April 6, 2015

The people!

Happy Easter! Am I kind of glad its over? Yes. Now, we can actually go and visit people and no one will complain that its holidays haha. Ate a lot of this strange bean dessert that is called "habichuelas con dulce" or like, cream of beans or something like that haha. Anyway, its really sweet and like heavy and its cooked kind of like a stew of beans with a few other things. Anyway, its pretty good but I dont like it all that much ahah. We got stuffed with it anyway. Lots of people had inflated pools around. Kind of tempting to preach to them as they couldnt really move from their pools, but they were mostly drunk or in bathing suits so we kind of just wandered the streets trying to find people it reminded me of a slow western movie where the hero cant find anyone and just wanders the ghost town with the tumbleweed and everything. Except the tumbleweed was beer bottles haha.

Anyway, it was still a good time and general conference made it a lot better. Nice to hear modern revelations. Shows that we still need it, who knew back in the day what to do with a cellphone haha. I really liked Elder Oaks little thing about cellphones in the sacrament meeting. Something about how youre not feeling the spirit if you are texting, chatting or something like that during the sacred hour of the sacrament. Im going to be arriving home very much out of date it looks like. Back in my day, only the cool kids had cellphones and the rest of us had to use the home phone (that sometimes was wireless, yes!).

Anyway, all inspiring stuff. I liked the focus on the family and The Atonement. One of our investigators who isnt married came to the saturday morning session. I think it left an impact, he seemed a little different after haha. Nice to see that some of our efforts are paying off with a few of the couples we are teaching, they are basically doing everything but being married. Just one more law to keep haha! I hope it happens for them, I have been in prayer for them for a long time now.

Other things this week, well we had a cool activity today with the zone where we made pizza and played basketball. I ate more than a whole pizza. Its still sitting there in the stomach haha.

We wandered the jungle out past the highway this week, and found some members out there we hadnt seen ever. Some less active, one active. The active member is blind, but she still gets around and comes to church and everything. The jungle environment was really nice out there, and receptive people mostly. Although a few closer christian churches have the power gripped out there, since our church is too far away for those of little faith. Forward!

Anyway, thats kind of all I can think of that happened that was really cool. My stomach is a brick right now thanks to that pizza. P90X tomorrow to work it off haha. Its a little strange being close to the end of the mission, but its all good. Those stinking members are always telling me "well, youre already at home". Yeah, no, not yet haha.

But, have a nice week everyone

Que El Senor les cuide,

Elder Sullivan

March 30, 2015

Hey everyone,

I hope life is great!

Here in the Villa, we are ¨enjoying¨ slightly warmer weather, with a lot less rain. Also, happy Holy Week everyone! Its time to celebrate Easter, the advent of the Lord´s ressurection. Here, we will be celebrating for a week and a bit. Unfortunately, that means lots of people leaving for the beach and parties in the street. Ah well, opportunities to hand out our pass along cards to the drunk throngs. And the bonus is lots of families around in their houses! Woohoo!

So far lots of cool stuff has happened, Im not sure I remember it all though. Yesterday, we just gave some serious ¨boches¨ or like, really frank and direct talks haha. Told one guy that today, we receive modern revelation and thats why no wine in the sacrament. He kept on trying to argue all this law of Moses stuff about like the Word of Wisdom till we told him how it was. Back in the day, it was pretty hard to clean meat. Not so much anymore, so its just fine to eat pork. He agreed. Next, we told a man who was unmarried and living with his wife for like 30 years that.... he is living in sin its time to get married and baptized. He sort of accepted, we need to find his wife and talk to her more haha since hes obviously not very persuasive. Next, told a couple who are not married what the law of chastity is. We told them it was probably time to start the divorce and marriage papers, no matter the cost, since the ward will help with that.  I explained to the couple that they can separate now and get baptized and work on the marriage papers separated, or we can try and get it all done with the court and various other things all before July. We have left them to think and pray about that. 

The rest of the week was spent finding less actives everywhere and trying to help them come back. A few were receptive, others took some effort. We convinced this one guy who said he had erased his memory of mormonism to listen to us again. We also helped this one lady feel good about the church and that no she wasnt forgotten (well, at least by the Lord) and she ended up crying in the prayer since it was probably the first prayer said in her house for years. Great experience to find her totally by chance. Lots of work on reactivation right now, kind of a change of gears from before. Results are being seen with a few families and random young adults who people have been inviting to church.

We pushed a truck down a hill a few days ago. Like, 5 times. it finally started up and we made it to the far out neighbourhoods we are teaching. Lots of success with the getting rides out to that distant area so far. Home teaching still is bad here, if only people would just do it. Ate a lot of food. One member made us these tacos with like beans and beef and guacamole, she served her mission in Guatemala so she made it really good. More tacos in another house, more Dominican style though. Ate fried chicken today. Played basketball too, with this one member who is the only young man left in the ward. Hope he can stay active and go on a mission, though its pretty hard being the only one. Working a lot with that family, since they are not entirely in harmony. Im sure that the young man´s life will all come together when hes a little older though. I mean, it sort of happened for me (at least, Im on a mission!).

Well, other stuff.... I dunno. It was a good week. Lots of jungle travel, having lessons with people. Listening to that strange Argentinian accent from that one lady. Lots of people come to church, so thats cool. They just need to be married or not so youthful and rebelious haha.

Nice to see some progress here in the ward, everyone is pretty willing to help, so thats nice too. At least we may have some reactivation work getting done. Baptisms will still take some serious paper work.

Keep the Holy Week holy, and try to do some good this week and remember that because Jesus lives today, we can also live everyday to the fullest.

Elder Sullivan

March 23, 2015

Hello...

So here we are, writing again (didnt this just happen on wednesday?).

What more has happened? I probably already wrote about the temple, it was cool and awesome, always a comfort to rejoin the Lord in His house. I always hate having to leave, but service is more important than sitting in meditation forever.

Um otherwise preaching has been fairly normal. A guy we are teaching just realized that he has to get married to be baptized, so he said he would work on that. YEAH!  We are out in the jungle a little bit now, on a hill at the base of the mountains, meeting new people and having a nice tranquil setting to teach people in the coconut trees. Its been fun finding people, teaching and stuff but we kind of suffered working with the ward a bit. Everyone in the world needs to realize that home teaching really is a big deal and it has to get done. And if it would get done, how much better we would all be off. The youth are going to seminary more consistently though. Yeah! Attendance went from 0 to 5 youth, so thats pretty good. Did it require bribes, hard talks, and probably the young women wanting to flirt with my companion? Maybe, kidding about the flirting haha.

Well.... Im a little blank on big experiences.

Met a lady from Argentina. She had a weird accent, but was friendly and stuff and was fun to teach. They always say the word for I ¨yo¨ with a super harsh J sound like ¨Joe¨. Its kind of scary and sassy sounding. We have this language teacher that we are teaching who is super cool with lots of questions and is super intelligent but we are probably running into that same problem with all smart haitian investigators... the whole progress thing. He comes to church though and has good friends in the ward. He loves Canada, and a few relatives live out there in Montreal. Got those people out in the distant little neighbourhood to church yesterday, although we had to waste all the minutes on the phone to get it done. Ah well.

Maybe its just me, but all the people have seemed a lot sleepier lately. I think its something in the air, I find myself sleepy if I sit still too long. Gotta fidget and keep active and work out. Ill get my companion doing those push ups soon. We have to work off all the extra oil, salt, fat and sugar used in Domincan cooking. Its death. But we just bought a bunch of vegetables and stuff from the market today (it was super heavy, next time we bring a wheelbarrow) so our health should be better.

Well I think thats kind of it. Life is good. Going strong.

Keep the faith bretheren,

Elder Sullivan

March 18, 2015

Hey everyone!

So, a big week. Received the mini missionary, Elder Uribe from San Cristobal. Hes cool, 19 years old and about to leave on a mission to Nicaragua in may shortly after this transfer terminates. So that will be tight. We just spent two days getting his papers ready, that was a lot of travel and pain. But it worked out and we may not run out of money. 

So a lot has happened, we had a stake conference with some decent church attendence, we actually always have lots of people in church they just have other things to sort out to get baptized. Hoping that someday we will get there, sooner than later would be nice. But its alright, most people are on their way, step by little step and thats the important part.

Alright, so last week Elder Holland came to the mission. The whole mission got together and that was super awesome. Elder Holland came in and decided he wanted to shake each missionarys hand. So he did, even mine. Didnt say much, I just said where I was from and he said that was good. But later, when he explained that by shaking our hands really he was just looking into our eyes to see what he called into our souls, he said that most of us were getting it and doing good. Made me feel a lot better, more worthy to be doing what Im doing and having an apostles approval. He was a great speaker, probably the best speech Ive ever heard. Really got in our faces haha. But it was cool he explained a lot about what a mission is and what it should mean to us, first explaining that his mission meant so much to him. He almost didnt go, since his family was mostly less active, there were work opportunities and he was dating the girl who would later be his wife. There were lots of reasons not to go on a mission. But he went, and look at where he is today. He explained that every opportunity in his life he had obtained by deciding to go and serve a mission. Then he got a little bit more intense about how we had better value our missions and use what we learn and gain for the rest of our lives. What really struck me is how he explained that the mission force is an elite circle in the church, and whether it is fair or not, people think we are perfect, even though the mission president and the twelve know for sure we are not. He told the story of a little old lady in a gospel principles class where the teacher asked a classic question to start an Atonement lesson. What perfect person do you know? He expected them all to say Jesus, but the lady in the back answered, the Elders, referring to the two missionaries who had taugth and baptized her. As President Nuckols always says, people always call the missionaries angels, and they thank him for sending us out. Basically, people have a very high image of us, these 18 to 26 year olds that the Lord himself sends out. So, Elder Holland told us to value that, to live every day in that image as the representative of Christ for the rest of our lives and realize that we can never go back, never be the same. The mission is meant to be permanent. I agree, and hope I can apply that more as a missionary, and I have always shared that deep and sincere respect Elder Holland talked about with peoples trust. Trust of the church, investigators, members, the apostoles, everyone. So our job is a pretty big deal, but making the best of it! He also talked a bit about the book of mormon, and how it is the sign, the signal of the restoration and that when we give a book of mormon to an investigator, that is the sign, that is their signal that the restoration is now in their hands, and they are supposed to be able to recognize it. Thats why we have Moroni on all the temples, the angel with the trumpet proclaiming the fulness of the gospel, or in other words, the book of mormon. Huge section on it in 3 Nephi chapter 21, look it up. Anyway, good stuff, we should always be sharing the book of mormon, its our signal to the world. Also, awesome to see all those old friends from the mission and catch up.

Well, preaching was good. A few lessons that went well, hoping that these investigators can pick it up a little. Elder Uribe has put us in charge of helping the youth get more active and go to activites and seminary, so far, a little success. The youth always need help especially here, there are basically none.

Also, today we went to the temple. Super cool. The session was nice. A great blessing. Although, next to no sleep so time is moving a little slow haha. I always learn something more from the temple, hope to make it more regular attendance after the mission haha.

Well, thats all I can really think up right now, that long section on Elder Holland kind of ate up most of my thought process and time. Bunch of shenanigans running around doing all these things in the captial for a passport for the mini, and lots of figuring out the ward a little better here. Its a work of heart.

Anyway, keep on pressing forward, never look back because life was meant to change you so dont bother trying to be the good old guy you used to be, always look forward to better things.

Con amor,

Elder Sullivan

March 9 2015

Hey everybody!

So, another beautifu week in Villa Altagracia, unfortately with not so great news, Elder Jones is leaving for San Cristobal, meaning I am going to be left all alone in Villa! Well, almost alone, apparently I will be receiving a ¨mini missionary¨ which means a member who lives somewhere in the mission who will be my companion for.... who knows how long? No one knows who it is, or why here all I know is that I am the only missionary in the mission with a mini and no other details haha. So that will be interesting.

Otherwise, all has been well. Today we did a bunch of farewelling in the district.

 Random tip, I might be writing on wednesday instead of monday next week for a temple trip...

So yeah we made pizza with the district and stuff, good times. Played this strange card game about the book of mormon, I think I won but only because I had an invincible combo that I think the creators didnt think about. So fun.

Um, we did a bunch of farewelling this week. Um, oh I did a split with our district leader who was here in Villa when he started the mission. Really cool, he helped us find this one less active we are teaching now and it was cool for him to see the old area and old friends of his, one couple that we are hoping to get married and baptized haha. It was fun and stuff, and the district leader almost matched me in P90X so I better start working out harder. 

Other cool things, we made some big steps with people. We got a little more direct on the getting baptized thing with people even not being married, we even set some long term goals with them. Looks good. We were teaching these two eternal investigators who are not married and Elder Jones got all direct about baptism with them, and the wife started ¨dando pela¨ or giving it to her husband that they were not married and needed to be keeping the commandments and stuff. It was crazy, but he came up all defensive and such. Well, Elder Jones started doing some crazy questioning and stuff and we uncovered that it turns out this guy just doesnt actually understand the Restoration, and so he doesnt believe that the bible can be the basis of religion nor all the bad religious leaders of the past that have created the modern religions. Turns out the restoration answers that doubt super well, so he was kind of taken back, and we plan to follow up there, especially since he sees more need to get married right now for social and financial reasons, so its looking up there. The ward is willing to help out, the new guy and I will be working on that. The bishop is pretty excited about working on some certain people, and so I think if we can get all the unmarried couples into position, the ward will help us get them married and free of nasty sin! We had some kind of repeat experiences with other people. One guy who can actually get married super easy if he and his wife will just do it, keeps on saying he needs a firmer answer, but he promised Elder Jones one day he would get baptized. We are going to see if we can make it sooner than later. He needs some more reading and praying, and a little push on the whole commitment thing, but its exciting to see maybe another marriage in the mission yeah!

Well, I cant think of too many other things. We had fun, preached a bunch, heard lots of boches from this one member who kept on talking about tithing, coming to church and reading the book of mormon. He gave a huge thing in priesthood about how people who work on sundays do not trust in the Lord´s promise of tithing, that they work because they dont trust giving him his day and his money, and he said that those people will always suffer financial problems and never feel peace of mind. Interesting point, I think I will never work on sundays no matter what, its not the biggest sacrifice in the world. It still strikes me in this ward the happiness of the married couples, and the apparent lack of peace in all the people just living together who arent members. Its gotta be commitment, and the commitment of some of the members is so apparent, and so they liev great peaceful lives, but our investigators are still missing that. I hope some of them can determine what they really want and go get it.

Contacted a lot of people this week. 100 in total. Good times, its nice to talk.

Played clue with the ward mission leader last week. Fun times, supposed to play today as well. Best thing since sliced bread!

Well its all good here and I have no complaints other than the whole mini missionary thing but I just need to be more patient haha.

Have a nice week!

Que el Señor les cuide siempre,

Elder Sullivan

March 2nd 2015

Hey everybody!

So life in the Villa is going super well, and its already hard to believe that on saturday we will receive transfer calls. Wow. It turns out I only get 3 more transfers and then Ill be transferring permanently. Ai yi yi! We did lots of stuff this week, although mostly the members dropped out on us and the people we are hoping for the most progression have started flaking a bit. We didnt even get out to see the Solano family out in the remote part of villa, but we did have ward council which was.... fun? We also went to another Dominican funeral for the mom of a member. Sad, as always, but I find Dominican funerals mostly just uncomfortable and kind of strange how everyone kind of just sits in the house all day looking at a coffin and crying a lot. And then some preacher guy got up and started giving a strange sermon. At least we paid respects and gave our feelings to the member who had suffered the loss. Of course, this meant our meeting later started late and the bishop was upset about that saying the members had forgotten the scripture let the dead bury their dead, because everyone stayed at the funeral up until the grave procession which lasted forever. When I die, my funeral will definitely be nothing like these haha. I hope everyone has a party or something, instead of sitting in plastic chairs waiting for.... something. At least the member knows that her mom is ok and waiting in the spirit world better than she was here, 

Other things, we set a baptism date in this month of march with one of our long standing investigators. He has like... months in church but is still not married. He committed to the date though, and we are going to work our buns off for the marriage and stuff. Hes just a little slow about things, but hes really cool and understands all the stuff and just needs a little bit more surety about whats hes doing. I like having goals though with investigators and taking steps to reach them a lot better than floating around waiting for a testimony to appear out of the air. Tip for all, it doesnt happen. Gotta move from A to B, not float around. Commitment is the way to Christ.

Found out this one member draws these awesome anime drawings, a little nostalgia there. Hes one of the only young men, and is moving towards reactivation. He passed the sacrament recently even, BONUS. All it took was... basically no work from us just from his Dad. 

Church was a little sparse this week due to rain, but thats a common thing.

Hoping for some big things this week with some cool family home evenings and lots of work with the members. We even got a lunch date with one partial member family, hoping to strengthen them especially the 12 year old son who is the only deacon. The ward out here is still kind of lacking in something, but I havent really put my finger on it. We are just lacking progress with reactivation and such right now. We even had this one less active basically like lash out and attack us in one lesson. We were just sharing a nice little scripture to encourage her to read the book of mormon and she got all angry about how she doesnt go to church and she has other things to do and that we didnt understand because our lives are comfortable and easy. Well, that went poorly, but we recovered by changing subjects and mostly just accepting her accusations instead of hitting back. So now we are the guys with comfortable lives who just walk around teaching people about stuff. Accurate? Somewhat I guess haha.

Got a chance to catch up today with some old buds in my last area. We headed down to the big supermarket Jumbo in the capital to pick up some stuff (like, a new bag for me and a bunch of stuff for laundry and some fancy foods like Pop Tarts haha) and we ran into Elder Laws and Hasler. Caught up with them, nice to hear about Cruz Maria being good and strong and her husband is going to be referred to the missionaries in Spain YES! We also chatted a bunch about stuff, like Elder Holland coming soon to the mission to probably send us all home haha. Nice to see old friends, and eat that awesome food from Wendys. 

Also, found out that one of our investigators is a surfer too! We were talking with them about faith, and he started using an example I always use to explain faith with surfing! So that was cool and related to the lesson and stuff, and it was awesome to relate with him on that. It turns out the sea just calls to some people, and there is no turning away. The story I always use with surfing is that  when one paddles out, first you have no idea what is waiting beyond, but you hope its good. When youre out in the surf, you cant see the horizon, cant see where youre trying to reach. Instead you battle the waves, diving under, ducking them or just driving forward. Often you dont make much ground, but if you stop and let the wave get you, you lose all the progress made. Its usually a battle getting out, but if you dont stop eventually a gap opens and you reach the line up at the horizon, the sun is nice and bright, the waves calm and you sit and wait for a good one to come haha. But you cant stop in the break zone. Its just like faith, you gotta keep going and always make steps, even if they go nowhere. Because the horizon is there, even if you cant see it, and the reward is so much better than 5 minutes of paddle battle.

Anyway, there is my little spiel haha.

I hope all is well with everyone, and Im sorry if I forgot any interesting stories (I dont think I mentioned there was a little tiny earthquake last week, did I? Well there was, the house was vibrating haha but it was pretty minor and we just continued with the lesson)

Hasta que nos volvamos a ver,

Elder Sullivan

Feb 23rd 2015

Hey yo!

Well, another week gone, this one pretty well. We had a conference with President and a couple other zones. It was pretty cool, President is still going strong with the pulse motto, and the mission really is responding well. Some people are going crazy with the amount of members they get into their lessons, and the goals in the mission are being achieved to great new heights. He talked about how he ride his bike and stuff, and how his new fancy dancy chronometer has helped him push much harder since now he knows how hard he is really exercising. He then said something about how that is his workout not things like P90X, so I flexed my overly large biceps when he mentioned P90X and now everyone including President knows I do P90X haha. Anyway, President is super right about needing a way to measure our performance, because we need to ¨break paradigms¨. We all think we have certain levels of achievement, boundaries, limits everything. Those levels really only exist on a mental level, and the Lord has provided us this wonderful life to see that really, we can break any paradigms and reach higher than ever. Thats the purpose of the Gospel. Repentance is really breaking our limits, not restricting ourselves. Rather than saying ¨I cant¨we can always say ¨I will¨. Because the nice thing about the Gospel is that when we reach our limits, just liike the body releases hormones to keep the body moving in times of need and adapts itself quickly to keep going, the Lord gives us the strength to keep going, to still be ¨decent men in an indecent time¨.

President also talked a lot about keeping covenants, so it must be important. I finally managed to ask him about surfing, he rides a 9 foot 3 board, cant quite hang ten but he really loves surfing and is probably like those guys out on the San Juanico shore, without the hanging ten haha.

I wrote last week about a little satellite neighbourhood where we went with a member, taught some stuff and it was great. Well, an entire family of 6 came with that member in his truck to church this sunday! It was awesome! They really liked it and arrived early basically I see nothing but opportunity with them other than they are probably not legally married but Ive seen people get married before so... Anyway, it was nice to see that working with the members pays off, and nice to meet such a cool family who like was willing to just come to church and received us, I hope we can meet with them more, although we are a little restricted by the distance. In that sunday we had like 10 investigators come. It was crazy. Two of our unmarried couples came, just becase theyre cool, and a couple young women (still no young men) one of which we have been teaching and she has some great potential, wants to be baptized and has a good member friend. And this one lady came who has been an investigator since forever ago. It was funny, we were teaching her a couple days ago, and we had decided to try and get her to keep going to church. So, in my classic zero tact manner I asked ¨Hermana, why dont we see you in church anymore?¨ Yeah, so she explained that with her family not going and seeing all the other families there it made her a little depressed. We convinced her it would make her feel better and that her family would follow, and after knocking on the door that morning to wake her up, she came and felt great! The blessing of follow your dreams and passions haha and missionaries being probably a little too direct.

Taught lots of new people, its always fun to run up against the whole ¨every church is right¨ and other classic Dominican statements about why they dont live the gospel of Jesus Christ. Good times, and seeing new people is always exciting as you never know what theyre going to say, and I think first visits are the best time to really have people feel the spirit of the message.We are lately seeing lots of the devestation of not keepoing the law of chastity in the lives of people. ITS REALLY IMPORTANT!

Anyway, it was a good week. Ive been getting more direct and tougher in teaching people, maybe its a reflection of my personality but who knows. All the leaders have been telling us to be more direct about commitments, so its happening haha.

Well, thats kind of it. Our house is super clean right now. So bleached and scrubbed. AND I FOUND MY DEODORANT SPRAY YESSSSSS. So I smell like manly roses.

Gracias por todo, sigan adelante!

Elder Sullivan