Oi! Or should I say Hola!
Yep, President Collins threw me a curveball and assigned me Spanish speaking! Adios Portuguese, at least for now.I guess that's the biggest news this week. It's been a crazy week with a new mission and a new language and new companions and delayed flights and so much more so hopefully I can tell you everything.
The day we flew out was kind of crazy. Since our flight was delayed so much in SLC we missed our connector in Phoneix, so US Airways felt bad and gave us a free tour of all the country's airports! Haha not really, but we flew from Phoneix to DC and then to Indianopolis, and all our flights were delayed by an hour or so, and by the time we got to the mission home is was like 2 am, so that was definitely a long 24 hours. Being late also kind of threw off all the orientation, so we were mostly just thrown into the work right after we got here. I got to talk with President Collins a bit, but time was short and everything was so rushed, and before I knew it I was trying to teach the gospel in Spanish. It's been quite the adventure. I'm serving on the east side of Indianopolis, which is more run down then the west side, but the people are really nice and pretty receptive to the gospel. Since we are Spanish speakers, tracting is kind of different because we don't knock all the houses. I guess their are some tell tale signs of Hispanics which include cleaning supplies on the porch, Christmas lights up year round, minivans, and a couple other indicators. Pretty much we guess what houses/trailer homes are hispanic and knock. The formula is pretty effective, but everyone once in a while we get some English speakers, and we teach them if they let us and then hand them off to the English missionaries. It's kind of funny because we're looking for people I don't know how to talk to. It's been great though, and Hispanics are awesome. We're in a Spanish branch with four other missionaries and have a ton of investigators, but it's so hard to teach them because they work like crazy and since we're only in certain areas on certain days schedules don't match and appointments fall through all the time. The other struggle is that we can't teach women unless a man is there, and a lot of times the husband is off working late and there are a lot of single moms that want to be taught, but we just can't teach them. But despite all that we have a ton of investigators, and a lot of people working towards baptism. It's tough because I can hardly participate in the lessons, but I love talking as much as I can, and even though I hardly know the people here, I already love them, which is really cool. Further confirmation this is the Lord's work.
I'm in a trio again, same with all the other visa waiters. Our visa's can come at any time, so they put us in Trio's just in case. Elder Cozzens is my trainer, and he's a great guy and a great missionary. He's so hardworking and so humble, and really leads by example. My other companion, Elder Paxman, is a newbie as well. Both of us are picking up the language decently fast, but I just have to remember to be patient, and I'm trying to keep up with Portuguese too which is a challenge because when I talk I kind of default to Portuguese, and since I don't know it that well it just sounds like really bad Spanish, so pretty much I'm speaking a weird mix of Spanish, Portuguese and English, "Sportugish" as I like to call it. Life is good though, and it's mostly a blast out here!
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