Bannon's Mission Blog: Happy New Year

Our family had so much fun talking to Bannon on Skype at Christmas! He is really doing so well and even bore his testimony in Spanish. (Miguel told him to keep working on it haha but we are so proud of him!) We were skyping with him on my Mom's computer while we were holding up the IPad with my grandparents and aunt and uncle and cousins on it since they were in California and we were in Idaho. We are so blessed to live in a time where we can see and hear from our missionary in a different part of the world! It was so great to hear his experiences and how much he loves the people of the Dominican Republic. Please continue to pray for Bannon and the people of the DR! Thank you all for your love and support of him, he would not be such a great guy if it weren't for the wonderful people he surrounds himself with. Happy New Year!

Christmas was awesome!!

On the 24th (which is Christmas in this country) we had 4 dinner appointments! Dominicans make you eat so much, especially on holidays. So by the end of the night, you could say I didn't need food for a good week and a half! In the morning, I opened my Christmas package from my family and got some sweet things! Especially a ton of Utah State clothes which I am stoked about! Thank you family for all the gifts! Elder Rodriguez, my last companion, got to be in a trio with me and Elder De Bernardi for Christmas so that was awesome! Especially because he had some gifts from my parents in my package. Later we went to a members house to visit with him because I asked him earlier that week what his plans were and he said he didn't have any. So I thought it would be super cool for him if we went and visited with him. We sang a Christmas song and talked and gave him chocolates. It was really cool. He doesn't have any family here, but we are his family. I wish we could have done more, but it was great. Finally we got to the church to Skype our families! It was so good to see my family and talk with all them. Sounds like everyone is doing great and it was a good Christmas. The next morning, I attempted to make fritters like we always eat on Christmas morning, and to my surprise, they tasted exactly like the ones my mom makes! Then we took Elder Rodriguez back to meet up with his new companion and we taught some great lessons the rest of the day. These past two weeks have been killing us because everyone is so busy with the holidays. It has been a challenge to find our investigators and have good lessons without blasting music down the street, but I'm hoping it gets better next week when everyone finally calms down! We have two new investigators who are so awesome and really understand and accept the gospel. They are sisters and always have great questions and are hungry for more. They are ready for baptism and want to get baptized, buuuuuut, they both live with their boyfriends... Gosh why aren't people married in this country!? So it is going to take a miracle to get them married with their boyfriends because both of their boyfriends don't have any interest. Also, one of our best progressing investigators just told us she doesn't want us to keep teaching her. I was devastated when she told us this. I had so much hope and faith in her and she was progressing so much. I honestly have no idea what the heck happened, but we are going to go back this week and talk with her and get it all figured out. So I am asking this of you friends and family: Fast and pray for the people of Los Cocos! If we fast, and you guys fats and pray for my investigators and the people of Los Cocos, I really think we will start to see miracles. Just please fast that we can get our two investigators married to their boyfriends, for our progressing investigator who doesn't want us to come back, and just for us in general to be able to find and teach the people of Los Cocos who are ready for this gospel and have strong interest and desire to partake of these great blessings. That would be so awesome of all of you. Thanks!

So today my whole district and a few others, wanted to go to the waterfalls in my area that are 2 hours away by foot. I have been there 2 times already, and I did a super intense calf workout on Monday, so I could hardly walk yesterday or today. So I had no desire to go, but I didn't really have a way out of going so I just went. We went with two members of our church who know of hidden waterfalls as well. When we got there, I followed one of them up this huge mountain on this zig zag path through the jungle. He got us lost up there... So we tried to find another way down. But it was about the worst and most dangerous decision we could have made haha. We were literally slipping and sliding down cliffs and big rocks were falling down from above, so we had to dodge them. Then the trees that we were holding onto for support kept falling down and were not strong. At one point I was literally hanging on to two vines over a 20 foot drop. It was awesome! Literally felt like I was in a crazy movie or something. I eventually rock climbed my way down using the vines and swung like Tarzan. Felt so cool. Haha. Me and 3 other missionaries went back a little early and a few others stayed and tried to find other hidden waterfalls. They ended up getting lost and were gone for another 4 hours! We left at 7 this morning, I got back at 2:00 and they got back at 5:00! crazy. But overall, it was a great, fun, adventurous day! Lived life on the edge... Literally. :D

Well, Happy New Years! Make this year better than the last!!

Elder Greer