"Greenie Fire"

My new companion is good! It is always funny to see the greenie fire when they first come in! I was talking about that with one of the returned missionaries here, we were talking about how when the new missionary first comes they clean the whole pension and always have a ton of energy. Then after one or two transfers they lose the energy to fight the constant amount of mud, dirt and other messes. I still clean, I´m not saying that I don´t clean but I also don´t try to have everything spotless like before. It just doesn´t work here. Then we said that the greenies when they have their first hijo end up being the one who sleeps while their new hijo is the one that cleans the pension, jaja My hijo said that that will never happen to him and that he will always clean the pension to be spotless (I said that too :P) I told him that is awesome and support him in it, but I highly doubt he will last any longer than two transfers.

But more specifically about him, jaja Everyone we talk to asks him if he is Chinese and starts making racist jokes about him, I think it will happen his whole mission. The people here are very ignorant. I told him to get used to it now because it won’t stop so he is thinking about for the summer trying to find one of the Chinese hats that they wear to support their racist comments and jokes because it would be funny. He is actually a mix of Hawaiian and Japanese.

We get along good but sometimes I feel like he wants to challenge what I tell him. He is very new and excited and has all these ´´great ideas´´. I know that I am going to be learning more about patience this transfer, jaja I am going along with a lot of his ideas so that he can learn for himself, especially because he doesn´t listen when I tell him what will happen. He likes to do things for himself instead of learn from other people. Like today he couldn´t understand that I had faith that we could reach our area goal for baptisms of 4 (I know it COULD happen) but at the same time I don´t think it will happen and we should lower it. Then we talked with the sister missionaries too and I think that another person’s view helped him to see what I was trying to explain and maybe trust me a little more, we will see. But I also want to let him try things for himself and learn for himself why things work and don´t work. Just a lot of greenie fire that is all, haha. I remember when Elder Fiabane had that, jaja.

For conference it was broadcast in Castellano in the chapel where all the Latinos and investigators, and members went. We had another side room where it was broadcast in English. I think that I would have understood pretty much all of it in Castellano but it would have bugged me to have the voices changed of people like the prophet and the apostles.
My favorite talks were probably first of all the one on Saturday by Uchtdorf. I loved the story he started with, the guy who had all the things that we do for our church listed to him then he asked why would anyone want to be a member of your church? jaja I thought that was funny. I also liked that quote of doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith. I think that if more people would think like that it would help them out a ton. He also talked about some great points for things that people have said to me while on my mission. Like the church isn´t perfect because it is ran by us who are imperfect beings but that is no reason to not go. That they should go and add their talents and try to help make it more perfect.

Other talks that I really liked where Edward Dube and David A Bednar. I liked the quote in Dube´s talk ´´faith is always looking towards the future.´´ that we should always take serious all of our calling because God put us there at that time and place for a reason so we need to do what he asked. I also liked in Bednar´s when he talked about how we often receive simple but significant blessings. I think we often overlook those simple but significant blessing. Like in the story he told the lady had no unusually large medical bills or payments that she had to make. That we can receive blessings from God for the same end through different means like we may have more endurance to search out different job offers than other people. God will always answer our prayers, just maybe not in the way that we expect. ´´Your thoughts are not higher than my thoughts, but my thoughts are higher than your thoughts.´´

Our relationship with those who feed us is good, jaja that isn´t the problem. The problem is that the bishop is trying to set crazy rules for us to have baptisms. There was a, as we call it, attack the missionaries meeting this week. The bishop and his counselors set up a whole bunch of crazy rules about baptizing and told us how we were doing all these different things wrong. We talked to president who told us that he knew that what is going on here isn´t our fault it isn´t the missionaries failing but the church failing the missionaries here. President has talked to the Stake President and he is going to talk to the bishop. The way that he did it we aren´t even involved. The stake president is going to ask him about things that president has heard have been going on here that shouldn´t be (like the bishop trying to interview baptismal candidates). President told us to just to our best with the ward we have and he is pleased with our work. 

I love you guys so much and I can´t wait to hear from you next week!