July 28, 2010

Hello Familia,

How goes everything back at home? It sounds like everything is good. I was wondering if you would send me a picture of the new TV. I want to know what it looks like in the casa. Gracias. Jordy sounds like he´s doing so good in his new area. That´s pretty much every missionary´s dream to arrive in an area like that. But I´m glad that he´s having success and enjoying his mission. He´s a good little missionary and I´m proud of him. Toay, on the other hand, still has some problems. This week was a depressing week to go to church. Hardly anyone went... and it wasn´t even cold. Betiana came with her two daughters, which was good, but there were only like 25 people there. The chapel is so big here and so beautiful that it makes life more depressing when there are only like 3 benches with people in them. It´s just hard because we can´t figure out how to help people. There are so many people that just stopped going to church for some really dumb reason ( I just didn´t go one Sunday and then after that it was easy, I had futbol games on Sunday... I´ve already decided that I´m going to use that story on my kids if they ever have an argument about wanting to play sports on Sunday. "You can blame Pablo, who is now totally inactive and is living with a girl he doesn´t love because she has his child, and it all started with his futbol games that he went to on Sunday instead of going to church." Maybe that´s a little strong?) We have been able to contact some of our investigators again though and we are teaching them again. We also visited a menos activo lady this week and showed her the video Finding Faith in Christ. She was crying by the end, so we figured that was a good sign. The sad thing about her family is that she has like four sons that are almost the age that they could serve missions. I have gotten such a testimony that this is exactly what boys that age need to be doing and it helps them so much in the rest of their lives. It also helps keep them out of trouble for these two years.

We stopped by Cesar´s house this week and were able to talk to him and teach him about baptism again. It turns out that he had Google-earth stalked our houses and he actually had our house in Henderson pulled up on his computer when we went to see him. He´d also been looking up lots of stuff about the church on the internet and had stumbled upon BYU (which he pronounce Byoo). We directed him to the church website. It sounds super creepy that he was stalking us, but he´s nice so it´s not as weird.

Something that was really fun this week were a bunch of activities that we got to do. On Friday morning, we went to the stake center in Santa Rosa and helped with a youth conference thing, where we left with the youth and went to contact people on the street. It was fun and some of the girls were so full of energy and so excited to share that it reminded me of how excited I was when I first got here. A few no´s really takes the animo out of you, but they did a good job. We also had an activity for Pioneer Day. We walked down the street and ate choripan (sausage on bread - actually really delicious) in the wilderness to remember the pioneers. We sang Come, Come Ye Saints before we left, but that was about everything that was said about the pioneers. It was a fun activity though and a bunch of people came. At the end of the activity, they got out Tejo. It´s a game kinda like Horseshoes and everyone played. They wanted us to play so we tried, but we lost horribly. At least we tried though and it was a cultural experience... that´s what I´ve started saying about everything that doesn´t turn out very well. :) We had to leave early to do missionary work so the Bishop gave us a ride home in his truck (we´re trucho pioneers... fake pioneers). The good thing about Toay is that I´m positive that the church will never die here because of the solid members of the church that will always keep going no matter what.

We also found a new investigator this week who actually wanted us to come back and see him again. Dario let us in and gave us some tea (don´t worry, the kind we´re allowed to drink) and we talked to him about the church, even though he told us he already had a religion. Turns out that he´s really involved in scouts so he went to the Catholic church for a while, but when we left, he was excited to go to churhc on Sunday. We brought the Restoration video to his house the next day and watched it together. He´s super nice and we really hope that him and his WIFE (yes, I said wife) and their children will come to church this Sunday. Life is good in Toay. Hna. Sommermeyer is helping me a lot with my Spanish. She corrects me when I say things wrong and helps me figure out the words for what I want to say. Today, I learned how to say squash (aplastar) and polka dots (lunares). It´s good because they´re words that I would never learn how to say if I was speaking English all the time. All in all, the church is true and it is really the way we have to live our lives if we want to be happy. I know for a fact that Pablo would be much happier now if he had chosen church over futbol. So family, I hope that when i get home, we can all help each other choose church over futbol or lo que sea so that we can be happy now and for eternity. I love you guys so much and I am so grateful to have a family as supportive, loving, and funny as you are. Good luck with everything! I´m praying for you!

Love,

Hna. Seegmiller

P.S. Please tell Kylie that i so appreciate her letters and love her a lot. Also, that I am awaiting a letter from Luke and Erik, who I know are now home and have nothing to do. :)