Monday November 30th 2009

Hi Everyone;
I am just going to talk randomly about this week because I'm not thinking much happened this week but maybe I will remember things as I start writing. So, this Saturday we had another baptism. And it was awesome. Everybody and anybody went to the baptism. We had almost every women in the whole church go to the baptism. Boo-ya!! And the girl that got baptized is named Violeta. We are teaching her whole family but the thing is that her parents can't get baptized yet because they aren't married. But we are working on it. It is way hard to get paper work in this country. Nothing is organized.
Thanksgiving almost passed by without me even knowing. It wasn't till 8:00 at night that our mission leader, who is American, told us that it was Thanksgiving. My companion and I just looked at each other and were like; "Shoot! We missed Thanksgiving." So we went out and bought ourselves Domino's pizza - two huge family size ones, and eat them. It was sweet. Not really like Thanksgiving but still sweet.
Today for p-day we had a Thanksgiving dinner as a zone. And I must say that my mashed potato making skills are improving. lol. I pretty much make the sweetest mashed potatoes ever now. Friday we had zone conference with the President, and that wasn't bad at all. That was the week basically - nothing really to interesting. Hopefully everything will go a little smoother this week, because it was little hectic this last week.
Happy Belated Thanksgiving!!
Elder Woestman

Monday, November 23rd 2009

So Mom – the package you sent down with a friend got stolen?!?!?! What bad luck do I have? lol. Oh well, I guess it is the thought that counts, but it probably would of been better if you told me that there was nothing but sox inside of it because then I wouldn't of felt bad about it.
So my week was pretty interesting I guess. It all started Tuesday when I went to go teach this member’s two friends. We will call them Friend #1 and Friend #2.. But only Friend #1 showed up and he showed up with a whacked up story. So it turns out that last Saturday Friend #2, was at the church playing basketball with Elmerts, the member kid, and Elmerts’ sister. Friend #2 and Elmerts’ sister got a little too friendly at church, but the crazy thing is that this girl is the girlfriend of Friend #1. So obviously there is a big problem. Now Friend #1 wants nothing with the church and Friend #2 doesn't want to show his face at church again because of what he did. All cause of some stupid girl. . . and they were both dang good investigators as well. We will see if I can turn them around with some time.
Then Thursday we had our interviews with the president, they were nice and fast, because that’s how they are if there are no problems. And he also gave us permission to go to Semma – which is a taylor store, or a place to buy fabric. So my companion and I are going down there to buy some pant taylor and get some pants made. I’m dang excited for that, and then Friday I did my first baptism interview. I was sooo nervous. I was afraid that I might let somebody get baptized that wasn't really ready and I spent and hour and a half doing the interview, and I didn’t even know it. lol.
Saturday the other two missionaries had a big disagreement and one called the APs and so they came over and they had a big talk. My companion and I grabbed some orange soda, sat at the top of the stairs, and listened to the whole thing and it was pretty intense. The one missionary even started crying, probably better than any movie you could ever watch. But it left us counting our blessing on how good we are getting along and everything. lol. And yea, that was my week. Another nice week of crazy mission drama.
Elder Woestman

Monday, November 16th 2009

So this week was pretty sweet. I’ll start it off with Wednesday. So Wednesday we went to the super market to get our food for the week, right. Well, we found these what looked like hamburger patties and they were dang cheaper than regular ground beef. Soak Score. So we bought them in place of ground beef. Well, when we went home that day to make lunch we immediately went to the patties to eat some hamburgers for lunch. I started frying them up but the thing was that after like five minutes you’d expect them to start cooking, right? Well they were still blood red. And 20 minutes later they were still blood red, just cooked blood red. So the plan was to just give it to the dogs out side. Well my companion decided that he wasn’t afraid of it and was going to eat it - which was stupid. Thursday I got a phone call from him at the hospital office and I had to go talk to the doctor and sign him out. They think he may have parasites. But I guess that just makes me lucky for not eating it.
This week was the best week number wise for us, but the worst week success wise. We had 12 people committed to go to church Sunday, but only 5 went to church. We even stopped by 6 houses, but not even one of the people we passed by would answer their door and were therefore probably sleeping. But hey, that’s about it, and I have to go. Have a great week.
Elder Woestman

Monday, Nov 9th 2009

So my week was just awesome. We had a lot of success this week. It started out with a sweet family home evening night that we did Monday. We made enchiladas with one of my baptisms. And then Tuesday we went out with another one of my baptism Willy, for the first time - and that was awesome. He was way good. We taught one of his cousins. Later that night we did another family home evening night and after words Willy did a bunch of magic for the people we were teaching. They all loved it. And, Willy loved the day so much - it was a blast. He is way excited to leave with us again tomorrow. And I am too because that day was the most successful day we had all last week
The rest of the week was pretty normal. We actually have a bunch of new people that we are teaching. We got four referrals this week, three Sunday and one Thursday. That’s way awesome because referrals are the best way to go by far. One of them is a boyfriend of a member and they are thinking about getting married. Two of them are friends of one of my baptisms. And another is this sister-in-law of this member guy that moved into the ward from Brooklyn. And he knows English, which is always sweet. Oh and Saturday we ran into these two guys in the super market who were from Jersey and they spoke perfect English. It was crazy. I kept on getting confused because I wanted to speak to them in Spanish but they were talking to me in perfect English. I ended up speaking probably the worst English ever in front of them. Oh and I totally forgot. I also got interviewed by this one girl who needed to interview a native English speaker. So that was fun. I did that Wednesday. But all in all the week was way sweet.
-Elder Woestman

Monday, Nov 2nd 2009

So Halloween was just crazy for me, because I almost got moved out of my area. So basically I almost got specifically transferred out of my area because of this girl in my ward that my last companion and I reactivated. Basically, she gave me a note and told me not to read till I got home. Which I did just because I thought it was something like she had a problem or wanted me to give something to someone. But it turns out it was a love note. And basically on the back of it, it had two hearts, one of which was broken. On the bottom it said ' Te quiero mi Dulce Bebe ' . So you can start laughing at me now if you want. Everybody else in the house did, because for one, that's not even spelled correctly. Dominicans don't know how to spell. And two, that means “do you want me candy baby”. So I had to call up the AP's and tell them about it and the only reason why I am not being specifically transferred is because they trust me. I told them I could handle it. And, they don't want to separate me and my kid or start the area over with two new companions. So I got pretty lucky there. But yea that was my Halloween. Pretty much ridiculous.
The rest of the week wasn’t too bad. We have been working with this family to get the parents married, and we finally got a date with them for the 14 of this month to get married. That is dang sweet.
And also we found this in-active guy named Juan who we got to go to church Sunday. We have almost all new people that we are teaching these days. We had our capital conference with the President Thursday. He gave a long speech about holding on too long to people that just aren’t going to progress. He said even if we convince them to get baptized that doesn’t mean they will stay active. Oh – and Wednesday one of my baptisms went to the Temple, which was awesome because now he has twice as much energy as before and he wants to start doing family history work. (But I think that’s only because the person that does that in our ward is this girl that he likes. lol.) But yea that was my week. Work, work, work with a little bit of craziness.
Elder Woestman