E-mail 09/15/2014

Well it didn´t rain.... well a little Sunday.  We got a lot of work done this week.  We had a bunch of new lessons this week and they're still coming, we just need to work on getting them to church.  We have a baptism planned for 11 Oct, which is two weeks after the transfers :( and I have six months in this area, well my companion is happy.  It's good to be running to appointments and not thinking, "well lets go contact because we don´t have anyone else to visit," so hopefully we can keep it going.   Everyone wants to give us food to the point where even I am full.  We also found out that we don´t have a ward mission leader, he moved to Tamalipaus, so now we are waiting to see who will be the new one.  Either way we hope to get the members more involved.

Oh and we cleaned our water tank that´s on our roof today, sorry I forgot to take pics, but it was green on the bottom and the water in the toilet was turning green, so we decided it was time to clean it. 

Sorry there are letters missing in some of the words the keyboard isn´t working right, and it´s taking more time to write too. (Mom fixed the missing letters)

Les amo

Elder Durrant  

E-mail 09/08/2014

Wow what a week, yea I know I say that every week, but this week we have officially entered the rainy season.  It hit hard on Wednesday and just about all the rest of the week.  It was sunny on Sunday, but it´s getting ready for another go around.  Well there really aren´t any gutters here, some times you´ll see a drain, but for the most part the roads are designed so the water runs down to the river.   Seeing as about half my area has dirt roads, it gets interesting, but I say it makes it fun. Because it´s always sunny here, it get´s so hot, and it makes for good contacting.  Some people saw us in the street while it was down pouring so they waved us over to get under cover for a few minutes.  When it stops there's some parts of the road where there are big puddles, so people try to get the water to move down the road, because after a few days it starts to smell bad.  I don´t know why, I think it would dry up with all this heat, but it doesn´t, at least not very fast.  All this rain does take a toll on my shoes, but we shall see how long they last. Well we didn´t get many lessons this week, I would have thought that more people would be in their houses with all this rain, but obviously people don't think the way I do.   We did manage to contact 103 people this week, that´s the most contacts that I have ever done in my mission in one week.  We are starting to find more and more people to teach.  It was so funny because as we were walking down the street, there was a group of guys and one yelled "hey cachito y dos metros" basically he said hey shorty and two meters.  For the most part kids like to try and practice their English with me or ask about words.  Sorry this week´s letter isn´t that long but in general I´m doing good and hope the same for you all.

Les amo

Elder Durrant

E-mail 09/01/2014

Wow what a week!  First thing, we finally got gas installed in the house, so we can have hot water.  I´m so happy I can have hot showers in the mornings again. I also bought a mirror so I don´t have to use the microwave to comb my hair, but it´s been very useful.  With the increase of missionaries, it means more houses and more material, which means it´s harder to get stuff for the house, but we manege.  We already have every thing that we really need, it's just the odds and ends.  We also found out that the lines of our area are a little different then I thought, so come to find out there was a part of our area that we haven´t been working in.  We had intercambios with the zone leaders, so in the morning we went up there to try and find less actives and contact people up there.  We didn´t have any luck getting in any houses, but we got a nice sun burn.  It´s actually the first time I´ve gotten a sunburn from just walking around, but sometimes I get it when we do some sports on Mondays.

Well me and my comp have had more success among the less active, but with a class yesterday on how to work with the missionaries we hope to get more member involvement.  We will be having a noche de hogar (family home evening) with some members and an investigator today, so we'll see how the work progresses this week.

les amo

elder Durrant

E-mail 08/25/2014

Well this week has been awesome. Elder Ortiz is the first comp. that I have had that actually contacts, and he does it more then me, so I have to get my act together to catch up. ;)  People were actually home when we went to go visit, and we finally convinced someone to go to church this week, which you´d think wouldn´t be so hard seeing as it doesn´t start till noon.  We also had a bunch of less actives go to church, well where we lack in investigators we make up in less actives.   Hopefully we can get people to listen to us.  It was a little tough with Elder Stephenson because we were two tall white guys, it scared people, especially at night, and well my comp. is short so that isn´t so much of a problem anymore. 

It was funny, this week while we were walking, a girl asked who we were looking for, and so we said the name and she said that she was waiting for a letter and wondered if we were from estafet (mail service) well we said no. 

Well the work goes on, I hope you all are doing good.

¡Les Amo! 

Elder Durrant

E-mail 08/18/2014

Well this week has been good, the hermanas in our ward baptized the mom of another baptism that they had a few months ago, so they're happy.  It was so funny because we went to the baptism and someone locked their keys in the closet, and so we tried picking the lock.  Well Mom and Dad, don´t worry because I don´t have the skills of a thief, so the next thing we tried was get those flat plastic cables to wrap a box and we got it behind the thing that keeps the door closed (sorry I don´t remember what it´s called) and Elder Stephenson was pulling it with all his weight, then it snapped and he fell backwards.  It was funny because he always makes fun of me for doing stuff like that.

Well transfers came and well I´m still here in Sauzalito 1, and Elder Stephenson left for Zacatacas.  My new comp. is Elder Ortiz, he's from the state of Mexico.  He has seven months in the mission, and very quiet, so hopefully I can get him out of it.
This morning was crazy, we had to be at the central (bus station) at 8 in the morning, and for some reason I got sick last night, so after one hour of looking for a taxi, we finally got to the bus station.  We got their about 9 and after chatting a bit I headed back with my new Comp. and I took a nap, so I feel better now.

So basically I was in my first area for 3 months, then my second for 6 months, then my third one for 3 months, and now I´m going for 6 six months here, my comp has had more areas then me, but that´s fine because I like staying in one place then moving around.

Les amo

Elder Durrant

E-mail 08/11/2014

Well not much happened this week, but there was someone interesting that showed up Sunday.  He came in the middle of Sacrament Meeting, so we went and sate by him, then later we  found out his story.  If I remember right, he's from Chiapas, he's basically Indian.  He spoke two other languages, some dialect of Mayan.  He could speak Spanish, but he struggled with it.  He was traveling to the US but his visa wasn´t accepted or something like that, and so he had no choice but to head back, but he didn´t have any money to do it.  He couldn´t get any help from anybody, until an old man offered to help him out.  So he sold his watch to buy his ticket to get here, but he didn´t have enough for the rest of the way, so he gave him the direction to our chapel and said that he had some children that went to this church and that he should ask for some help from the bishop.  It was very humbling to hear his story especially since in class we talked about the good Samaritan.  He talked about his home land a little bit, he even told us that there was a chapel where he lives.  He was also missing part of his index and middle fingers from the first joint.  If I understood him right, he said that it was a sign of a worrier, but he said he wasn´t that anymore.  It was also very interesting his comments of god and that he came to know the true and living god.  As far as I know, he is on his way home now, but it has surely been an experience I will never forget.

Well as for work, we are getting more of the members involved, but it´s still a work in progress.  Our ward mission leader is really good, he is a young ward mission leader, but he does a lot and he wants to be a mission president one day,  He has two years now in the church, but he knows a lot.  He hasn´t been on a mission, but that doesn´t stop him.  When we are together it´s like being in a trio.

Les amo

Elder Durrant

E-mail 08/04/2014

Yesterday we had a meeting with the stake, it was a meeting for the ward counsel, but they invited us to come.  It was a really good meeting, they gave examples of what the meeting  should be like, hopefully it will help the work move along.  We are trying to get the members involved in the work, but it´s a slow process.  We are still working on finding people to teach, we have found some but we still would like to find more, and well there´s only two weeks left before the next transfer and it just seems to go faster and faster.  Right now I´m working on making a disc with some Mormon Messages so we can show  them to our investigators, because most of them don´t have internet.

Sorry there's not much that happened this week, I´ll try to write more next week.  Someone said they would give me some of their old coins :) so I might send some pics when I got them.

Les amo

Elder Durrant