Jack - October 23

Hi everyone! I´ve finished my first week in the field! It was pretty difficult, but it was also pretty good. My companion always tells me that he appreciates my enthusiasm for the work, I have a lot of trouble with speaking the language and also knowing what to say, partially because it's a different language and partially because I´m really not a conversationalist. So that stinks, its hard to improve when you don´t know the words either. Nevertheless, whatever I can´t do, I try to make up for in enthusiasm. I set pretty high goals for our area in terms of contacting and handing out copies of the Book of Mormon, and we´ve seen quite a bit of success there. Whenever I´m walking down the street, or contacting houses, or even talking (well listening) to people, I´m always smiling, it´s weird because I don´t really think I smiled that much back home. Here I am constantly smiling, and I mean constantly because sometimes my face hurts a little at the end of the day haha. I figure that I might not be able to tell someone perfectly of the happiness of our message, but if someone always sees me with a smile they might wonder why, especially since I stick out here. I´m 99% sure I´m the tallest person here. Anyways my message to you is to smile more, practice having a resting smile on your face, even if you´re not actually super happy, it will always improve your mood, and make you an overall happier person. For our district meeting this week it happened to be on my companion´s birthday, so that was cool. The sisters made brownies and brought chips and soda and some Colombian food (because my companion is Colombian) called Arrepas or something, I don´t know how it´s spelled. But I do know I never want to eat them again. My companion also happened to make some for me for breakfast, and then our lunch appointment also consisted of them. It was not good, basically when you take a bite it seems to expand in your mouth and cover everything, kinda like if you´ve ever done that one game where you look for candy in a pile of flour, but you have to use your mouth. Yeah not a fan. The lunches here are real hit or miss for me, yesterday we had a really good lunch and for desert we had chocolate icecream with sprinkles on mini waffles, it was amazing. But then the other day when we had lunch at the owner of our pension´s house we had some avocado and some kind of meat and cheese and it wasn´t bad, and it filled me up so I wasn´t complaining. But then they brought out a huge meal. Apparently that was just a salad. I was so stuffed, especially since I don´t generally eat much anyways. Once while we were walking down the street we encountered a man who was really polite to us but as we talked he told us he was baptized into our church when he was a kid by some missionaries like us, but that he had a bad experience with the church, because his only friends were the missionaries, and they switch areas often. So he felt alone and betrayed because he thought these missionaries were his friends but then they left and never talked to him again. As he was telling this I felt so sad. It was a shame that the members at the time didn´t make him feel more included, and maybe he wasn´t really converted to the gospel, maybe he was only looking for friends, but either way no one should ever feel alone. I hope to do better than those missionaries in helping people realize that. Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ will always comfort us, also as a church we should always remember to be friendly towards everyone, include everyone. Nobody should feel alone. A good church should feel like family. This experience was also hard for me because I failed to respond how I wanted, I wanted to try and comfort him, to express how sad I was that that happened to him, but I just stayed silent because I was afraid I wouldn´t know what to say or it wouldn´t be received well. Either way I felt bad for failing, all I could think about afterwards was Mosiah 28:3, but my companion tried to make me feel better and remind me that it was only my first week. I´ve got a lot of improvement to do thats for sure. This week I had some incredible studies of Helaman chapter 5, because as I read the Book of Mormon I´ve also started keeping a study journal, and Helaman chapter 5 is incredible. I wish I had more time to explain why, maybe I´ll explain it next week, but until then I encourage everyone to read it and look for examples of the Doctrine of Christ. Faith in Jesus Christ and His Atonement, Repentance, Baptism for the remission of sin, the gift of the Holy Ghost, and Persevering to the end. I hope every one is doing well back home!

Elder Blaylock