Week 85

Hi! My birthday was pretty dope! It didn't rain during the day, only very early in the morning. It's been pretty sunny all week long, and super humid. So now, because of our house with leaks EVERYWHERE, all of my clothes are growing mold. It's super disgusting and it already ruined 3 ties, my backpack, and my suit. I called Sister Mathews (mission president's wife) and she told me to wipe everything down with vinegar... I just haven't done it yet because vinegar smells bad.

Elder Mortensen was still able to make me my cake, it got destroyed on one side but he did a good job, lol. I'm going to miss Morty, he was one of my favorite comps right after Burch and Welch. Elder Sosa and I get along pretty good, much better than at the MTC.  The first few days were a bit frustrating because I'm not used to his teaching style, but I'm getting him into shape haha. 

Morty and I said goodbye to a ton of people we met together and members that helped us out a lot this week, it was sad but at least I'm still here. 

This is Ivanildo. He is getting baptized this Saturday and he is one of my favorite people in the entire world. Morty and I were having a tough day, we had been walking for a long time and all the people we talked to on the street were blowing us off and stuff. I was frustrated, so as we came around a corner I told Morty "Alright, I'm going to contact the very next person I see and he is going to get baptized" and as we turned the corner, I saw Ivanildo in front of his house pulling water out of a well. I went up to him and invited him to sit with us. I could tell he didn't want to talk to us, but we insisted and he told us to come back later. So we did, and we had the most powerful 1st Lesson of our entire missions. At the end he just cracked open and confessed to us how he had been drinking and using drugs and how it was destroying his parent's hearts. We invited him to be baptized and he accepted. Every time I see him now it just seems like he's brighter and happier. He's really excited for this Saturday, it's just a little sad that Mortensen won't be here to see it happen.

His parents are really well off, but both from different religions. His dad is Catholic and his mom attends a church called "Templo Mayor" both are super active members of their churches, but Ivanildo was never interested in religion. He is 27 years old and spent 2 years at a university in Bolivia, that's where he learned Spanish. He learned English by himself from books and movies and is very fluent... every lesson that we've taught him has been in English because he likes practicing. He's super smart, he is fluent in Portuguese, Spanish, English, and a little French. When we found him he was working on getting his driver's license, which he finally got this past week. He is now looking for a job but nothing specific, he just wants to help his parents out. 

His mom cares about him a lot, it's a little sad to see how worried she was. Once we went over for a lesson and he wasn't there, but his mom answered the door and she called him like 10 times in a row and when she finally got a hold of him she got after him and told him to get home right away so we could talk to him. We tried to tell her it was ok and we could come back later and she said "If I couldn't get him to go to church, I'm praying that you two do, I just want him to change." We are going to make sure both parents can go to the baptism, maybe we can convert the whole family, fingers crossed! 

Week 61

I can finally send pics, but the week was pretty normal, nothing too crazy. We had a ton of success this week, we have been struggling to get investigators to church for the past month, but we had 5 yesterday, which was a huge improvement from the 1 we had last week. I also gave a talk on missionary work along with Chevy and Sampson. All 4 of us also put together a fireside about temples and missionary work, it went pretty good.
It was also my son's birthday! We didn't celebrate it with anything big though, just shawarma! Sorry it was a really bad pic of it but it was darn good. Chevy and I wrestled him down and gave him his birthday spankings though, haha it was fun. I also somehow talked him into buying this shirt that says "we own the night" lol it fits him extremely small.

 

Btw, PLANNER NUMBER 10!!!! I hit double digits!!!! I was very happy that morning. My stack actually looks like a stack! Haha McMullin is all mad cuz he only has 2 lol. Which does feel horrible, Olsen had 10 and I only had 1 when I was being trained and I wanted to cry, lol not really. 

So here is the picture I tired to send last week of McMullin's broken bed. It happened in the middle of the night too, I heard a loud sound at like 4 in the morning, so I turned my head and saw his legs up int he air and he was all like "shut up" half asleep and it was HILAROUS. I lost 30 minutes of sleep due to nonstop laughing. So he basically just balanced it until 6:30 when it was time to wake up and rolled out of bed and the bed just fell apart again. 

Also, the senior missionaries went home!! The Demkes are awesome, I'm gonna miss them a lot. They took us out to eat one last time before they left, they were super nice. 

Oh and before I forget, McMullin's mom is super nice and she sent him a care package with a tie for me. It's like a pastel purple for Easter. Tell her I said thank you on my blog!

Week 32; 20th Birthday!

Man today doesn't even feel like my birthday, I'm like banned out here in the butt crack of Africa with nobody around haha. Check out my birthday present form one of our investigators!!! A tootsie roll!!! It's the first time I see one in about 7 months! American candy!!

So let's see, cuzas (things) that happened this passed week... Remember Danildo?? My recent convert is such a boss that he did divisions with me for an entire day! Hinzaguy did the same with Elder Burch. They are on fire, man, they helped so much, introducing people to us and helping us teach. I have two name tags and on one of them I covered up Zuniga and put Alves, so Danildo was super excited about that. 

I liked these two walls here and the mountain behind me. The path goes through them, so we don't have to walk over it. 

If there is one thing I have learned in my mission, is that Jehovah Witness people suck. Elder Burch and I taped this to our door and we see it every day, lol. 

(What is the secret to have a happy family?)

Well, that's it for today!

Week 31

So this past week I didn't really email you much so I'll go over that too. It was probably the shortest week in my mission. We stayed in our area on Pday and Tuesday and then left on Wednesday right after lunch so we could get to Sao Vicente Thursday morning for Zone Conference. It was awesome getting all the trainings from President and seeing everyone else again since I've been stranded on this island for a while. So we were supposed to take a boat back to our area Friday morning, but apparently there was this huge party going on in Santo Antao so EVERYONE was traveling over there. Enough people to take up all the tickets for the next few rides. We didn't end up coming back to our area until Saturday night. A pretty cool thing about all this is that I got to chill and do splits with the Zone Leaders and another couple of Elders. So it was the end of transfers, and Elder Montes was told by the Mission President that he was leaving the island to go train on his last transfer. Ever since day one here in this Zone, Elder Montes has been my Zone Leader and a pretty awesome friend. Him and my trainer basically taught me everything I know. This was the last time I was with him, and now he is in San Tiago in the middle of nowhere training a brand new greenie haha. That's pretty awesome.

Our district all thought it was going to change a lot, that a lot of us were gonna get transferred and whatever, and everyone ended up staying together, haha. Our district is awesome, the sisters make good food and cake.

Speaking of transfers, I'm already at 5! It's still a super small number, I know, but compared to when I had only one planner, I've been here a while.

Also, I found this fluffy dog in Mindelo.

So this past Monday we celebrated the birthday of a member, her name is Julia. It wasn't a big thing, just a get-together with a bunch of crackers and stuff. It was way fun though, this branch reminds me of Port Isabel so much. We are all one big happy family. There's more pics of it but they are all on Elder Burch's camera. I'll forward them later. And well, I guess that just about sums it up for this week. We are working a lot on helping less active members become active again, I think that's what we are going to focus on more than baptizing this transfer.

Hey! Remember the lady that beat me with a stick??? She's the old one next to my comp in the last picture haha. She's super funny and everyone loves her, but she isn't afraid of hitting or slapping anyone in the face. One time we were eating at an activity and I was stuffed from eating so much, and she came up to me offering cake and I said no.... big mistake lol. She literally shoved the cake in my mouth haha. The same happened to Elder Burch. She's crazy but everyone loves her. Her name is Eugenia.

Well, that's it for this week, I love you!!! Bye!!!

Week 24, Lots of Pictures!

Haha I would be more excited to eat the tacos. I'm starving right now. Well, my week was flipping sweet! We had a zone meeting back in Sao Vicente so we stayed there overnight since it's impossible to travel back to our area in one day. We lost 2 days of work, but I got to go back to my old area and see Ligia and Bruno and their family again!! I was soo happy to see them, and the best part is, they just got baptized yesterday! Man I was soo excited for them, and they were glad to see me too. It was sad cuz Bruno asked me if I could stay another day so I could be the one to baptize him, I wanted to soooo bad but I couldn't :( I was still super excited for them tho.
The Family Home Evening was awesome, the investigators we invited weren't there, but we were able to bring some less actives and got to know the members here a lot better. I love all these people so much, they're becoming like my best friends.
And speaking of friends, Elder Burch is an awesome comp. He's funny and a really hard worker. I'm glad I get to serve with him for another 6 weeks (transfer night was yesterday). It was his birthday yesterday and I made him a cake. We ate it for breakfast and lunch haha. Bad choice, I was super hungry the rest of the day for not eating anything solid. So this morning we hiked up like the most beautiful place I've ever seen. Its one of the members' banana and mango garden/forest thing where he works. It was super sweet not having to hike with missionary clothes on. My camera doesn't even do it justice either, it doesn't even compare to being here. We also ate a couple of mangos and caught some frogs and stuff.
I like trees. So yeah, I still have to email the numbers for our district to the mission office and other stuff, so I won't have time to write much more. So bye bye, I love you!! Good luck at work and hope you have fun at the quince, do the wobble for me lol. Tchao!

-Elder Zuniga