Behold, I will send for many fishers, saith the Lord, and they shall fish them;
and after will I send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain,
and from every hill, and out of the holes of the rocks. Jeremiah 16:16

Monday, February 12, 2018

Derek: Captain's Log Week 13: 'Vaina'


 28 Wherefore, labor ye, labor ye in my vineyard for the last time-for the last time call      upon the inhabitants of the earth.
(D&C 43: 28)

I was going to start this by venting on how much I hate Spanish. But the thing is I realized that they don't even speak Spanish here, they just speak Dominican. Ready? This is how you speak Dominican. Step 1: Speak normal Spanish. Step 2: Take out evey ‘S’ you should say. Step 3: Make up words as you go along. Step 4: Talk really fast so people don't know that you don't know Spanish. Step 5: Throw grammar out the window, it's too overrated anyway. There, you are now fluent in Spanish and Dominican. For example, instead of saying the word "cosa" which means "thing" , in spanish, a Dominican would say "vaina" which literally means a "sheath", like for swords. Or they have this phrase here "Tamo heavy" which is supposed to mean "We are cool". But it's not Spanish; it's half bad Spanish and half English. I have this fear that I'm going to go home and not be able to communicate with any real Spanish speaker.

Ok that's enough venting. So back to the good stuff. This week I had my first Zone Confrence. We talked about the importance of repentance and about how agency is one of the most misunderstood and wrongly-taught principles in the gospel. So I’m trying to spend a good part of my personal study time each day studying it. It got me even more excited to serve. I also spent some time this week buying things to send home in my first package. And I finally got to met Dorisbell!!!! She is a progressing investigator that has been out of town for the last 8 weeks!!! We talked with her and gave her a fecha for the 10th of March. I really love my investigators they are all super cool but the definitely need to go to church more. One of our biggest problems with one of our investigators right now is that she said that she will only go to church if her friend does and will only be baptized if her friend does. So we are going to help her realize that she needs her own testimony. But she doesn’t read or pray or even go to church so its really hard for her to gain her OWN testimony if she isn't willing to put in her own work.

Today, to celebrate one of the elder’s birthday, we went to the batting cages. It was super fun and super cheap. I totally killed it and caught one of the balls that was launched at me single handed. But what was super funny was that 4 of the kids that were going to come were super late because they had a riot right outside of their house: police, burning tires, broken glass, and all. The cops shot a mustard gas grenade at the apartment right below the elders’ and they got a little tear-gassed from it. They even said that a women ran out of the building with a infant having a seizure. 

Anyways the mission is great, the church is true, and that’s it.





The b-day boy hitting a few balls.

 Elder VanBuskirk




Hi Mom. 

So this week I learned Braille and how to solve a Rubic’s cube, I was wondering if you can send me a book on how to do origami when you have a chance. I can’t find any here. Also a pocket US constitution. 


I gotta go right now. Love you

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