well so we hope we can keep that up.

Went and visited my old areas on monday, great experience. So nice to see all the people again. Wish I could have spent forever with them all. But at least I have all their facebooks and stuff. I hope to see them all again as well!

Well I was going to write more but we really didnt find that much time tonight when the light came back to write a bit.

Hopefully more next week, mayb esome photos... well I guess Im already back anyway but

con amor,

ELder Sullivan

June 8th 2015

Hey everybody!

So just here, chilling in the DR (well, chilling isnt exactly an accurate description with the weather, more like sweating it out). Things are good though.

Well, this week was interesting. Sort of a sifting through people kind of week as a bunch of people we just have kind of dropped or missed because they werent home. We dropped two youth recently who we were really fed up with. They were just toying with us and not learning anything and who knows why they were taking the lessons with us, they just kept on demanding things and not paying attention and so, we told them how it was and left. We had been patient for at least a month with them, so that was kind of the final straw, and it looks like they wont be talking with us for a while. I have decided to never become a teacher of students in a school, Im not very good at it haha. 

Otherwise, Francisco is still at the hospital, apparently he is suppsoed to be operated today. Pray it goes well! Other people are progressing but still not married, but at least they are working on it. So far, it looks like the only hope of seeing a baptism before leaving the area will come from reactivating this one family and having their daughter be baptized. But we are still working hard on it, the ward is really supportive so I think we will come out on top here!

What else went on... well we didnt have water or light for most of the week. So lots of sitting on the porch, wondering when life will begin haha. Im a granddaddy out here in the mission, Elder Herrmann is now training a kid from Oregon, so thats cool. They be working hard, his new comp is kind of shy met him today but he'll be a sassy dominican by the end, Elder Herrmann certainly is, haha. We had an activity today playing basketball, and Herrmann and I caought up a bunch. Good times.

Been called chinese a lot lately. People are kind of racist about it actually, especially in basketball today haha. Ah well, I guess I mostly lost in basketball anyway. 

The rest is kind of fuzzy. Still a little weird to be so close to finishing the mission, weird that I recognize its the end but still cant even imagine what it will be like to be finished and someplace other than my little apartment here in the DR. Going to miss the people here in villa, super nice guys. And that one guy draws anime and stuff, we learned a bunch from him haha. 

Well, those are the adventures for now, keep the faith!

Elder Sullivan

June 1st 2015

Hey everybody,

So what to say about the week, its been good. We managed to get out more without so much rain. We even contacted and found some new people. Taught some really cool restoration lessons there in the first lesson, that was fun. Its cool how people relate better with the restoration than any other of our lessons. 

Anyway, some cool happenings. Francisco got hit by a motor, so his foot is broken. He is coming back from the capital sometime soon, but we may be rolling him to church in a wheelchair. Who knows, maybe the experience will help? For him to... I dunno... speed up getting married? Or something, either way, kind of unfortunate, we hope hes ok. Motors are dangerous things, gotta watch the street when you walk on it. Although, we all seem to walk in the middle of the street, and just dodge them when they come.

Well, other cool things, we have a lot of people coming out to church, members and non members. Its like a fiesta or something. Anyway, its cool to see everyone out there, and really lots of our investigators are progressing really well in terms of their learning, repentance and overall lives, the only problem is that so many are not married. But, if they got married, they would be baptized tomorrow haha. All we need now is a new shipment of book of mormons, and a few miracles in the paperwork/marriage department. Hopes are high!

We are having lots of fun, had some cool dinners with some people and watched the restoration movie with one investigator with food and everything. It was cool, and unique that someone actually had a functioning DVD player and TV (although, it was a super old DVD player haha). Some dog attacked me, but backed out at the last moment before actually jumping on me haha. Probably had something to do with Elder Wassum yelling at it haha. I have oficially decided also to never teach juniour high or elementary school except maybe for like piano lessons. Because kids that age are super annoying, and its super hard to teach them and basically is just this huge patience game. hey but they are fun to have around in church because they're pretty goofy haha.

Um what else? There is this cool guy named Felix that we teach who is progressing really well with the book of mormon, hes actually getting into the story and he comes to church straight from his job as a security officer, he doesnt even sleep until after, and he really likes the church, gets super into the classes. He even filled out this little self-sufficinecy thing when we did like a provident living class thing (I didnt even fill it out haha, I probably doodled during that class). Another cool youth we are teaching finally came to church, hes super quiet and stuff but he was liking the lessons and getting into the book of mormon reading super far and actually understanding the story. Too bad hes moving into the capital, but at least he progressed with us. We had some good times with him, playing dominoes and learning the gospel.

Other stuff, kids are crazy in the DR. They almost kill each other on like a daily basis. 

Good times had by all. Oh right, its transfers. Im staying here with Elder Wassum, but our district will be seeing some big changes. A guy who was in  Azua is coming in, so Ill have to talk with him about my people there. Otherwise its stay the course for now. President sent a special note to our group of missionaries, seeing as we will be taking almost a quarter out of the mission with us. He wants us to leave the legacy. So thats what we are doing.

I heard that Elder Perry passed away, a great man. Ill miss him. I guess the world is still changing, somewhere out there.

Keep the faith bretheren, never give up.

Hasta entonces,

Elder Sullivan

May 25th, 2015

Hey everybody!

Hope everything is well!

So, here we are another week. This week was mostly, rain! We were severely rained on basically every day. So we got a little wet and ended up a little demobilized, but we still managed to get around somewhat. 

The week showed a lot of good progress with less actives. We have mostly been visiting them so far. We have these two sisters from the hills on the other side of the highway who have been coming back to church. Their kids are really needy and annoying, but they are cool. Really nice to us at least haha. The two sisters have been inactive for a few years, but we found them one day contacting. After talking a bit, we got them remembering about all the times they had with the first missionaries who baptized them. They especially remembered getting the pamphlets, reading, the weird games we always play as missionaries to have people pray (the nose game is a favourite) and various other experiences. Thats mostly our job with less actives, is to remind them why they made covenants in the first place. And when they remember the missionaries who baptized them and all their experiences with them, it always helps them. We taught these particular two a lot about repentance and are trying to encourage them that getting back on top is possible, itll just take some effort and they should never feel bad about coming back to church, its not a shameful thing. So far response is good, and its nice to see them changing. Maybe even their little kids will be a little happier (not likely). 

Well lots of other less actives coming out too, we are having lots of good times with them, since they are happy to receive us and the ward actually home teaches them and stuff. We even ventured out to the north to visit a few more out there, everyone is a little more excited about church and such now. We have a young man coming back now, hes super cool. I probably already talked about him. He draws anime and stuff, hes drawn me a few things haha and Ill probably send a picture he drew of me and stuff. Hes really cool, into animation class and stuff. Fun to sit with in church, he can like draw stuff in just a couple of minutes and it looks awesome. Im trying to learn a few things from him, but my drawings are still really bad. At least I have the shapes down better haha.

Still waiting on the marriage situation for the investigators or extended church attendance for the youth so... well... baptisms are going to be tough but we have big plans for Francisco to get on the bandwagon haha. At least everyone is making progress little by little, although teaching youth is always a pain (they just never like to pay attention and rebel against us whenever they can, but they all went to church). Anyway, all is pretty good!

Had a funny talk with Francisco cartoons. He thinks that dragonballz is really good, I dont really think so. He then called most japanese cartoons demonic. Dragonballz is totally japanese. Ah well. He always tells me I look ugly until he puts his glasses on, then suddenly Im a handsome dude. 

We had a kidney shot war with our little deacon during some ward wedding that happened (its our fellowshipping of youth style haha). We locked him in a room for a bit, after thoroughly destroying him with kidney shocks. And then some big 8 year old kid showed up who weighs 120 pounds. I picked him up but it was a huge effort and I guess I made a weird face. He will one day be a super fat boy.

There was probably other stuff that happened... but I cant remember it all

Have a nice week!

Elder Sullivan

May 18th 2015

Hey!

So hope everything is all good over there!

We had a good time this week, topping it off today with an activity at President´s house where we played a bunch of sports. Elder Wassum and I did Villa proud in a few of the games, we ended up being the last two in a game of bump in basketball and he won so thats cool haha. Things have been nice up in the Villa, a little rain has cooled stuff down a bit and its nice to be working really efficiently up there. This week we didnt really get as many lessons due to lots of people not being around and such but we still got lots of people at church, the chapel was fairly full. Lots of less actives came back that day, probably because of the solid home teaching efforts here and we are focusing a lot on working super hard with less actives very specifically We were super happy to see two sisters go that live up in the hills. We had been talking with them lots about repentance and such, trying to help them see that its fine to come back, and that the shame of the people is all just imagined and that really it will just be good for them. I hope it was, and the bishop was cool running around and talking with everyone. Our schedule is a lot more organized now, so we are even planning to run up north a little bit to see how the northern folk are doing haha. 

Other cool stuff, I guess according to an old guy in the street the church isnt true because there are 80 000 orphans in the world. Interesting statistic, keep paying fast offerings I guess! Some goofy kids of our ward mission leader are really sassy. The were around for one of our lessons, and kept on saying that Elder Wassum was going to pray, and then they kept saying amen through the lesson, Common kid stuff, but they are super sassy when they do it and they always say no when I ask them stuff why do kids always say no?

Other stuff, we cleaned the house really well and threw out the trash finally the truck came for that. So it smells normal again. We had a cool meeting with the capital and talked a lot about converts. I was happy about that, and the mission is really focusing on the whole converts thing. President made all these little books for us to use and fill out for all our converts and things on the mission so we can remember it all and he put all his contact info there too. Its nice that he wants the mission to be an experience to be remembered and that the people always stay with us. I really like that, and will try to always be writing all the cool people that Ive met and gotten to know so well. Lots of nostalgia in the conference when I thought about all the great people Ive met, lots of cool stuff. I hope that we can have a few baptisms here in Villa to spark it up and stuff. At least we had two 8 year old baptisms on saturday haha. One girl totally cried, the other was just fine. Good times. Lots of lessons this week about the sabbath day, trying to get people out to church and not working on sundays. Its working, I think probably because its a huge focus in the whole church right now. Sabbath day observance. We will see what happens. Shared a cool scripture, in 2 Nefi 32 about the Spirit and that talking to about prayer. I like those, especially one verse (I think verse 3) where Nefi is all like ¨And if you dont figure all this out, its because you do not ask or knock, and therefore you are not brought unto the light (or to church, or baptism, or happiness, or success) and must perish in darkness¨ You gotta step out of the darkness, and ask and knock and look. Thats when it all gets clearer. I hope the investigator we were teaching understood that, since everyone is a little too content with just sitting around and waiting for something to happen. Make it happen!

Well I cant remember what else really happened this week.

Pa´lante!

Elder Sullivan

May 11th 2015

Hey everybody,

Another short message, but such is life.

This week went well, happy mother's day everyone! Hoping to see big progress with people. The only big story I really have to tell is that Francisco will probably be getting married finally, even if its by the catholic church. Otherwise life is normal, were doing good. Church was fairly full of investigators and such, so its exciting.

Well, I think thats all I have for now, Keep the faith bretheren. Little scripture for everyone. "Those who wait upon the Lord shall not be ashamed". Onwards!

Pa'lante!

Elder Sullivan

May 4th 2015

Hey everyone!

Well the entry for the blog here will probably be pretty short.

Life is awesome, Elder Wassum and I just went and taught a bunch of good lessons, rocked some awesome numbers, even being a little sick and crippled. We saw lots of people we are teaching in church, less actives and investigators a like. Exciting things are happening. Lots of chilling in the jungle regions.

Well the rest I dont really have time to write sorry.

Elder Sullivan