Sorry for the late posts but here are Bannon's 2 most recent letters starting with the oldest first. He and his companion seem to be doing great! Thanks for reading! I will post again later this week when we get the new letter.
So this week I learned that we
actually only get money 2 times a month! I thought we got money every P-Day,
but that's apparently not the case. So learning how to budget is definitely
vital! Sucks, but it will definitely help me when I'm just as poor in college!
The weather:
It is so hot all the time! And
humid! It’s pretty much like being in a sauna all day! I have gotten used to
feeling like I just got out of a Jacuzzi in my clothes. It rains a lot though,
which helps it cool down a little, but it’s like humid, hot rain so it feels
like you're taking a hot shower when it rains. It gets stormy a lot too. With
thunder and lightning that is super loud. Really random weather though. One
minute it will be pouring rain, 5 minutes later it will be sunny and only a
couple clouds in the sky. A lot like Utah actually! ;)
The food is really good! It's
usually always the same thing though; Rice, Chicken, and Beans. Lots of avocado,
which I love. And always cooked/fried green bananas which taste a lot like potatoes.
The language:
So all anyone would ever tell me
about the DR before my mission is that they are obsessed with baseball (which
is a fact), that they eat lots of rice, chicken, and beans (which is also a
fact), and that they speak a million miles per hour and don't pronounce their
"s's". Yeah, when they said they talk super-fast, they weren't lying!
A hundred miles per hour is not an exaggeration! And they never pronounce their
"S's" unless the word starts with an "S." The word
"Dos" is pronounced "Do." And so on... Even if I did know
this language fluently I don't think I would understand. My Spanish is still
pretty terrible, and I am sure I sound like a 2 year old cause my grammar
sucks, but it is coming along. The spirit definitely helps get the message across.
Sometimes people ask me a question or say something to me and I have no idea
what they are saying because it sounds like they are mumbling and I can't tell
the difference between words and sentences. So I just smile, laugh, and say
"Yes." When in doubt, just say yes! Works every time! Well, most of
the time. Sometimes it gets you in trouble, or you agree to do something you
don't want, but that's only sometimes so I'm just gonna keep doing it!
I taught my first Haitian this week!
He was pretty good at Spanish, but he had like a weird French, Creole accent
which was kinda cool. He is as dark as night and super cool.
I thought my area was pretty small
at first, but it is actually pretty big and we walk a lot. The further away you
get from the main part of town, the more it looks like a village and like you
are in another century. A lot of people on the outskirts can't read, so it
makes it hard to teach them when they can't read the Book of Mormon when we are
gone or the pamphlets that talk about what we believe. But I am going to be
creative and figure out a way! Because there is always something more you can
do.
Littering is definitely a thing here
unfortunately. There is trash everywhere. People just throw their trash
wherever because there isn't a good trash system. This place is beautiful,
but it would be way more beautiful if it was clean and there wasn't nasty used Kleenex’s
and such everywhere.
I have come to hate dogs and love
cats. That was the exact opposite before my mission. I don't actually love cats,
but they eat mice and rats that run across our house floor so I have come to
dislike them a lot less. There are a billion dogs here. All over the place. I
think they are mostly all stray, but it is hard to tell because they are just everywhere
all the time and in peoples yards and stuff. All they do is roam around, beg
for food and have babies. And they are all really ugly, unclean things with
scratches all over their bodies. At first I thought it was way sad, but every
other morning we seem to find dog poop on our front porch and it is so nasty.
And no one touches them because they haven't ever been cleaned. Sad, but I am
loosing sympathy every time they leave their present on our door step.
This morning all the missionaries in
Santiago City area got together and played sports. It was way fun and I definitely
got showed up in soccer by all the Latino's!
The work is great and we have a
bunch of new investigators that are super solid and interested. We have 3 for
sure baptisms right now, and two more with dates set that I think will end up
happening. I love being able to tell people that they are more than just our
investigators and numbers to us. It is the best to see someone you teach really
progress and understand the blessings of this gospel. Two of our investigators
are getting married soon and we are helping them with that because they don't
have much money. And later will get baptized and really have a strong desire to
go to the temple in a year. So that would be way cool if I got to go with them.
I also gave my first priesthood
blessing in Spanish! It was obviously way hard, but it went well!
I always feel like I am forgetting
something and like I didn't say everything that happened, but every day is an
adventure and I love the craziness!
Elder Greer
 |
This week was great! We got another
one of our investigators who is super solid committed to baptism, making that 4
people since I have gotten here! That is almost half of the members here in all
of Los Cocos in the 2 years it has had missionaries! If we keep this up, we
could eventually get a branch going here which would be amazing and super
helpful. But that is a stretch for now, but it will happen soon enough.
Also this week was General
Conference. On Saturday we were at the stake building all day watching and
later was the Priesthood session which ended at 10:00pm our time. That is also
when the last Gua-Gua leaves to go back to Los Cocos so we had to stay the
night at our district leader's house in the city. The next morning we woke up
early to catch a Gua-Gua back to our area and then hurried to get ready for the
day. We went around all morning talking to our investigators telling/reminding
them about conference. We only managed to get our investigator who I committed
to baptism this week, Ruth, to come to the morning session. But a couple others
said they would come to the afternoon session. Ruth ended up really liking it
and what the Prophet and Apostles said. Then after the morning session we had a
2 hour break before the afternoon session so we had to be quick. A family at
the church brought food and were so awesome and fed us which was such a
blessing because if they didn't feed us we wouldn't have eaten lunch. Then we
booked it to the Gua-Gua to hurry back to Los Cocos which is about 40 minutes
away in a Gua-Gua. Of course when we needed to get back quickly it took forever
so we ended up getting back to Los Cocos at 3:30 and the afternoon session
started at 4! So we started booking it to our investigators houses and were
calling people left and right. Before we knew it, it was already 3:57pm! We got
to our last investigators’ house and she ended up bringing like 6 other people
with her! We then all quickly speed walked to the Gua-Gua, but Elder Rodriguez
and I realized it was 4:02 and the Gua-Gua usually leaves at 4:00 so we were
just praying for a miracle that it would be there and it would have room for us
which is never likely. We turned the corner to see if there was one there, and
BAM! There was one waiting with nobody in it yet! That right there was a huge
answer to our prayers. We all piled in and ended up filling the whole Gua-Gua
up and we took off! I then realized how incredible that just was, and then
realized how many investigators we had coming. I began counting and we had 13
investigators!! (9 not including kids) That is a huge number for us! How we managed
that, I have no idea, but we got 3 families. The driver, of course, took
forever and the Gua-Gua was way slow, but we made it somehow a lot quicker than
I thought were and only missed the first 26 minutes of Conference. The talks
were all really good and stuff, but I was just praying for a super good talk or
something to stand out to my investigators. Something they really needed to
hear. Then bam, out comes my boy David A. Bednar with a talk specifically for
non-members/investigators! And it was perfect. I love Elder Bednar, he's great.
Never fails to give an amazing talk and really deliver. I think my
investigators learned a lot from it and the rest of Conference and I really
hope it helped and stood out to our 4 committed investigators.
Later that night, we went to
Ibelleze's house (The lady that I was prompted and felt the need to turn around
and talk to a couple weeks back) for our next lesson with her. She ended up not
being there so we turned around and started walking to our next appointment. I
saw a man sitting right where Ibellize was sitting when I had that experience
with her. I said hi and kept walking. Just like the experience with Ibellize, I
felt like we should talk with him. But it wasn't a very strong feeling and I
wasn't sure exactly if it was the spirit. But I didn't want to take a chance so
I said a quick prayer asking to know for sure if this was a prompting again. We
were quite a bit away at this point, but the feeling didn't go away so I
stopped, turned around, and Elder Rod followed and without a word to each other
walking back, we found the man and just like with Ibellize, I started talking
with him and getting to know him, and we eventually had a lesson! Ibellize
eventually showed up and sat with us. The lesson went great and they were both
way in tune and interested. We went back to, Gabriel is his name, his house
yesterday and his family was there and they were super awesome and interested
and I think we are going to make some good progress with them.
I know that hard work pays off and
when you put your trust in the lord, he takes care of you. I hope we keep
having miracles and success and are able to be a big example to the rest of the
missionaries. I have unfortunately seen many disobedient missionaries and
missionaries who just don't make enough of an effort or work as hard as they
could. So I really hope our success keeps coming, not just for the people we
are serving, not just for ourselves knowing we are doing good work, but
especially so we can be an example to the missionaries everywhere. Maybe they
will see our success and make a change or see that we are working hard and work
a little harder.
Last week I had to give a talk in
church! I found out earlier that week but then we remembered it was fast Sunday
that Sunday because of Conference the next week so I didn't prepare anything.
That morning, before church, we had a quick meeting and they told us we weren't
having fast and testimony meeting so I had to give a talk! I had 30 minutes to
quickly prepare something! Luckily I had my notebook and it had a talk from the
MTC on Enduring to the End. But it was all in English so I had the Sisters
translate it for me real quick. Needless to say, I pretty much read half of my
talk and I am terrible at reading Spanish out loud so it probably was not the
best, but I shared an example of running and just bore my testimony really well
and strong and it made it a little better... haha.
Today way P-Day so we decided to go
to the peak of the mountain as a zone. There were about 12 of us total, not the
whole zone showed up, but it was a way fun group of us. The mountains are all
in my area and are the mountains we run every morning. We got a gut to take us
all up in the back of a truck because the peak is really far away and would
take all day by foot. As we climbed up the mountain in the truck, I was
surprised to see that there is a whole village up there! Like they even have a
small school! This is awesome, and it is in my area and it is so beautiful! But
trying to tract and contact people up there would be insanely hard which is why
I don't think the elders in my area, or me have gone up there to try. And it
would be even more hard to actually get people to church cause it is like an
hour away in a car and most of these people, especially up there, don't have
cars. But we just might give it a try! Sometimes being crazy and doing the
unlikely/impossible ended up having a great effect. Maybe we will have a ton of
success and prove it is possible. But we are in for some leg cramps and LOTS of
walking up LOTS of hills. I'm stoked! Anyway, we made it to the base of the
mountain on top of the mountain we just climbed. Then we started the hike to
the top. It was an incredible hike! It was like a mixture of Jurassic Park and
the Hunger games 2! We finally made it to the top, then the clouds quickly
rolled in so we couldn't see the view very well which is a bummer, especially
because up there on a clear day you can see the beach and the whole coast. Then
it started raining. But that made it pretty cool and interesting on the way
down because we were literally in a rain forest and it was muddy and people
were slipping left and right. It took half the day, but it was so worth it and
was way fun! Definitely gonna take my family when we come back and visit.
I was definitely sent to the right
place and area. Not a day goes by that I regret the choice to go on a mission.
I love everything about it.
Elder Greer
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