Monday, March 10, 2014

And the Happiness Continues......



SOoo it`s been a pretty great week here in the wonderful city of Bucaramanga. It actually has been a little cooler this week especially in the mornings but no aguaceros like in Oregon:) I`m super relieved and happy that you’re back to running Shay:) Honestly from the time I learned about your achilles problem,  the first thing I thought back to was when dad was trying to convince you to keep swimming and that it would be a good cross trainer. I chuckled to myself quite a bit with that thought but as you know, we`ve all regretted not taking good ol dad’s advice;) Who knows what would have happened if I would have listened to him and would have taken those Kung Pau classes with all of the nerds in togas;) I`m sure dad remembers standing at the elementary school next to Millicoma on a rainy day trying to convince a bawling whiney kid to go in there and bow to his sen sei. I would probably be the next Rex Kwon Doe if I would have listened to him. And don`t even get me started on motorcycles!!!
So I would like to relate a series of super weird experiences I had last Tuesday. These experiences came from trying to talk to everyone in our path. So in the afternoon our lessons had fallen through and none of our plan b`s were home. So we just started trying to talk to people lol.  We decided to start walking to the lesson that we had that was at the bottom,  most farthest part of our area and to talk to the people that crossed our path. Well we went from having nothing to having everyone basically contact us because they saw us talking lol. First,  we taught a guy in a park that had committed all and every kind of serious sin and for that reason had what I like to nickname ¨the Jason Bourne syndrome¨.  He had lost the last 3 months of his memory, just like that! gone. We tried to help him and then were up and off again. The next guy had read the WHOLE ENTIRE Book of Mormon and he said he knows it`s true but he has to read in secret because if his daughter finds out she will throw the book out. He said we couldn`t meet again because if his family knows then they would probably stop feeding him ( he was a pretty old guy.) Then we had an odd lesson with a young guy that only believed in the Bible from Acts to Revelation because Paul was the only true apostle of Christ, I still don`t really understand that point of view. Then we ended up with a kid about our age trying to fight with us lol, he was from some Christian Church and the only thing he did was try to pick a fight. But ended up failing before he even started, he tried to quote a scripture from the 10 commandments and yelled at me ¨OPEN UP YOUR BIBLE TO EPHESIANS 20¨ I calmly said kind of confused, uhhh those are just letters and there aren`t 20 chapters. He yelled again ¨EPHESIANS 20¨ So I opened up to Ephesians and there are only 6 chapters. So he said the heck with it and proceeded to cite the commandment of not worshiping graven images. Then I said ¨ohhhh I think you mean Exodus 20 look here it is¨ - probably a little sarcastically. ¨ Then we let him finish and all I said while shaking his hand was, ¨We respect your beliefs, now respect ours or our conversation is done here¨ He tried to cite another scripture but we just turned around and left.
Next thing I have to tell you is that my poor nikon camera was dropped last Saturday and is broken:( I won`t tell you how I broke the thing because it just gives me too much shame to share it with everyone. So at first it turned on but the lens has pieces broken inside because I could here them crunching around when the shutter tried to shut. And now it doesn`t even turn on. So I know it will cost over 100 mil (50 dollars) to fix. Because my comp dropped his and had it looked at and the damage is the same. So I was just thinking about buying a new one for myself for my birthday. We have a few connections that are going to Venezuela in a few weeks and told us they could find some nice ones for really cheap prices. So we`ll just have to see.
Also we finished the week great!! with our 2nd baptism here:) It made me feel really good because Sergios girlfriend, in the last lesson that we had, asked us what we had done differently because every missionary and his dog had taught Sergio and weren’t able to ¨convince¨ him to be baptized. All I said was that it was the time that God had prepared for him and he accepted. Then he said, “No but you guys really helped too”. You guys all shared the same messages and had the same little pamphlets. But you guys made me see things a little differently, made me feel important, and actually care about me. That really hit me hard and I am so grateful to our Father in Heaven for just how he does things and how perfect his plan his. We were just there at the right place and the right time and God did the rest. I love this work! Well hope you guys have an exellent week!!! LOVE YOU ALL
-Elder Crook


No comments:

Post a Comment