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, March 4, 2019

Derek: Captain’s Log: A Los Cielos Abiertos


Happy Dominican Independence Day everybody who cares!!



So Wednesday we had a cool activity at the church to celebrate the Republic that is Dominican. We ate, we talked, we danced (Well, they danced. We obviously didn't). We had a great time. So it started with a few presentations about this beautiful country and it's history then after that the youth performed a few dances. It was pretty good but the best dance was when Natalie, some girl I baptized, and Nicole, her step sister, preformed a super cool dance that made all the other primary kids super jealous. I was high key impressed to be honest. Then after that we ate the Dominican food that was prepared. Because of where I'm at, there wasn't any really big parties in the streets like last year. So leading up to Wednesday I kept explaining that to my comp that Independence Day is super crazy here, but when it arrived my comp was super disappointed because no one was in the streets. 

Also yesterday we finally got Christen to receive the Holy Ghost after not being able to go to church the last few weeks. So that was great. We also should have 4 baptisms the next Saturday but anything can happen so cross your fingers. But 3 of them have passed their baptismal interview so they should be all right. Also last Sunday we showed up to church and we received 6 new people to teach and they all seem to be progressing well, so we will see how that goes. 3 of them are a family, a mother and two daughters, who are what we call dry members. Which means that they go to church a lot and know everything but just aren't baptized yet. In their case the reason for that is because the mother lives with a dude who she is not married to. The family has 2 years meeting with the missionaries already and know everything, but the husband thought that if he gets married it means that he then needs to get baptized. But she explained that that isn't the case. He likes the church and goes every Sunday but doesn't really feel sure about it yet. But he is now willing to get married, so we'll see. So they lived in another ward but just moved into ours, and when we visited them we walked in to this beautiful house where she played hymns that she had on a CD, made us quesadillas and a smoothie. And her two angel-like children of 11 and 9 were there and were paying good attention and asked really good questions. But they pretty much already knew everything we taught them. We felt as if we were in heaven. Anyway we got to talk to her husband for a sec at church and we will come by this week to talk more about their wedding and baptism because they have waited long enough.

Last Monday we invited some of the missionaries over and we made pancakes with some homemade buttermilk syrup on top, and we played a lot of dominoes. On Tuesday we had to go to the capital so my comp could do some legal paperwork so while he did that I got to hang out with some of my really good mission friends who had to be there as well. One of them goes home this month so it was nice to catch up before that happened. Also this week the Mission President’s wife and the office Elders came to our house to do inspections. And we were out working when they got to our house, so we walked in and Hermana Santos, the president’s wife welcomed us by saying, "Welcome to your dirty house." Now disclaimer, the house was actually pretty clean, what she was referring to was that the house itself sucks. It has like 20 years in the mission and because we have gone so long without water it was nearly impossible to mop or anything. But apparently they are starting to look for a new house for us so that's great.

So from Monday to Wednesday night this week we were blessed to have had the Evaneglical church rent out the baseball field about a quarter mile from my house. They were having an event called "A Los Cielos Abiertos" or  To The Open Heavens, in which they would scream and sing until a little past 10:30 every night. So at first it was alright when they were yelling and screaming about Jesus, but then they just ditched the whole Jesus thing and just stared screaming literal nonsense. And even though they where pretty far way we could still hear them super loud anyways. 

Elder VanBuskirkcito






French flag at the DR Independence party


my area


Pancakes with the boys

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