SUPER SATURDAY- NOT SO SUPER SUNDAY !!

April 11th, 2017 

Tuesday - well I had intercambios with Elder Belnap, he’s my MTC comp’s son (my mtc comp trained him) so we were already warmed up to each other, but we crossed the bridge again, (I almost ruined my underwear crossing that again). But we had a pretty good day, had a couple charlas and found a new family to teach in the night. We did try to find a future investigator and their landlord just screamed at us that they were protestant and didn’t need anything. So I told him firmly that we weren’t there for him. haha I don’t think we’ll be going back there anytime soon. 

Wednesday - I woke up at like 4 in the morning just to figure out that Elder Belnap could go back up to his area with the other elder that was doing intercambios too. So then I went back to sleep, but then there weren’t too many people home today, so we just contacted and joked around all day. 

Thursday - The activity!! haha so we started planning this activity for the ward to help strengthen it, and haha no one came, it was going to be awesome!! So basically our convert Camila came, and Esteban and the bishop, and thats it. Haha we even bought a bunch of things for object lessons but... no one came. So we are trying to strengthen the wards and get more commitment from them. 

Friday - so from this day forward all the days were good, today we found a new family to teach, a lot of the people we are teaching though are leaving on vacation this week. But we are teaching them and their 17 year old niece. She is a Jehovahs witness and said she knows her religion isn't true but also doesn’t know if there is a true one. But she’s progressing pretty well, she said she’s gonna pray and search to find her answer. And if she gets one she’s gonna follow it. Then we went to the Lemos´ at night to teach them. 

Saturday - SUPER SATURDAY!!!! haha so we came up with this thing called super saturday where you put all the best investigators on Saturday right before Sunday so they have a desire to go to church, and haha we had 3 lessons with members and 3 other lessons and found 2 new investigators. But we had a really good lesson with Ana, a fairly newer investigator and she said she would come to church!! Also we had a lot of others say they were coming!

Sunday - NOT SO SUPER SUNDAY - so no one came to church... haha we found out Ana drank a TON of mate the night before and felt horrible in the morning but said she would come next week, (only thing is she isn’t married) then all the other ones slept in. Also another thing we have found 3 awesome people that would probably get baptized, and they live in the Hermana’s area... haha so were basically just finding for them! but as long as they get  baptized I’m fine with that. 

Monday - so my comp was just saying bye to people, and we had a couple lessons, actually mostly lessons, haha 1 lesson was going pretty good then her neighbour(who didn’t like talking to us early because we taught them both before) she came in and we both thought ¨oh great!!¨ but at the end she actually helped out, the lady we were teaching said “if I’m going to get baptized it’ll be in the catholic church because everyone does it that way” Then her neighbour said “well if everyone jumped off a bridge would you do that, you need to look and she if thats the church you want, not just because everyone does because everyone could be wrong” Then she thought about that for a bit. hahaha well that was nice to not have to tell her that, better coming from the neighbour!!!

Well yea this week was another good week, just filtering out the teaching pool, and trying to find those prepared people, haha we’ve also been sharing the Prince of Peace videos with everyone we see. But we’ve got some good investigators right now who can start progressing and yea basically that its. We are kinda starting from scratch this change trying to do that, and it’s working, but people just need time to truly convert!! Also my comp is leaving me 😱 haha he’s going to my old area in Aeroparque! He’ll like it there, and my comp is Elder Rodrigues from Barcelona! So this will be a good change.

llloovveee 

Elder Grigor

Elder Merino saying goodbye to the families in Durazno

Goofing around with the kids!! 

Elder Grigor with his district in Durazno 

Don't take life too seriously !!!

April 3, 2017

Monday - My bday!!!!! We had a couple of parties and a family home evening with 2 families in the ward, and then the guys we live with surprised us with a cake!! It was amazing!

Tuesday - I had an intercambio with Elder Colson. He’s new, he’s been out about 2 months and he came here with Coral. I’m pretty sure they were in the same district in the MTC. We had a decent day, it wasn't that great until at the end of the day like 8 o’clock. We had nothing to do so I was contacting, and a guy named nacho(who actually kinda looks like jack black) opened his door and said he was atheist and a professor of philosophy. So I had an impression to say we were spirits before this world, and he said: “how’s that, how do you know that? Here, can you come in?  I want to hear this.” So we taught him and he agreed to pray that night, and we gave him the Book of Mormon. We explained it, and he asked if we could sing it and write our testimonies. Then he asked: “so how long does it take to get an answer, because if it comes in 30 years I’m not gonna be too happy!”

Wednesday - We had a good day, we started trying a new strategy in contacting and tried to give them the first lesson right there, and it’s working pretty well. We ask if we can explain 1 page, then we say a prayer and explain the whole thing pretty quick, so we talked to 1 guy (but he told us his wife is totally against it and he doesn't want contentions). Then another lady who works in compaña (in the middle of no where) and she’s only in her house 4 days out of the week and she lives in another part for 26 days... then we taught a menos activo (less active) lady whose family aren't members.

Thursday - Today was decent, we are trying to help out Enrique and Ana a lot to get them to come to church, but we’re thinking Enrique doesn’t want to. They are investigators from a while back but they haven't gotten married yet. 

Friday - Another decent day! Haha we tried teaching these kids how to pray but their dad came out and got mad at us and ran us off. He was a member and his family died and now he doesn’t like the church, (sometimes when things go wrong people blame the church. The church has nothing to do with that, it’s just there to help you when those things happen).

Saturday - Conference!!!! It was a really good day because (well 1 bad thing-I'm sick) but it’s conference! So I loved the talks. There were a lot of words I didn’t understand because they talk in weird words, but there was a lot of problems with the transmission. Sometimes the translator wouldn't say anything and would say things I couldn’t understand (I can’t hear him in English) or it switched to french 1 time. But it was still good, no investigators came but Camila came, she is our convert. Then in the middle of the sessions we taught a family of 4, a mother, 2 daughters and a ten year old grandson. They were all listening really intently but 1 of them was listening soo closely and following along so closely, haha at first I though she wasn’t going to pay attention because we gave her the pamphlet and she was on her phone. Then she opened it right up and asked what page are you guys on!!!!!! It was awesome and they understood soo well about the priesthood power being lost. Then we watched the priesthood session in english, and I loved the talks. Especially Elder Bednar and Elder Eyrings talks. 

Sunday - Wooooo!!!! the Lemos`came to church!!!! and she asked what happened to the classes and everything. So we explained and she said, alright we’re coming back next week too. The only problem is that she smokes, but her son and husband both accepted invitations to be baptized! Then I also really liked yhoon chau or however you spell his name, his talk was really good: about looknig up. Then we had another lesson with the Lemos family.

Monday - we had a zone activity today haha it was pretty fun, then we got a bauru and ice cream. But yea it was a great week.

So basically we found like 3 families that want to start listening to us. We also found 14 new investigators this week, working hard and finding lots!! The best thing is most of them are prepared or will tell us if they don’t want anything so we don't have to waste too much time teaching people who aren't ready YET to progress. Also the changes are in 1 week and I’m not ready. I want my comp to stay, we having fun together. 

Haha have fun everyone!!  Don’t take life too seriously. Learn to have fun, life can be difficult. It needs to be difficult or we wouldn't be here. So learn to find the fun in everything to help you along the way!!!!

Love You

Elder Grigor

Fun times at a Zone activity 

Elder Grigor & Elder Merino on their birthday !! 

Birthday Cake for the two missionaries 

HMMMM.....good cake!!!! 

Intercambio with Elder Colson

These shoes need to be burned! 

Elder Merino at our investigators home